I agree that there is no need to allow the traditional gatekeeper analogy.
Had a very interesting conversation with a couple dear friends last week about this. I have known both men for at least a decade and respect both for how they strive to keep meaning and intention in perspective. One is a little older than I, the other several years younger. The younger one is on a quest, shall we say, to find some answers to the great unknown to guide him through the rest of his existence here while the other is trying to help guide him to an understanding. I don't really agree with the methods of either of them but I ended up speaking with a mantle of authority once they understood where I was coming from.
I was raised with a handful of differing religions tainting my relationships with various factions of my family (one of which actually meant that I was unacquainted with a whole trunk of my family tree because of their religion and that my grandparents had precipitated this upon the rest of us because they got married). I never felt comfortable with any of the four religions I was coerced into participating in so I was never baptized but I did go to church to keep from being punished for not participating, and besides, I got to sing in the choirs so I was willing to trade off my objections for the reward of being able to sing-which is a form of expression I can't live without.
Most of the family were some form of judeo-christian something or other but I found upon my grandfather's death that a big chunk of the family were jewish and he was the son of a rabbi who was from a long line of a special sect, apparently for whatever that is worth to them. His bride was, at the time from a lutheran group but that was only to hide the fact that they had previously been jews up until a jewish expultion from some part of Germanic Europe prior to the Hitler thing. I escaped all the religious stuff when I left home at 16.
As an adult I have come to the conclusion after much study of world religions, archaic up to modern, that I believe in nothing. Doesn't matter what or who or where. I reject the ideology of belief in itself. In my conversation with my friends I was asked if I believed that the bible was true and why or why not, by the younger. I began a rather lengthy response with this statement: "I believe in nothing. I do not subscribe to organized religion of any kind. I have an understanding of a lot of things, I know many things and I am willing to respectfully consider all other things but if I am required to believe in something, then that conversation with whomever is over." Up to that point, my friend was kind of defensive of christianity which he had recently started practicing but had some problems getting his head wrapped around. The elder friend kept emerging from the kitchen to thank me for my eloquence and ability to clearly describe what he understands as well though he is a practitioner of some Native American ceremonies, which BTW are not considered "religion" by the Native Americans I know.
We ended up conversing about this the entire afternoon with the younger friend having worked through some serious barriers that religion had put before him, it was good and I had a good feeling by the end of it. I did explain to him that we all have some kind of life energy that is what we are, however, energy does not disperse, it can only transform. By following a religion he allows someone else to interpret what that energy is and that unless he follows along with the interpreter's parade, he will suffer somehow. It is guiding through fear and guilt to fulfill someone else's agenda. And that is how I describe any organized religion: as a population control device reinforced through fear and guilt and has nothing to do with who and what you or anyone else is. But if they can make you believe they "know" what you don't, then they've got you by the ring in your nose.
And therein lies the problem in this and many a nation, by being tethered to something that they don't know or understand, people allow themselves to be controlled by someone else for the benefit of that someone else and not those being lead. And a residual problem with that is how all of our laws require that one believe in someone's guilt or innocence, not by the truth about whether or why they are guilty or innocent of breaking a law but what those judging believe. Until that problem is properly addressed, we can't convince very many of what's wrong with the zealots we are up against now in all the world.
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