Daily thoughts day 2 - listen here or text below:
Day 2
Good morning.
This weeks daily thoughts are motivated by the Man Booker prize winning novel “Life of Pi”.
In one part of this book the teenage main character, Pi, manages to simultaneously become a Christian, a Hindu and a Muslim. He happily attends a church, temple and a mosque for a number of months until people start to notice and object to his multi-faith religion. This leads to a showdown involving his parents, a priest, a pandit and an imam. The adults decide that he has to choose one of the three religions, but Pi doesn’t understand - “if people can have more than one different passport why can’t they have more than one religion?” he asks? Pi’s dilemma is perhaps made worse by this part of the novel being set in India at a time when choice of religion could often mean the difference between life or death.
Of course historically the choice of religion was based on geography and family tradition. However today we live in an increasingly globalised and multi-cultural society where people of widely differing religions mix on an every day basis. So is it a valid thing to just become a member of all religions?
I don’t think it is because there is an important difference between respecting people of other religions, and what a person privately believes. The power of each religion is in its ability to provide a coherent picture of the world, providing a framework for ethics and behaviour. If we start to combine traditions we will unavoidably run into conflicts. Of course we should always respect and work with people of other religions, however if someone wants to explore spirituality it is probably best not to create our own religion, but rather choose a tradition and follow the wisdom of history.
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