You can clearly substitute your beliefs and your scriptures with that the one’s I have quoted, as I am familiar with them.Qur’aan – Sura Ikhlas
112:1 SAY: “He is the One God:
112:2 God the Eternal, the Uncaused Cause of All Being.
112:3 He begets not, and neither is He begotten;
112:4 and there is nothing that could be compared with Him.
The Vedas and Bhagvad Gita have identical words, they will be added over this weekend.
Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Bahai’s are trained to know that GOD is not a physical being, he or she is genderless, it is not an object nor is it definable. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) experienced the presence of God during Meraaj and was described as Noor or the light. Is that the experience of being nothing and being everything as the Hindu Philosophy puts it. Nidi Nidi. Sarmad went nuts with the idea as well and Moses saw the light too.
God has consistently asked in Qur’aan not to define him in human terms, it is an abstract energy that gives life and that is the cause of all existence. It is just one single source. The Jews go even further and resist containing G_d in words.
Whereas, the Christian and Hindu theology trains one to believe that God created humans in his own image, and they have come to understand God in human terms, God is personal and God has appeared in human form for them and that is how they relate with the creator.
The Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrian, Shinto and Tao are trained to be Karma centered rather than God centered. Everything has to have a balance, when one loses that balance through bad actions, a trade off for regaining that energy becomes necessary. Which the other religions explain in terms of repentence, forgiveness or doing lot of good to offset the bad karma.
All the belief systems are legitimate to the believers. The above are not crystal clear boundaries, there is a lot of overlapping in all the ideas above. I hope you can see the essence in all these beliefs; Accountability, Justice and Equilibrium.
Equilibrium is the key, every thing is created to have its own balance including humans with themselves and with others. When the balance is disturbed, Law of Karma becomes operative squaring out the negative and positive energies, and those items that are not squared out, has to be squared out, if not in this world, it will be in the mysterious next world either through the concept of re-birth or eternal life after death.
The idea of re-incarnation or continuation of life after death in different theologies has the same essence; when the rest of the issues are squared out in our life time, the unsolved justice will be accounted for in the continuum after this life. This gives hope to the mankind that Justice prevails and inturn brings about an equilibrium to the human psyche. Whether we watch a movie or bad things happen to us in our real life, we yearn for that elusive justice and it is there.
Does God have a religion?
Well, he created us, each one of us with our own fixtures. Qur’an, Al-Hujurat, Surah 49:13: “O mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. The noblest of you, in sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Allah Knows and is Aware.”
God continuously acknowledges the existence of the human kind in all its glorious forms, indeed Qur’aan begins with the idea of the world(s) 1:2 “All praise is due to God alone, the Sustainer of all the worlds,” and ends with,114:6 “from all [temptation to evil by] invisible forces as well as men.”. Men meaning the human kind.
One may see the clarity and acknowledgement of different pathways laid out by the creator and he tests us 109:6 “Unto you, your moral law, and unto me, mine!” Contrast this with the verse from Al- Hujurat, Surah 49:13 above
Religion is a manual to understand oneself and one’s relationship with the creator (creation).
I do not think God has or needs a religion, we have and we need it. I am open to learning through your comments. It is an open field, let’s enhance each other with knowledge.
Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of the World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: “Good for Muslims and good for the world.” His personal Website is www.MikeGhouse.net and his articles can be found on the Websites mentioned above and in his Blogs: http://MikeGhouseforAmerica.Blogspot.com and http://MikeGhouse.Sulekha.com . He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town
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