Reflections on Christianity
First of all, I want to tell you couple of words about religion itself. Today, there are vast numbers of religions all over the world, with thousands of minor branches developed from each. I think religion is generalized set of moral values of one or another nation. As long as moral values vary from country to country, even from person to person, religion that developed in different parts of world should also be different. At first sight, this statement seems to be genuine. Indeed Hinduism is too far fetched from Christianity; Muslims have nothing to do with Jews… But let us not be fooled with first impressions. Idea that all religions have nothing to do with each other, or that they have different basics is a huge mistake.
To grasp that common trait we have to delve deep into the past, where all those ideas were born in the human conscience. There are few basic questions that troubled minds of those people. First one and most crucial I guess is the fear of death. There is no such person in the world who never thought about this fixed ending of our lives. We know so much about it – we see death everyday, everywhere - and at the same time we have no idea what lies beyond this physical world.
Another important question is about our existence. What is our mission? And what are we born for? I think this question is a mere psychological problem. We don’t want to be simple animals. We look, we act like them (We eat, we sleep, we have sex, we kill) and only difference, is that mission we entitle to our lives.
Further evidence for this idea is that each religion has one and the same moral code, slight alterations do exist, but mainly they preach same things… Don’t kill, don’t lie, and don’t steal. What I’m trying to say is that all religions have common basis. They are all meant to explain our existence – and it’s up to us to decide which one is right or close to our mind. So here we come up to one important issue… And that is what I actually don’t like about Orthodox Church. No follower of other religion then Christianity can get blessedness of god! I think it doesn’t matter what religion you follow, every human has equal right to get into heaven, no matter what is his spiritual direction. There is one more thing that worries me a lot. That concerns our sourcebook, I mean bible… It’s is so general, there so many explanations! One can translate same passage in thousands of different ways. This way it can be applied to everything, I think universal truth should be more specific – without any doubled, even tripled meanings! To give a little example: After forty days of fist, Jesus returns from the mounts. He comes up to a fig tree and finds that it’s fruitless! He gets angry and burns that tree… Explanations for this little biblical scene are vast. But I believe, that it means that fruitless creature (that can be women) doesn’t have any right to live. Sounds not quite Christian right? I think this is the proper explanation for in other passages, we are told that one of the main purposes of a human is to give birth to newer generations! How come that this explanation was lost to every monk? That’s were biblical generalization comes to aid our beloved priests… It’s so easy to find other explanations! So I think religious book should be concrete, not to give people like me some reason to talk about its imperfection.
In all other senses Christianity is the “great idea!” It perfectly fits a role of moral restrictor. Christianity is both, powerful weapon in the hands of politicians and a good amount of wealth for spiritual leaders. And of course, it provides proper answers to our questions…