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Compare Islam with the Christian faith
Christianity and Islam differences
Compare Islam with the Christian faith
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The transmission of religion and faith has survived through various different cultures and societies. Religion and faith have both evolved either into more branches or a completely different ideology or thought process. These new creations of branches or new ideologies change the course of thinking and provide new outlooks on life. For instance, baptisms in Christianity mean a “salvation” and rite of passage to follow in the footsteps of God while in the Islamic religion a baptism is closely correlated with a Wudu, which prepares Muslims for worship at any time to Allah. What these examples show are that people strictly follow “obligations” in order to fulfill their religious ideology. Religion, in my opinion, is confined too strictly to regulations and a process that is not externalized to an individual. The conception of faith is more personalized than religious practices with the open mind and “free-lancer” aspects.
When an individual looks up or ponders the word “faith” they find explanations like immense support of God. When I ponder the word “faith” I think of something that supports a purpose either in a negative or positive way. In Western society, the statement “I have faith in you” means a different thing for everybody. My definition of faith does not match anybody else because no person shares the same cognitive set up from one another and everyone has a different way of supporting something to gain a sense of “happiness”. This is where faith can be more personalized with the open mind than with religious practices. For example, if a Christian went to church and tried to enhance beliefs inside the religion to fit personal needs, they would be considered “unholy” or a sinner. The concept of faith allows for the belief ...
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...uits them best like a style of shoe. Maybe the child is uncomfortable with a certain type of shoe while he is comfortable in another. Faith and free lancing is about the comfort of an individual without forcing them to be brain washed into the beliefs to live life through the religious guidelines. The free lancing aspect shows that faith is more personalized than religious practices.
As a famous band once said, “Any way you want it, that’s the way you need it”. This lyric should be the case towards people when it comes to implementing faith in their lives. Faith provides a personalization through free-lancing and the open mind aspect to go through life discovering happiness. Religious practices bond you to a set of beliefs and standards that affect the whole aspect of people’s lives when people should make their own decisions on what they think is right and wrong.
Finding a way in life can be difficult. Following that way can be even more difficult, especially when it goes against someone's origin. In Acts of Faith, Eboo Patel tells his story of what it was like to struggle through finding himself. Patel asks the question of "How can I create a society of religious pluralism?" throughout the book, and raises implications about what our children are being taught in different societies throughout the world.
The fourth component of faith is that we need to understand that faith can act as fear, fascination, or both of these qualities at the same time. The fifth component of faith is that doubt is a major product that will always exist with faith. The last component of faith is that we need a community in order to have a “language of faith”. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story
Our faith must go beyond our intellectual aspect that it will transcend to the sphere of the infinite. Faith must not come from others, it must be personal, and it must not come from the teaching of the priest or the church dogmas, it must come from our deep personal relationship with God, which is Absolute, Perfect, Omnipresent, etc. And in the teleological suspension of the ethical or to be in the religious stage, one must embrace first the ethical life which is universal and what usually the society follows and to transcend to the realm of faith, which is necessary to believe in the
Religion, which is meant to enhance the faith of it followers, has done the opposite. The practices of religion have become overwhelmingly factual that the faith component of religion has vanished. In order to be a genuine beliver one must comprise an authentic faith. Both religious leaders and followers must realize that their religion is not factual, but sustained through faith. The key to the gates of heaven is faith, not facts.
the power of faith are developed and can be used to show the problems in today’s culture.
In my opinion Paul Tillich makes the most valid point regarding the nature of religious beliefs as defined by him in “What faith is?” Religious beliefs have faith as its underlying principle. Tillich defines faith as “the state of being ultimately concerned and that the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern” (Tillich1). Man has many concerns which encompass his day to day survival, however; unlike other creatures his concerns include matters that are social, political and spiritual in nature. Man’s quest to find answers to these concerns that transcend matters of day to day physical existence is addressed in the realm of spirituality which Tillich and other Theologians define as faith.
The definition of faith is, as a strong belief or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. The fact that someone has faith doesn’t mean that they won’t face difficult circumstances, such as renunciation, the loss of a loved one, or deception; rather they trust in their god or gods to carry them through their troubling circumstances to the other side. The Great Aten, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Hebrew Bible all includes, aspects of faith; including creation, love, and the loss of a life.
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
Michael Paul Gallagher, Frederick Nietzsch and Soren Kierkegaard all have different views on faith and its place in people’s lives. Each of these publishers express their view on how faith should be either kept alive or forgotten about or how faith is becoming somewhat blocked from our lives. Gallagher speaks of the four forms of cultural unbelief “religious anaemia, secular marginilisation, anchorless spirituality and cultural desolation”. Here Gallagher identifies the causes of why faith has become less important in people’s lives due to a lack of change or boredom. Unlike Gallagher who believes faith should still view a dominant culture in the Christian life, Frederick Nietzsch I believe expresses how faith blocks people from the truth
“Faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase”- Martin Luther King Jr. So what exactly is faith? According to the first definition of the Merriam- Webster dictionary, faith is allegiance to duty or a person: loyalty. And yet another definition from the same dictionary says, belief and trust in, and loyalty to God. See, the word faith can have so many different meanings and uses, making it hard to have one distinct definition, so no wonder the Catholic Church and Luther had different views on faith. When talking of the word faith, it really just depends on your own personal definition of the word.
Neil Shenvi has a good analysis on the significance of faith as he writes “faith is the ability to hold on to beliefs that we know not to be true even when we are tempted to abandon them.” This concept is essential as when you fall under the doubt of the hermeneutic of suspicion. Lastly, and arguably most important is the segment of Love. As Pastor Rick Warren states “It could be said the reason you’re alive is that God created you as an object of his love. God made you so he could love you, and so that you could love him.”
In my life, I have come across different religions such as Christianity and Judaism. I grew up in a Christian household and I have come across Judaism with family friends and even my own family. I have attended Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s for my family friends and I got to see a bit of Jewish culture and tradition which I greatly appreciated that I could be a part of. Along with experiencing Judaism, my aunt converted from Christianity to Judaism when she married my uncle. I got to see a conversion of religions which was very cool and fascinating. I have been guided in the right direction in regards to my faith by my parents, my youth leader and my grandmother. I have been open to learning about other religions and I accept other religions.
Throughout history faith and reason have been connected to each other for centuries. Without reason in faith the understanding diminishes and leads to a lack of faith or guessing and uncertainty. Many great men and women from ancient times have studied the relationship between faith and reason and have tried to connect them. Faith and reason are of the most importance when it comes to understanding religion and it’s meaning. Faith can be best defined, in context, as a view or position that a particular argument is not able to invoke reason.
How do we define religion? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of religion is as follows: “the belief in a god or in a group of gods, an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods, or an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group” (Merriam-Webster.) My personal definition of religion is that it is a set of beliefs and practices that generally pertain to the worship of one or more than one spiritual being or representation of a spiritual power. Religion can be a personal belief or an organization or group of people who have similar beliefs and values. There are many different types of religions in the world and have been since the beginning of mankind.
While faith is something that is not let go of easily, some would say that faith is not something that can always be relied on. Sometimes it could depend on what situation needs more faith, but it is sometimes true that even with faith, things might not turn out the way we want them to no ma...