Small Twist on the Same Story

I recently got more fuel to add to the proverbial fire that just about all religions are minor twists on the same story. I am going to be up front that I believe I may be a little off on the odd detail, as I’m FAR from a religious scholar, but I do trust a number of the sources from which I gleaned this information…however, if any of the following is inaccurate, please let me know. I’m open to correction, but as far as I know at the moment, it is all factual.

My basic premise is as you’ve read above. Just about all major organized religion is based on slight variations on similar “stories”. The fact that religious wars are fought based on religious belief is in and of itself preposterous, as I am unaware of any religion that does not preach love and acceptance.

Before I go on, I do want to be clear. I’m not suggesting that religious beliefs are frivolous, or that the teachings from the Koran, Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. are “fables” or untrue in any way. I basically view the Bible (the religious text with which I am by far most familiar) as a quasi-history book. And as with all history books, “facts” are open to interpretation, and were recorded through the eyes of the author, so can’t really be taken as cold hard facts….perhaps simply a good indication of what probably went down. You dig?

Anyway, once you start looking into things, you really start to shake your head that so many people have died over relatively minor differences…

Let us begin with the fun-loving Christians. For crying out loud, they can’t even get along among themselves (though we will see later, Muslims aren’t much better). When you get right down to it, the basic difference between Protestants and Catholics is on the role of some old dude in a big white hat. Like, c’mon people… Can’t you even find something cool to fight about?

For the sake of space, I’m going to ignore the various (and numerous) stripes of Protestants, as those were mostly politically fuelled segregations with little theological grounding that I’m aware of.

The major beef Jews have with the Christians (or vice versa…) is some carpenter’s son with an affinity for robes and Birkenstocks. Basically, while Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God, Jews aren’t so sure. It’s not like they don’t respect the dude, don’t get me wrong… I believe they still consider him a prophet; they’re just a little dubious of his lineage. Apparently this is a really really big deal…

Now, Muslims have their big dude Mohammed. And within that, you have Zoroastrians. They’re basically down with Mohammed; they just have a different take on the prophets that followed him. Strict Muslims (from what I understand) believe in four prophets. The Zoroastrians, however, only really recognize the fourth of those, and then through lineage have eleven prophets whom they recognize. Also, similar to the Jews and Jesus, the Zoroastrians are down with the idea that Omar, the first prophet the Muslims recognize, was pretty cool; they’re just a little hesitant to give him full “prophet status.” And for this, Muslims are basically “allowed” to kill Zoroastrians without fear of retribution in the afterlife.

Now (again with the caveats), I’m not going to suggest that this is where similarities end as I am not well-read enough to comment particularly intelligently on much more….but my basic point stands. You’d think that with all these similarities, that folks could find some common ground! There’s clearly enough of it…. Instead, they spend all their energies trying to either convert (in the minds of well-meaning, if perhaps misguided missionaries in North America and Africa in particular) or exterminate (too many examples to even start to list) everyone else.

All this killing…in the name of a religion (pick one!) that preaches love and acceptance.

It honestly stuns me…I guess I’m far too idealistic and naïve…