CONVERSIONS
"......those people usually believe their religion is the “right” one – the One True Religion. They think their doctrines are the true doctrines and their God is the real God, and all others are wrong. Such a view makes two assumptions that I reject.
The first assumption is that an omnipotent and omnipresent entity such as God/Allah – or Brahma, or the Tao, or the Trikaya – can be completely understood by human intellect, and that this perfect understanding can be expressed in words to form doctrines that transmit this perfect understanding to others with unfailing accuracy.
And I say that’s nonsense. I say no doctrines of any religion, including mine, are the complete truth. All fall short of perfect understanding. All are frequently misunderstood. The truest doctrines are just pointers, shadows on a wall, or a hand pointing to the moon.
At the same time, it may be that most of the doctrines of most of the world’s religions reflect some small part of a great and absolute truth, so they aren’t necessarily false, either. As Joseph Campbell may have said, all religions are true. You just have to understand what they are true of."
well its true...we are after all merely humans..what the prophets, what the doctrines say may after all be a slight deviation from God's actual word..and then the word is spread, and so on and so forth...and in the end, the truths and the lies are all mixed together, and in the end we just need to find out what is true to ourselves...
i luv this phrase:
“Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even those of your own religion. They are merely guiding means; they are not the absolute truth.”
In the end, if no matter how good a person we are, or how big a service we make to humanity, we will still be damned/not be saved/go to hell/suffer eternity...unless we become part of a particular religion...I'll rather go to hell(if there was one)....I don't think heaven will be a good place with such a authoritative, merciless, cruel and unfair ruler..
posted by Li Hong at 8:39 PM
1 Comments:
C.S. Lewis (author of the Chronicles of Narnia - atheist turn-Christian) once said what you just quoted... about all religions not being the definite answers but as guidances.
It's true, in fact that a lot of people are more in love with being part of a religion than being in love with God. XD (I'm not excluded from this sin sometimes, honestly)
P.S. Try to get his book entitled "Mere Christianity" ... I think it'll be a pretty good read for a thinker like you. (No, it doesn't force the reader to convert, but to understand why *he* converted after being anti-Christian for the longest time)
P.S. You'll enjoy hell... but only if you enjoy darkness, loneliness, people reading your thoughts aloud and screaming at you for thinking them, and an awesome craving for living water that no amount of liquid can quench. I'd rather choose heaven - authoritative, demanding God than hell anytime.
P.S. God isn't bad. If He was, I wouldn't be typing this... He'd probably zapped me and sent me to hell for all my sins if He were bad, but I'm still here!
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