As I continue my monkey musings trying to educate myself and qualify as human, I have hit a brick wall called “religion”. Google tells me that the English word “religion” is derived from the Middle English “religioun” which came from the Old French “religion.” It may have been originally derived from the Latin word “religo” which means “good faith,” “ritual,” and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin “religâre” which means “to tie fast,” or “bind together”.

Therefore, defining the word “religion” is fraught with difficulty. Many attempts have been made. People seem to focus on a narrow definition that matches their own belief system, but few—if any—others.

So I revert to my favourite book, The Bible, which seems to have answers for everything I want to know. All it says about “religion” is in James 1:27:  “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this—to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

I am wondering why people argue so much about this word. It seems that “religion” has been severed from “the truth” somehow. Post-modernism teaches that what is true for you is not necessarily true for me. I can understand that as applied to liking or not liking bananas, but not as applied to the question of— ‘Where I came from?’ There simply cannot be several “true” answers to this, can there? (My mother and my father would be mightily miffed if there were!)

I’ll let you know how I go. In the meantime can anybody – perhaps a bishop – enlighten me?

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley, The Thinking Primate.