Religion

karen armstrong’s talk in st andrews:)

I went to a talk by Karen Armstrong yesterday and i was really inspired by her. The way she talked about religion was so mature and so powerful. My friend told me to write a summary and I thought maybe i should share it here to.

Ill try and sum it up as best as I can InsyaAllah.

She started off by talking about the definition of God. How Catholic priests and nuns from her childhood used to define God and say that he was a perfect ‘being’. She said that scholars of religions (I can’t rmb who but Ibn Sina included) would be terrified because you can define God. He is beyond our understanding, beyond our very realm of existence. How can we define God who is so omnipresent yet not physically present. Like Aquinas, she says our notion of existence is far too limited to apply to god - God is not a being, but being itself.

She then moves on to talk about Transcendence. We all have a yearning for transcendence. When we feel that we inhabit our humanity more than at other times. She said that people in the UK especially have lost interest in God and so we try to find that feeling of being with God. When you experience some feeling that is out of this world, the feeling when you feel you are indeed experiencing God. She compares this to sitting in a symphony that was so great and majestic but the silence after the performance and before the applause is so powerful, so transcendent. She says people have stopped looking for that feeling in religions so we turn to music, films, art, travel, sports, sex and passion. She talks about how good theology should help you to live in the moment of silence that follows an instrumental, the beat that is pregnant.

Why have people lost interest? We have lost our belief in myth, she says. “We have lost an understanding of what ‘myth’ is….it is now defined as fabrication, this is not myth. Myth is timeless.” Myth was a programme for action. It could put people into a posture, the belief of something. And it is often followed by ritual. “You can’t be a good dancer without actually dancing! Religion is also practical discipline. It must be embodied and enacted, not just a head trip.” She gives the example of Christ asking for commitment when he asks for ‘faith’ - work night and day for the coming of the kindgom of God. She gives the example of the ritual prayer of Muslims. Quran is a call for action for zakah, building a just society etc. All these values have to be put into practice.

So she moves on to question the definition of Belief. What is belief? Is it accepting a set of rule or norms? Or is it really about practicising, giving yourself to the ideology, giving your loyalty and your heart?

She moves on then to talk about compassion. Every religion has an ethic of compassion. Jesus, Muhammad a.s., the Jews all lived in violent societies. The great religions of the world all demanded a main moral: compassion, leaving the ego behind, TRULY understanding the pain of the other man, of the other society. The golden rule of Confucius, “Treat others as you would like to be treated, whatever culture, ideology or belief they hold”. Jesus told us to “Love thy neighbour, love thy enemy”. Muhammad s.a.w. said “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” These values of ‘love’ and ‘respect’, how do we interpret it? We have don’t have to love our neighbours in the traditional sense but we must indeed learn to be loyal to them Protect the other parties best interest even if it goes against yours, leaving your ego behind, being the better man. We must remember of how little we know. “We are such an opinionated omniscient society.”

“If religion has any point today, then it must be about community and living together in harmony and respect.” If the leaders understood the Golden rule, the world wouldn’t be the state it is in today. If the US understood the 9/11 from the muslim pov, so many things could be different. If the fears and anxieties of fundamentalists and extremists are being addressed, truly and sincerely, what kind of world would we be living in today?

We all strive to build a global community that is harmonious and made up of different beliefs. How do we achieve this? If we stick to the Golden Rule, if we use the compassionate voice of religion against the voice of extremism whether in the political sphere or the religious sphere. Compassion is about loving each other even in difference. When we truly realise the pain of others and feel the pain as well, only then will we become god-like.

I took this off of my friend's blog.

Find her: Macaroons On Monday