Religion as the process of making meaning together—the container, not the contents
When most people hear the word religion, they think of God, the Bible, and prayers—the “popcorn” that fills the bag. But these are not what religion is.
Religion is the bag itself—the universal human process for carrying shared meaning. Every culture has many of them. Every human being participates in several, even if they call them by other names.
A bag is the structure, the frame, and the set of shared behaviors that makes meaning portable. For example, familytradition is like a bag holding various individual traditions, just as a bag contains popcorn. Being a music fan is like having a bag, with your favorite band, their songs, and concerts as the popcorn inside.
And here is the part most people miss. You can find meaning for yourself—and you should—but religion is the way we make meaning together. This matters because only shared meaning can be tested, refined, and made durable over time. Alone, meaning fades. Together, it is woven into something strong enough to be carried forward.
These bags are not made of thin paper or random scraps. They are woven from the fibers of shared discipline and repetition—the regular actions that bind people together. They are strengthened with symbols that point beyond themselves, mottos that can be carried in the heart, music that stirs memory, and beauty that invites reverence. This is the process of religion: not simply believing something but enacting it over time until it becomes part of the body of the community.
Some bags are woven from sacred stories: the Torah scroll, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Qur’an. Others from political ideals: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Human Rights. Some are stitched together from jerseys, chants, and hometown pride—sports fandoms are as much a religion as any altar-bound faith. Others come in the form of scientific paradigms, artistic movements, or activist causes. The bag is the same: a durable, portable structure that lets a group of people carry meaning together over time.
Because these bags are processes, not objects, they change. The popcorn shifts from age to age, place to place. One generation’s holy is another’s obsolete. The bag may be rewoven to carry a different weight: a nation once bound by pioneer self-reliance might restitch itself around consumer abundance; a community once united by temple rites might now gather around the preservation of endangered species.
Every person you know is holding several bags—some they chose consciously, others they inherited without question.
Problems start when we act as if we don't need them. In our modern world, many people think they’ve “left religion” behind because they’ve set down one bag—the church, the mosque, or the temple. But they don’t walk away empty-handed; they simply reach for another. It might be career achievement, national identity, environmental stewardship, or personal wellness. These too are bags for carrying meaning, and they come with their own rituals, creeds, and communities.
You can reject the popcorn. You can throw it out and make new batches. But you still need the bag. And in an age when so many are trying to go without one—or pretending the bags they carry aren’t religious—we are finding out how quickly meaning spills out and is lost.
The question isn’t whether we have religion. The question is whether the religion (the bag) we carry is worth the weight, worthy of the contents, and strong enough to last.