The Best and Worst of Religion—A Divine Contradiction
What If We've Misunderstood Religion All Along?
In my writings across the Substack newsletters, I love to explore invitations that are paradoxical. One paradox I came across this week was from Father Richard Rohr, who said, “Religion is the worst of things and the best of things.” It seems fairly clear to this writer that, in many ways, it is the worst of things. There have been more wars fought over religion, and more people have died as a consequence of religion than for any other cause in the history of humanity.
“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” —Meister Eckhart
The word religion comes from the Latin root religare, which means "to bind" or "to reconnect." It is derived from re- (again) and ligare (to bind, tie, or connect). This suggests that religion was originally understood as a way to reconnect or bind oneself to the Divine, to truth, or to a higher order. The same idea comes from the word yoga, which means to yoke. In essence, these words religare and yoga point to the same experience, which is that of union. This is the best of things, but unfortunately, rather than union, the worst of religion has its focus on division. It's my religion that is right, or we are the chosen people. Convert or die.
The True Meaning of Repentance
In Bringing Heaven to Earth, my focus is on sharing with you the best of religion. This is also the case with my Substack newsletter A Yoga Life. To experience the best of religion—and I mean any religion—you are required to repent. Don't be put off by that word the way that I used to be. The word repent used to be one of those words that pushed my buttons. When anyone in religious authority would use it, I would simply stop listening. I knew what would follow. It would be a catalogue of sin and damnation, with a teaching focused on the fact that I was a miserable sinner responsible for the crucifixion of a man some thousands of years ago.
Some people flee from the fear of hell. Others seek the joys of paradise. But the wise long only for God. —Rumi (as quoted in Christian mystical texts)
This is the worst of religion. In Islam, it is the idea of jihad. In Hinduism, the idea of the caste system. This is God made in the image of man.
Turning Within: The Invitation to Union
The word repent invites the journey to experience the best of religion. It's a practical spiritual instruction of the highest order. It's been distorted by those who do not understand its true meaning but have turned gold into lead. They have imbued this word with an idea that you are to feel guilty. It's a real turnoff, but it's great if you want to be in control of the masses. The word repent is not about the need to feel guilty. It's a word that points to what you need to do so that you can inherit what the Master Jesus Christ called eternal life.
God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.—Meister Eckhart
So, what does this word repent actually mean? It simply means turn around. So, does that mean you turn around and walk in a different direction? No. It means you turn around the focus of your awareness. It means that you turn your attention within rather than without. It means that in order to repent and experience eternity, you turn within.
Why turn within? Because the Kingdom of Heaven, the experience of revelation and union, is an experience of withiness. Where is this withiness? It's within your consciousness. Don't confuse consciousness with your human thinking mind.
Beyond Belief: Direct Experience of God
This is the most practical, liberating practice you can ever do. Better than Bible study or learning any religious text by rote. It takes you into the silence that is the nearest thing to God (Meister Eckhart – Christian mystic). It takes you into direct experience of God rather than believing in God. Within the Christian tradition, this turning within is called contemplation. I call it REAL prayer. It's learning how to abide in the Most High. This is the best of religion. In other traditions, it's called meditation.
The soul that is united with God is feared by the devil as though it were God himself.—St. John of the Cross
No need for guilt. No need to be identified as a miserable sinner. All you need is a longing to come home, to know the magnificence of the light of your own BEING. No need to have another dictate to you what to believe. To use a movie metaphor, repentance is the equivalent of taking the red pill and taking the adventure into the Wonderland that the Divine created you to be and KNOW. This is the best of religion.
It is the invitation to go beyond belief into the knowing of union of your sense of personal “I am” with the universal “I AM.” This is the true understanding of the scriptural passage “I AM the way.”
Who Are the Chosen? A Different Perspective
To emphasize this turning within, let me share with you the meaning of the word Jew. In the Bible, the Jews are the chosen people. Metaphysically speaking, a Jew is someone who has turned within. If you turn within, if you repent, you're one of the chosen—but it is not God doing it. You're the one doing it. You are the prodigal son or daughter returning to the Father's house, who celebrates your return to the place you never left.
Contemplation is nothing else but a secret, peaceful, and loving inflow of God, which, if not hindered, fires the soul in the spirit of love. —St. John of the Cross
Religion is the worst of things and the best of things. Only those who have been graced the KNOWING of God can invite you to the revelation of the best within you. The rest are the blind leading the blind—not into unity but into deeper division. Such is the history of religion.
Conclusion - An Invitation to Turn Within
Religion can be the worst of things, but it can also be the best. The difference lies in whether it leads to division or union, whether it binds us to dogma or opens us to direct experience. The best of religion is not about belief—it is about KNOWING. It is about turning within to discover the eternal presence of God, to experience the union that religion, yoga, and mysticism have pointed to throughout history.
To repent is not to wallow in guilt but to shift your awareness—to step beyond fear, beyond conditioned belief, and into the silence where revelation arises. This is the heart of contemplation, the stillness where you do not find God as an external force but as the very essence of your being.
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.—Meister Eckhart
This is the invitation of Bringing Heaven to Earth—to turn within, to abide in the Most High, to move beyond second-hand faith and into firsthand KNOWING. It is the way of the mystic, the path beyond belief, the journey home to the light that has always been within you.
Are you ready to step beyond the worst of religion and into its greatest gift? To know the kingdom within? To remember the eternal truth of I AM? Join me in this journey of turning within, where heaven is not a distant place but a present reality—one that lives in you, through you, and as you.
Tony Cuckson Cordressagagh Ireland