Religion should include tolerance

A visit to my roommate's church this weekend did not convert me into a religious person. In fact, my venture into the church was eerily similar to the three or four visits I'd had in the past. It just made me wonder.\nI was sort of turned off from the church in high school. I had a friend who was deeply religious. He made a vow during his junior year to not date any girls until he went to college. It was basically a two-year lenten period he imposed on himself. But that's not how he chased me away from the church.\nI don't even know how the conversation started, but a holy war broke out when he told me that people who didn't take Jesus Christ as their savior were going to Hell. This was when my eyebrows went past my forehead and almost jumped off my head.\nI could not figure out how a guy, probably one of the nicest kids I knew, could be so close-minded. It was disturbing, to say the least.\nI've met other deeply religious people in my years since that incident, and I can't get over how narrow their beliefs can be about religion. There are people in this world who believe that their way is the only way. But I don't think that's the case.\nThere are too many different religions in this world for one religion to claim to be the right one. And there are too many situations in this world to say something like my friend did.\nMy curiosity about his afterlife policy made me come up with questions I never thought I'd ask. I asked him about ancient people who never heard about Christianity. Those people couldn't be in heaven because they'd never heard of the religion. And I asked him about the babies who die every year. The children never got a chance to say their first words, but, according to him, they were going straight to Hell.\nAnd that was when I decided I might not ever want to get involved with religion. I was scared I would become less tolerant of people who didn't have the same beliefs as me. \nDon't get me wrong; I do believe that there is a God. And I believe that things happen for a reason. That's not really practicing anything. I usually just try to make sense out of things that happen in this world. You can call it "pragmatism," if you want. But it's not really a religion.\nI do things that are morally right, while refraining from actions that could be deemed morally questionable. Every day I try to be the best person I can be. Sometimes I do a good job. And sometimes I fail miserably. But I don't need religion to tell me the difference.\nFrom what I understand, religion offers something comparable to a code of ethics. But it's more than that; it's a code for life.\nReligion can be a wonderful tool if it's used properly. Most religions have lessons and stories and moral guidelines that can be learned at any age and at any time. I have nothing against parents attempting to pass their religion on to their children.\nBut an idea that should always be passed along is tolerance. No matter what type of religious ideas you practice, you must realize that there might be another person who could gladly argue against everything you say. \nYou shouldn't change your ideas to agree with that person, and you don't even have to make any attempt to like that person. But you should respect that person's choice to believe in something else.\nOur concrete knowledge of the afterlife is like a grain of sand on a beach that stretches to eternity. Simply put, we don't know squat.\nSo condemning people might not be the best thing for us to do. No one knows what's going to happen when we leave this world. \nBut I figure that as long as we're here, we might as well be tolerant of others and open to different ideas. And I'm pretty sure there's no religion opposed to that.