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I’m sure everyone, including myself, have witnessed people from
varying religious groups trying to prove that their faith is the
“true faith.” I noticed that this is not true for just one
particular group but from majority of well meaning groups who want
to save the world. It has me thinking and wondering. Is religion the
last bastion of prejudice and bigotry in the new millennium?
Religious bigotry has been part of human history
for centuries. The Second World War alone saw the annihilation of
millions of Jewish people by Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. From the
Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition in medieval Europe to the
Catholic-Protestant conflicts in Ireland the current Jihadist
movement, religious conflict seems to be a natural occurrence in
humans as a specie.
Of all the reasons to be prejudicial against a
person or group of people, it seems religion is going to be the
hardest to overcome. Political affiliations, culture, language,
sexual preference, skin color, race have proven to be surmountable
over the past decades. How then do we go about overcoming
discrimination because of faith? Admittedly, the strongest
motivating factor to hate another is that it is justified by divine
law or at least interpreted as such.
Could the movement toward unity require the
people to be less attached to their religious beliefs? To take a
step back from our paradigms we inherited from generations past and
look at the other belief systems objectively without bias, is this
possible?
In my own search for the meaning of the divine,
I admit I strayed from my basic Catholic upbringing to find answers.
I’ve sat down with Taoists, Buddhists, other Christian
denominations and eclectics. When I listen to the basic core of
their belief, it’s basically the same for everyone. The only
difference lies in language, culture, semantics and founder. So I
ask: What’s all the fuss about trying to out do each other
proclaiming “My God is better than yours?”
These days I often see religion as food.
There’s Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Filipino and other cuisines
that can satisfy hunger. But each one of us has a particular taste
and preference. So we choose the one that tastes best for us. I
suggest we all get to know the menu of various cuisines for the soul
that are out there. Let go of the fear that it might “shake our
faith” if we listen to another point of view. Instead of looking
for differences, listen for the similarities. If anything, it could
bring us closer to the main course of coexistence.
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