“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”
Countless atheists and agnostics have grabbed onto this quote over the last century and a half. It insinuates that religion dulls, numbs, and controls people.
. . . we couldn’t agree more!
Religion, as a system to get closer to God (or find salvation), is a problem. A big problem. And it certainly has been used like an opiate to control people. Now interestingly, in the last century, the shackles of traditional “religion” are being put aside more and more. There has been a mass exodus from organized religion and the numbers are not slowing down. A recent survey concluded a 266% rise over the last few decades in the amount of people who identify as having “no religion.” They are leaving the proverbial opiate of the masses.
But here’s something else that’s equally interesting. Over the last few decades, there has also been an unprecedented rise in the use of literal opiates. Today, there are more opiate-related cases of addiction than in any other time in history. And it is becoming a deadly epidemic of massive proportions.
So it appears that even though the culture is being weaned off “religion,” people are still in need of numbing an incredibly deep and real pain. Thus, from a macro perspective, huge segments of the culture are jumping from one opiate to another (one metaphoric and the other literal).
Indeed, the world is still in need of true healing, not just a temporary numbing.
But to understand how we come to find real healing, we first need to see more of the connection between opiates and religion. This will open up to the door to a beautiful revelation . . .
How Religion is Like an Opiate
An opiate is a chemical extract taken from natural poppy seeds. It is then processed in such a way that when ingested it binds onto pain receptors in the body and manipulates the way the brain processes information. (Note: The opioids being used in pain killers today, such as fentanyl, do the same thing—they are just lab-created versions of it.)
In the same way, religion is extracted from something pure and natural. There is an underlying dimension of spirit and truth from which all religion draws its power. But it is fed to people in order to control and manipulate. (And of course, we’re speaking of religion in the negative sense here; not in the way it’s mentioned in the book of James, where “pure religion” involves the care of orphans and widows and remaining unstained from the world system.)
Opiates have some interesting side effects. On the less deadly end, they can cause sleepiness, nausea, and constipation.
Similarly, religion puts people to sleep, in more ways than one. People check out and don’t use their brains as much to process the world around him. It also makes them spiritually and emotionally constipated, like something is stuck up their butt. A lot of back-up occurs. While a religious smily face can be on the front exterior, the inside of the cup is often filled with a hypocritical mess of impatience, judgmentalism, and fear.
The more extreme side effects of opiates include the loss of consciousness and obviously death itself . . . In the same fashion, religion quenches your awareness and consciousness of love. It causes you to focus on evil and darkness. As a result, it quickly leads to a spirit of death. Whether it’s an eastern religion or the teachings within many sectors of Christianity, there is this constant call to die to oneself because, ultimately, the evil is inside of you and it needs to put to death in some form or another.
The deep pain within humanity comes down to the shame and guilt surrounding this sense of evil. Both the book of Genesis and modern psychology come to many of the same conclusions about this root issue of shame and rejection. Thus, religion becomes a type of spiritual numbing agent that’s applied over this pain. It gives you a system of rules and laws that provide a temporary sense of relief, but only if you’re doing good enough and following the prescribed system. A “form” of peace comes in, but it only lasts as long as the prescription of religious adherence is being ingested.
And that is where we get to the true solution. The real healing comes from a radical revelation of grace and truth. It is the revelation that we already died with Christ on the cross . . . that our evil, sinful nature was already put to death . . . and that right here and right now we are eternally accepted in the Beloved!
It is this solution that is at the root of this publication. There are infinite possibilities found from this singular truth, and we look forward to exploring more of them with you!