On this Easter sunday, the eternal massage is that by the death and ressurection of one, Jesus Christ, God and Man, (add a Palestinian of Judaic traditions), humankind has the prospect of salvation from the eternal damnation from Sin. Following Him and His teachings, people will rise from death and attain the Paradise. Hallelujah! ( I hear Handel's Messiah).
I remember attending religious classes in my days at a Sarawak Catholic LaSallian School, whose Irish brothers I remember with highest respect. They evengelised without coersive orientation, but by combining spiritual humility and enlightened multicultural tolerance and appreciation.
In that enlightened Catholic Christian context, the classes I refer to were introduced to simple texts "One God Many Paths".
In the belief that I have subsequently evolved, the book title is quintessentially Christian, and "Catholic" at that. Mark however, the notion of "One God Many Paths" may be contested by not people of other faiths but by many new found Christians. It is comforting though for one to hear on BBC on Easter, from the lead Anglican cleric in Bagdad, who believes that good followers of Judaism and Islam may be saved just like good Christians.
Back to Easter. The passage from death to life, from darkness to light or from evil to goodness resonates through different faiths of course: the Hijrah of Islam (Alhamdullilah!), the Passover of Judaism, the Buddhist enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree celebrated at Wesak, the Deepavali of the Hindus, even the scientific humanism of the atheist. Thus a conscious and spiritual search for the Truth and Goodness, whether the faith is polytheist, monotheist or nontheist, much of it also embodied in a relatively new faith of Bahai.
The great faiths, and would one dare to say scientific nontheist faith, are Divine gifts to humanity, different in form to suit different cultures, at different times of history. They are however very similar in substance, in the shared core values of love and humanity, and they should be universally shared in the globalised confluence of digital age civilisation.
That apparent differences in faiths may not lead god-created communities, and indeed the entire world, to self-destruction in nuclear-age conflicts, but that the shared universal values be the driving force bonding humankind, divinity and divine-created Planet Earth.
Hallelujah!
Francis Ngu
I remember attending religious classes in my days at a Sarawak Catholic LaSallian School, whose Irish brothers I remember with highest respect. They evengelised without coersive orientation, but by combining spiritual humility and enlightened multicultural tolerance and appreciation.
In that enlightened Catholic Christian context, the classes I refer to were introduced to simple texts "One God Many Paths".
In the belief that I have subsequently evolved, the book title is quintessentially Christian, and "Catholic" at that. Mark however, the notion of "One God Many Paths" may be contested by not people of other faiths but by many new found Christians. It is comforting though for one to hear on BBC on Easter, from the lead Anglican cleric in Bagdad, who believes that good followers of Judaism and Islam may be saved just like good Christians.
Back to Easter. The passage from death to life, from darkness to light or from evil to goodness resonates through different faiths of course: the Hijrah of Islam (Alhamdullilah!), the Passover of Judaism, the Buddhist enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree celebrated at Wesak, the Deepavali of the Hindus, even the scientific humanism of the atheist. Thus a conscious and spiritual search for the Truth and Goodness, whether the faith is polytheist, monotheist or nontheist, much of it also embodied in a relatively new faith of Bahai.
The great faiths, and would one dare to say scientific nontheist faith, are Divine gifts to humanity, different in form to suit different cultures, at different times of history. They are however very similar in substance, in the shared core values of love and humanity, and they should be universally shared in the globalised confluence of digital age civilisation.
That apparent differences in faiths may not lead god-created communities, and indeed the entire world, to self-destruction in nuclear-age conflicts, but that the shared universal values be the driving force bonding humankind, divinity and divine-created Planet Earth.
Hallelujah!
Francis Ngu
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