The common view of religion that I perceive people to have troubles me.

The way I think people commonly view religion is as follows: an establishment or institution that prescribes beliefs and traditions for people's lives and afterlives. I've noticed this view both in religious and non-religious people.

To me, religion means thinking about my life and afterlife. In other words, my religion is my own and is unique. I might have been influenced by things other people have said but I don't accept their body of beliefs as a package, I accept or reject individual ideas.

In other words, all 4 possibilities exist: religious traditionalists, non-religious traditionalists, religious freethinkers, and non-religious freethinkers.

Controlling other people through religion vs. practicing your own religion individually seems to be the important distinction for me. I think those who try to control other people's beliefs or lives are actually rebelling against God, even if they might say they have God on their side. For example:

* Discriminating against LGBTQIA+ people goes against my religion
* Trying to make your children believe your religious beliefs goes against my religion
* Sexism (expecting people to fulfill certain roles based on their gender) goes against my religion
* Sex negativity (e.g. treating marriage as holier than other consensual sexual relationships or situationships) goes against my religion
* Expecting people, such as your family, to participate in traditions (e.g. expecting them to attend church) goes against my religion
* Collecting offerings to maintain church infrastructure / services goes against my religion (whereas donating money to help others is part of my religion)

Rejecting religious traditions doesn't mean my religion is less important to me than other people's religion is to them. Indeed, many of my religious beliefs are increasingly important to me in our current world. For example:
* Repenting (changing your life) is part of my religion
* Forgiving people who repent (and maybe even when they don't - still thinking about that one) is part of my religion
* Being humble is part of my religion
* Associating with people who don't believe the things you do, and who do things you consider wrong, and who society says is supposed to be your enemy, is part of my religion
* Treating morality as very important or absolute, rather than merely a social contract, is part of my religion
* Enabling minorities / disadvantaged people is part of my religion
* Protecting nature and the rights of animals is part of my religion
* Non-violent resistance to oppressive regimes or to those who wield power unjustly (e.g. boycotting oppressive corporations or opposing oppressive laws) is part of my religion

You're allowed to say my religion is incorrect or evil or nonsense. But you're not allowed to ascribe beliefs to me that I don't believe just because you heard that someone else (or yourself) who's religious believes them. (That actually happened a couple philosophy nights ago.) I care about the ethics I do because of, not in spite of, my religion. Of course, caring about the above ethics doesn't mean I always do them; I've made many mistakes.

I'm not saying these things to try to make you believe in religion but to try to promote understanding among all of us and especially between religious and non-religious people. I'm not meaning this post to be offensive to anyone and I'm sorry if it is (I know several of my posts from the past that I look back on seem offensive to me now, even to myself, so I won't be surprised if this one is too, but I tried).