Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #309 – Religion OR Spirituality

			We need religion, because we need an authority outside of ourselves to check ourselves.
		

			The whole spiritual but not religious movement is a reaction to Christianity. Because Christianity
for centuries and centuries and centuries, has been overbearing when it comes to how they're
organizing religion for you. First of all, it's based off of revelation that's not authentic. And
second of all, is based off of really shoddy interpretations of that in authentic revelation. And so
you had centuries and centuries where people we're being told, you have to believe in this very man
made sort of ideology, or else you're, you're going to *, so people got fed up at one point. And
they're like, you know, what, I'm better off doing this on my own, okay, I'm better off interpreting
		

			these things, or accessing these things on my own. And as Muslims now coming into the space in North
America, that's not necessarily our story, right? We've always had religious kind of interpretation
has always happened in the public sphere, right? accessible to whoever is able to climb the ladder
of Islamic scholarship, right? Whether you've been a slave, or a freed slave, or from this group of
people, or that group of people, rich or poor, we've always had an equal access, or at least a
relatively equal access, and Equal Opportunity sphere, for people to educate themselves become
trained in the religion and argue with equal weight to other people that have training in the
		

			religion as to how to properly interpret these things. Right. So then to come in and to think well,
all organized religion is the same and organized religion can't really speak to me, and I don't want
anybody to kind of, you know, rein in my experience would be like, Well, okay, if you're the only
one at the head of it, you're the only one making the decisions, what I've called before, like the
playlist suffocation of faith, right? It's like, well, I like this video and that video, and that
makes me feel good. And that affirms me, you're going to end up
		

			only selecting the things that affirm you, that's basically the long and short of it, if there is no
space without organized religion, okay? It's just that now you're the one organizing it, as opposed
to either a lot organizing it for you, or a group of qualified individuals organizing for you now
you're the one that's organizing it, you're organizing your playlist, whether your playlist is made
up of yoga, or Reiki or crystals or this or that whatever sort of thing that you feel and experience
as spiritually valid. You're the one who's organizing it. And the idea behind religion is that you
can't do it by yourself. Because you are going to have a conflict of interest, you are going to have
		

			ulterior motives. And it's extremely difficult for an individual to parse out, when am I being
sincere? And I am really, really going to accept the truth even if it's challenging to me, even if
it is tough for me to hear. And when am I going to just kind of like in a wishfully thinking sort of
way, go with one sort of practice or one sort of belief or one sort of thing because it kind of
benefits me in some ulterior motive. So we need someone outside of ourselves. In order to kind of
keep us on the straight and narrow you need an authority that's outside of yourself to be able to
balance between affirming you and challenging you affirming you and challenging you. And that's how
		

			you grow because if you never challenged yourself, you're never going to grow