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| | What if.........
I have often wondered - considering religious figures like Jesus,
Buddha, Mohammed - whether God intentionally inspired these people to
make changes in their own cultures, intentionally enlightened the
willing and receptive. And instead of throwing things around like
"well, Jesus is alive and the others aren't; Jesus is God and the
others aren't," maybe we have a responsibility, in honoring God, to
look at what he inspired in the others as well as Jesus.
According to Wikipedia,
I think Jesus would agree with this. Of course, Buddha apparently
parted ways with the Judeo-Christian concept of a personal God who
created the universe. Well, that was Buddha.
Again, according to Wikipedia, Mohammed did make some really good
changes in society but at the same time he was a military leader. I
haven't looked deeply enough into his background or the religion to
know everything he was about, but apparently he believed that man had
corrupted the pure religion and it was his job to set it straight
again.
That sounds exactly like Joseph Smith and the inception of the Mormon
church, who believed he had a revelation from God when he asked God
which religion was right and he was told they were all corrupt and he
had to bring back the pure religion.
It seems to me that with these last two, as was the case with many of
the desert hermits of the early Christian Church, that they saw the
corruption in the world around them, and wanted to set things right
again.
Now, Buddha (the original) apparently lived about 5 centuries before
Jesus. Where did he get those ideas about overcoming greed, hate, and
ignorance? He had to get them from God, I think.
Still, people didn't get it.
Then we have Jesus coming on the scene, and being resurrected as God's
exclamation point, so to speak. And then enter religion, doctrine,
infighting, schism. Greed, hate, ignorance.
We still don't get it. God is not about "look, I'm the biggest, baddest
thing in the universe and you will bow to me and my messiah or spend
eternity being tortured."
I guess the point to all this is that there is goodness and truth in
different places, places we reject out of hand because we are raised to
believe that our way is the only way. We believe what we believe
because we have been taught to believe that, and to be critical of
others who do not, to believe that others are less enlightened, less
intelligent, and have nothing to offer us. Or worse still, that these
lesser beings do not deserve the least bit of respect, and in some
cases, that they don't even deserve to live.
Religious zealots and terrorists are not restricted to Middle Eastern cultures.
The truth is that truth and beauty are strewn throughout the world. We
need to look for it where it is, because when we take one package hook,
line, and sinker, then we get a lot of debris with that and we miss
some genuine gems in the process.
I am not saying all beliefs are equal or equally true. I am saying
truth is what it is, and it is where it is. It would be nice and tidy
if all truth were found in one package - less work for those who like
things in nice, tidy packages. But finding truth takes looking for
truth, and asking, what if.......
| | | Posted 10/12/2006 7:47 AM - 203 views - 6 comments
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