Let us now briefly examine the God/gods of the different religions.
Judaism ‘evolved’ the idea of a monotheistic God, Yahweh. This happened after long periods of worshipping three types of gods: worship of the family gods (teraphim), worship of the sacred stones and worship of the great gods, some native, others foreign (Baal, Molech etc).
Zoroastrianism introduced gods as abstract concepts. Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil. He is said to have received a direct revelation from the one true god Ahura Mazda. Soul, life after death, resurrection, judgment, paradise, hell, and devil were all Zoroastrian ideas first, later borrowed by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Buddhism may be thought more as way of life than as a religion in its narrow sense. It developed as a reaction to the greed and materialism of the newly emerging merchant class at the time of Siddhartha Gauthama who left the comforts of a life of luxury as well as his family and wandered the world as a mendicant in search of enlightenment. One night he put himself in a trance and when he awoke he became the Buddha, the enlightened one. He believed in the gods of the time but for him the ultimate reality was beyond the gods. All life, for him, was suffering; only dharma, the truth about right living brought one to nirvana (the ultimate reality, freedom from pain). The state of nirvana has nothing to do with the gods; in fact it is beyond them. By living a life of compassion for all living beings, speaking and behaving gently, kindly and correctly and by refraining from drugs and intoxicants that cloud the mind, one can attain nirvana. The same universal secular message is given by Jesus as response to the question by the Pharisees about the greatest commandment: love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. (Mathew 22:34-40). Perhaps the rumor that Jesus traveled to India could be true, as he seemed to have imbibed some Buddhist principles.
Hinduism has many parallels to Greek religious practices. Both are steeped in myths with numerous gods and goddesses who have many human characteristics. However, traditional Hinduism is a way of living than a way of thinking.
Islam has borrowed heavily from both Judaism and Christianity. Mohammed, considered God’s prophet by the faithful, was resting in a cave outside Mecca, called Hira, in 620 C.E. when he heard voices which he wrote down and collected into the book Qur’an. The message was clear: God is one and there is no other. There is a Judgment day with eternal paradise for the good and everlasting hell for those who go against His will.
Christianity. Chapter 4 of Karen Armstrong’s book ‘A History of God’ is titled ‘Trinity: The Christian God’. There is a reason for this. Though Christians claim they believe in monotheism, their God is not exactly one; He is three in One or One in Three – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 3=1. 1=3. For ordinary mortals, this is a mystery and that is how the Christian Church wants it to be regarded. Do not try to understand it, rather, just believe it! Jesus was a Jew and his initial followers were all Jews who believed in the one God Yahweh. How and why did the later followers of Christ change to a ‘kind’ of polytheist mode of thinking?
St. Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, who became a follower of Christ after he fell from his horse and who claimed to hear disembodied ‘voices’ that he identified as the words of Jesus, could come to our aid here. He was instrumental in spreading the gospel to the gentiles who were used to a variety of gods. It was he who realized that the good news of the gospel would have greater acceptance if Christ, the messiah, was projected as divine rather than human. Hence he claimed that Jesus was a preexistent ‘heavenly’ being; that he was created as the ‘first born’ of all creation; that he existed in the form of God and that he was equal to God.
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