Posted on 04/06/2014 1:44:23 PM PDT by little jeremiah
In the Masnavi of Islam it is said, “Kill thy neighbor as thyself”
According to the Bible, there are things more important to God than this world being made better. So much evil goes on here that if God’s chief goal was to improve the world He’d have to destroy it and us.
What God’s Word teaches us is that what happens in this world determines what happens in the next. The wheat and tares both grow here, and at the time of Judgment, the wheat will be kept while the tares are cast away.
God’s Word also teaches us that religious actions and good works in themselves mean absolutely nothing to Him. What matter to God is the heart they come from, and its motives. The troubling thing is, though, is that the Bible says our hearts are so evil that we’re deceived to see our motives as pure when they’re not. (Cont’d)
And while many religions, created by man, have some version of the Golden Rule, that really doesn’t mean what it seems to. The Bible says God put His laws in our hearts, and even more importantly, He created us in His image for the purpose of us to have relationship with Him and each other. If we value others at all, we won’t think we should treat others how we wouldn’t want to be treated.
There are a lot of problems with that, though. People can’t always decide what’s good and bad treatment. For instance, abortion. And then many times they can’t see the situation clearly because humans are both sinners and limited in understanding. We can also lack the moral strength to do right when we want to, or just want something else more. (Cont’d)
The Bible says that “there is a way that seems right to a man but it leads to death,” and that without God leading us, “every man does what’s right in his own eyes,” which always leads to us going off the right path somewhere.
The Golden Rule in Christianity, then, also requires people to depend on God to find out what’s true and good. He gives us the Bible to teach us, and then His guidance through things like prayer and the words of other believers.
And performing the Golden Rule shouldn’t lead to the chief sin of Satan, pride. Doing right has a great many benefits, and God has suffered long with us to make us able to do good. Giving to charity, if out of pride, can lead to people feeling they have a license to sin a little, convinced God needs them, and they’re so good they don’t need His mercy and forgiveness.
It's not a religion.
The story of the Good Samaritan is an example of a person living by the Golden Rule.
The point is that if people around the world, whoever they might be, acted with respect and kindness towards others, (as described in the article), there would be far less mayhem and slaughter going on in the world.
And I don’t think anyone can say that would not be a good thing.
Regarding your point about some people thinking, for instance, that other people should be allowed to have abortions because they want them, that is a good point. There have to be moral absolutes accepted, and since all religions basically have the same moral absolutes*, if people actually followed their scriptures (as faulty as many of them may be in various peoples’ estimations), at least they all hold to the same basic moral absolutes.
*I leave Islam out of this because it is vicious from the get-go.
People consider it a religion; depending on one’s definition. If people as above define religion as “any belief people hold” such as Satanism, leftist doctrine, etc - then Islam would be a “religion”.
If people mean “a belief in God with systematic teachings and practices” then....they claim to believe in God, but their understanding, their book, their traditions and their ongoing history of butchery show that they know nothing about God, and use Islam as a political tool of tyranny and slaughter and conquest. So in that way of looking, it is not a religion.
The only Golden Rule I see being enforced these days is “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
And that is why everything all over the world is FUBAR.
As we understand religions and political beliefs, Islam is not a religion but a political system wrapped in a fig leaf of religion. Sharia law is incompatible with our constitution.
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