Friday, January 23, 2009

"THAT GOD WOULD HAVE...

...man choose the one true religion by Faith seems a sloppy way to run a Universe."
r. heinlein


3 comments:

red dirt girl said...

sounds to me like he/she is a person who a: isn't controlling, so you are not 'forced' to believe - it's up to you ..... and b: the word 'faith' - believing without actual evidence or proof is the key word.

have you ever had 'faith' in anything in this world ?? that would be my starting point. though i tend to call 'faith,' hope - instead.

and no, cowboy, these are not the girls named faith, hope etc ....

xxx
rdm

tut-tut said...

Well, hmmm. I don't think there is one true religion. But I think there is faith, as rdm describes it.

e said...

Since my original comment seems to have disappeared, I will try again. Being a Reform Jew, I have a slightly different perspective than that traditionally taught by protestant denominations. After several months of study with my rabbi, I consider the following:

That there is more than one path to God for people, that one should consider the history and context and possible biases in Biblical passages when reading rather than taking things literally, that many of the stories within both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are midrashic in nature. This means they may not be literally true but are intended to illustrate concepts and ideas.

In Judaism, one's faith is superceded by actions; in other words, deeds are more important than creeds. We believe in God, but each of us may vary with respect to how God is defined and how we relate to whatever our definition may be. Our ethics and laws are highly important, and how we treat others and ourselves is also important. We believe in community and in trying to equalize the inequities that exist. We are obligated to help others as we are able and to give for charitable purposes. We are also obligated to read Torah and to lead and live as examples to others. Additionally, there is no concept of original sin, and humans are born with free will and two basic tendencies, one toward good and the other toward bad. That said, we also have the ability to engage in teshuva or return, to good as far as deeds and actions are concerned. Just stuff to think about...