Saturday, March 20, 2010

In God's Name

Early this morning, the Husband took the car as he was going for a day-hike about 3 hours out of Melbourne. Problem was, my house key was in the glove compartment, so I was stuck at home. With nothing much to do, I turned the TV on, which is something I don't do often. Incidentally they were showing the documentary In God's Name, by Jules and Gedeon Naudet.

12 of the world's most influential religious leaders were interviewed and followed around for a day - The Pope, the chief Rabbi of Israel, some Christian leaders (including the head of the Russian Orthodox church), two Muslim leaders, the Dalai Lama, the Sikhs' leader, a Hindu spiritual leader, and the Japanese Shinto High Priest.

I watched in awe, not only of the massive diversity of followers and ways of practice, but even more so the COMMONALITIES of the beliefs and hope that they shared. It is hard to imagine the commonalities between these people from extremely different backgrounds is due to coincidence. It is easy to say the commonalities shared is due to our humanity - which is precisely right. The question is, where would our humanity come from, if these commonalities are not a coincidence?

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