Do you believe? There are many things you will be given the opportunity to believe in throughout your life. Whether you do or not will inevitably be up to you and you alone. Many people may flit through your life and try to persuade you to decide one way or the other but you will be the sole maker of all your end choices.
What “do” you believe in? Is the human race infallible? Is there life anywhere else out in the universe? Are we given, or do we have, or do we get just this one and only life to live? No one can ever answer any of those questions for anyone else but themselves. And, those few questions are but the tip of the berg of questions that mankind has been asking for most of its existence.
Religion is a question in and of itself as well as an enigma. Go ahead and count every life that stands on every side of all the religions of the world. Whatever number you come up with rest assured that at some point in history all those souls will be at one another’s throats because of what each selectively believes in. Soldiers scream into battle and clergy scream out platitudes and influence leader’s attitudes and the laypersons bend to whims of people they will never meet. It all ferments like a good wine and blood spills. All this happens in the name of deity, and with no discernable sign of it ever ending, everyday.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have all invaded Jerusalem nearly “en masse”. These three religions comprised of so many have deferred to fighting one another for centuries instead of seeking answers for the world’s ills together. In light of such perpetual conflict a question of “beliefs” must be lobbed grenade style into their midst. Hence, do you believe that God wants you to carry on fighting, maiming, killing, and torturing the world with fear in his name? Have you been divinely instructed to wage war? Has God ordered you to claim a land as your own because it was written down in a set of specific instructions that cannot be denied or ignored? Can you prove your right to the convictions you impose on others? Can you prove unequivocally that you have any right to impose what you believe on others?
Believing in something has always been an underlying rudimentary function of the human condition. If we had nothing to believe in then, our lives might have felt like something less than what they should have been. Early on our minds begin to form the synaptic puzzles that give rise to our “character”. Religion is one of the “affecters” that digs deep from the onset and leaves lasting impressions that force the steerage of our lives into lineages that we would otherwise never even acknowledge existed. Great tumults sometimes befall us and the cornerstones of our beliefs can crack, shatter and crumble to dust before our eyes. Faith might preserve what we believe in, or faith itself might die. Remember this though; you have to have faith in the first place, in order to lose it.
Some of the greatest stories of mankind come straight from religion. Do you know the stories of, Cain and Abel, Noah, Samson and Delilah, Moses, Ezekiel, Jesus, Adam and Eve, The creation, and of course the Revelation? I use these Christian ones because I am Christian and have no endeavor to disrespect any religion the world over. All religions have heroes in their histories. Protagonists, antagonists, the meek, the prophets, savior(s), and kings, nobles, warriors, the unlikely, the big, small, well known, unknown, and anything else you can laud onto a human as a descriptive title. What a triumph it was when David slew Goliath. What a tragedy it was when Jesus was crucified. What melancholy wafted from the pages when Moses could not enter the Promised Land? The Revelation tolled out its’ story like a bell lamenting and warning of the things to come. All religions have their books of stories. Many are similar in execution of the tales of religious history that they tell.
Several stories in the press last week undoubtedly angered many who believe in God. The factions of the human race who choose not to believe in God or a higher being had their say and their media explosion for the day so to speak. I heard pundits call God a “Lie” and discount his existence with stellar amounts of conviction. I was taken aback more by the tone of their voices than anything though. Almost every voice that denied the existence of God did so with a completely false feeling to their words. Was it just me, or did it sound like they were afraid on some level that God would hear them? It was like they were admitting to being taken up in a UFO and whisked off to mercury’s sunny side for medical tests. The phony sound of it all was both whimsical and we-need-to-keep-our-eyes-on-these-people-ish. God obviously got a big kick out of it all I’m sure. I he had no sense of humor he would surely have destroyed the world that very day.
Hey! Religion is one of the few types of ballast on this ship of life that actually works. Unfortunately there are those who change the very definition of how it works by re-interpreting the teachings into their own twisted, sick, and demented conglomerations of actions married with false translations of guidelines handed down to us over centuries. Just because Samson slew the philistines does not mean anyone today must “slay” their enemies. Just because Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt does not mean that people of today need to be lead out of society and onto spaceships arriving in the tips of comets. A wee bit of common sense would go a long way these days if only it would be used.
Statically the majority of the world’s population won’t run off with the first cult that swings thru town. They have lives to lead and happiness to discover. The hapless few who cave in to the mind games of over zealous dogmatic purveyors of salvation are many when scrutinized but few when quantified in comparison to the entire world. Still, one death in the name of religion is one death too many on any given day.
Print- •
-
Share
- Share this item
-
Grab the link
Copy and paste the link:
- Blog about it
- Close
- •
-
6 Comments
Follow joseexist
Comments
Also, mytwocents, why are you implying..."just a jewish man," acting as though I've mis-spoken or disgraced the name of Jesus Christ? Is Moses- "just a Jewish man," or Elijah, just a Jewish man!" Brush up on your history a little and re-think that.
October 28, 2009 at 9:40 a.m.This comment was removed by the user.
October 28, 2009 at 9:30 a.m.Archeology in its many forms can only provide us with what was preserved in one way or another. It will forever strive to be a complete collection of information. The pieces we discover add to our wealth of knowledge but the gaps we are yet to fill are the inroads for conflict.
I think our race seeks to emulate the library of Alexandria. We know it was dystroyed but will we ever know the full extent of what was lost? Christianity exist today along with many other religons. All religons have evolved through the ages into their present configurations. Some have changed in extreme ways while others have changed in lesser degrees or not at all. Devotees can be very proud of their particular religon and mass mentality can sometimes whip affairs into rages that cause damage or even death.
I know there are those who would see me as a "weed" to be pulled. Those are the only people I can probably see in the same light. I too weep for the world K.S.
Until God blends my brains himself, I refuse to let religon confuse me. I would rather come between two (or more) sides in conflict and try to defuse the disagreement,daunting as it may be.
The first verses of the first book of the Bible can be taken figurativly or literally.There were no humans there to witness the events but God did do some amazing work. The timeline is at his pace and from his reference. How long is a single beat of his heart? How long does it take for him to blink,draw a breath, let it out?
The athiest don't want to admit that there can be something more powerful than themselves and the devoutly religious refuse to relenquish their belief in something they can never have a physical grasp of. We can agree to disagree if we choose. In the end we will be born, we will live, and we will die. We can choose to be good, or evil. Evil is never a good choice. Good is always the right choice. Despite our knowledge of our own history, fragmented by our own destructive tendencies as it is, no one can be assured that anyone else will make the right choices in life.
When I leave this life I hope I will have made the world a little better. There will however, always be room for improvement.
I have no idea who founded Christianity but I might research the subject. I'm sure there is no shortage of scholars who have given us a profound amount of information in that area. Out of respect, I should also dig into the foundations of all other religons as well. I'll bet there are some very interesting stories aligned along some very interesting time-lines.
October 28, 2009 at 7:45 a.m.Understand what you are trying to clarify - but be careful. Since it was (and IS) based on His life and teachings, Christianity was founded by Jesus (who btw, was much more than just 'a Jewish man') - and ORGANIZED by the apostles and early church bishops, with Peter and Paul taking important leadership roles (but they did NOT 'found' the religion)
October 27, 2009 at 11:04 a.m.Jesus, a man also known as: "The Christ" was a Jew.
Paul, one of Jesus' followers founded the religion: Christianity
Not to be confused...
October 27, 2009 at 10:39 a.m.Jose, Excellent thoughts. You expressed the very well, as usual.
Looking back through history we can see the first Christian Church, started by Peter and Paul in Jerusalem when Messianic Jews were banned from Jewish temples, was later destroyed by the Christian crusaders.
And from the prophet Mohammed to today the one true goal of Islam was to make people convert or kill them.
Today, in Israel, Arab Muslims have more freedom to practice their religion than any other place in the Middle East. They have seats in the Israeli Parliment and even Muslim terrorists get the best medical care in the world in Israeli hospitals where Arab and Israeli doctors practice medicine side by side.
An Israeli doctor at M.D. Anderson did groundbreaking surgery on my father in '95 and this past February, an Iranian doctor saved my mother's life when she got the flu and bacterial pneumonia.
Indeed, two of the most modern, intelligent and pro-Western societies in the Middle East are Iran and Israel. The difference between the two are that one has a group of maniacal meglamaniacs in charge! I'll leave it to the reader to guess which is which.
The fall of Adam and Eve brought sin and death into the world. Each of us has a choice now. We can choose life or death. We can choose to kill or not to kill.
Sadly, there is a minority of Muslims who believe, steadfastly, that killing, terrorism and war will help usher in the "Last Imam" and the world will end in a perfect Muslim utopia.
Utopia! Modern secular progressives believe in the idea of utopia through more government. Government is indeed their religion.
Modern extremist right-wingers believe in the same thing. Like Hitler's "1000 year reich" they believe in government control in much the same way.
What scares me is the present silence of this latter group. Where are they? I know they're out there! What do they have planned and when?
Extremism used to bring about a utopia has been used as an excuse to maim, kill and deny basic human rights for centuries.
Malthus was a utopian dreamer as was his ardent follower, Margaret Sanger. Kill off the minorities, the "human weeds" and the world will reach utopia.
And yet I look at the little black faces of my pastor's children and wonder at the sweetness I see.
I look into the kind eyes of mi madre especial and I wonder at the motives of people who would consider her a "human weed!"
I look at the photos of Palestinian children giving a Nazi salute and I weep for this world!
October 27, 2009 at 9:32 a.m.