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Can All Roads Lead to God?
- Thread starter InChrist
- Start date
Audie
Veteran Member
Of course.
Trouble with always trying to find
"God" Is, those who think they are
seekers are just looking for something
Out There when it's in their own head.
Effectively going about with a mrror
in front of their face.
Behold the Augustine the sainted.
He climbed an actual peak and was glorying
in the physical, when he realized how
Wrong that was, came down ashamed and
repentant.
One might think that God, being an omnipotent
supreme being, would find us. No seeking
needed by incompetent mere mortals.
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This is a common line of thinking I see from exclusivist, monotheistic religious traditions. Often, it is an attempt at religious inclusivism and aimed to foster greater religious tolerance. After all, if these diverse religious traditions are all actually walking a path to your one-god, then they can be saved, aren't going to hell, et cetera, et cetera.
This method of inclusivity underwrites very real and significant differences in theologies and other religious perspectives. It instills tolerance by ignoring diversity and difference rather than accepting that different traditions are, in fact, following different roads to different mountains. And that's okay. Or at least it should be okay given human diversity is both inevitable and unavoidable... but understandably exclusivist traditions have trouble reconciling this because they feel they have the One True Way or that there is only One True Truth.
As someone whose religious traditions are inherently pluralistic, I'm not one to tell the story of "all roads lead to the same thing" because my own experiences directly contradict this idea. My religion does not lead to your god, or your spiritual truths. Or to those of other religious traditions, for that matter. Why would they?
Audie
Veteran Member
As if anyone Iives on an actual peak
still less on the metaphorical one
that's the actual topic.
As for "perspective", we refer you tok
Saintly Augustine, atop a real mountain.
Where all he saw was himself.
And point out that there's a whole lot of
perspectives that hardly require a mountain.
Further that if all you are looking for
and expect or allow yourself to see from
any prison cell or scenic overview is
yourself, in the form of some " god"
you imagine, your roads and perspectives
lead youv where to see nothing.
Audie
Veteran Member
I seldom am
The writings can also be misinterpreted and taken out of context. Many of them were written in very ancient times when societies were very different. The problem is in taking all writings literally when they were often meant to be metaphorical, allegorical or interpretable. Even the Bhagavad Gita can be misused or misinterpreted by someone to justify vigilantism. One might believe it's their dharma to go on a hunt to eliminate whom they believe to be evildoers. This is clearly wrong, per all commentaries and purports I've ever seen on the BG.
Since my understanding and belief is different, I word that as "All roads (many incarnations) lead to the eternal Christ" because to me the Eastern word "avatar" is the same as "Christ".
There is a description of the rebirth cycle here which is a completely wrong understanding of both Hinduism and Buddhism. Since this is not a debate thread, I will not broach this topic here. But if you are interested, I can start a thread and invite you.
The Bible says something very close to that: Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Clearly you are a Christian even if you don't realize it consciously
Yes... thus my signature.
I definitely see and experience the world far differently than I used to. Growth or development always leads you to higher altitudes, or higher or more inclusive, or wider perspectives than you used to have. The question for you seems to be, is there such thing as a higher perspective? Is there anything greater than what we are right now that we can become. Some say no. Others say yes.
Indeed that is true. But you don't understand what that really means, until you reach that peak. "I am that which I seek", does not translate into "the ego is all there is".
That is true. There are horizontal perspectives, and vertical perspectives. We're talking about the mountain, so that's talking about vertical perspectives.
You see nothing, and everything. It's a shift in how we frame and exist in reality itself. What we thought was everything was nothing. What we thought was nothing is everything.
Audie
Veteran Member
The Bible says something very close to that: Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Clearly you are a Christian even if you don't realize it consciously
As if
Audie
Veteran Member
No doubt you think youve reached some
peak and are so enlightened.
We hear the same from bedrock fundies
who insist God guides now their
understanding as see so clearly that
Genesis is all accurate history.
As with them it's all talk and posturing,
all show but no go.
Samael_Khan
Goosebender
Worldview has a LOT to play in the "all roads lead to god" type of thinking.
For instance, in Theosophy, they believe such, but that is because they believe that all religions have mystery initiation elements, which they are correct in for the most part, and they believe that this initiate path decodes the symbolism of outward part of the religions and shows how they all end up teaching the same thing.
They believe that each life is part of the evolution of an individuals soul, so they get born into a body that is suitable for their spiritual path. This means that everybodies lifecourse leads them to become a part of religions that are suitable for where they are in their spiritual growth so that they can evolve spiritually.
To them, if spirituality was a specific subject in school, different people would only be able to grow in understanding when taught in very specific ways, therefore they would each have a different teacher and level of the course to help them grow efficiently according to what they are capable of. Religions are the specific teacher or course made to suit everyones needs.
When it comes to the surface view of religions, the surface readings and the antagonisms that are derived from it, they are for those who aren't that advanced in their spiritual evolution.
No, I'm not so arrogant to think I have arrived. But it's not arrogant to say that I have definitely moved to a different or higher perspective than I had before. To call that arrogant, would be like saying it's arrogant to say we are wiser as a 60 year old, than we were when we were 20.
Unless someone actually hasn't grown up at all, and are still just as childish in thought and reason. Then they might just lash out at those who claim they they have grown up, "You think you're so smart! Don't you!", sort of deflections from their own sense of inadequacy.
A lot of people claim a lot of things, and coopt things from others that they themselves haven't earned yet, nor could ever come up with on their own for where they are at. That doesn't mean you get to ignore people who actually do know something.
That's like saying since science got some ideas wrong about some things, evolution is fake too. I know some people like to reason like that because they are afraid of having their biased views challenged. That's just rationalizing away facts in favor of justifying staying put in their views.
But the problem is, there actually is show. There are actual fruits. There are actual differences. There is actual, measurable, observable differences. To simply call that lying, or fake, or untrue, speaks what it does about those who deny the evidence of evolution and call that fake. It speaks more about themselves in their denialism. It speaks of their fear, not what is really real.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
But that's assuming that what you believe is the absolute truth and that you can somehow speak for God.
IMO, all religions attempt to try and understand God(s) and what the implications are.
This setting of your parable is not right to reflect it on God. Definitely all routes lead to the top of a summit. There is only one straight path that leads to God on a horizontal plane. There are so many routes parallel to this straight path and so many routes that deviate away from it at different angles. These myriads routes lead to illusion. As a mirage in a desert followed by some thirsty people thinking of it as water.
This setting of your parable is not right to reflect it on God. Definitely all routes lead to the top of a summit. There is only one straight path that leads to God on a horizontal plane. There are so many routes parallel to this straight path and so many routes that deviate away from it at different angles. These myriads routes lead to illusion. As a mirage in a desert followed by some thirsty people thinking of it as water.