generalspeaking

Let Us Hope

Religion, the belief in a holy spirit whose omniscience and power demands respect and adherence to divine guidelines of spiritually-guided behaviours whose purpose it is to persuade peoples of different backgrounds and cultures to live together in peace and harmony can do much good. And yet it has done much harm throughout human history.

In submitting to the exhortations, through scripture, to behave closer to the angels than the beasts of whom humankind are but one form of life on earth, we hope to transcend and overcome our baser instincts. Instincts that were at one time deeply ingrained in our collective genetic memories, to enable us to survive as a species.

And which are most certainly not now, in civil society, conducive to understanding and good will among people. People not of one's tribe, of one's ethnic origin, religious belief, ideology, culture, tradition, history. In a world where human migration and the coming together of people from multifarious backgrounds live together, harmony must be achieved for the good of all.

The two most practised religions in the world today emanate from a source much older than themselves. The ancient Israelites attached themselves to monotheism, the belief in a singular and solely-existent powerful spirit, in a world that worshipped a multitude of gods. From pagan worship to worship of a single divine entity whose sacred word was to be obeyed.

Judaism eventually gave birth to an offshoot that developed into Christianity, and fully one and a half thousand years later, another religion was developed that owed its conception in part to the writings of the Old Testament of Judaic religious belief. Wouldn't it seem to make sense that respect for one another might prevail between the three?

Instead, their messages to their faithful managed somehow to be interpreted in such a way that they degenerated into vehicles by which hatred could be expressed one for the other, encouraging distrust, blame, and the misery of bloody conflicts, as each religion and their faithful sought to eclipse the other.

We live now in perilous times, where fanatics believing that their religion and theirs only is the true, the pertinent, the only one, that all others are raw impostors, and it has become their sacrificial duty to destroy all elements of the other religions' portrayals, symbols and adherents.

It can only be to the good that senior clerics of the three Abrahamic religions have taken it finally upon themselves to pursue peace among themselves, to craft a joint statement of intent, to encourage their devout followers to practise what they preach in the humanity and brotherhood of humankind.

The joint manifesto, "A Common Word", that has resulted from Vatican meetings between clerics representing the Roman Catholic faith, and that of Islam, promises to bring greater trust and understanding between the two embattled factions of a common religious heritage.

The declaration to jointly combat violence, to defend religious freedoms, and foster equal rights for minority faith groups, is a righteous one. Nothing untoward can possibly result in a dialogue between groups and individuals who seek to find common ground, to share dialogue, to begin to trust one another.

The world can only be a better place for all of that.

Labels: Human Fallibility, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 07, 2008