(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Just posed this question in challenging_god and wanted to record it here, too. (Some of you will see a crossposting.)

Does the strength of Christianity reside in the essential uniqueness of its message?

Or, conversely, is Christianity strengthened if it can be reconciled with other religions spiritually and/or mystically?

I fall into the latter camp. It seems to me that spiritual experiences are the same for people of every culture, and that religions and philosophies have largely derived from attempts to describe these experiences in concrete terms. These "traps for the divine" ultimately fall short because it is not possible to describe the infinite in finite terms.

Nonetheless I feel that my studies of scripture have led me to understand the Christian message as an outgrowth of this same mystical life with many parallels to the teachings of other religions.

Comments

[alobar.livejournal.com]

IMO, which is certainly not the yet the norm, a religion grows up & becomes a mature spiritual movement only when it sees its place as integrated into the entirety of spiritual evolution. An acknowledgement that God (or gods) speak in many ways to many people, and there can be no one religion which speaks to everyone until and unless a syncretic religion organically evolves from the little tribal religions (like Christianity, Buddhism, Voudoun, Wicca, etc.) at a grass-roots level -- rather than at the church hierarchal level.