Yes, after a while of separation from organized religion, I think my perspectives on it have shifted gradually. For example, I'm less angry since I'm not being hit with negative emotions from people in it. Also, I think it's more simple to view things as well or not-well intended. Really, any group of people is going to contain a mix of motives and predominantly kind/well-intended or self-interested/manipulative types.
I'm teaching a book by a famous psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl). In the book, he asserts that there are actually very few humans who are "merely decent." He says that put under severe stress, such as severe hunger and loss of freedom/safety (as in the death camps of the Nazis) people "unmask themselves" and show themselves to be the "saints or swine" that they truly are. I believe that history would prove him to be generally correct.
In a church setting in middle class society, you see a lot of masks with saints and swine under them. My parents are masked swine. I must not be like them, nor tolerate that lifestyle. I do not want to end up like them. I must stand against hypocrisy, peacefully, and make a better job of living than they did, as one who serves others and is more human. Like Frankl, I do believe that loving someone else and living a life devoted to serving the good of that person and a good cause, creating something, and looking outside of one's own life to do any good work one can do, is how we do that.
I think you are doing exactly that also and are a good person for doing it. Same to Ms. Spock!
XOXO Muse
