I found the September issue of the Utne Reader to be one of the more interesting ones. The cover is a discussion about "Designer God" where people tend to basically make up their own religion based on various beliefs... a combination of the religion they grew up with, with a little bit of Hinduist reincarnation views, a smattering of the latest New Age idea, and a few touches by angels and you've got your own religion.

In one article, they began to ask various religious leaders if this was a good idea. It seemed to me that if the leader had money to loose by people inventing their own religion, then they tended to look down on the idea. If, they had something to gain, then they tended to agree. However, one that I would have thought to have something to loose by the prospect came up with the most compelling argument for it...

God said to Abraham, "Leave your country, your family, your father's house, and walk inward to the land I will show you." This is what true spirituality demands: to leave everything we know; to relinquish everything we are; to wander without a goal, path, teacher, or teaching, simply trusting that when we get "there," we will know. Buddha did that. So did Lao Tzu, Jesus, and Mohammed. They all left home.

But we do just the opposite. Worse! We take refuge in those who taught No Refuge. We imitate those who demanded No Imitation. We study each other's floor plans, and borrow each other's furniture, when what we really need is to leave home.

Does it matter that Jews sit zazen or Buddhists keep Shabbat? No. What matters is that for just one moment we heed the call "lech lecha, walk inward" and leave home for the unknown.

Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro
Author and director, Rasheit Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Miami, Florida

In discussing this very subject with another friend of mine, I made the following comment …

I feel that "churches" and "religions" are useful in getting a "child" from base level animal drives to higher social forms and eventually to the door of spirituality. But I also feel that once religion has taken the human creature to this point and shown it how to grow spiritually, it should cut the leash.

This is actually the concept in Zen and Hinduism, and I admire them for that. They realize that while there is one path to God (Tao), that path is different from one individual to the next. Their job is something akin to school. A school can not possibly hope to teach a child everything that they will need to know in their life. All school can do is teach the child how to learn what it needs to learn, and graduate it.

Religions should teach a child how to develop its one spiritual path, and how to modify that path as it grows. Just what Joseph Smith did, we all need to do. That is, once God reveals more to you, like that he has a physical body, then you rewrite your scriptures to match and get rid (or clarify) the phrase, "God is Spirit."

Most religions are not mature enough … er, confident enough ... er, well, each religion feels that if they graduate their students, the students will forget to pay their tithes to their alma mater, and they will not be able to pay the Pope for his nice house, etc. Yes, you can see that things like this come down to money. And so "churches" go on, using guilt to get money out of people, and in the process stop them on their journey to God.