behaviour is the only proof

Submitted by jeff (Canada), Oct 31, 2006 at 00:03

Islam is not the first religion to use violence to gain "converts". Catholicism has "converted" many at the point of the blade. As has paganism of various forms....... If we believe that our minds and hearts ( our souls ) have been given any kind of freedom to decide our own fates, we must therefore concede that forced allegiances to any ideology are powerless.

None who say that they believe, under point of knife, or barrel of gun, or torture, or even simple social pressure, can be said to have true faith. It is not the word of our mouth, or the observance of rites and festivals, or the wearing of certain clothes, or speaking certain phrases at certain times, that count for anything significant, whether we be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or otherwise. .....It is our behavior.

No-one can be truly bribed, or forced, to follow God /Allah, or any belief. We follow, and submit ourselves to God through trust, and trust alone. Any religious group can have it's leadership corrupted. The decision, whether or not to stay focused on GOOD BEHAVIOUR, is OUR decision....... not the decision of any church, nor any mosque, or any synagogue.

All three faiths believe that the fall of man occurred upon the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ....And it is because we KNOW the difference between good and evil, that we are - responsible - for our ACTIONS ....We cannot hold blame to any of our accepted faiths for our own failures....We have the knowlege of what is right and wrong within us, by this common hereditry. We have lost the innocence of children who know not what they do. ....The time for proving that one faith's holidays and prophets are right, over any other's, is irrelevant. The neccessity, to act the way we should, is paramount, above all other distractions.

If you choose prophecy over kindness, tradition over true strength, and commands written in stone over commands written in your heart, you will fail to see what you are intended to be. We are created through the expenditure of vast amounts of energy and thought...this effort was made by god for a purpose. Let's not waste our energy arguing about details that can be expained by God in an instant....the final hope, and intention, is that we learn and adopt a certain charachteristic, a certain BEHAVIOUR. The rules of this behaviour are common, and self-evident. None of us have any excuse for any behaviour other than love.

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