Musing over religious differences

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cheddarsox

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I’ve been involved in a thread about “mean spirited posters”, which got me thinking about the variety of religious forums I am part of and their “personalities”. Which got me to thinking about how different religious outlooks shape the way one deals with discussions of faith and people of differing beliefs.

The most "friendly’ forum I am part of is pagan. People have wildly different views on issues, but they have little investment in needing to prove themselves right and the other guy wrong.

Something I often see on this forum is an OP which starts…".since all religions claim they are true and the others are wrong…" And I just want to (name removed by moderator)ut that that is not the case. Many religions don’t make any pronouncements concerning other faiths, gods, etc.

The relationships between many pagans and their deities or Divine forces is rather different from what seems to be the prevailing Catholic outlook. Often here, people post about how they feel abandoned by God, how they need to defend the faith, or how people’s souls can be lost.

Those are not things I read on pagan forums. The pagans have a very different understanding about how their deities operate, and where the power lies. If a deity wants you, you will know. They will grab hold of you and shake you till you respond. They are not “hidden” gods, relying on people to gather followers for them. They operate more like the OT God. They do what they do, and no amount of logic or reason is used to explain themselves to their followers. They have the power, they don’t need to explain anything.

Also, pagans tend to share their experiences and ideas without trying to reason the other people into accepting their view. They don’t use logic to defend their faith or their deities. It is more a case of “this is what I know.” end of story, if the idea needs defending, the deities will take care of that. Their power is not threatened by the fact that some people don’t get it. Nor is the relationship between the humans and the gods threatened if all the people don’t agree. There is a sense of underlying trust. Deities don’t abandon those whom they have called. The relationship is there, even when the human isn’t “playing along” or does things that the faith teaches them not to. There are consequences. But the relationship is not severed.

I post this because when we discuss things with people of other faiths, it is good to remember that we are not just dealing with worshipping deity A, rather than deity B, we are dealing with completely different understandings of how the universe operates and how the deities relate to their lands and people.

Many faiths don’t use reason or logic. They don’t consider or expect religion to be logical or reasonable, or the Divine to behave in ways that appear reasonable to humans. They don’t argue that way, because they know if their deity wants you to understand, they will grab you and shake you till you do. They don’t feel it is their place or requirement to defend the Divine.

Many relgions cannot be compared in side by side parallel charts, they don’t have equivalents to one another. I think this is why the “personalities” on the forums is different. People here aren’t “mean” they just understand their role in the cosmos very differently.

anyway,…hoping that others will share thoughts here

cheddar
 
Ahimsa said:
Does personality “A” join religion Number 1, or does religion Number 1 produce personality “A”?
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I’m not sure. Good question. Probably some of both. I have heard people tell of stories of being called by deities they’d never heard of, into relgions they’d never considered before, so apparently sometimes it is religion #1 producing personality A.

cheddar
 
Ahimsa said:
Does personality “A” join religion Number 1, or does religion Number 1 produce personality “A”?
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It’s a good question. There is a story in Judaism about converts being “Jewish souls” born accidentally into Gentile bodies and finding their way “home.” As that feeling of “coming home” is one that I hear across conversion stories, regardless of the religion either converted from or to, sometimes one wonders if that is the case, that there is a place for us but we are not always born into it.

In my case, religion A did its utmost to produce a personality A, but even well before I had ever encountered anyone who practiced religion N or even knew that anyone still did, I was showing signs of attempting to follow it as best I could as a 10 year old. I also realized that no matter what I did, I did not fit into the definition of religion A, even at its most liberal (this realization took another 20 years, however). I searched and tried religion B, which was much closer to religion A, and even religion C which was quite different, but couldn’t fit there either. Religions D, F,K, L, etc also left me entirely cold. It was not until I found religion N that I could say “yes, this matches my experience of spiritual reality” and settled down at “home.”
 
In Christianity, we believe that God has made a way for human beings to find Him and His forgiveness and to see paradise and escape suffering after this life. This is extrmely important information. He also wants to use us in His plan to spread this information. He has many reasons for it, including that it gives us an important role in His plan and that it gives us deep and vital relationships with one another. It also helps strengthen our faith.
Therefore, we feel duty-bound to share what we know. It is our purpose on earth. To stop trying to convert others would not be polite, it would be cruel and callous to the unbelievers and negligent toward our Maker and Saviour. It would also strip meaning and purpose from our own lives. We can’t give up the struggle to share what we have.
Since we have been killed for sharing and still are in some parts of the world, some of us have reacted by becoming shy, others by seeking cute, easily-digested ways of phrasing what we are trying to say, others by returning violence for violence (a major no-no, but it happened), and others by watching God refine and polish their character into a shining example of loving courage and clarity.
When I was a pagan, I was more self-centered, easily confused and unstable morally, with no compass to guide me. I saw myself as following nature and trying hard to love all beings. Things just kept going amiss. I used a fuzzy, undefined way of thinking to avoid facing the fact that I wasn’t as consistent or spiritual or loving as I wanted to think I was. My mental clarity suffered.
There were people around me who seemed to see my mental fuzz as a gentle, intuitive state of mind, proof that I was spiritual. They saw what they wanted to see.
When I was a Buddhist, I tried not to be attached to anything. But that’s not possible. I tried to be easygoing and composed in all circumstances, but without the power of God to help, I could only act that way on the surface, and not all the time. Actually, like most Buddhists I knew, I became the opposite of what I was trying to become. We all meant well at first. But most of us ended up irritable, self-important and feeling hollow. W etried to practice compassion and harmlessness but our frustration at not having
the power to do so wore us out.
So, yes, beliefs affect goals and goals affect behavior and thoughts – personalities.
 
strngrnrth said:
When I was a Buddhist, I tried not to be attached to anything. But that’s not possible.
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True, unless you are a buddha. The practice of Buddhism is not “to not be attached to anything”. Non-attachment is not something you can practice; it’s something that appears when you’re ready for it. The practice of Buddhism is, in fact, the exact opposite of trying to be merely “non-attached”.
 
I too sort of “wandered” and ended up not being what I hoped, and practicing an empty wanabe religion (alongside my real spirituality) until I found myself in the religion I was most deeply called to.

Like Karen, I look back and see that I was practicing my current faith, to the best of my abilities even as a young child. I was a pantheist, looking for a place to happen.

I hear many religious converts of every ilk describe the same sort of experience. Feeling misplaced, being disappointed when the religion they practiced fervently, did not yeild the fruits promised. Feeling like a failure, crazy, disillusioned, etc. Until, following often inexplicable circumstances, they found themselves faced with a new faith, sometimes a new deity, and things began to fall into place for them in a very deep and real way.

The fruits in their lives attest to the “seeds falling on good ground”.

This has puzzled me, because I do believe in an ultimate truth. But I see that some people flourish and produce fruit in one faith, and others in a completely different one. People seem to be called to wildly different paths. I don’t know by what, or why. But change the names of the religions, and so many conversion stories are the same, over and over.

I understand the “human” side of it, but I am mightily puzzled by what is on the other side doing the calling/leading, etc.

cheddar
 
cheddarsox said:
This has puzzled me, because I do believe in an ultimate truth… I understand the “human” side of it, but I am mightily puzzled by what is on the other side doing the calling/leading, etc.

cheddar
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I think the one God is on the other side. I also think it is reasonable that the innate influence of God is perceived differently by many people over many ages, but is responsible for the basic goodness in humanity, not it’s darker violent nature we see in the news and history books. I believe God is order; not disorder.

The rhetorical question must be considered: why aren’t G(g)od(s) physically present so there is no ambiguity to the nature of our existence, and relationship to the Divine or spirits?

I conclude that God manifested a reality to limit that perception by humanity, culminating in Christ. How humans imperfectly described that manifestation is the Bible. By it’s nature, faith is generated by acceptance of an unknown, but some things become known that support what we believe. We should use our logic and reason to discern the validity/probablity of those things.

I think it’s pretty clear no particular group can perfectly describe and practice the Divine, but I also think it clear the extraordinary efforts by the Divine in our human history to show us the way to understand as close as possible what that ultimate truth is.
 
I originally came to this forum to learn more about my Catholic faith, but then here I am in “Non Catholic Religions” 🙂

Originally, I never anticipated seeing exchanges between Catholics & other faiths, or political discussions, etc. But then I found there were many of them.

I don’t pretend to have the experience of many of the other posters on this forum or even in this thread, but my experience so far with “mean spirited posters” tends to primarily involve confrontations with Islam and/or offshoots of that subject, such as the war on terror, etc. The things I have seen indicate a change in the last several years that a significant segment of the population has experienced as it pertains to their perception of Islam. I suspect that on 9/10/2001 you might have seen a different view, but I wasn’t here then, so I don’t know.

Perhaps I am just more forgiving of others than of those of my own faith, but the Muslims who come and post here, often with limited English skills and seldom much in the way of reasoned argument, don’t bother me much. They may be offensive and I may not like that, but they don’t bother me as much as the other Catholics who will often demean, even if it is only in a very subtle way, other Catholics who do not agree with them, particularly if the root subject is politics. These Catholics will imply or in some other roundabout way state that people that don’t think the way they do are stupid, immoral, etc., when all that is at stake is a difference of opinion.

Since I have found the same type of behavior evident in those sharing the same political philosophy but who are not Catholic, I conclude that it is not a Catholic thing so much as a political thing. Indeed, I would submit that “mean spirited” behavior is profoundly non-Catholic."

Of course there is also always the subject of what is considered “mean spirited”, the definition can be highly subjective, but I didn’t think that was the purpose of this thread.

In summary, I don’t think that religion makes you any particular way, nor do I think that certain folks, because of the way they are, are drawn to certain religions. I believe that mean spirited people are just mean spirited and they’re liable to pop up just about anywhere. Plus, most of us have a cranky day here and there, I sure do. Catch me on one of my cranky days & you might think I’m mean spirited too.

Now, if the mean spirited posters are Catholic, I believe they need to do more self examination and go to confession more. Having said that, if someone is locked into the position of “I’m right & anyone who does not agree with me is a moron” then I am not sure that self examination will be effective. Maybe that’s why we have moderators!
 
cheddarsox said:
The most "friendly’ forum I am part of is pagan. People have wildly different views on issues, but they have little investment in needing to prove themselves right and the other guy wrong.
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That might be because pagans don’t really care? Or know they are not serious?

As for your general assessment, we’ll have to take that with a grain of salt.
 
SPH1 said:
That might be because pagans don’t really care? Or know they are not serious?

As for your general assessment, we’ll have to take that with a grain of salt.
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I think that you are right, pagans don’t care if others think their religion is “right” to the degree that some faiths do.

This may be that they are used to it, belonging to a minority faith in most cultures.

Maybe because many are polytheists and don’t think there is only one “right” religion for everyone, but that each should follow the path they are called to.

Not serious?

The degree with which they take their faiths seriously is about the same as in other religions, some do, others not so much.

Not sure why you feel the need for a grain of salt. People here “asess” other forums all the time. Some are friendly, others not so much.

I find Beliefnet to be pretty contentious in general. That atmosphere does not bring out the nice in me. I tend to stay away.
 
SPH1 said:
That might be because pagans don’t really care? Or know they are not serious?
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“Don’t really care” about what specifically? If you mean, “don’t really care about their religion” then I disagree with you. If you mean, "don’t really care about issues"I disagree with you. If you mean “don’t really care whether the other person approves of their position or not because they know where they stand and they know their own experiences with spiritual reality” then I agree.

The vast majority of the Neopagans I know (myself included) are quite serious about their religion. Are there those who are not? Of course. There are those who are not serious about their religion in all groups.
 
A discussion between people who believe differently or even who just interpret differently is a healthy thing as long as it does not come to blows. I’ve learned a lot doing this. The funny thing is that the more I am challenged by non-Catholics, the more I look into the topics brought up, the stronger my faith becomes and the more I realize that IMHO the CC is right on. IT has also increased my respect for others beliefs as long as they are respectful in return. So I highly recommend ‘musing’ over religious differences.
 
BelFarfalla said:
A discussion between people who believe differently or even who just interpret differently is a healthy thing as long as it does not come to blows. I’ve learned a lot doing this. The funny thing is that the more I am challenged by non-Catholics, the more I look into the topics brought up, the stronger my faith becomes and the more I realize that IMHO the CC is right on. IT has also increased my respect for others beliefs as long as they are respectful in return. So I highly recommend ‘musing’ over religious differences.
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I have discovered the same thing. I hang at a variety of religious forums, not only to learn what others believe, but to learn what I believe. My faith has been deepened and matured tremendously by discussing faith issues with others. And when no one is yelling, or trying to yell over anyone else, it is much easier to hear what everyone is saying.
 
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