Setting free noble words hijacked by men in robes

These are five otherwise beautiful words that have been imprisoned within the clutches of belief systems that presume to prescribe narrow definitions around how these words may be applied to one's daily life. It's high time that we use the better part of our minds to gain perspective of the sort that will finally set free these great words from the cage they've been kept within by the robes-clad officers of organised religion.

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One can pray, but not necessarily to a god and certainly not necessarily to the god of any man who wears some sort of robe.

One can go to church, but not necessarily to a church built for a god nor a church where one is obliged to listen to a man wearing some sort of robe.

One can sin no more after gaining enlightening knowledge of what is right and wrong, and not necessarily out of fear of a fearsome place told of by a man wearing some sort of robe.

One can be blessed by the fruit of real personal achievement and not necessarily by edict, gesture, nor absolution "given" by a man wearing some sort of robe.

One can have hope, so long as said hope is substantiated by some form of aspiration and a concrete plan to achieve it, and not by some empty words delivered from a pulpit by a man wearing some sort of robe.

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It is time we think and understand enough to distinguish the truly spiritual from the merely religious.