MULTIFAITH PERSPECTIVES

In the Christian circles I used to inhabit, I was taught to believe that if you weren’t a Christian, you were going to hell. Actually, if you weren’t the right kind of Christian, you were also running the risk of hellfire.

I always had a problem with that, but I had to believe it because that is what I was told to believe. To question it potentially put me on the path to perdition.

I was not aware that there were Christian teachings that held a more gracious view. This line of thinking says that God has revealed Him/herself to everyone in some shape or form. God loves everyone and wants to be known by all.

This is not “synchronism”, which is the taking of a bunch of different religions and jumbling them to create a patchwork faith based on the “authority” of one’s self-absorbed whims. This is being spiritually enriched by recognizing God wherever he/she/it may be found.

The following are some quotes supporting this notion from a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist perspective.

CHRISTIAN 

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“Each religion has its own unique value and insights which we need to share with one another.”

–Father Bede Griffiths in The New Creation in Christ.

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“Confidence in dialogue implies a deeper faith…than you find in a merely rigid, defensive, and negative attitude which refuses all dialogue.”

–Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.

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Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing "ways," comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.(4)

The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.

From   “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”, Nostra Aetate, Proclaimed by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965

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BUDDHIST

The purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples, but to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity and love. Every world religion, no matter what its philosophical view, is founded first and foremost on the precept that we must reduce our selfishness and serve others. Unfortunately, sometimes religion itself causes more quarrels than it solves. Practitioners of different faiths should realize that each religious tradition has immense intrinsic value and the means for providing mental and spiritual health… Each faith has the ability to produce fine, warmhearted people and despite their espousal of often contradictory philosophies, all religions have succeeded in doing so Thus there is no reason to engage in divisive religious bigotry and intolerance and every reason to cherish and respect all forms of spiritual practice.

 --The Dalai Lama, “The Global Community”, www.dalailama.com

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ISLAM (SUFI)

“There was a time I would reject those who were not of my faith. But now, my heart has grown capable of taking on all forms. It is a pasture for gazelles, an abbey for monks, a table for the Torah, Kaaba for the pilgrim. My religion is love. Whichever the route love’s caravan shall take, that shall be the path of my faith.”   

Ibn al-Arabi in The Interpreter of Longings.