DO WE REALLY WANT TO BE SAVED? AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?

No one really wants to see the Messiah come, whatever we say about the matter. We're so wrapped up in believing in such a thing that the reality of it would ruin a way of life. Perhaps that is God's greatest gift to us, something to live for and the faith that fills our hearts. Religious faith is so very important to so many people. Their faith shapes their entire existence and defines their relationships to other people, for better or worse. Ideally it is for the better, but that's not a unanimous reaction to deep faith.

For all the good religions have done, all the meaning they have put into so many lives, the powerful moral lessons imparted, the charitable acts performed and the love drawn from so many opened hearts, there is an ugly flip side to organized religions, every last one of them. With out getting into the ugly particulars, the wars, the torture, the oppression, hatred and guilt, the rapacious theft of wealth, the petty usurpation of power and dubious authority and who did to what to whom in the name of God, religion has a lot to answer for. Many sins to be atoned, if you will.

So many of our faiths believe in a Redeemer, a Messiah, a cleanser of this world and eraser of our sins. Our prayers reflect that belief as we beseech the Almighty to come down and make us whole and good and righteous. But that is a direct contradiction to so much of our lives and our human history, where we have striven to improve ourselves, our outlook on life, our tolerance and the continually improved living conditions we provide for our children. We have done these things ourselves, by trial and error, by recognizing our faults and correcting them, often through grievous suffering.

We are human beings, by nature creatures who seek and strive and work towards a goal. We found out it was wrong to enslave other human beings, and we cut that crap out. We decided to learn all we could about disease and health and nutrition and now we live better lives in sanitary conditions and are able to combat a tremendous variety of ailments that were once routinely fatal. We eat better, live cleaner and much longer that we once did. What diseases we cannot heal, we study and research in an effort to unravel their secrets and alleviate human suffering.

None of these advances are the result of Divine intervention since, according to the great majority of religions, God has not spoken to any human being directly in well over a thousand years. It was human beings who affected our own intellectual and spiritual evolution, through education, enlightenment, communication and hard work. With all the evils and ills upon this world today, human life is infinitely better for the average person than it was a thousand years ago. He or she is smarter, better educated, better fed, healthier and lives twice as long and in greater material comfort than their counterparts from the past. We did this, not God.

We also do a lot of rotten things in this modern day and age, from allowing mass starvation to occur on a global scale, to waging wars, to spreading hatred and committing genocide to theft and murder and allowing a small wealthy elite to oppress poverty stricken masses in too many places. These facts tell many religious people that we need to be saved, saved from ourselves and our destructive tendencies, and delivered into Paradise. It tells others that mankind still has much work to do, much to learn. Maybe we can create our own Paradise.

Or if not, maybe if we live up to our potential, only then will we deserving of a heavenly paradise. It stands to reason that a race of beings who have saved themselves, who have learned and grown and progressed and prospered and matured, who have learned to live in peace and harmony and who have made certain that all people share this bountiful world, those beings would be more deserving of a reward than a bunch of petulant children who need to be saved from themselves.

Besides, aren't we supposed to be spending our lives preparing for the redeemer, fixing what is wrong in our hearts and in the world around us? Looking around this troubled world, we're way behind schedule for that rendezvous. Even the religions we follow are still seriously flawed and contradictory, even after countless reformations. Being "born again" is no guarantee you won't still be an asshole, and too often being born again pretty much guarantees you'll be an irritating jerkoff for the rest of your life.

Then there's the "Fundamentalists" among us who figure that their best religious bet is to go back a bunch of centuries and act like a real severe, ignorant and smug hateful prick. Who's that helping? What the hell was the point of all our centuries of spiritual and intellectual progress we've worked so hard to attain if you're just going to throw it all away and go all Medieval on your fellow man? And what Messiah worth his salt would want anything to do with such miserable clods with so little love in their hearts?

No, we don't really want a Savior, as much as we'd love to believe we do. We're certainly not ready for one either, and as humans, we need to do the work ourselves, to really live the Golden Rule and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. And to do so not because it is a difficult chore or some sort of sacrifice but because it comes naturally, and is the normal way to behave. We need to open our hearts and truly share the love in our hearts, the greatest power that human beings possess, greater that our curiosity, our unceasing work and our imaginative intellects.

Love leads to mutual respect, understanding, tolerance and peace. Love should inform our every action and thought and all the work we need to do to save ourselves, our world and our brothers and sisters, all of them. The Redeemer, the whole idea of a Redeemer, has served us well at times and other times has caused us great pain. The simple lessons of love, peace, charity, humanity and understanding that our religions teach us have been overanalyzed and overcomplicated to the point of creating hatred, mistrust and bloodshed over what should be a beautiful and fulfilling experience.

What we have done is put the burden on another entity, on our God, to improve us, to do the math for us, and to save us, when it is our responsibility to clean up our act and to grow and evolve into the full potential of our humanity. If we use our brains, our hearts, our souls and our love, we just might be able to figure this world out. Then maybe we can have some reason to offer a Messiah to come around and visit us. Meanwhile, we have much to do.