YOUR RELIGION AND MINE
By Taiye Olaniyi
….What do you know about your religion and how careful, careless and caring are you about your and those of other peoples’ religions?
Sometimes I begin to wonder whether it is man or religion that will outlive one or the other but then I reasonably realise that without man there is no religion and there can’t and could never have been.
Founders or may I say certain personalities after whom religions were founded were earlier exposed to self, nature and to Whom all came from into being.
These personalities could not be fully known no matter how close or fervent in belief one could be to them.
For those of us of this age, we could only read, hear and are taught about them by those to him we decide to entrust all authorities.
Whereas Mary, mother of our Lord Jesus the Christ was singled out amongst many virgins of her time, even as his mother, Jesus had to remind her his mission was to accomplish the assignment given to him by his “Father in Heaven”.
Doing, carrying and accomplishing such an assignment and experiencing the pangs of pain at the Cross of Calvary, he again reminded his mother and those sorrowing around not to cry for him but for themselves including you and I today mere mourners, wailers and moaners.
So, we read history about what was, what might not have been actual and how such journalists of old reported such being objective, subjective, inductive or deductive as such no option for us than take their recordings and records may be hook, line and sinker.
In putting self into reports, records, dictates, observances and immutability of what the scriptures of our various religions contain, the changing “Self” from birth to old age would discover variants in meanings and values we attribute to our various religions and those of others.
Our lives may be meaningful or totally meaningless even in our religions because of the science of life and living which individual or collective experiences are.
Certain experiences dictate to us how actual or relative we should be in our religious inclination, disposition and persuasion, thus necessitating further need for further search and admittance of personal conviction if not even confusion.
II concur with prophet Mohammed (saw) who gave injunction to all Muslims, including you and I to search for “KNOWLEDGE” as far as humanly possible.
This to me and my tiny knowledge is to help attain” Peaceful coexistence”.
Little wonder a Muslim scholar in particular hardly rejects sharing ideas and thoughts on and/or over his religion with those of others.
Invite an average Islamic scholar to an interfaith seminar, you would be better assured of his readiness to grace the occasion anytime, any day.
Little wonder the pain of each and everyone of us when our cherished religions are misunderstood, misinterpreted, misappropriated and misrepresented.
In such belief and misconception without knowledge, where ignorance, poverty, disunity and misrule reign supreme in the society according to to Ustaz Oguzhan Dirican, “Peace” becomes elusive.
Things fall apart as centre does not hold.
For peace to reign and tranquility to obtain, many of us of mystical persuasions yearn and in humble quest see God’s hands in every religion.
Mystical students world over pride in going further to appreciate similarities in all religions but anchor much more in the spiritual kernels inherent in every religion.
The ultimate desire of such mystical student either in his or her religious persuasion is to ” Have a personal and Intimate awareness of God of his understanding within the domain of Self”.
The “Spiritual Kernel” of all religions is the mystical way of proving to self like Jesus the Christ once intoned, ” My Father and I are one”.
Further to this, our lord Jesus the Christ concluded,
“that same Father is in you and greater things you can all do”.
The question then is, be one a religionist or seeker beyond mere religious observances, its propagation or even its fundamentalism, what then is your role in search for Peace?
How tolerant or otherwise are you in respect of your religion and those of others?
Think about it.
*Taiye Olaniyi is a Lagos-based public commentator and journalist* (vitalnewsngr.com)
