Source: Cochrane Times
By David Feil
With the growing fear and need for positive change in the world, six religious experts came to the Ranchehouse on Apr. 19 to take part in Cochrane’s eighth World Religions Conference to speak about the need to build bridges of mutual respect and goodwill for the betterment of mankind.
“We’ve created walls against each other,” said Warren Harbeck, who spoke from the perspective of Christianity and emphasized the close relationship he had with the other speakers even though they all follow different religions. “We here hold our common humanity precious. When it comes to our relationship as human beings, not even religion should divide our common humanity.”
For Harbeck, the way people should treat one another is best described in the parable of the good Samaritan, a story in which a man is beaten within an inch of his life, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. Despite his condition, a rabbi and devout scholar walk past their fellow Jew but a Samaritan stopped, bandaged his wounds and took him to the nearest town and saw that he was cared for.
world religions – major religions group
“This guy was one of the others,” said Harbeck, pointing out that at the time Jews and Samaritans rejected each others’ beliefs but Jesus called on people to look past those differences to see each other as a neighbour. Today, Pope Francis was seen living what he preached during a visit to Greece to assure the refugees who fled there from Syria that they were not alone and brought three Muslim families back to the Vatican with him to help settle them into new lives.
“The building materials are the same in walls and bridges, it is up to us what we build,” said the Hindu representative Romesh Anand noting that despite the plethora of religions in the world they all believe in one god, even Hinduism which views its many deities more like aspects of the Almighty than powers in their own right.
But it is the small differences that often lead to divisions. Anand remembered how Guru Nanak, the founder of Sihkism, had brought together Muslims and Hindi but when he died they quickly reverted to their old ways over an argument about whether he should be buried or cremated.
“It is not who is right and who is wrong, but what is right and what is wrong,” said Sykes Powderface, who spoke from the perspective of First Nations Spirituality. “We need to arrive at how we share oneness with each other.”
To Sykes, he viewed the differences between people as a positive diversity like is seen in nature where dozens of species or plant can live in harmony and often help one another much like how trees offer the shade needed for smaller plants to grow who in turn hold the water trees need to live and grow.
“The Creator intended for everything to be diverse. God loves variety,” said Powderface, as the most lush places on earth are full of different animals and plants while places with limited diversity are the barren landscapes of the desert and tundra.
“We need to have the courage to rise above our ideologies and embrace our commonalities,” said Mike Bopp of the Baha’I faith, who felt that there is a need for the reinvention of a planetary civilization that would likely stem from spirituality as the world has been centralizing more and more wealth to the detriment of millions, a state that is not sustainable and in fact is damaging the world we all live on.
To do this, Bopp emphasized the need to reintroduce individual thinking and get people to open their minds beyond a single doctrine to both other religions and science in order to bring down the fear and distrust commonly seen among people today, including faith communities in Calgary that sponsor events promoting a fear of Islam as terrorist propaganda rather than a religion.
“Islam emerged in a society that did not accept others where the only rule was might makes right,” said Taha Syed, representing the Ahmadiyya Muslim faith, noting that after Muhammad conquered the local tribes he created a culture that accepted the practices of Jews and Christians and only required that they follow the civic laws.
As such, Syed finds the terrorists using the Quran to legitimize their actions to not be true followers of Muhammad as their aim is to divide and regress where Muhammad sought to unify and build. Similarly, a number of Muslim nations are showing no regard for the refugees being created by the Syrian conflict as they make power plays while the Christian nations are stepping up to help settle refugees.