CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS AND SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS
According to some estimates there are around 4500 religions in the world. The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviors including clerical hierarchies, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, congregations, regular meetings for the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places either natural or architectural and/or scriptures.
The practice of a religion may also include
sermons, commemoration of the activities of a god or gods, there are sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, music, art, dance, public service or other aspects of human culture.
In all this, no religion or spiritual tradition is better than the other,
each and every one of them is better to those who believe in them and they all came from one source. Religion is just as good as politics, there is a lot of religions which were formed under the patriarch name Abraham, but they don’t agree on a lot of things. They are always fighting for the tittles Real descendants , True worshipers, Holy and not Holly etc. Amongst these is Christianity and its denominations, Traditional Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, Pharisees (ancestor of Rabbinic Judaism) Sadducees possible ancestor of Karaite Judaisim (to mention few). They are many in their names and they were formed for power and profit just as good as many political parties around the world were formed. Like for an example in South Africa, during the apartheid era, parties fought for freedom, we saw the likes of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Thambo, Jacob Zuma (to mention few) and many others serving very harsh prison terms with Nelson Mandela serving more. All of them had one aim, to do away with an apartheid regime. Now here comes the new democratic government of the will of the people of the black government that people wanted, but still lot of political parties are formed, some by those who rebels from old freedom fighting parties of which they belonged, (for what?) for power, they are power hungry, they need money as well. Same applies to religions; one had to start his own under the same patriarch name just for power and to put religious laws to suit his own selfish agendas. That is the reason you are seeing a lot of churches built right next to each other with different names. Some end up being just empty buildings with people moving to the other for various reasons. Now this is the time churches start to fight over members, coming up with systems of calling one another The church of Satan not of God, Demonic church, Holy and Not holy. All this is the trick to scare members so that they come back. So where does religion differ from politics?
A religion is a cultural system
, It is histories of lives of people and their cultures changing down the line, a religion is always never what it was, never exactly what it used to be, the system always change due to new systems of life, it will always try to squeeze itself in any new form of life, any technology, sometimes religions change due to political changes around it. (Christianity changed a hell lot when it became part of the state of the Roman Empire. It did not end there, Christianity being part of the state of the roman empire exploited that position to subdue other religions, they pushed to the point that even other religions/beliefs that were even stronger and powerful and older than that of theirs had to seize to exist. Remember earlier on we mentioned that no religion is better than the other; they were all formed the same way for more or less, same purposes, (power, control and wealth).
Comparing Religions of the World
The first thing we should do is determine how the major religions of the world differ from each other and to ascertain whether these differences are bridgeable. Christianity is based on the God of the bible, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit and particularly the life of the son Jesus Christ. Now this is where all conflicts, arguments, contradictions and wars of beliefs start (Jesus Christ the son of God!) Judaism the sister religion to Christianity believe and worship the same God as Christians but do not agree with their stories that Jesus is the son of God and the only way to heaven, they suspect him to be only a prophet.
The Christians have been heard saying that other beliefs
and religion are based on writings done by men who amongst them saw god writing a bible or a book of some kind? As God is said to be that big, how big is his pen? As it is said that spirits are invisible, who saw the spirits passing massages to the writers of the bible? Why does it contradict itself? (Whose writing is the bible, who gets the royalties of the selling of the bible, if it is God the said owner of bible, where is his bank to put all the money?. The money goes to the leaders of the church. When you are recruited to the church, they will tell you “come and drink milk and water for free, have honey that cost nothing.” when you are in you will be told of paying every 10% of whatever you get in the form of money and in kind. How big is God’s purse and how big is his store room?) Does all these money go to god or they are just business for the leaders of the churches. When the founder member of the church dies, you will find the remaining leaders and even children of the deceased fighting for top leadership position, is this about money or serving God/god?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with other religions and traditional beliefs
, the reason some are going through tense situations is that they bought in the Abrahamic religious wars of which is not theirs and confused themselves even more. Judaism the sister religion to Christianity is based on the Old testament of the bible, rejecting the entire New testament and holding that the Messiah has not yet come. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with believing in Christianity and any other Abrahamic religions, anybody has a free will to believe in what he/she believe in. Every religion is accompanied by its people’s cultures and traditions even the Christianity as well goes with a lot of Jewish cultures and traditions.
One thing we should agree upon is that the major world religions
are quite different with many conflicting and contradicting views. As I said earlier on that no religion or traditional spiritual belief is better than the other. All traditional spiritual beliefs and religions are equally true to their own people, if some religions would stop trying to change everyone to their religious beliefs blaspheming other religions they would stay out of trouble. Going back to the writing of the bible, it will say, “John wrote that, Paul warned that, from the beginning Satan has been deceiving humanity, in the garden he convinced Eve that ” you shall be gods.” there are some phrases that I do not understand here, such as (since the beginning Satan has been deceiving ). Who is this Satan? how did he get this power of deceiving at the beginning, at such the time God of Christians was at his best creating such a massive thing as earth, would so called Satan dare to start deceiving, would he survive such said powers of the word which would be used as in saying “Perish Satan!” and he just seize to exist? In the garden, that is of Eden this Satan convinced Eve that she shall be as god if she ate of the fruit of the center of Eden. In some cases it is said that it is a snake that spoke to Eve. Did snake talk in ancient living? Has snakes associated with humans and participated in human things and spoke at one stage of life? In Genesis 3 it says that this garden Eden was earth and it was made with the river Euphrates crossing it, does this mean that this God’s earth is Babylon now Iraq because thus where this river is? Now the center of the garden Eden, is that the center of the earth? Where were other places other than this garden by that time? We have got much different kind of people on this planet earth, which ones did this God create? Is it Indians, Chinese, British or American whites, Africans, other, How did people change to what they are today divided in their diversities? Where did all these different languages come from? This thing of the bible of God changing people languages when they were building the tower does not make sense, may be it can be good for children’s folktales.
I personal believe that earth and its people were there
, no Satan, no demon No creator, earth was just there, no snake ever spoke. If this Satan is there, he/she is a survivor because he has got too many enemies, the cries I have heard from Christian’s simple show that this Satan is feared and is a winner. When the bible was written it stated that “It is times of the end, the time of the coming of the Lord is near, even today it states that same thing but it has passed thousands of years. People who will be born hundreds of thousands of years to come will find it written/ saying the same “Lord is near, Times of end have come, Satan will shortly be destroyed.” I personal am not afraid of Satan, what is Satan to me? I also personally don’t believe in hell, these people knew that burning is very painful; just buy a small red coal, now how much feared would be a pool of fire? There are also stories of Noah’s Arch, those are very confusing stories, do you want to tell me that every living creature was there inside, put there by Noah himself as wild as I know them, lions, tigers, leopards were now the friends of their meal. Listen to 2 Corinthians 11: 13-14 it says “Satan’s hoisting of false religion has been a very effective lie,” Listen to it when it carries on saying, “Since it mixes in some truth.” A lie mixed in with truth. Can you see that all this is referring to all other religions beside them (Christians?)
I am trying to give you the picture that no religion is constantly superior as compared to that of others. If any religion would get an opportunity to be part of the state as did the Christian religion with the Roman Empire WHICH WAS A SUPERPOWER BY THEN, it would be the same as big. Some people would join it just to be safe. All religions are political in vice versa. I think the Pope represent the church in politics, and with that he is the remains of the Roman Empire in visa versa. Religion is all about the power. In reality Constantine the leader of the Roman empire who brought the church to be part of the state did not believe in Christianity and the church, that is why he was baptized lying on his bad sick. (Where was he all this time that he was baptized when he was about to die. This simple means that it is not him who wanted to be baptized but they waited until he was ill and had no choice. Constantine was clever he knew that if he did not put Christianity as part of his kingdom, it would disturb his ruler ship as this Christianity was growing so fast and that was so clever of him.
(Let us return to our African values, norms and traditions) Azibuye emasisweni
Ngiyabonga / I thank you