All Together Now; Or, As Many As Possible

LK made a lovely and thought-provoking post about God and people insisting theirs is the "right" religion, i.e. "God loves us all, can't we just get along?" I'm paraphrasing, of course, and my brain is a little fuzzy from lack of sleep, so if I forget things or don't make much sense, please don't hold it against me. ^_^

God loves all of us. It's the one factor that we can all depend on, at any time and in any situation. Even when it seems everything else in our lives has gone to absolute poo, and we think nobody could love us and that nothing will ever go right again, God is there with a shoulder for us to cry on and to reassure us.

God is loving and faithful. Just writing that is so comforting to me. : ) So, in the great "my religion is the true one" debate, to me it would make sense that God would offer us many paths to Him, because He wants as many of us with Him as possible! These paths all have the same basic rules (the Ten Commandments, for lack of a more concise label), with the primary one being, of course, to worship and love the Lord our God.

Take no other God before Me. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with your mind, and with all your strength. That is the true path. Simple.

However all the other doctrines and miscellaneous details and quarrels between Judaism, Christianity and Islam may fall, that is the core our respective religions. It's our common thread. So we're all following that greatest commandment. We're all on the "Straight Path".

Senseless quarreling over who is "right" only causes anger and hurt feelings. Can you really claim to be loving your neighbor as yourself in circumstances like that? It's one thing to have discussions, to make your viewpoints known so that others can enrich their understanding of you/your motivations/your religion. This breeds understanding and support -- which all of you ladies are excellent in providing. It's another thing to stand on your soap box and tell someone they're wrong and going to Hell and here's all the reasons why -- which basically boils down to "You aren't Catholic/Protestant/Muslim/Jewish/etc like me."

Unfortunately, that level of intolerance is how Christians are often viewed, even in (or perhaps I should say, especially in) the U.S. So many sermons are the fire-and-brimstone type. Who wants to be part of a religion that seemingly talks about little else? Where are all the sermons on love, forgiveness, peace?

Let's just keep it simple: Love God. Love your neighbor.

Renewing the search

Hi, all! I'm doing well. How are all of you? I just got a lil' Toshiba netbook computer, so I can get online more often now! : D I'm very excited about it.

But now I have a problem. A big, unsatisfying, frustrating problem. One I thought was resolved. Namely: I'm back in the intellectual and emotional debate between Islam and Christianity. I started reading the Bible - from the beginning - and have also been reading the S.V. Mir Ahmed Ali translation of the Koran. Found a couple of interesting books about the Bible, too - "Jesus, Interrupted" and "Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years".

Now, I am not one of those folks who believes the Bible is perfect and has never been changed by so much as a word. People have been involved with the Bible from the get-go, and we all know that people tend to screw things up (intentionally or not). After all, we aren't perfect. We make mistakes. So... I'm cool with people talking about the Bible having been changed. The two books mentioned previously are all about the influence of humans on Christianity and it's source and teachings.

But it's leading me to another spiritual crisis. I'm reading both the Koran and the Bible, and I'm realizing... as much as the uninformed person claims that Islam is a religion of violence, Christianity also has a violent history, full of mysogyny and war and all those other horrid things. The Spanish Inquisition, anyone? The way I look at it, in terms of violence, the actions of extremists in the Middle East are on par with those of the Catholic Church centuries ago and, later - to an extent, with prejudice, etc - the Protestant church. Hmmm, I didn't say that quite right, so please don't take offense. I'm trying to organize my thoughts on this topic, but I'm a bit out of practice on religious intellectual discussion.

To my way of thinking, the issues right now are what the Christian world was going through 2 or 3 or 4 centuries back. So are we really that different, after all? All I see is a difference in time, and maybe not even so much that, considering the 600 years between the foundation of Christianity and that of Islam - Christianity was suffering many of the same problems at the age that Islam is now.

I'm so confused... But I'll keep reading and praying and, with God's help, may finally rest 100% certain in the validity and rightness of my faith. Whatever that might end up being.

I wonder how my deployment will affect my questioning soul.

Biggest fear: Picking a religion, but then finding out after I die that it was the wrong one and that I'll go to hell for it.