The Holy Context
In the past it was a crime to translate the Bible into your mother tongue. The Bible had to be in Latin so you needed to learn Latin to know the Bible. And, like in Islam’s case, since less than 1% of Christians read Latin, that means 99% or so of the Christians did not understand what the Bible was really saying. You had to trust the impressions and interpretations of your priest.
But then the Bible was not originally in Latin (or Greek). It was in Aramaic. So if you want to really understand the Bible you had to get your hands on the Aramaic version of the Bible and learn Aramaic to be able to read it.
How many Christians speak Aramaic and have an Aramaic copy of the Bible? So you need to get your hands on the translated version of the Bible instead and hope that whoever translated it got it right.
But then the message in most of the ‘holy books’ (the Qur’an included) is not always literal. There is much that is allegorical as well. Did the person who translated this original version of the ‘holy book’ understand which part is literal and which part is allegorical?
And herein lies a problem. You need to trust the skills and knowledge of your ‘teacher’. And your teacher will look at things from his or her viewpoint — which may not always be right because people are unavoidably influenced by ‘external factors’ such as upbringing, society norms, cultural background, etc.
Hence, to the layman, they need to take the word of a scholar, priest, imam, etc., to interpret what their religion is trying to teach you because just by reading the ‘holy books’ you can’t always understand what the message is supposed to be.
Most religionists (a religionist means a person who has faith in something: also called acceptor, submitter, adherent, apostle, canonist, convert, devotee, disciple, doctrinaire, dogmatist, follower, freak, orthodox, prophet, proselyte, religious person, supporter, upholder, zealot, etc.) think that religion is an exact science. It is not. There is nothing precise in religion. Religion is subject to impressions and interpretations.
And this means you can never get a ‘pure’ impression and interpretation. Invariably, all impressions and interpretations will get ‘tainted’ to a certain degree. This is further complicated by the belief that some ‘holy books’ contain ‘hidden messages’, which are beyond the comprehension of the ‘lower level’ religious adherent. For example, Muslims believe that only the Sufis can grasp the ‘higher’ or ‘hidden messages’ in Islam. The layman Muslim, which would be the majority of the Muslims, cannot grasp this ‘higher level’ understanding of Islam. So who then really knows Islam? Not you and I, the 99% or so of the Muslims. Only the 1% or less of the Muslims who are truly enlightened can understand Islam. The rest of us just have to accept the word of the ‘learned man’ and trust this person and follow this person’s advise. It was once the same for Christianity.
Genesis 3:15. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (King James Version)And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (New International Version) How would you interpret this verse? Is it literal or allegorical? If I were to take it literally I would say this refers to God making the snake the enemy of humankind because of what the snake did to Eve: tricked her into convincing Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. People will kill snakes while snakes will strike people as punishment.
But is that all there is to this message: about snakes and people being enemies? Is there instead maybe an allegorical message here?
Another very crucial point to note is: was it not Satan that tricked Eve? In that case why is the snake being punished when it was actually Satan, masquerading as a snake, who committed the crime? How can a just God punish the snake for the evil deed of Satan? This does not give the compassionate God a good image, does it?
So you see, much of what we know and what we believe is based on ‘guidance’. In short, we have been taught by certain people what we should believe based on these people’s understanding of what it was supposed to mean. Are these people right? As what religionists would say: only God knows.
You may think you know your religion. In fact, you may even think you know more than me. But what is it that you know? You only know what someone told you. But you do not know whether this someone is right. You believe this person is right. And belief does not make it right or a fact. Belief is still just that, belief.
In law, hearsay is not evidence. In religion, hearsay is everything. Can you send someone to jail or sentence that person to death based on hearsay? You would be outraged if that happens. But you are not outraged when someone tells you a story about an event that happened, say, 3,500 years ago, based on hearsay.
How many ‘holy books’ do you read? And which ‘holy books’ are those? Do you know that there are more ‘holy books’ in existence than you are not aware of? And you do not read these ‘holy books’ because they are classified as Apocryphal. But who agreed on this classification?
It is the same with Islam. We have the Qur’an and then we have the Hadith. There are about 700,000 Hadith but less than 7,000 are accepted as authentic and the rest as apocrypha. Some sects accept only 500 and others none at all.
Again, Islam and Christianity walk down the same path.
If you were to read the Bible and the Qur’an you will find much overlap and agreement in belief. The glaring difference would be in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Christianity. Islam rejects this in total so this means Islam rejects the foundation of Christianity. And this is the single most crucial element in the difference between the two religions. If you accept the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ that would mean the Bible is right and the Qur’an is wrong. If you reject the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ that would mean the Qur’an is right and the Bible is wrong. And this whole thing comes about because of the issue of sin and the punishment for sin. Without the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ then the matter of sin can never be resolved. Such a Complicated World
In Islam, you commit both good and bad deeds and God will look at the balance between the two. You receive sin for the bad deeds and blessings for the good deeds. If you clock up more positives than negatives then you get to go to heaven. So you need to make sure your account is in black and not in red.
In Christianity, you commit only good deeds. Even the smallest bad deed (say like calling someone ‘stupid’) is a sin that will not escape punishment. Hence you can commit 1,000,000 good deeds but if you commit even one bad deed you will still get sent to hell, unlike in Islam.
In other words, in Islam, the door to heaven is still open to you if you can try to do a bit more good than bad (say 51% good versus 49% bad). In Christianity, the door to heaven will always remain closed even if you do 99.9% good and just 0.1% bad. No sin can be forgiven never mind how good you are.
Now, Christianity believes we are all born sinners (while Islam says we are born pure like a white cloth). That means every single person is going to end up in hell. Not a single person is going to heaven. But then God sent Jesus to die on the cross so that he can ‘underwrite’ all our sins. Hence, without the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, heaven will be entirely empty and every single person will be in hell.
And this, basically, is the fundamental difference between the two faiths involving the way or road to heaven. And that is why Christianity and Islam have been fighting for ‘world domination’ for more than 1,000 years. It is all about the differences of opinion in how we get to heaven.
The Future to Heaven!!!
And while they battle it out to decide who has the correct version and who has the wrong version in how we get to heaven, they make life on earth a living hell for the rest of us. Muslims will feel that Islam is God’s religion and all other religions are not. Christians would feel exactly the same way. So, if just your religion is God’s religion while all others are not then why do they exist? Can anything exist without God’s permission? And if nothing can exist without God’s permission then none of the other religions would exist. There would be only one religion, God’s religion. There would not be more than one religion in existence.
Rise of the Machines!!! A True Companion that needs to be shake in order to Live for a way to recharge the body. What would the future lies for Mankind? Is robot the will of God so as to be part of an existence? What do you think? God allows us freewill and we are free to do what we want but we will have to face the punishment for disobeying God. However, did God not know beforehand that His new and innocent creation did not have the experience of the treacherous and evil ways of Iblis and would, therefore, be defeated by Iblis? God knew that Iblis will succeed and that Adam and Eve would fail the test. So why allow it since this failure would displease God? Even the other Angels knew that Adam was going to fail and they said so. So this was God’s plan all along, then, that man would inhabit and populate the earth. But then when Adam and Eve failed the test and got tricked/tempted by Iblis, God evicted them from Paradise and sent them down to earth as punishment. So, we are here on earth as descendants of Adam and Eve as a form of punishment. But God had intended from the very beginning that we live here on earth. That was the reason God created Adam, and then Eve. Hence do you mean that God had intended to punish us from the very beginning and that Iblis was part of this plan and that if Iblis had failed to trick/tempt Adam and Eve then God’s plan for us to live on earth would have failed?
A Reason to belief in the One true God
There is a Muslim belief (at least some Muslims believe this) that towards the end of time Judaism will be split into 71 groups, Christianity into 72 groups, and Islam into 73 groups — and that only one each from Judaism, Christianity and Islam will be the true followers of their respective Prophets. The rest will be deviants.
Now, which from the 71, 72 and 73 are true? The Muslims believe that only God will know which ones are true so Muslims are advised to very carefully seek the truth and search for the true Islam lest you mistakenly follow the false Islam and end up in hell.
A tale of Interpretation of what the future is supposed to be.
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.
"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.
"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.
"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."
"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree too. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get in arguments. In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with the people of different thinking. This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions.
Around 20% of the world believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he died on the cross to save humankind and was resurrected three days later. Another 20% of the world believes that Prophet Muhammad and not Jesus was the last prophet and Muhammad’s miracle is the Qur’an.
To the first 20% this is the truth. To the second 20% this is also the truth. Then the balance 60% of the world thinks that these 40% are silly and the ‘evidence’ they offer to support their ‘truths’, their so-called ‘Holy Books’, are fabrications and were created to menegakkan benang basah or to substantiate a myth and present it as fact.
Hence which would be the fact here, and hence also which would be the truth? We have three versions of the truth and all sides would argue that theirs is the truth while the others are lies. Can you see, therefore, that not always is the ‘truth’ true? Sometimes the truth may not be true.
When someone reports what he or she saw then that would be an eyewitness account. That could be considered as evidence and therefore the truth.
When someone reports what he or she had been told then that would be hearsay. In a court of law hearsay is not accepted as evidence.
When someone interprets an event (whether witnessed or reported) then that would be an opinion. That person is merely stating what he or she perceives the event to mean.
Readers need to analyse the source of the information, whether the report is based on an eyewitness account or third party information, and whether it is a ‘raw’ report or a conclusion/analysis of what that event means to the person making that statement.
More than half the world believes in God. Maybe I should rephrase that. More than half the world believes that some sort of God exists.
Some may ask, “What the difference?” Actually there is a difference. Believing in God and believing that some sort of God exists are two different things.
When you believe in God that means you not only believe that a Creator exists but you also put full faith and trust in that Creator. And since He, She or It is the Creator that makes you the creation. And since you are the creation then the Creator owns you. You are the Creator’s possession.
You do not own anything. In fact, you do not even own yourself. Instead you are owned. So that makes you nothing.
Someone who believes that a God exists but does not believe in God would not accept nothingness. You would feel that you are somebody. You would feel that you own your being. Your position, status, power, family, wealth, etc., are all yours. You worked hard for it. You fought for it. Hence it all belongs to you.
It is very hard for a person who just believes that a God exists but does not believe in God to accept that nothing belongs to you. Your car belongs to God so if someone wishes to steal it then that is God’s wish. After all, that car belongs to God and not to you. In the first place it was God’s money and not your money that you used to buy the car. So if God wants to take it back and give it to someone else that is God’s wish.
When you believe in God and you have full faith and trust in God you would leave it to God to decide whether you should be driving a car or whether someone takes it away from you. That person may be a car thief but would he be a car thief if God did not wish it and could he have stolen your car if God did not allow it? So it was God and not the ‘thief’ who took your car.
Your life belongs to God. God gave you life and God has every right to take back that life. You have full faith and trust in God to decide when to give you life and when to take back that life. And if someone shoots you dead then that would be what God wants and that person who kills you would have no power to not kill you if God wants it to happen.
Yes, that is the most difficult concept about believing in God for most people to accept. Many believe that a God exists but cannot bring themselves to believing in God to the point of allowing and accepting someone to kill you as God’s wish and something that you or your killer cannot avoid.
Saying that you believe in God is easy. Practicing what you say you believe is not. And this is what separates those who believe that God exists from those who believe in God.
The problem is most people believe in the God that religion says exist. Hence your belief in God is contaminated by religion. Yes, that’s right, religion is contaminating. Religion contaminates your belief in God due to the fact that religion weakens your belief in God and reduces you to just believing in the existence of God.
Time is meaningless to God for He is omnipresent. The ever existence be it in the past, present or the future. It is said that the future is pre-written by the Hands of the Creator and a believer needs to accept the fate or the test of Life. Can Man overwrites the fate or hands of destiny? Is creation of Man build on Lust as oppose to God's creation that is build out of Love. As Man and Machine Rise for a better future, so shall the Life of Mankind for a better After Life in a Life of Once In a Lifetime so as to put forth a kind of Ride tat leads to a safe passage Home... Cause every Man wants to be in a place of Heaven truly. Yeah!!! 'Cause we all live In Future World A world that's full of love!!!