RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
A RADICAL CALL FOR GLOBAL PEACE & SPIRITUAL ONENESS
When I first started this website, it was to be mostly about my dogs
with a little bit of spiritually to lift the soul of the passer by , but
as the days go by I have felt compelled by the mighty ones to make a calling
for religious oneness, as I believe if we cannot heal religious racism
and find peace, harmony and mutual ground between the religions how can
we ever begin to heal the world and find global peace ?
I am asking that all who pass through this site and read this article
give serious consideration to Inter-faithing. If you are Pagan make an
effort to visit a Christian church, if you are Catholic try and visit a
Mosque and so on ... if you stop looking at the religion itself, worrying
about what religion is correct, weather your on the right path,
stop wandering around in circles trying to figure out, who to obey, what
or who to worship, and pay attention to the teachings of most religions,
you will find that ,in essence, they
all promote the same thing, peace and love for all mankind .
There is not a right or wrong path as far as I am concerned. I think
all rivers flow to the same ocean, there is not a right religion or spiritual
way, but I do believe that being religious does not make you necessarily
a spiritual person and being spiritual does not make you religious. My
up bringing was a heavy mixture of Catholic and Christian and the one thing
they both had in common was Jesus, but as I got older I felt something
was a miss with how it was presented by its followers.
I wondered why God our Father, who loved us so much, had so many strict
rules that you had to follow to the letter? A Father that a jealous God,
an angry God. And worse the doctrine said repeatedly that the God was male
and that a woman could not achieve a rapport with God. It felt like
a male God ruling over a male world , and women definitely weren't valued
equally.
And sorry to say, I have seen some serious hypocrisy amongst some people
of the faiths I grew up with. Those that seem to think because they donate
a share of their wages to the church, that this makes all their bad and
intolerable behavior to their kids, wife, friends or neighbors all right.
Those that seem to that think because they go to church every Sunday, this
makes them religious. Well it doesn't. It makes them a follower of religious
ritual, period. These same folk, its been my experience, often break commandments
regularly and pay no attention at all to the "seven deadly sins", most
don't even know what the seven deadly sins are. They are:
Pride : is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes
with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called
the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
Envy : is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony : is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one
requires.
Lust : is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger : is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead
for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
Greed : is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm
of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth :is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work
I don't believe there is a right religion or spiritual path but do believe that being religious does not make a person necessarily spiritual and being spiritual does not automatically make a person religious.
If we really believe that one God created all the different countries and cultures, why do some find it so hard to believe that all religions are one religion and that all Gods are one God? Isn't it oh so possible and oh so probable that the stories just got structured according to each evolving culture?
Many of Jesus' followers, for example, continually bewail the idea of how " Jesus died on the cross for us", and shed tears, but the fact is, according to history, Jesus was put to death at the request of his fellow religious followers.
What of all the thousands of poor women put to death and tortured in the most inhuman manners by the Christian church in the name of Jesus ( accused of being witches ) ? Where are the tears for them ?
If there is only one God, why are there so many different religions ? Isn't religion itself the "devil" in disguise ? How many wars have been waged in the name of "God" ?
These same followers have wiped out entire civilizations and cultures and killed millions of people in holy wars all in the name of "God" generation after generation and 2000 years later wars are still being waged in the name of "God". Not to mention the millions of the followers of Christ killed in the name of the " God" of other nations. And so it continues.
So I think until we can stop warring over religion, global peace will only ever be a dream. We work so hard to dissolve cultural political and racial boundaries but what of religious boundaries ? There needs to be equal acceptance of all religions.
We need to respect all faiths and paths if we are to ever make a better world and a global community. Inter-faith will bring about a more humanitarian and peaceful world , we can only change the world by changing ourselves, so be that change you want to see in the world.
For if we don't change our ways soon are world will be a thing of the past , the world is not going to save itself and neither is some God going to come down from the heavens and magically give us a nice shiny new one , only we can save our world and it needs saving NOW.
Yes there are many disasters being reported lately ... earth quakes, hurricanes ,tornadoes and floods and although certain religions will say that they are predicated and that it is the final days, this is pure blindness. God is not the cause of these destruction's, man is. I watch and cry at the images on my TV of some small children homeless and lost crying ,trying to find their mother or fathers. Parents looking for their lost infant , whole families and homes wiped out in the blink of mother natures eye.
I have heard some people say that it is karma and the three fold law in effect for certain countries behavior , but that is pure rubbish, what Deity would punish innocent men woman and children for the wrong doing of a few ?
Remember the seven deadly sins I mentioned ? The chief of these is prideful greed. It is greed that is destroying our planet. Its is man. It is you and it is me. We live are busy lives, buy what we want, when we want. We buy more of what we want and less of what we really need. We waste special quality time with our families to put more hours in at work to keep up with the Jones's.
The whole world revolves around money and designer gear. Getting a better car, a bigger house, the latest 42 inch plasma tv. Especially if your purchase is bigger or better than the guy next door just bought or your sister's or your brother's.
Even young mothers spend more time worrying about if their baby has the newest Nike trainers and burberry coat and bling them up to the max, but constantly run out of the essentials like nappies and food. The Designer baby is now the latest fashion accessory for the teenage mother .
The other side to all this behavior, on an ecological scale, is all that money promotes business, big money. Which of course equals big business which means: More factories, more rubbish, more fumes ,more pollution ... all of which are responsible to a great degree for the destructive climatic changes and the inclimate weather conditions taking place all around the world. These natural disasters are not entirely natural at all, they are man made by changes we ourselves, have made to the very planet itself.
You cannot find true happiness in material things ,we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give , there is an old native american saying I saw on a poster once years ago that really hit home to me and my hubby and it went a little like this
Only after the last tree has been
cut down
Only after the river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been
caught
Only then will man realize that
you can't eat money
So you see at the end of all this it is down to you and me to make a difference to heal our planet and to make a difference for ourselves for our children and for our children's children ... CHANGE BEGINS WITH YOU !!!
