Is it just me??
Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 9:48 am
Well, you asked, let's see if I can avoid boring you. I bet you don't get to the end of this without falling asleep, Skittles!
Religion covers several sets of beliefs, none of which are very compatible with each other. They all describe the same world, but they interpret the cause of what happens differently.
There are nature religions, such as the native Americans practiced. Wicca is quite like that. Anything that talks of the Earth-Mother. They see an inter-connectedness between all things, they feel your mind shares thoughts with other minds, that all things have a level at which they are conscious. Mystical stuff. Shamen understand and interpret to the rest of the community.
There are magic religions, quite common in Africa. If you know the principles of cause and effect, you can do something that changes the life of the person you're acting on. There's no good or bad, just power and influence.
There are religions with many aspects of God being seen as different powers - the Gods. Norse, Greek, Roman, Hindu. You get tales of the Creator, the Sustainer and the Destroyer as the great Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, with their uncounted minor manifestations like Agni, God of Fire, or Ganesh, Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. I think of these as primarily story-religions though I have no doubt that their worshippers are as fervent as anyone else's.
There are religions with no God at all, like Buddhism, which explores the real world with just as complex and rich an understanding as religions with a God or Gods.
Lastly, there's what you've been brought up near to, the Abrahamic faiths, and each of this group of religions is very compatible with each other. These are Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism, and they all have a single God - the same God - who chose a people - different people, eventually - as His own. The Jews and Christians take the first five Books of the Old Testament as a description of God doing the choosing, and telling the people how to behave. The Koran tells Muslims what happened after that. The New Testament tells Christians a different history, in which the words God, only Son, sacrifice, remission of sins, New Deal and grace figure prominently. The angelic revelation to an American, Joseph Smith, informed Mormonism and gave the USA an Abrahamic religion all of its own.
For the first thousand years, all Christians were prepared to share their central religious observance, the Mass or Communion. Anyone who tried to change the core belief of the community - by saying, for example, that people weren't inherently sinful, or that a person could become holy by his own efforts - was called a Heretic and persuaded otherwise or expelled from the religion. The appearance of Islam after the first six hundred years did a lot to tie Christianity together in that way.
Eventually, a heresy happened that wasn't one small group against a big group, it was half and half. Nobody could settle the truth. It was so minimal a quarrel that neither you nor I would even understand why they argued, but they ended up refusing to share each other's core service of worship. They're still split. One's called Orthodox Christianity and the other is called Western Christianity.
Five hundred years ago, Western Christianity split half-and-half again, into Roman Catholic Christianity and Protestant Christianity.
Every year since then, some congregation of Protestant Christians has given themselves a new label like Baptist, or Anglican, or Pentecostal, or Methodist, but (now, at least) they share communion, they're splinters of Protestantism but they're not totally separated from each other. Some of them, like the Anglicans, refuse to even call themselves Protestant, they say they're all that remains of Catholic Christianity and that Roman Catholics are Heretics. Hair still rises on the necks of a lot of these people when they enter the same room.
Do you see a pattern in all this?
All of the Christian churches, without exception, are trying hard to find a way to get back to sharing their communion with all of the other Christian churches. Don't hold your breath, though. Nobody is even started on bringing all of the Abrahamic faiths to a point where they can share a core belief without arguing.
Religion covers several sets of beliefs, none of which are very compatible with each other. They all describe the same world, but they interpret the cause of what happens differently.
There are nature religions, such as the native Americans practiced. Wicca is quite like that. Anything that talks of the Earth-Mother. They see an inter-connectedness between all things, they feel your mind shares thoughts with other minds, that all things have a level at which they are conscious. Mystical stuff. Shamen understand and interpret to the rest of the community.
There are magic religions, quite common in Africa. If you know the principles of cause and effect, you can do something that changes the life of the person you're acting on. There's no good or bad, just power and influence.
There are religions with many aspects of God being seen as different powers - the Gods. Norse, Greek, Roman, Hindu. You get tales of the Creator, the Sustainer and the Destroyer as the great Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, with their uncounted minor manifestations like Agni, God of Fire, or Ganesh, Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. I think of these as primarily story-religions though I have no doubt that their worshippers are as fervent as anyone else's.
There are religions with no God at all, like Buddhism, which explores the real world with just as complex and rich an understanding as religions with a God or Gods.
Lastly, there's what you've been brought up near to, the Abrahamic faiths, and each of this group of religions is very compatible with each other. These are Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism, and they all have a single God - the same God - who chose a people - different people, eventually - as His own. The Jews and Christians take the first five Books of the Old Testament as a description of God doing the choosing, and telling the people how to behave. The Koran tells Muslims what happened after that. The New Testament tells Christians a different history, in which the words God, only Son, sacrifice, remission of sins, New Deal and grace figure prominently. The angelic revelation to an American, Joseph Smith, informed Mormonism and gave the USA an Abrahamic religion all of its own.
For the first thousand years, all Christians were prepared to share their central religious observance, the Mass or Communion. Anyone who tried to change the core belief of the community - by saying, for example, that people weren't inherently sinful, or that a person could become holy by his own efforts - was called a Heretic and persuaded otherwise or expelled from the religion. The appearance of Islam after the first six hundred years did a lot to tie Christianity together in that way.
Eventually, a heresy happened that wasn't one small group against a big group, it was half and half. Nobody could settle the truth. It was so minimal a quarrel that neither you nor I would even understand why they argued, but they ended up refusing to share each other's core service of worship. They're still split. One's called Orthodox Christianity and the other is called Western Christianity.
Five hundred years ago, Western Christianity split half-and-half again, into Roman Catholic Christianity and Protestant Christianity.
Every year since then, some congregation of Protestant Christians has given themselves a new label like Baptist, or Anglican, or Pentecostal, or Methodist, but (now, at least) they share communion, they're splinters of Protestantism but they're not totally separated from each other. Some of them, like the Anglicans, refuse to even call themselves Protestant, they say they're all that remains of Catholic Christianity and that Roman Catholics are Heretics. Hair still rises on the necks of a lot of these people when they enter the same room.
Do you see a pattern in all this?
All of the Christian churches, without exception, are trying hard to find a way to get back to sharing their communion with all of the other Christian churches. Don't hold your breath, though. Nobody is even started on bringing all of the Abrahamic faiths to a point where they can share a core belief without arguing.