Introduction
Today, the world’s biggest question that lingers through the minds of many people is the need for having religions in our societies even if they are failing to accomplish their main duty of fostering unity and love. Among many discussions from his book, (Frazer, James, 2009),clearly states that religion is a thought of faith, practices or interests that a particular group upholds so dearly that all the members of that group are expected to behave in a given way. The major religious groups in the world today include; Christianity, Hinduism, Islamic, Judaism and Buddhism. All these groups have nearly different belief systems from each other in their forms of worshipping.
Part one: Situation Analysis
Karen Armstrong’s TED Talk, on the subject of “the charter of compassion”, she defines religion as an act of behaving differently. She also brings a clear view and comparison on the religious practices of the early century and the practices and beliefs of the current generation. In her quest to bring out the sense of religious conflicts, Karen, states how one religion despises another religions’ beliefs simply because they are not in line with their own belief hence resulting into quarrel.
She talks of religion as being the tool that leads us to compassion and then with compassion our different religious beliefs take us to a common God. Furthermore, she talks of the universal religion where we are to show compassion to everybody. Hence, in order to accomplish the golden rule which needs us to do to others what we would want them to do to us, the different religious groups need to unit with one another and treat each other with and treat one another with love. In her conclusion, she gives a way forward for the charter for compassion to help people to reclaim their religion and use as source of love.
The golden rule of religion.
Today, the world’s biggest question that lingers through the minds of many people is the need for having religions in our societies even if they are failing to accomplish their main duty of fostering unity and love. Among many discussions from his book, (Frazer, James, 2009),clearly states that religion is a thought of faith, practices or interests that a particular group upholds so dearly that all the members of that group are expected to behave in a given way. The major religious groups in the world today include; Christianity, Hinduism, Islamic, Judaism and Buddhism. All these groups have nearly different belief systems from each other in their forms of worshipping.
Religion without rules and regulations ends dividing people since everyone practices what they believe are the best for them without caring for the rest who do not believe in their religious practices. The most important rule that can bind all the religions together is the rule of love. Loving one another without no considerations of their religious backgrounds and doing good to everyone even if they do not do you good in return. (Basumatary, Songram , 2014) , the only way to win the rest into believing what you believe in is by doing far much better than they do in behaving differently from them and challenging them with your deeds as well as in your speech.
The reason why for instance, many religious groups do not co-exist in peace is because there is no party that stands to represent their religion in action of good deeds. Many have failed to treat others with love and instead the best they can do is to use all means in forcing them to follow their ways even if it means killing members of different religious groups to act as a threat to the rest who do not follow their ways. This then puts the world into its current state where everyday people get killed or get displaced simply because of disagreements in the religion practices.
Another reason why religious groups are in constant fights is the misinterpretation of the doctrines. For instance, some believe that by killing those people who are from different religious backgrounds from theirs, they do God a favor and hence earn a ticket to heaven. This is a misinterpretation in the sense that God himself is powerful enough to kill anyone who does not believe in him and further he does not kill them because of the love that he loves his people with and so he has given everyone an equal opportunity to transform and follow his ways. No one would want to be killed by another person and so by killing others, we do not follow the golden rule of doing to others what we would want them to do to us.
The ever changing world has resulted into relativism where truth is regarded as being relative, in other words, there is no truth and so truth only depend on what an individual believes in and not everybody else. This has resulted into people abandoning the belief systems of their religions with an excuse of what is right you is not necessarily right for me. The acceptable codes of conducts are therefore slowly disappearing and new behaviors are cropping up which results into disputes among various religious groups, anyone can do anything to anybody and go without punishment because they have simply done what they believe in. with relativism, there can never be true love and without love no one cares to check on how they treat others (Sarat, Austin,2012). When we all begin from a common source, it becomes easy for us to love one another. This is where the charter for compassion comes in, where a sense of compassion that one has for the other compels them to fix themselves in the situations of those people and with great love, take them as they are and not as we would want them to be. This then means that one has to appreciate the differences in their religion practices and instead of using force, win others to their religions by living their lives differently.
These, then, clearly shows that if we all sit back and do nothing concerning the situations at hand, our world is headed to a much worse destination. For the charter for compassion to succeed, we all need to go back to our religion, evaluate them, own them and practice them. With this, our world is assured of peace, unity and love as every religious group co-exists with one another. There is no excuse to it, everyone is capable of doing something and so in order to see the success of the mission of the charter for compassion, and everyone must take their position and play their part.
References
Basumatary, Songram. Ethnicity and Tribal Theology: Problems and Prospects for Peaceful Co-Existence in Northeast India. , 2014. Internet resource.
Frazer, James G. The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion. United States: Floating Press, 2009.
Sarat, Austin. Legal Responses to Religious Practices in the United States: Accommodation and Its Limits. Cambridge [UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.
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