God Without Religion

New Years make you think, reflect and consider....

I don’t believe in religions.

I do believe in God.

Death is not an ending, simply a transition.

That sentence alone can make people uncomfortable, and I understand why. For many, religion and God are inseparable. But for me, they never have been.

Religion feels man-made. God does not.

The difference between religion and spirit

Religion, by its nature, is organised.

It has rules, structures, hierarchies, and histories.

It is written, interpreted, defended, and often enforced.

Spirit - or God, if you prefer the word, is something else entirely.

Spirit isn’t owned.

It isn’t named correctly by one language and incorrectly by another.

It doesn’t belong to a tribe, a book, or a century.

If God is infinite, then God cannot be exclusive.

The moment belief becomes certainty, something essential is lost.

God cannot be tribal

God cannot be Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist - or all of them at once - in the way religions claim.

That idea alone collapses under its own weight.

If God exists, then God exists everywhere:

• in every culture

• in every place

• in every human being

Not above us.

Not judging us from a distance.

But within us.

I don’t believe we are separate from God.

I believe we are expressions of it.

Life as a visit

I have never felt that this life was the whole story.

To the human body, a lifetime feels long - sometimes painfully so.

To spirit, it feels like a flicker.

I don’t believe we are here to be tested or punished.

I believe we are here to experience, to learn, to feel, and to remember.

One day, we return to whatever we came from.

Not as a reward.

Not as a judgement.

But as a homecoming.

Nature came first, stories came later

Long before temples and texts, humans looked to the sky.

They watched:

• the sun rise and fall

• the seasons turn

• the crops grow and die

• the light return after darkness

Sunday honoured the sun.

Spring festivals celebrated renewal and fertility.

Autumn honoured harvest and abundance.

Winter marked stillness, death, and waiting.

These weren’t beliefs.

They were observations.

Religion didn’t invent them- it wrapped them in stories so they could be passed on.

Over time, the stories hardened.

The symbols became rules.

The rituals became authority.

Religion isn’t the problem - people are

This isn’t an attack on religion.

There are deeply kind, generous, and spiritual people in every faith.

And there are cruel, fearful, and power-hungry people in all of them too.

Religion doesn’t make people good or bad.

It simply amplifies what is already there.

The problem isn’t belief.

The problem is when belief becomes a weapon.

God without intermediaries

I don’t believe God needs representatives.

No priest.

No institution.

No permission.

You don’t need to be told how to pray, where to look, or what words to use.

Stillness is enough.

Attention is enough.

Presence is enough.

God , or spirit, or whatever name you prefer, isn’t something to reach for.

It’s something to remember.

A quiet ending

This isn’t a conclusion.

It isn’t a doctrine.

It’s just a reflection.

I don’t believe in religions.

I do believe in God.

And I believe that this life - restless, beautiful, painful, fleeting - is a journey we take for reasons we may never fully understand.

A lifetime to the body.

A flicker to the soul.

Something to consider for 2026

With Love

Mark