I grew up in Kenya in a Protestant Christian family with a mum who was and is still very religious. As the years went by, I began to wonder whether I was indoctrinated into Christianity or if I believed in it. In my quest to find out, I began to look at Christianity in more detail and also delved into other religions. In the end, I decided to relinquish the coveted title “Christian” for a couple of reasons.
           When missionaries went to Kenya in the early 20th century, they labeled the religions of the so-called natives barbaric. In order to be accepted by the colonizers, they had to relinquish their traditions and adopt the new god because the new Christian god was the true and only one. The gods of the natives were not real; they paled in comparison to the “real” god. With the coming of the colonialists, taxes were introduced which every native had to pay. In order to pay the taxes, you had to have a job, working in the plantations or the houses of the colonialists. But before you got the job, you had to be a Christian and adopt the colonialists' ways in order to be fit to work in their midst. Failure to pay taxes would lead to inhumane punishment or imprisonment. Therefore, many people were forced into becoming Christians in order to get pitiful jobs. Christian education was also introduced in all the schools in the country and every student said prayers, read the bible and slowly adopted Christianity. The missionaries' mantra was that they had an obligation from god to enlighten the world by revealing the true god, a.k.a the Christian god. So Christianity was spread in Kenya in a manner that was more indoctrination than offering the opportunity to make a decision based on pros and cons.
           Since the colonial era, Christian Religious Education has remained as one of the subjects that every student has to take from grade one to eight unless one is a Muslim. I have a strong feeling that the reason we have such a large population of Christians in Kenya is because of this early indoctrination into Christianity. The children are not offered alternative religions to choose from or even given the chance to exist without religion. They are taught from an early age about the power of this Christian god and as they grow up, the emphasis increases in the form of customs and rituals, like baptism and communion. By the time one is an adult, he or she is already “in”. He fears this god and even discussions on the validity of the existence of this god cannot be entertained. I have tried having such discussions with my age mates but they just cannot take it. To them, this god cannot be questioned and he is the only and right god.
           I have watched the CNN clips on how the Islamic fundamentalists are trained to become suicide bombers. Most of these young men come from poverty-ridden households with so much hardship that they find life not worth living. The teachers identify these vulnerable boys and offer them companionship, food and shelter at their training schools. In these schools, the teachers use religion, in this case Islam, to program the boys into robots. When the training is done and they are told to jump, they can only ask how high. The main argument they use is telling the boys that they are fighting for god. They convince them of the Holy War that exists between the Islamic world and the West. They convince them that all their hardships are caused by the West. They convince them that the West is at war with Islam and they should stand up and fight for their religion and their god.
           They convince them that the god they are fighting for is powerful, owns the heavens and will extend an olive branch to them when they blow themselves up in the holy war. These young men are thus convinced and after a few years of training, they are ready to perform their first and final mission. They are made to believe they will be met by a couple of virgins in the golden palaces up above as martyrs—heroes of the Holy War. Thus convinced, they blow up women and children from the skies, buses, hotels, churches, mosques and homes. I cannot help but ask myself, if there was no notion of religion that tricked these boys into believing they will have a better life once they died, if they knew that once they blew themselves up NO ONE knows what will happen when they die, if they knew that they might be killing themselves for nothing, would they still blow themselves up? Don't you think they would have asked for some time alone, maybe the rest of their lives, to think about the proposition from the teachers? I think they would. Another observation that comes into the picture is that the teachers don't do the missions themselves. If being a martyr is such a noble thing, shouldn't the teachers lead the way in killing themselves? They know more about the rewards that materialize in the end. They can easily train others to become teachers after they are dead and gone. Don't you think so? Once again, religion is used to deceive and achieve the objectives of a select group of people by taking captive the minds of the exploited individuals.
           Another observation I have made is that people born in Christian families grow up to become Christians, those in Islamic families become Muslims and atheists raise atheists. Is this a coincidence, or does upbringing determine to a large extent what religions people end up professing?
           When I decided to cease considering myself a Christian, I didn't tell my mother because I know her expectation is that I should be an upright Christian who does not waver from the “path”. I call it family pressure and tradition and I think it has a strong bearing on what people end up becoming. So it saddens me when I hear a person of religion x telling someone of religion y that their religion is wrong simply because they have been brought up to think that their religion is the right one. The funny thing is that Mr. X does not realize that he is in the same boat as Mr. Y. They were both told their religions were right from early childhood. I know for sure that Christianity is an absolute religion. You go to heaven to meet the father through Jesus Christ alone; there is no other way. Mohamed will not do, or anyone else for that matter. Does that mean that everyone else will go to hell, that is if there is hell? I believe Islam also has their customs that followers need to follow so as to remain right with god. Therefore, if you are following the Christian ones, but neglect some core Muslim principles, you wouldn't be right with god. Are we serving the same God? Is there one God? Does God exist?
           Then there is the fact that major religions were spread by the sword. By major I mean Christianity and Islam. In the early days of Christianity and Islam, when one was not a member of the majority religion, they were imprisoned or fined or flogged or killed. Armies of god moved from city to city spreading the word to “heathen” people who had to either convert or die. Many people thus became religious due to fear of death and punishment or banishment. And so religion spread. Even in the present day and age, there is so much animosity between some Christians and Muslims. In Nigeria, thousands have died in religious wars. The same thing has happened in Somalia, Ireland and many other countries in the world. Why do people feel the need to force others to worship their god(s)? Why do people feel insecure when others seem to be doing just fine with their own different God? Is it the fear that if my friend's God is true then maybe mine is false? I don't know. Anyone?
           In some cases, religion helps us to relinquish our obligation to make decisions and pass it on to others. Millions of people world-wide do not support abortion or cloning because they are Christian. Simply being Christian makes abortion taboo to you. Therefore if the issue is brought up, there is little or no room for level-headed discussion since some people have their minds already made up by virtue of belonging to a certain religion. I believe if there were no such blanket answers, people would be open to more discussions. The human race is only a few thousand years old, and it is unreasonable to resist change because religion is against it. Wasn't religion invented by humans for humans? Religion, if it is necessary, should be dynamic and change with time, but then it would cease being religion. My opinion is that we should be free to make up our own minds on issues that concern us. If the Pope doesn't think gay marriage is right, that doesn't make him right. I don't have to follow him. I believe that, as humans, we are all on the same plane when it comes to deciding what is right and what is wrong. No one has supreme authority to make that judgment. We are all mortals with quizzical looks, wondering what the heck we are doing on this planet.
           Humans are free to decide whatever they think is the best way to live their lives. When it comes to matters like life and death, no one has the answers. Everyone has the right to be religious or not, but the right to insist that your religion is right is reserved. If I had the power to erase religion from people's minds for a year, I would do it. So the people who are poor would stop waiting on god to deliver them and start delivering themselves. So when we discuss cloning, we will not say it is immoral according to the bible. So when we want to blow innocent people off the skies, we will know that that might be the ultimate end for us. So when we attack another nation and kill their children and women, we will not say we were under the guidance of god. So when we have important decisions to make that will affect other people, we will not pray, but talk, think and find solutions. So when we fail, we blame ourselves. So when we succeed, we congratulate ourselves. So we live our lives in the knowledge that we all know only so much, and strive to know more. So we take to heart what Carl Sagan said: "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”