Christine,
Any human institution's potential is only limited by the quality of those who practice it. Over the course of this thread's discussion of religion, many have pointed to the ills it has visited upon humankind. I posit these ills were not visited by the religion itself, but rather by those who practiced it.
Just as I wouldn't damn all restaurants (or all food for that matter) because I had a bad experience with the McDonald's Fast Food Sect, or all music because I mistakenly followed the Heavy Metal Sect, or all fashion because I was forced to follow the dress code of the Leisure Suit Sect as a child, I cannot damn religion for being subject to the foibles of humanity.
Food is necessary, and a wonderful experience when prepared by a chef, music can be a profound experience when composed by a gifted artist, and clothes can transcend mere functionality when created by a skilled designer.Codified spiritual practice (religion) can be equally powerful when practiced in an appropriate manner.
And genuine spiritual practice, in whatever mode, is necessary for the development and fullest functioning of our souls.
Too often we judge the merits of institutions, experiences, etc. by their weakest moments--using this as evidence to deny their validity, and their potential as powerful and positively transformative experiences. Seems tragic that we willingly preclude whole aspects of the magic of living by judging the whole of these by their flaws.
Your cynical quotes about religion brought to mind a collection of quotes I've assembled which cynically portray another human institution. Wonder if it should be damned and abolished as well?
______________________________________________________________________
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get
in, and those inside desperate to get out.
- Montaigne
Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and
suffering. --Anonymous
I've sometimes thought of marrying, and then I've thought again. -
-- Noel Coward, 1956
For a male and female to live continuously together is...biologically speaking, an extremely unnatural condition.
-- Robert Briffault
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
-- Honore de Balzac
If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
-- Chekhov
Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.
-- Madame de Rieux
A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love is blind and marriage is the institution for the blind.
-- James Graham
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
-- Katharine Hepburn
When you're away, I'm restless, lonely
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
here's the rub, my darling dear,
I feel the same when you are here.
-- Samuel Hoffenstein
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
-- H. L. Mencken
Men have a much better time of it than women: for one thing they marry later, for another thing they die earlier.
-- H. L. Mencken
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else.
-- Will Rogers
A husband is what's left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
-- Helen Rowland
In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice which is still very much practiced.
-- Helen Rowland
When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living.
-- Helen Rowland
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
-- Gloria Steinem
Love is blind -- marriage is the eye-opener.
-- Pauline Thomason
Marriage isn't a word... it's a sentence.
-- King Vidor, in the 1928 film, The Crawl
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
-- Mae West
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
-- Oscar Wilde
Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.
-- Oscar Wilde
She's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.
-- Oscar Levant to Harpo Marx upon meeting Harpo's fiancee
Barbara Walters: "You've been married 42 years. What makes your marriage work?"
Robert Mitchum: "Lack of imagination, I suppose."
I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.
--Sam Kinison
I think many men have a very real anxiety about marriage. It's stemming from men's fear that it's going to end in divorce or death and it's not clear which one is worse.
--ArLynn Leiber Presser
"A man without a woman is like a fish without a bicycle."
--Bono, U2
You can never be happily married to another until you get a divorce from yourself. A successful marriage demands a certain death to self.
--Jerry Mccant
"Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die." -- Johnny Carson
" The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding"
God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage.
-- Mark Twain
What a world of trouble those who never marry escape! There are many happy matches, it is true, and sometimes "my dear," and "my love" come from the heart; but what sensible bachelor, rejoicing in his freedom and years of discretion, will run the tremendous risk?
-- Mark Twain
The most dangerous food is a wedding cake. -Proverb
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell. It is simply purgatory.
--Abraham Lincoln
After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together.
-- Hemant Joshi
A wedding band is the smallest handcuff in the world.
Personally, I think if a woman hasn't met the right man by the time she's 24, she may be lucky.
--Deborah Kerr
Everything is Everything,
Rick
p.s. Think of the correlative negative statistics one could use to paint marriage as a "bad" institution: incidence of murders,and physical and psychological abuse commited in married households vs. among single people on a per capita basis . . . . |
