For good people to do evil, that takes religion.

Mid-week reflection: -

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." (Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics) 

Mmm...I wonder what it takes for evil people to do good things, or more relevantly, become good? Is religion the culprit here too? 

One also has to consider this, why good people bother to stay good and evil people bother to stay evil? Or, what makes good people turn evil and evil people turn good? 

You see, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Is religion then the "sauce" that makes good people evil and evil people good? What's the common denominator? Is religion this common denominator? Sauce for thought?

But, isn’t take just a tad confusing? For god’s sake, is religion good or evil then? 

Alas, here’s what I think.

If we want to be good, nothing will stop us from being good. And if we want to be evil, nothing can stand in our way either.

I have seen good people turn evil too after they become rich and powerful. And I have seen evil people turn good after they have lost everything or take that walk down their own Damascus road. 

People do indeed change and they sometimes change faster than the traffic light changes colors. 

We are as much a victim of circumstances as we are a declared victor of it. 

No peak comes without the valley, but no peak is a guarantee that we will not fall once again into our own valley. In fact, the higher the climb, the harder the fall. And the harder the fall may just be the deeper the change. Go figure right?

Some people remain good in good times and bad times, regardless. And others remain evil whether in good or bad times. They are just indifferent to the seasons of change. They are evil for the most banal, or noblest of reasons. 

You can almost whiff a virtue in that, that is, they just want to be consistent about being consistently evil. And neither being religious nor irreligious has anything to do with it.

And if we want to point the finger, we will need more than ten fingers or two hands. The reason for the enduring goodness and evilness of man is too complex a social and personal phenomena for explanation or pinpointing. 

Religion is an easy target because it is most prominent and convenient. It is the lightning rod that gets struck down, the unwitting deer in the middle of the road, and the sore thumb that sticks out. 

If anything, religion aims to make the natural supernatural and the imperfect perfect. However idealistic the aim, the earnest throw always fall short; and most times by a long shot. 

So atheists have a field day with our shortcomings, which to them are magnified many times over by the highfalutin biblical assurances we present to them. They tend to forget the “like” in Christlikeness, and mistake the lifetime journey with its overnight arrival.

They also forget that it is not the cover that makes a good book. Neither a coat nor tie that makes a good man. A book is a good book by reason of good authorship and a man is a good man by virtue of his thoughts and actions over time. 

We judge a book and a man the same way we judge a seed, that is, by the fruits it produces. A good book gives birth to a harvest of inspiration and imagination. And a good man demonstrates it by the fruits that his life bears. All of which does not happen in an instance. Some may take many instances; some just never. 

A religion that is not internalized is nothing but the cover of a book or the boastings of an insecure man. A believer who does not bear fruits over time is like an unplanted seed, kept away from the sun and the rain, lost in darkness and forever parched. 

So religion is only an excuse for evil man to do evil. It is a tool rather than the cause. It is a means to an end rather than the end itself. 

I guess the last known frontier of human inquiry when it comes to religion is this: “Will we treat others as a means to our end or as an end in itself?” If it is the latter, then we would have savour a foretaste of what it means to fulfill the two greatest commandments Jesus talked about, whereupon all the laws and the prophets depend.

Going back full circle, the quote above hints to a tragic sense of irony when it reads, "but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." The observation, however sarcastic, is pregnant with the spawn of hypocrisy. 

Nevertheless, I wonder which comes first, "the religion chicken or the evil egg"? Is a man evil first and commits evil things? Or is he of a certain religion first and commits evil things? One is about cause and the other about convenient correlations. 

The answer to me is clear. While I can't answer the proverbial chicken or egg riddle in general, I can say with some confidence that religion is like a knife with a protective handle. You can choose to hold it by the blade or by the handle. It is a choice you make. It has nothing to do with the way the knife is made. 

Should you choose to hold it by the blade, you will bleed. Should you choose to hold it by the handle, it's yours to keep. 

It is the same logic with religion. It is a choice the believer makes. The choice makes the man. Good or bad, the man makes the choice. I can only pray that that much is clear to all men, even the wisest amongst us.