Last week, I wrote the article The Interconnections of Religion. It is about how our experiences seem to suggest that all religions are the same. My reflections about the issue showed this wasn’t true. Instead, they have interconnected truths from which we have similar experiences from different religions.

Yet, this still left us with two questions… Which is the right religion and how do we find these interconnected truths?

Errors in Searching For The Interconnected Truths

These questions are misleading.  They have an error because they don’t let us see the bigger picture. No religion is completely right and it’ll be pointless to search for all the right interconnected truths. We couldn’t live with all the time it would take to accomplish this daunting task.

Religions Have Misguided Beliefs

All religions may have some truth to it, but they still are man made. They still have biases and incorrect beliefs. Some religions have been twisted for personal gain and pride. Other religions shape a belief with good intentions, but later the belief is proved false. Most religions have included incorrect beliefs for both reasons: pride and ignorance.

Search For Truth Or Life?

There was a point in my life where I tried to find the all the connections between religions. I read the Tao and the teachings of Buddha. I had deep conversations with a follower of the LDS and a Muslim. The experience was interesting but lacking. All the time I spent searching for the truth took a huge chunk of time out of my days.

The search for truth came at the expense of the important relationships in my life. The people that brought me the most hope and joy became increasingly distant.

The search for truth inadvertently started to destroy the truth that I’ve found.

What should we do?

We are starting at the wrong place. us.

Truth Starts With God

Our search for truth should start with God. The benefit of religion is that it showed us the truth, but it was man made. There were errors in it. On the other hand, we are returning to the original source when we first seek God. He (sorry for the lack of pronoun to use for God) has the ability to guide us to the truth that we need. All we have to do is ask.

Forget The Labels. Ask The Original Source

I don’t know your philosophical beliefs about God’s existence nor do I know if you follow the same religious background as I, but it is not important. I am not asking you to pray to my understanding of God, but for you to cry out to the creator.

Move past your beliefs for a moment and just speak to the original source. Call it the creator. Call it the original source. Don’t call it Father, time, teacher, or any other label. If you need to visualize something, envision the emptiness before the world and call out to whoever is there.

ask it your question. Then wait.

Difference In Religion And Spirituality

This is the difference between spirituality and religion. They both rely on a faith in something bigger than us, but they have different starting points. Religion or any metaphysical philosophy starts with a set of beliefs and everything else is understood through them. Spirituality starts by asking God to help guide you and through the guidance you will be able to understand the truth when you experience it.

One isn’t necessarily right over the other. You can find truth by exploring all the different religions, but it will come at the price of your life and relationships. Spirituality helps you understand the truth as you live throughout your daily experiences. Therefore, the issue of spirituality and religion is twofold. The first is that having a spiritual faith over a religious faith is that you can still experience all the aspects of living. The second is Spirituality starts with the original source, whereas religion starts with man’s reflections on God.

Next Time On Altnoise

The next article I am working on will finish up this discussion of religion and spirituality. We will explore how we can see truth in daily life and different religions.

Until then, read this interesting article by Todd from We The Change entitled What Is Your Legacy

This is a continuation in a blog conversation with Albert Foong from Urbanmonk.net.

 It finally happened to me. I’ve heard stories about them, but never been confronted by one. Maybe I look too innocent. Actually, they probably know that I’m going to burn.

I was jogging by the lake as I always do in the evenings. Sweat was pouring down my face (I must’ve gone at least a quarter mile) and I noticed a guy in front of me. He was leaning against his bike and talking with someone who seemed annoyed. She was sweating. He wasn’t.  It just so happened that when I began to jog by him, he was ready to start a conversation with me. He handed me a pamphlet from the 70′s with two men shaking hands and asked me a question.

“Can I talk to you for a minute about how Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? He is the only way you can get into heaven.”

The Frustrations of Religions

I understand how easy it would be to walk away from faith. Everyday, I have to admit that guys like him belong to the same religious tradition as myself. He called himself a Christian. I call myself a Christian.

 We’ve all read the stories about how a Muslim man killed himself and a number of American sons, wives and parents all in the name of faith or a Christian man either killed or physically removed thousands of innocent families from their homes in order to build a nation under God.

They were missing something. I don’t want to worship their God.

Then there are those other stories. The stories that we love. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a platform for the African-American voice through a peaceful revolution. Gandhi showed us the meaning of love and reconciliation. Mother Teresa became a servant to the misfits of the world.

 They all did this in the name of God.

Similarities In Religion

In our modern interconnected world, religions seem to jumble together. There are good Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Jedi. Ones that we all can look up too. On the other side, there are judgmental and purely evil people who claim to be part of one of the major religions.

From our experiences, it would be easy to say that all religions are saying the same things, only in different ways and different contexts. This isn’t true. We might want to say that all religions point to the same general truth. They are either a good source for doing good in the world or a marketing technique to control a set of masses. I agree on both accounts, but they still aren’t saying the same thing.

The Differences In Religion

Religion is based on certain assumptions about how the world exists, the relationship between the creator and his creation, and our personal interactions in the world. No matter how close two people from different religions seem alike, the individuals will always have different assumptions about the world’s existence. What you see is an interconnected belief about our purpose in this world.

They still are different about why they are choosing to make good or bad choices.

I am a Christian man who wants serve the world and improve it while I am here. I do this partly because I believe that Jesus showed us that God is this way and asks us to follow in his path.  A Buddhist man wants to improve the world because it is a step in achieving Nirvana, a Hindu man believes that all of existence is part of God and if we hurt the world, we are hurting ourselves, and an Atheist chooses to imporve the world because he feels or thinks its the right thing to do. All of these religions want do good things in the world, but they are still different.

[ two quick notes: 1. I am not an expert on all religions, therefore my assumptions about non-christian religions come from my basic study of them. Correct me if I'm wrong about them. 2. You can have more than one motive for wanting to help the world. I see it as the right thing to do and a calling that God has asked of us.]

The Original Religions

I mentioned this to the Urban Monk about how we can’t say that all religions are pointing to the same truth, but he disagrees. He believes that each religion’s original teacher all said the same thing, but we have misinterpreted the messages. This is more than possible. It is true that we have misinterpreted the entire original message of Jesus (I can’t speak for any other religion), but not his basic message. Anyone can still read the gospels and say that Jesus taught us to serve one another and that God loves us like a loving Father. This is the basic message of Jesus.

It is different from Judaism.

It is different from Hinduism.

Today’s Religions Are Different From Original

I don’t want to come across as saying that Christianity is better than the others. I’m just making the point that they are differen’t. Even if they were the same in the original form, which could never be proved, they are different today. You can have an argument to say that all religions were the same originally, but you weren’t alive at the same time as the original teacher. In order to call yourself by a religion, you would need to follow similar assumptions of today.

The Interconnected Truths

 The real statement should say, “All [major] religions have some interconnected truth.” We cannot deny our experiences of religions. There are similar connections between all religions. I’ve had a Muslim neighbor and a Christian friend from the holiness tradition live very similar lifestyles. They were both careful of their actions and did not want to attract attention to their bodies. They thought that attention would bring temptation, evil and sin.

This is an interconnected truth.

Seek The Interconnections

There are many more throughout all religions and finding these interconnected truths should be one of our goals. Is there one perfect religion? No, religion is man made and has errors (including Christianity). These little interconnnections give us a view of God’s fingerprint in our world. In these truths, we can see how people from various backgrounds and different continents can come to similar understandings about life and God.

They are the beautiful things that should pierce our spirits and the start of connecting people throughout our communities.

 Read the first part of the blog conversation. It is about compassion. Click Here to read my contribution and click here to read the Urban Monk’s contribution

“I’m going to keep holding on..

holding on to you”

I don’t know how many of you are writers out there and understand my predicament, but I am stuck. I’ve written the above lyrics as a chorus, but I can’t come up with any other words for the song. The music is finished with melody, chords and rhythm, but I can’t or won’t write the verses. I know what the song is about and I love the concept. Maybe this is the problem. I love the chorus so much that I am putting the writer’s block on myself.

Everything Becomes a Burden

It must be the irony that is laughing at me. I have an idea for a song about being persistent but all I want to do is give up on it. We all go through times when we just want to give up on something, even when it is one of the most beneficial things in our lives. After awhile, everything becomes a burdern.. a chore.. a frustration.

God is one thing/being whom we would like to give up on from time to time. I know I have. There have been countless times when I tried to feel his presence or get some kind of assurance that he is there and received nothing. God hardly shows up when we feel we need him too. He hardly shows up at all.

Mother Theresa did it 

It is encouraging to hear that Mother Theresa doubted God at the end of her life. In her personal journal (which I’m torn if I should read) she shares that she felt like God left her at the end of her life. I understand her despair. She was one of the most spiritual people in the public world. Her servant life has completely changed Christianity for many people.

Maybe being persistent with God is similar to why I am choosing to be persistent with this song. I can visualize the goal. I know when I finish the song it will be good [to someone]. When I am frustrated with God, I would love to give up on believing. But I dont. I even say sometimes that I am an atheist, but I’m not.

If you have read any of my blog posts from this past week, then you know the story of my friend Darius and what he is going through right now. It is  a hard period of life for him. I try to be strong and listen when he needs me, but it is tough. All I want to do is drop to my knees and cry.

Everyone Goes Through It

We all go through hard times in our lives. Days where we catch every red light and little chance to catch up with work. Every conversation turns into a frustrating obligation. These things are difficult, but life is harder than this. I’ve had one friend commit suicide, another die of cancer, another die in a car accident and now one has brain cancer. I am 24 and I allready know of several couples whom are divorcing.

This morning in Sunday School, someone mentioned that God doesn’t allow things to happen that we cannot handle. I like this idea. I disagree. There are many times in our lives that shit happens to us where we can’t handle on our own. I do not know of anyone whom could handle their child dying before themselves. Someone close to me has lost everything to him – his house, his wife, his children, his job, his income. He didn’t deserve it. He can’t handle it on his own.

Life Is Random

A certain church denomination believes everything is predetermined and happens for a reason. Another one says that diligent prayer can change things. We can’t prove either of these justifications, but I do like the idea of another one that I heard this morning. Life is random and we just need to learn the way to continue.

Giving Up

I believe that God allows unmanageable horrors to occur to us. Many of them are man-caused; others are natural. It is not about pointing fingers. If it wasn’t for modern science many of us would’ve been dead years earlier. If it wasn’t for modern science we wouldn’t have had the Terri Schiavo case, bio and chemical warfare, animal testing, or love bugs. Life is random. Our reactions aren’t. How we overcome the impossible times is the issue. We can mask it and pretend to be strong. Today, I have learned that I have to admit that I can’t handle it and ask God for Strength.

I admit it. I’m a lazy father when it comes to spiritual practices such as praying. Its not that I think praying is a waste of time, life just flies by and another day is over without praying.  I suppose there are some young families out there that have a solid prayer life, but I haven’t found many. From my experience, nearly every young family whom started marriage by routinely praying has since ceased.

No, I’m not going on a pessimistic rant about the death of family in America. My wife and I fall into the category of a spiritual shallow family. We had higher hopes. I am actually optimistic about the potential of the family in America. Unlike the generations that have come before us, we realize that we need the help of someone larger than us.

The problem for many newlyweds and engaged couples is that they are entirely idealistic. They have nothing else but idealism. Eventually, reality will surface. The couple begin to realize that praying before every meal, praying at night together, and personal devotional time cannot be juggled into one day. Add in arguments, hospitals, friends, restaurants and other factors, life is never steady enough to live and pray idealistically.

This is why I am suggesting a new realistic plan for inserting prayer into the family. If one follows these steps then it is a reachable goal to include the discipline of prayer into the family routine

1. Start Small – Do not attempt to be a prayer mystic tomorrow. Start by committing to praying (lets use the word conversing) once in a day. Do not pencil in a slot in your schedule, but allow it to occur when there is a down moment/time for rest in your day. It could be on the drive home from work, during a coffee break, in the shower, or through commercial breaks. Don’t feel guilty. God is willing to converse with you anywhere at anytime.

2. Announce It – A good commitment begins with an announcement to someone whom you want respect. This kind of commitment should not be attempted alone. Invite your spouse to be involved and support one another.

3. Create a Visual – Everything that we involve ourselves in a daily basis stems from a stimulus of our senses. Write it down, draw a picture, or record a song. Do whatever it takes to remind you to look like a fool and pray.

4. Reward Yourself – I know this sounds like some superficial and controversial step, but it is one of the most important. Learning and habit forming occurs when our bodies associate a task, substance, event with something beneficial to us. It is the nature in us - Pursue worthwhile things while avoiding useless tasks. If we worry that prayer will cut into our time and cause us stress then we’ll naturally start to avoid it. On the other hand, if we reward ourselves by removing one dreary task from our schedule, it will prove beneficial.

5. Write and Reflect – After you pray, write it down. It doesn’t have to immediately follow the prayer, but at some point keep a log of all the time you spent praying. Use the log at the end of the week to reflect on your prayers, the benefits, the trouble, and how you felt. During the time of reflection (it could be at church or during saturday morning cartoons) ask yourself if it was worth it.

 Continue in this process for two weeks and you will have a habit starting to form. Once you start praying yourself, you then can repeat the process and include family prayer times. Allow yourself to build slowly on your family’s prayer life and you will realize it will grow exponentially. After you’ve gotten a steady habit of praying alone, remove the reward. Then move to praying once a day with your spouse and restart the process