Jesus Christ Blog

Patrick Roberts


We Americans love our religion because it allows us to pick and choose God’s goals for us. The substance of our religion is an infatuation with control, which is also the case for all lovers of religion.

We suppose that we’re clever for finding new religious standards against which to measure ourselves. These measurements are easy to understand and they make us feel good about ourselves for a while because they tell us what we want to hear.

We are following something that looks vaguely like faith down ever-darkening alleys of religious presumption. With our actions say we say, “We’re striving ahead even if we have to run out ahead of God!” Yet such overbearing insecurity is spiritually self-defeating. This is the opposite of Christ-centered surrender. We love our plans and our plans love us back and on and on until we become utterly clueless about true spiritual usefulness.

Our American minds cannot comprehend the fact that God is disregarding our best laid plans. We want some kind of guarantee for tomorrow but God keeps telling us not to worry about it. Therefore, because God fails to give us the credit we deserve, we shrug our shoulders at His heavenly wisdom while we continue using His name to label our man-made methods. Christ’s command to take up our crosses seems unreasonable to us, so we dismiss it as such.

However, even more dependable than our inclination to make plans is God’s inclination to explode our plans. God dismantles our manly construction with shocking persistence. Evidently, we have a God who is much fonder of surprises than we might have hoped.

God’s lack of respect for our plans is purposeful. We assume that we’ll live long enough to accomplish our silly little plans, but this will not necessarily be the case.

A savvy businessman might plan for and successfully builds twenty skyscrapers during his earthly sojourn. However, if that man fails to take care of business with God, then, by neglecting the Main Thing, that man loses everything forever. Therefore it works out for that man’s eternal wellbeing that God demolishes his plans. He is blessed to be swallowed up, plans and all, by God’s devastatingly merciful grace. Not that looking ahead is a bad thing, but if we follow Christ then we are called to take care of business with God before everything else.

So what remains for us after God has taken away all that our flesh holds dear? Only a life-consuming dependence on Christ remains. In God’s estimation this is the highest honor any person could hope for.

Our goal as Christ’s followers is to be so reduced in Him that we are completely dead to our old selves. This is strategic. At the point that we are so thoroughly humbled, there will be nothing left to shield us from the truth about ourselves in relation to God’s kingdom.

After we are reduced to the point that we boast in nothing but Christ and our crucifixion in Him, then He will move us beyond ourselves and therefore also beyond our miserable failures and shortcomings.

That Christ is All and we are nothing is great news! We should embrace the chance to become nothing because this makes room for Christ to be our All in all. We will learn from experience that God bounces people who are even as bad as us back onto the right spiritual track.

So here is American churchgoers’ first order of business: Stop using religion to resist God. If we want to hear from the Lord again, then one little thing remains: We must relinquish everything we hold dear. We have to give up the right to even understand God and His Way of doing things.

Now is the best time to start embracing the superiority of God’s Way over the American way. We have abundant reason to weep, maybe even bitterly at first. But this is a joyful weeping because it proves God’s faithfulness to keep our consciences alive.

by Patrick Roberts. Find his book and additional resources at www.BooksByPatrick.com

Amlan Roychowdhury


 

THE ONE RELIGION—THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.

 

In today’s world, all that we see or hear, is the mindless killing of innocents in the name of religion. Be it the total destruction of the world trade center, or the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai India or the senseless massacre of the Christians in some of the eastern block countries, or Orissa in India, it is the innocent people, mothers , fathers, who suffers the most. They are forced to leave their habitat, homes, jobs, schools, and live in dilapidated refugee camps. No sectarian group who perpetrate such senseless mindless war think about the crying child, the wailing mother, the hapless father. Their only aim is to spread fear and terror all in the name of Religion. The perpetrators feel that they are doing a tremendous job and that by doing such an act they will be rewarded by the Divinity. God, Bhagwan, Allah, Christ, or any other name that one might give, will bless them with martyrdom.  Does ones conscious sustain such concept?? Does Bhagwad Geeta tell us to kill people?? Does Quran teach us to inflict pain and agony to our fellow human beings?? If not Then why in the name of religion such acts are perpetrated??

 

We must have some idea about the evolution of religion to understand that religion helps us to bind together within the group and between the groups.

From the very beginning when man was an advance ape scientifically termed as Australopithecus he lived in a group. Living in a group has lot of advantages, one of the prime being safety. Then there was the economic reason for man to be in a group. During the early Paleolithic period when man was a hunter gatherer, he needed a well defined group with a well defined division of labor among the group for the group to be economically viable. The animals that were hunted were as mammoth as the wooly mammoths. When the economy shifted from hunting gathering to agrarian the groups needed to be much larger. Therefore there needed to be some rules, rites, rituals, and certain norms that gave the group an inherent control from within. Thus becoming a well structured social group. The rites, rituals, and and certain norms were basically made for the groups to be more economically viable by creating an atmosphere of harmony and not discord at any times. Therefore we see the development of religion or a spark of it among the Neanderthals.  Neanderthals were the first hominids to intentionally bury the dead. Exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Some scholars, however argue that these bodies may have been disposed of for secular reasons. Likewise a number of archeologists propose that Middle Paleolithic societies such as Neanderthal societies may also have practiced the earliest form of totemism or animal worship in addition to their (presumably religious) burial of the dead. Emil Bächler in particular suggests (based on archeological evidence from Middle Paleolithic caves) that a widespread Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal bear cult existed.

The evolution of religion is closely connected with the evolution of the mind and behavioral modernity. Evidence for Paleolithic burials is often taken as the earliest expression of religious or mythological thought involving an afterlife. Such practice is not restricted to Homo sapiens, but also found among Homo neanderthalensis as least as early as 130,000 years ago. The emergence of religious behavior is consequently dated to before separation of early Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of symbolic ritual activity besides burials may be a site in South Africa dated to 70,000 years ago.

 

Does evolution of mind and behavioral modernity justify killing of thousands of innocent people ?? No religions in this world, in its truest sense preach cruelty and killing. Every religion in this earth preach unconditional love, brotherhood of man, and love thy neighbour. Quran, Bible, Bhagawad Geeta and all other religious text preach only one thing and that is help mankind in his hour of need irrespective of caste creed *** propagate love and not ****. Here in modern time we are all doing just the opposite.

 

The religious ideas also make their impact by crossing the boundaries of their origin (or dominance) to far off places. Religious faith of economically and militarily strong race (or nation) tries to dominate the weak and the underdeveloped. The mode of *********** and percolation of religious ideas may be through missionary activities, or through persecution by the sword and the pen. Tactful, but definite, attempts may also be made to derogate the native religious beliefs and customs, and to eulogize the religion of the strong. Thus, customs and rituals, religious faiths and traditions, art and literature, all find free flow from dominant culture to economically weaker one. The resistance of the native people is chiefly through the strength of their own religious principles and traditions. Militarily the native may not fight back, but the religion of the land might be capable of keeping its head afloat if its level of growth, faith in scriptural tradition, and history are strong.

 

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa lived such a highly spiritual life that he made India strong in this field, and thus, Vedanta could sustain and extradite itself from the influence of narrowness of religious dogma. Moreover, in the process, a wonderful synthesis and harmony of religions was established as the basis for universal religion. In addition to Hindu ways, Sri Ramakrishna undertook the sadhana of both Islam and Christian faiths. Between 1868 and 1874 a devout Muslim and a Christian initiated Sri Ramakrishna in their respective methods of worship. On both the occasions, he had visions of the great Prophets of those religions, who merged in his body. On both the occasions Sri Ramakrishna was established in Nirvikalpa Samadhi state after the visions. He could then emphatically say: “As many faiths, so many paths!”

He explains that every human soul has an objective and that is to connect to the divine. It is like a mountain top and there are umpteen number of ways to reach the top. If one takes a route to climb the mountain top and half way through he decides that this route is treacherous and he comes down to take another route, he will never reach the top of the mountain. He has to take a route and stick by it. The route is the religion and the top of the mountain is the almighty. The Divine. Which ever way he chooses his ultimate destiny is that one point –The mountain top, The divine.

 

As intelligent creatures and as gods finest creation we must realize this and stop all this senseless and mindless brutality. In the vast space earth is like a pin head and the only place where Gods most precious creation “MAN” lives. There can be only one religion and that is of Humanity.

 

 

 

Cathi Bee


It is a fact that the world today is very religious. One needs only to examine how many religions there are as opposed to the single direction of “Atheism” to see this. Many feel that the tendency towards some sort of faith is proof for the existence of God. Many claim to derive great power from their religious practices. Many believe that their specific belief system is the only truth and that the whole world should be converted to their views. So why not you? There are about as many good arguments against religion as there are for it.

The religious drive was developed in very primitive societies. Human beings could not understand what they saw and experienced. Lightning was a scary mystery and crop growth was subject to scarcity and abundance at apparent random. People needed religion to explain the world to themselves. Religion was their weapon against the fear of life and the fear of death.

Despite the fact that people have meanwhile discovered science to explain the world to themselves, ancient religion survives well, as does the fear. One reason for this could be a type of “sheep” or “follow the leader” mentality. People are unwilling to trouble themselves with too much critical thinking, and therefore accept whatever they learn from their parents. This is the conformist paradigm.

Another reason is, as mentioned above, fear. There are all sorts of fear attached to religion: eternal damnation takes up a significant part of the religious energy. Christians for example believe that all non-Christians are damned to eternal hell. In more immediate terms, some are afraid that that life itself would be meaningless without religion, not to mention what such a lack of belief would mean for death.

This fear is responsible for many a religious atrocity. Religious leaders use it to their own advantage and the disadvantage of many. In ancient societies, human beings may have been simple enough to listen to their leaders without thinking about what they heard. But we live in the information society.

We have the freedom and the right to choose what to believe and what to discard. We are intelligent enough to decide what makes sense and what does not. We have the knowledge to determine who is self-serving and fraudulent and who is genuinely interested in serving the human evolutionary process.

We no longer have to kill or maim to bring our point across, and yet this still happens. We are no longer obliged to believe any specific thing, and yet we still do. Not learning from history seems to be our only consistent trait.

If more people grounded their views in the human rather than the religious viewpoint, perhaps we might have less starvation and murder in the world. We may have fewer power-hungry leaders who kill in the name of God, more who serve life rather than death, and peace rather than fear. A loving heart can change everything.

K VIVEKANANDAN


TRUE RELIGION AND WORSHIP

Purpose of Life

God has not made the creation for a sport but with a great purpose. We were not created merely for a short term life but for eternity. All of us humans, angels, Jinns are destined to live eternally. No one will be spared from eternal life. We humans are here on the earth only for a passing life which is only a trial period to qualify ourselves either for eternal bliss or eternal doom. God, the merciful and benevolent did not impose this trial on us but we, humans only did choose the trial. Though we chose the trial in the beginning of creation, out of his infinite mercy, God promised us to give his guidance to emerge victorious from the trial as we need God’s guidance and protection at all times since the evil force(Satan/Mara/Angra Mainyu) who is one of the creatures of God and who revolted against God the Almighty, is always trying with his hosts to make humans go astray and deviate from the right path. After all, the evil force and his hosts could be able to revolt against God with the free will given by God to his creatures.

Guidance from God

As promised in the beginning, God sent his guidance by choosing some of the righteous men as his prophets(Rishi/Nabi) from among the peoples that lived in various parts of the world in all ages right from the period of the first man Adam to the last prophet Muhammad(Muhammad is the last one in the line of prophets), and giving them books by revelation(Sruthi/Sroasha/Wahi). Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Laotzu, Manu, Krishna, Mahavir, Gautama Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Muhammad who are well known personalities are only prophets of God, but not gods, semi-gods, God’s incarnations or partners to God. There are many more prophets, most of them are unknown to us today because of loss of the books revealed to them or any records or even a hint about them in the written human history.

What is religion

Books revealed to prophets are of two types, ie 1. Books containing laws and ordinances regarding rituals, criminal as well civil procedures inter alia, prophecies, and other teachings and 2. Books containing only prophecies and other teachings. The first type of books institute a new religion ie a religion to a people/nation like Vedas(Hinduism), Gathas(Zoroastrianism) Torah(Judaism), ), Tao Tehking(Taoism), Qur’an(Islam) and the second type of books do not institute a new religion but append to the existing religion like Gospel and old testament books(Judaism), Upanishads, books given to Mahavir, Buddha, etc(Hinduism). Only God revealed books containing laws and ordinances only institute a religion or in other words, God’s religion is based only on the authority of the books revealed by God and any religion based on other than God’s books is not accepted by God.

Worship God Alone

God is one, only one, not two or three…. No one but God is God or can become God in any sense. God is self existing and unborn. He never takes birth either as humans or any other creatures. God taking birth ie incarnation is inappropriate to his nature, might and attributes. The notion of incarnation of God is only a human invention and there is nothing true in that. All the prophets were ordained by God to preach worship of God alone. God has very clearly and strictly ordained all humans in his books to worship him alone and has warned us against worshiping other than him or associating partner to him. God has made it very clear that worshiping other than God or ascribing partner to him is the greatest of all sins.

What is Worship

All acts like praying, praising, bowing, kneeling, saluting, prostrating, calling to help and other acts done in reverence is tantamount to worship. There is a difference between worship and merely showing respect to living humans. The afore-mentioned acts done just as a gesture of respect to living humans do not amount to worship but if the same acts are done before a statue, idol, any picture or any other articles and calling or praying to the dead persons, the acts become worship other than God.

Two Forms of Worship

1.Worship by praises, songs, bowing down, kneeling, prostrating, meditation or any other acts like saying “ In the name of God, If God will, invoking God’s blessings” etc, before starting any work.

2. Worship by rituals ordained by God. There are many rituals ordained by God in his law making books, to be performed by all humans. Among these rituals is a compulsory worship to be performed daily by every human being. This compulsory ritual worship has was ordained by God in all religions instituted by him. All prophets, their immediate followers and some generations after them performed this compulsory ritual worship. But, miserably this compulsory ritual worship has vanished from the practice of existing religions except in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. This compulsory ritual worship is none other than Yajna(Yagna/Yaga) in Hinduism and Yasna in Zoroastrianism. But peoples have distorted the pure form of performing Yajna/Yasna. It has to be purged of human distortions and restored to its originality and should become a part of day to day household and public practice. We all who believe in God should strive for this cause and serve God.

 

Derek Dashwood


Antique religion books tell us Confucius felt there was no after life. Jesus and Buddha did. Since 1949, China has been a nation that is officially of no religion.

Yet modern China now is experiencing a rebirth of interest of a deeper sense of meaning in life. And this is happening in the more sophisticated cities on the coast where the new more wealthy people with more education and learning are incorporating Buddhism into their lives.

While the officially Communist government now ensures that a member of state corporations is a partner with each foreign corporation, thus taking the known ways of capitalism directly into their system. And soon automobiles that look very identical to a name brand American car is being sold for less with a cute twist on the American name model.

And the people that work in the factories and the people building new factories and power plants every week are working hard and earning more than they might ever have thought possible a decade or two ago.

And a fascinating series of events are occurring and the government and the system seem relaxed about this, in contrast to their previous persecution of a dreaded meditative group they saw as a danger.

Now the China that persecuted followers of Christ but began to accept followers of Buddha around the time of Christ,is seeing Buddha being discovered again. Many on the richer coast have security and steady jobs.

They also have more freedom and time to reflect. And many are finding they feel empty somehow, and are finding the meditative nature of Buddha as a calming way to feel at peace.

This is good news as the natural peaceful natures of Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha were both recognized as far back as the Mighty Khan. Mighty Khan had given a scroll for the Pope to Marco Polo. Marco knew the wish of the Khan was to have the Pope send one hundred missionaries.

Mighty Khan had heard that this holy man Jesus was known as the Prince of Peace. His people were restive under a Mongol ruler and needed a calming, passive religion that would allow them to put their faith in an after life so they could get on with their duties in this life with less complaint.

Alas, the old Pope was dying, it took the new Pope time to consider. His advise was to strike a committee, which they did: they met annually, for several years. Until news came that the Mighty Khan had tired of waiting and instead receive one hundred missionaries of Buddha, who the Khan knew also promised a passive faith.

And now this simmering faith that shows thin Buddha of India as a emperor sized belly who is fully of China. What matters is that those who find this inner spiritual process of meditation are less likely to take up arms, for now.

That must be a comfort for those inside the Forbidden Palace: so far no people of Buddha have taken up the sword to force others to their faith or slay them, as other faiths have done.

History has an amazing capacity to allow events to unfold in ways that Marco Polo would fully understand.

Ernie Fitzpatrick


Come on in folks and take a seat. The how is about to begin. You won’t be disappointed because there is a story to tell that defies all logic (tongue in cheek). Listen up and pay attention because what you’re about to behold is how you can escape this hellish life on earth and live forever eternally with God in the sweet bye-n-bye. Take a seat as the show is about to begin.   

I just read the book, Jim and Casper Go To Church. It’s quite a muse about how America’s religion has put Madison Avenue to shame with it’s awesome sales pitch!

While you might not know it but you were DOOMED before you were ever born as you were an ORIGINAL SIN(er) and there’s no way out unless you quickly see your unworthiness and make amends. And you can accomplish eternal bliss today, at the end of the service, by simply saying YES to JAY-ZUS!

But first, let us tell you how rotten you really are how you can GIVE to His church. No, this is not some sort of Dark Ages indulgences. This is mdoern-day reality. Give and you will be saved! Give and you will be accepted. Give and your condo in heaven will have a down payment made in your name. One substitution does it all. One confession on your part buys the whole package. Say YES to JAY-ZUS now and you will receive the following.

>All sins forgiven

>Prosperity, success, and a fabulous job

>The perfect wife (or husband) if you’re not married

>The healing of all your sicknesses

>A Sunday home where you can always find love

Thus, if you DO NOT say YES to JAY-ZUS then you’re going to spend eternity in hell because God is sick and tired of those who do not give Him the respect of bowing their knee before Him. Rememebr the God of the Old Testament who meted out plagues, pestilence, and genocidal tirades for misdemeanors? Remember Him? He’s still here!

So, much for Madison Avenue religion. You don’t even have to go to church on Sunday to get these benefits. Just put your hand on the TV set and send in the biggest check that you can and they will pray for you and send you a beautiful genuine leather bound Bible- not to mention a request for more money every month!

Aren’t you glad this really isn’t the true God of Jesus, the Christ! Abba Father is love and His love is unconditional. There’s nothing you can do that will cause Him to stop loving you. You are His creation and you will be forever!

Konstantin Volegna


For every practice or thought, there is an opposite viewpoint. This is true with religious beliefs, political beliefs, and even opinions and studies of the environment. As humans, we both consciously and unconsciously choose to believe a side. There are many, many individuals who can see the reasoning on both sides of the proverbial fence, but there are also those that are staunchly devoted and will see no side other than their own. Medical treatments are no exception to this rule.

There are religious groups through out the world, including some who believe that a transfusion of blood is sacrilegious and would never take someone else’s blood into their body, as it makes them “impure”. There are some who do not believe in modern medicine and still, to this day, practice holistic medicine. However, most religions do not have a prejudice against Western medicine in whole, but may be against particular things, such as prescriptions for depression. Many Eastern religions have given birth to medical practices of their own. An example of this would be Taoism. Taoism believes in studying nature and its influences upon man. From this belief and observation rose the practice of acupuncture, which has to do with the flow of energy, Qi (pronounced chee), and how those affect areas of the body.

Passages from bibles, scriptures and a religion’s written word tend to be used by devout followers to discount the possibility of acupuncture as being a good thing. Many people will manipulate subjective - and even not so subjective - text from their spiritual writings to show that certain procedures and actions are nothing more than hocus-pocus or the “Devil’s work.” Certainly, once someone has taken a side and holds a firm opinion, they tend to feel that they have basis for their views and feel that others who argue with them have the wrong set of beliefs, no matter which religion they consider themselves a part of.

Quick fact: The traditional Chinese explanation of the effectiveness of acupuncture is based on the Taoist philosophy according to which good health depends on a free circulation of chi or life-force energy throughout all the organs of the body

However, for the most part, acupuncture is receiving a positive welcome in communities around the globe. Perhaps this is because of exercise programs, such as Yoga and Pilates, which have become so popular. Asian culture has exploded into the main stream in fashion, thought, spirituality, technology, and medicine. Years ago, such things as acupuncture and Yoga were only for the “beatniks”. The regular Joe did not practice such things and would not have heard the positive benefits, but nowadays, people around the globe want different choices when it comes to their bodies. Many individuals want to try to live a life with minimal medication and invasive procedures, turning to nature to help with illness and pain. Acupuncture is a good alternative.

Did you know that most experts would say that acupuncture is at least 2000 years old. The exact age is less important than the fact that Oriental Medicine is the most widely utilized healing system on this planet

Acupuncture, as mentioned before, has to do with the flow of energy in the body. The energy flows along pathways, fourteen to be precise, which are called meridians. All along the meridian, there are points within that can become blocked. Acupuncture is used to unblock the meridian and allow the energy to flow. This is done with the use of long, thin, solid needles, but most people report that the procedure is painless, so do not worry.

The medical field and the health-care services we choose to receive fall into our set of values and beliefs, be they moral or religious. Certainly, the ultimate decision to accept acupuncture or consider it nothing more than psychological smoke and mirrors remains yours alone, depending much on your personal group of beliefs and your opinion.

Ernie Fitzpatrick asked:


To the best of my “self-deceived” psyche, I have abandoned the lifestyle of fear based religion. I’ve found that while more and more are finding the joy and peace of such, there are few who have the courage or proclivity to go against the crowd of status quo maintainers. The church which is to represent God (who is love) manifest something quite the contrary when some major doctrine is even questioned, let alone challenged.

Fear based religion usually goes hand in glove with a heaven-earning religion.

At the core, but little understood is the Old Testament “works oriented” paradigm that has carried over into the New Testament. Faith without works is dead; however, such an over emphasis can lead one into leaving the courts of grace before knowing it. And the club that’s most often used to enforce church conformity and control is the threat of HELL! For way too long I believed in an eteranl hell. Now, hell is just a “cleansing gate” outside the confines of eternal life with our Creator (what most call heaven).

I simply believe that God’s grace does not end with the grave.

Man’s condemnation of other men is simply a egoic paradigm that has enormous control over us, justifies us, and leads us into areas unlike Jesus walked. When we reduce religion to an institution to control society (as Constantine did), we too often create people with little self control: the opposite of the intended goal.

James Mulholland put it this way, “The problem with controlling religion is that it is so convinced of the depravity of humanity that it cannot believe anyone could live a good life without manipulation or coercion.” Listen, whoever created this world is not going to give us a pass wherein we don’t have to experience life on our own terms and conditions. Without free will, there can be no love. As hard as that is to embrace, it’s still true and the longer we live and experience life, the more we begin to understand the incredible wisdom of God- and the folly of man’s ego: especially organized religion.

There is more to life “outside the gates” as Jesus said.

Be sheep only in regards to the Creator, not to the institutional church!

Royston Fernandes asked:


“Did God create all these religions?” Doesn’t this sound a rather unusual question? But its something, which has kept me, busy for quite sometime now.

If there’s only one God why do we have so many religions!

Doesn’t the word religion invoke a sense of unity between a particular community, hatred towards another, misunderstandings and discrimination between the society as a whole? So do we really need a religion?

Well, this question has say two answers, many may say YES, few others NO. But let’s just discuss about this and then come to a conclusion.

On Christmas eve, on Ramzan or any other festival for that matter, people hug each other, exchange gifts, dance, sing and so on. All this only shows one thing, people unite and celebrate that occasion as one family. What unites them? Their religion ofcourse! Doesn’t it look great?

On the other hand, we see extremists especially Islamic, using religion as a tool to create differences among people, resulting in conflicts. Why go far away, we can see inter religious groups disrupting peace and creating a lot of tension, very often. If we go to Great Britain we had the Irish (the Catholics) and the English (the Anglicans) fighting since a really long time. And then we have Darfur, where there is ethnic cleansing on the high. The list is endless. This fight in the name of religion is going on everywhere on earth, right from your own neighbourhood.

But if we all say, ” THERE’S ONLY ONE GOD”, then for whom are we fighting for? Or are we just spoiling his name, by fighting for our own selfish needs? So does God want so many religions?

That’s one aspect of this debate. The second one is about marriages. We see the amount of problems created when two people of two different communities unite in matrimony. We hear everyday how newly wedded couples are slaughtered because they wandered out of their communities! The government does encourage inter religious, inter caste marriages, but in vain. When we proudly proclaim, God is one and all are equal, why do we create a big fuss about these marriages? Is marriage a unification of two souls or a contract!

Are the bride and the groom going to live together of their parents?

Aren’t we creating all problems unnecessarily, and thus spoiling God’s name?



SO DID GOD CREATE RELIGIONS? AND DO WE NEED THEM?



Well I say, we do not need any religions, if the basics of all religions-”Love one another”aren’t followed. If we can follow these basics, then I think we need not even worship God, because He will be very much pleased with our behaviour and attitude. Religions were basically created not to divide people into groups and make them fight! But instead to make them realise that there is a supreme power (love) and to teach them to love one another as they love themselves. So I appeal to all people, of all religions to stop discriminating and fighting in the name of religion, but instead to unite and make this earth a true heave for everyone. Lets make this world a better place for you, everyone and me.

 

 

Nawaz asked:


Religion is as old as the rise of self consciousness in men but its origin, as that of man is shrouded in obscurity. A man has probably lived on earth for about a million years. During the greater part of this period, he had no civilization and has not left his impress on any durable material. All we know about him is based on his fossilized remains and while they tell us a good deal about his physical shape and structure, they tell us little about the man in him. Men acquired some rudiments of civilization when he began to work on stone and metal and to shape for himself tools, which hitherto he had taken ready made from nature. The remains of his artifacts, however shed valuable light on his developing needs and beliefs.

Religion can be traced back to the dawn of human civilization. The caverns of primitive men, wherein dead bodies were laid with a provision of food and weapons, suggest beliefs and practices which are unmistakably religious in character. It would seem that no sooner had man attained the stage of mental development, represented by self consciousness and started on the road to civilization than his breathless wonder at the world around him gave way to speculation on his origin and destiny and on the power which created the world and sustains it. His thinking took the form of myth-making and his tools of thought were not concepts but symbols. He felt vaguely but intensely an infinite power at work in the world around him. This dimly sensed power evoked in him the responses of fear and reverence or worship. The urge to worship appears to have always been there, but man can worship only that which he believes to be both good and powerful, because of his own helplessness. Primitive man was slowly and painfully groping his way to the idea of religion. He was seeking with his scanty resources, for an object which he could appease or revere and worship. No doubt, he worshipped crude objects or simple natural phenomena, but we must not forget that for him they only symbolized the supreme power at work in the universe. Worship is a characteristic religious activity and the anthropologists have amassed ample evidence to prove that primitive man did worship something or other. It has also been proved that primitive tribes, even now living cherish beliefs and engage in practices which are undeniably religious in character in as much as they refer to some deity or deities and to life after death.

In the light of these findings one can safely affirm that religion is a universal phenomenon (for the simple reason that, as explained in the Introduction, the instinct of self-preservation is inherent in man).

In the modern age, religion is visible in many different aspects, sometimes it is looked upon as a natural phenomenon and as such it falls within the sphere of science. But as the experience of individual man, it falls within the purview of psychology, while as a social fact, it is the concern of the sociologist. The sociologist is however interested only in the function of religion as a cohesive force in society.