Yesterday I came across an article about six Catholic priests who had been suspended because they had not remained celibate.
It made me stop and think.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that nature doesn’t make mistakes.
Every living thing carries instincts that didn’t appear by accident.
A bird builds a nest.
A tree grows toward the light.
Animals seek food, safety, and eventually a mate.
We don’t look at those things as moral failures. We simply call them nature.
So why do we expect human beings to be different?
Why do we create systems that ask people to suppress something that seems so deeply woven into being human?
I’ve never been able to reconcile that.
It reminds me of something I’ve written before.
You cannot cheat nature.
You can deny it.
You can pretend it isn’t there.
You can build rules around it.
But sooner or later, it reveals itself.
That’s why stories like these don’t surprise me anymore.
They make me question the expectation more than the people who fail to meet it.
The expectation itself seems to ignore something fundamental about being human.
As I’ve been reading about the transatlantic slave trade, I’ve also been struck by the role religion sometimes played in maintaining systems of power.
Slave owners taught Christianity to enslaved people. Obedience was praised. Questioning authority was discouraged. Certain verses about obeying masters were emphasized because they served a purpose within that system.
That made me wonder whether obedience can sometimes become more important than truth.
The thought has stayed with me.
Many religious communities place enormous value on denying natural desires. Wanting too much is called greed. Wanting sex outside prescribed boundaries is called sin. Questioning authority is often treated as rebellion. The ideal believer becomes someone who learns to distrust their own instincts and instead looks outward for permission on how to think, feel, and live.
I’ve come to see that very differently.
I no longer believe that our natural instincts are enemies to be defeated.
I think they are part of who we are.
That doesn’t mean every impulse should be acted upon. Human beings are capable of reason, empathy, and self-control. We make choices every day about how we respond to our feelings.
But that’s different from pretending the feelings shouldn’t exist in the first place.
There’s another thing I’ve struggled with.
I’ve met people whose public lives and private lives are worlds apart.
They teach one thing while living another.
They preach standards that they themselves cannot meet.
That isn’t unique to religion—human beings are capable of hypocrisy in every area of life—but it seems especially painful when those standards are presented as absolute truths from God.
The result is often a culture of masks.
People stop being honest.
They become performers.
Not because they’re evil, but because admitting they’re human comes with consequences.
The more I step away from religion, the less interested I become in perfection.
I’m more interested in honesty.
I’d rather live in a world where people can admit who they are than one where everyone is pretending to be what they are not.
Because if there’s one thing nature keeps teaching me, it’s this:
Reality doesn’t disappear just because we refuse to acknowledge it.
Eventually, it always finds a way to be seen.