For the past few months I've been questioning my faith. Not in the way that you would usually think but in a deep and loving journey that questions how you really become closer to God. And what I've discovered is something far from what I ever expected. After delving into the beliefs of the three major world religions, I've come to realize that we all have more beliefs in common than we might think.
Once I returned from Morocco I struggled with the predisposition that so many of us have about the Muslim faith. After meeting a sizable portion of Moroccans and hearing the entrancing call to prayer five times a day, I couldn't shake the feeling that so many of us have stereotyped them due to a small, wreckless, and evil portion of their population. For the past few months I've watched countless documentaries and read books regarding their beliefs and what I found was astounding. The similarities between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all rooted in Father Abraham. Ceremonies surrounding the Haj (the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims take at the end every Islam calendar year) are entirely based around the journeys and life of Abraham, his two sons, and his wife Haggar. I'm sure I'm not the first one to know this, however to me it was simply shocking.
I was eleven years old when every heart in America stopped on 9/11. I witnessed the horror on television that day and I never understood how a group of people could have such evil residing in them. Lacking any other knowledge about this strange sect, I automatically assumed if one group of Muslims wanted murder innocent Americans, then they all did. I remember myself and some of my close friends and family saying things like "let's just nuke them!'. Because that would indeed solve all of our problems: more killing. There is no good way to fight a religious battle.
Of course this is a story as old as time itself. During one of the great enlightenment periods in Alexandria, Christianity was a new and rampant faith that was overtaking Egypt along with the whole of the Roman empire. Christians, Jews, and people of the Roman faith resided in one place where there was constant violence and oppression between all three.
The famous philosopher Hypatia was a woman that lead many in her quest to discover the constellations of the stars and determine the shape of the path of the earth around the sun (the ellipse). Her contributions to science including the astrolabe where unrivaled in that time period. However there was one glaring problem that no one in Alexandria could deny when it came time: she was not of any faith. So, naturally they labeled her as a witch, due to the sheer fact that she only lay her beliefs in philosophy. Not only that, but she was a woman that men took counsel from and this was something that was not acceptable to the Christian high priests. One evening Hypatia was taken from here home, unceremoniously stripped of her clothing, and brutally murdered in the streets of Alexandria... by "Christians". I was dumbfounded that something like this could occur only one hundred some years after Jesus' death. This would only be followed by the crusades some hundreds of years later where more "christians" murdered thousands of innocent jews and muslims. So you see, all faiths have gone through periods of irrational, evil behavior.
Even today the battle continues in the Holy city of Jerusalem for control over some of the most important religious sites. For example, the Temple Mount that is currently used for Friday worship by Muslims is directly above the West Wall in which the Jewish congregation travels to at exactly the same time on Friday afternoon to pray. Then, only blocks away their is Jesus' path of sorrows where he took his last steps on his way to crucifixion. Christians go there now to reflect on the last moments of his mortal life.
Now through all of this new knowledge, I cannot give up my belief in Jesus Christ due to the sheer fact that what he taught was not followed by these "christians"who gave into evil and murder. Because to kill another human being is like killing God himself. However I've also come to believe that if we can put aside our hatred for each other and try to understand what other faiths believe and why, we would realize that all of us put our faith in one God and we just want to be closer to Him. Then and only then would the violence and confusion simply desist. If we continue to give into hatred, stereotyping, and mindless killing then we are giving up everything that our faith stands for. And then, we give up God all together.
It is truly my personal belief that there are many ways to receive salvation. Because if your heart is pure and your intentions are good how could God turn you away from such a gift? How could He deny entry into paradise purely because you were raised to follow a certain faith that is really not so different from another?
Perhaps knowing God is not just about following the religion that you were put on this earth to believe. Perhaps knowing, understanding, and unconditionally loving humanity is to know, love, and understand God.
