“When the night has come, and the land is dark…”

I’ve learned something very interesting today. Anyone who says that different religions are just different manifestations of the same teachings from the same God and are just tailored to a culture are utterly and completely wrong. I went to an Islamic mosk today with a friend of mine. I had nothing better to do and I’m a pretty open person so I thought I would go and learn. It was pretty obvious that everyone there knew that I wasn’t Muslim, even worse they looked upon me with pitty. I realize later (from a “sermon” someone was giving) that this was because I don’t subscribe to the ideas and methodologies from the Koran and because of that they believe I’m doomed to “hellfire”. I thought about this for a second and realized that had my friend come to a Christian church with me, the congregation (if they knew he wasn’t Christian) would look upon him in the exact same way. Since a Muslim doesn’t believe that Christ is the son of God (in fact, they see Christ only as a “middle man” in Christianity), my friend is forever doomed to hell.

From this came two very sad realizations. First, if God manifested himself to different peoples differently but equally, we would not believe each other to be destined for an eternity of pain in the most unthinkable place. That just isn’t possible. If God meant for us to have our own customized faith, then we wouldn’t be called to bring others to Him nor would we find fault in another’s belief system. Second, and no less important but slightly more confusing, good and righteous people all over the world are condemned to hell because they were brought up in a belief system that leads them away from the truth and from which there is little chance of convincing someone that they are wrong. According to Christian ideology, I can not see my friend in Heaven… not because he is evil, immoral, unclean, or uncaring… but because he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ. This thought causes me to trip a little bit because my friend is a very good person. He does good things, helps people when they need it and sometimes when they don’t. I know this is kind of thing is not for me to question God about, but I want to.

This is directed at people who don’t actually read this… STOP CALLING ME JUST TO PITY!. I can’t exactly vent to them, it would hurt their feelings, but despite what ever people around me know of my past, I’m not the same person I was a year ago and I’m not going to jump off a bridge. Yes I’m hurting, but for the love of God you don’t need to make me feel worse. Talking to her consoles me more than some of the people who won’t leave me alone.