There’s a pattern I keep noticing.

The louder some people are about how religious they are, the more I sometimes wonder what the performance is protecting.

I’m not talking about everyone. I know genuinely religious people whose beliefs make them kinder, humbler, more compassionate human beings.

I’m talking about the other kind.

The kind where religion starts looking like a costume. A shield. A way of convincing everybody else, and maybe themselves, that they are good people without ever having to look too closely at who they actually are.

Because somewhere deep down, we know ourselves.

We know what we’ve done.

We know who we’ve hurt.

We know the things we don’t want anyone else to see.

And sometimes I wonder whether the bigger the facade, the bigger the thing underneath it that someone is trying not to face.

I’ve questioned this stuff since I was a kid.

I remember being expected to bow down to a priest and thinking: Why?

He’s human.

Just like me.

He has thoughts. Desires. Anger. Fear. Ego. Contradictions. Maybe beautiful parts of himself and ugly parts too.

There is nothing wrong with being human.

What I’ve never understood is why we keep turning human beings into something above human.

Priest. King. President. Religious leader. Political leader. Celebrity. Guru.

I don’t give a fuck what title somebody puts in front of their name.

You’re still a human being, man.

Just like me.

And the quickest way to earn my respect isn’t to tell me what you believe.

Live it.

Be your religion.

If your religion teaches compassion, be compassionate.

If it teaches humility, be humble.

If it teaches love, fucking love people.

You don’t need to preach at me. You don’t need to knock on my door. You don’t need to quote scripture. You don’t need to tell me which political party supposedly owns morality.

Let me see who you are when nobody is applauding.

That tells me everything.

I think one of the hardest things a human being can do is become genuinely self-aware.

To look at yourself and say: Something in me is causing pain.

Where did that come from?

What am I protecting?

Why do I keep doing this?

How do I stop?

That doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. Sometimes people carry wounds for decades and bleed them onto everybody around them without ever understanding where the blood is coming from.

Figure it out.

Own it.

Get help.

Change.

That, to me, is more spiritual than pretending you have no darkness at all.

There are things, though, where I struggle to find that generosity.

An adult sexually abusing a child is one of them.

I don’t know how to reconcile that.

I don’t know how to watch somebody harm a child and then put on religious clothing, stand behind a pulpit, invoke Christianity or morality, preach about family values or proclaim themselves “pro-life,” and not feel sickened by the contradiction.

Because life is more than whether somebody is born.

A child has a life after birth.

Their safety is life.

Their innocence is life.

Their ability to trust another human being is life.

Their ability to grow up without carrying somebody else’s violence inside them is life.

When you molest a child, rape someone, abuse someone, terrorize someone, or deliberately brutalize another living creature, you damage life.

So don’t lecture me about morality while destroying it behind closed doors.

And animals belong in this conversation too.

I find animals easier to trust than human beings. They can’t use words to manipulate.

There is something brutally uncomplicated about them. They don’t build elaborate moral identities and then secretly become the opposite of everything they claim to represent.

Humans do.

Maybe that’s the thing I’m increasingly tired of.

The performance.

You don’t need to convince me that you’re good.

You don’t need a robe.

You don’t need a Bible.

You don’t need a title.

You don’t need a political slogan.

You don’t even need to tell me what you believe.

Just show me how you treat the vulnerable when you have power over them.

Show me what you do when nobody is looking.

Show me whether you can admit when you’ve hurt somebody.

Show me whether you can face the parts of yourself you’d rather hide.

Show me whether you are willing to change.

That’s your religion.

Everything else might just be clothing.