It is quite easy to encounter people who claim to be from religious generations and take pride in such self-proclaimed title. Although I rather regularly encounter such people, who range in degree of proclaimed fanaticism and certainly from all different religious backgrounds, I find it hard to find a handful, sometimes even traces or glimpses of religious practices or attitudes, which corresponds to the religions teachings that they should abide by daily.
Confirmation or assurance about the existence of a higher power in order to solely belong to a religious sect does not guarantee man salvation. Moreover, it certainly does not mean neglecting of our duties as human beings under the prescribed guidance. In fact it is through realization of such infinite existence that we must bring ourselves to complete submission to its original guidance, and it is only then that one can depart from egocentric values and ascend towards the infinite Truth, which neither perishes nor concludes .
This fact is strongly emphasized by Karen Armstrong, A former Catholic nun and a current author, who explains:
…to my astonishment when I began seriously studying other traditions, I began to realize that “Belief” which we make such a fuss about today is only a very recent religious enthusiasm. It’s surfaced only in the west in about the 17th century. The word belief itself, originally meant to love, to prize, to hold dear…
Karen Armstrong goes on to ask:
If religion is not about believing in things… then what is it about? What I have found across the board is religion is about behaving differently. Instead of deciding whether or not you believe in God, first you do something, you behave in a committed way and then you begin to understand the Truths of religion. And religious doctrines are meant to be summoned to action; you only understand them when you put them to practice
This is more beautifully explained in Leopold Weiss’s book (later known as Muhammad Asad) -- The Road to Mecca -- where he writes:
“In accordance with our family’s tradition, I received, through private tutors at home, a thorough grounding in Hebrew religious lore. This was not due to any pronounced religiosity in my parents. They belonged to a generation which, while paying lip service to one or another of the religious faiths that had shaped the lives of its ancestors, never made the slightest endeavour to teachings. In such society the very concept of religion had been degraded to one of two things: the wooden ritual of those who clung by habit -- and only by habit -- to their religious heritage, or the cynical insouciance of the more ‘liberal’ ones, who considered religion as an outmoded superstition to which one might, on occasion, outwardly conform but of which one was secretly ashamed, as of something intellectually indefensible.”
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