isbell@marvin.DEC (Chris Isbell ) (05/14/84)
[] From one of my submissions: >>One should not honour only one's own religion and condemn the religions >>of others, but one should honour others' religions for this or that >>reason. So doing, one helps one's own religion to grow and renders >>service to the religions of others too. From "The Ice Floe of Larry Bickford": >Basic problem: I do not strive to honor my *religion*. I strive to honor >*God*. My "religion" (if the term applies) is not something I have >concocted to glorify something - it is doing what God said to do. I do not understand the "problem". (If the word honour was re-translated as respect, would it help? There are similar problems in translating the Buddhist scriptures as there are in translating the Christian scriptures.) >(And His command to Israel upon going into the Promised Land was the >opposite of the above quote: "Exterminate the worship of other gods.") Where does the Bible say that other religions worship other gods? If there is only one "God" how can other religions worship other gods? (Do we have the translation problem again?) >Isbell's quote implicitly assumes some human control over religion; my >"religion" is neither subject to nor authorized by man. In a Christian context: We have no human control over *God*. Religion (and the church) are mental constructs of humans, over which we have (at least some) control - such as a choice to follow a particular religion in preference to another. At the conventional level there are many different religions in the world. Chris Isbell. (...decvax!decwrl!rhea!marvin!isbell)