Preface: This is a letter to my friend's mother. She was concerned about some things I said about Christianity and Islam. She wrote me a letter to respond to what I had said. This is my response to her concerns.
You make many good points about Christianity, many good foundational
ideas that come straight from the Bible, all of which I agree with. But
I didn't make my claims against Christianity. It's true that
Christians, by the book, are to love everyone as themselves. But the
truth is that Christians are human too, and many of them fall very
short. There are many Christians who view Islam and Muslims as a sort
of enemy, a very real and physical threat. It's just a sort of
over-generalization, a fear stemming from radical Muslim terrorism.
While
Christians don't want to Islam destroyed in any physical or negative
sense, the ultimate goal of Christianity is for the entire world to
become Christian, for there to be no other religions (because they are
all false). So in a very real, sense, Christianity demands a sort of
destruction of other religions (the same way a lot of American-driven
commerce demands the death of indigenous languages around the world in
favor of English). Whether or not that is a bad thing is up for debate.
I find it sad and terrible. I don't like the idea of everyone
practicing the same religion.
And Christians, Jews and Muslims are
brothers more than just being fellow men. Christians would not exist if
not for the Jews. The Jews are sort of their parents. Christians got
rebellious and ran away from home. Muslims come from the same stock as
the Jews and began the same way the Jews did, worshiping the same God
(El). The Muslims call the Jews and Christians "people of the book" and
used to have great respect for them. It was said that the people of the
book had a place in heaven. There are still a lot of Muslims who feel
this way, but not enough.
John 14:6 Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me". This
is one of the most famous Christian passages, but what does it mean?
For Catholics, it means two very real and physical things: being
baptized and eating Christ's actual flesh (not symbolic flesh, the
actual corpus christi). For Protestants, it's much less clear. I have
never really understood what it means. No one comes to the father but
through me. I used to think it meant "live as I live, embody my
teachings". But nobody really does. It seems to mean something else,
but I don't know what.
And is this to say that the best rabbis of
all time didn't know God? That Moses and Abraham didn't? They
definitely didn't know Jesus. What about natives living in Papua New
Guinea in the Medieval Ages?
I am searching. I am always
searching. That is my life. It always was. I'm not floundering, I'm not
lost, and I don't like people feeling sorry for me. The purpose of my
life is to know everything I can. It took me a long time to realize
this, but I'm so happy now that I know. That's why I exist. I have to
discover the true nature of things. I'm not looking for an ideology
that answers all of life's questions. That's ridiculous. I really
resent when people accuse me of that. I'm only interested in asking the
most basic questions. Because it's not the answers that are so
important - it's the questions. That's my purpose - to ask these
questions.
Questions like: what is God? Why is there something
instead of nothing? Can God be the Nothing? What's the difference
between nothing and everything?
The only reason I'm not an
Atheist (but I am in the Atheist club here and it's a lot of fun) is
because I don't ask the question: Is there a God? Instead I ask: What
is God? The best answer I have found so far is that He is Nothing. But
also Everything. And that the best way to define things we don't
understand is with paradox and dichotomy. But that's another story.
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