Saltmeister
The Dangerous Dinner
Popeyesays said:
We tend to seem unjustified in thinking we're the exclusive followers of the Truth. It seems to many people that we're too narrow-minded to believe in the universality of our religions -- that we're disagreeing over petty and minor details. We seem to disagree over rules, laws and certain doctrines when unbelievers have come up with "better concepts."
For Muslims, I understand that they have to follow rules and show their devotion to God by conforming to a code of conduct. Sounds good.
For Christians, you will hear a lot about what they call "salvation." A lot of Christians either don't understand what it means "to be saved" or perhaps they understand it but don't explain it properly. This confuses people who aren't Christian. Why do we have to be saved? What are we being saved from?
On the other hand, there is a lot of emphasis on a man named Jesus. People start asking, why should Jesus be so important? Sure, he taught a lot of things, but there have been philosophers throughout the ages who have taught tons and tons and tons of things on how to live. So why Jesus?
Then you find that in Christianity there are multitudes and multitudes of different sects, formed by people who thought they were starting a fantastic movement that would answer all the questions about Christ but ended up confusing more and more people.
You start wondering, what's the point? Why do Christians consider these things so so special? Are these things really that important?
I may not be able to explain why all these things are happening right now, but I do know what's most important in Christianity.
The most important thing is God and His Kingdom. We are on a spiritual journey and our goal is to reach God and His Kingdom. We reach God and His Kingdom by living by faith. God's Kingdom is not here on earth yet, but somewhere else in another time and place.
Our purpose is not to build God's Kingdom ourselves by making our society perfect or advancing civilisation. Civilisation is not that important to God. We are important, not society. There is no doctrine to follow and no institutions to respect or uphold. All we need is faith, hope and love to survive the long hard journey to God's Kingdom.
This is where Jesus comes in, Jesus dies on the cross and opens a path to God's Kingdom. It is on this path that our spiritual journey takes place. Jesus is important for several other reasons which I won't go into detail here. For the purpose of explaining why he's so special -- it's basically to undo what Adam did.
Undoubtedly, that points us to what is regarded as most important in Christianity -- undoing the effects of Adam's disobedience.
This is where you start seeing the reasons for our differences. Islam says that the reason why there is so much evil in the world is because we don't follow the rules, doctrines and institutions (at least as far as I know) of Islam -- the five pillars, praying five times a day, veiling of women, abstaining from eating pork.
Christianity says it's Adam disobedience. By returning ourselves to the original condition of Adam, we rid ourselves of the need for rules, doctrines and institutions, because we are all capable of doing the right thing by Adam's original nature. That's also the reason for Christianity's simplicity. The Christian faith is a rather simple religion.
This is a big gulf indeed!!!!
No, I don't think we're fighting over petty details here!!!!
