Well, Pastor Chad has certainly put out a heavy topic in that last e-mail. Why do people feel it necessary that everyone worship God in the same way that they do? And what do we do when a group of people feels that way? I thought about this while I walked my children to school this morning. (It's a beautiful walk thru the woods and is very conducive to deep thinking) My first opinion was PRIDE. We want to believe that the way that we worship is the correct way. And to insure that, we must also convince other people of our way. If another group has a different way, then there is the possibility of our being wrong. Simple pride. In addition, following the correct way, we have been told, leads to Heaven. So now we must fear that we might not get into Heaven if we have chosen incorrectly.
Unfortunately, when we get in to this line of thought, I fear that we have forgotten the real path that we should be following. Shouldn't we be striving to better ourselves and follow in the teachings of the Bible, Koran, etc? When we do this ,we treat others with the respect that we ourselves wish to receive. Love for each other takes over (Love your neighbor as yourself). And when we do this, then we are following a path, not for the end result (Heaven), but for the journey of enlightenment. And we know that it is right because it feels right to leave the hate, jealousy, and anger behind.
I don't know if I actually got this out in a cohesive manner and it's probably full of holes. But I hope you can jump over those holes and see what I'm trying to say.
1 comment:
Worry not sister, I follow!
I've found that the healthy side of all the worlds most common religions all seem to bring us to the same point (theology aside - here where not inculding what the religions BELIEVE about God). I'm talking here what the POINT of the religious practices of the different religions are all about (again theology aside - not concerned at this point about whether you're going to heaven or not)
The point of all these religions... theology and after-life aside, seems to be giving people tools to be BETTER PEOPLE... for the HERE and NOW!
If a person thinks their way is the ONLY way to get to heaven, then at best you'll want to get more people in with you. Or at worst you'll want to prevent people who think differently than you do from challenging your religious understandings.
Back in the early part of the dark age/middle ages, Islam Christianity and Judaism seemed to coexist freely together back in North Africa/Southern Europe.
After a while, things got bad, but for a while, people were actually respecting each other's views and theology.
Can a Christian or Muslim (they are both religions that call their people ro some form of evangelism)person be REALLY committted to their faith, and believe, be committed followers of their faiths, and all that... and still respect other peoples religous perspectives and not feel a need to try anc convert someone to their religion?
And if you DO respect other's religous perspectives without feeling like yo are called to "convert" them... are you truly being a good Christian?
i.e. Can a "true" follower of Christ truly respect others' religious faiths?
I think yes! See, here the assumption is that there is only one form of evangelism; and that's going door-to-door asking the "Have you accepted Jesus..." question. It assumes if you haven't, you are not going to heaven or something like that.
I don't buy it! Fisrt off - who goes to heaven is not up to us! It's up to God. And for whatever reason, God doesn't share those things with us. However we do have a repsonsibility to LIVE our faiths daily... assuming (I usually hate assumptions, but sometimes you have to make some...) that ALL people are God's people, no matter their religion. Once you assume all are God's people, then saving the whole world isn't you're responsibilty. We assume it's already been done! Your responsibility is to live in the best way we can! And know every day, even when you screw up... Tomorrow I'll have another chance to get it right! Although we have the desire to put our best efforts forward today, we'll not always acheive our goal... so there is always tomorrow to try again!
And where does that leave this issue of pride or fear? If the responsibility of getting people into heaven is not ours to hold, then we're certainly much free-er to just LIVE.
Plus I think this desire to control comes from fear. If we're scared, we'll react (in the negative sense- like lashing out). If we're scared, we're not thinking straight, and things like "love your neighbor" is the first thing going right out the window.
Post a Comment