Do all Religions Disagree and have Hypocrites?

This Monday post is brought to you by ... oh my goodness i'm about to open a can that should stay closed ... my Gram always told me, "Never talk about two things, religion and politics." I have spent most of my life talking exclusively about those two things and have gotten nothing out of it other than a reputation as a person that you'd probably rather not talk to. But here we go. I got a question two posts ago about wether or not other religions have differing opinions and do they in fact differ to the extreme that people who consider themselves of that religion practice and preach the anthesis of the actual religion (i.e.. Pat Robertson). So i'm going to try to dissect the worlds major religious traditions and find out if they are a hypocritical as Christianity.


1. Step One: What are the major religions of the world? I figured i knew but i looked it up anyway. Turns out i was wrong. My list was; Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Buddhism and whatever it is they do in Japan. It just so happens that there is a religion called Sikhism that has many more followers than Judaism, the largest religion in the world may be tribal idol worship, there are over a billion Atheists and i'm still not exactly sure what they do in Japan. In order to avoid making this a book on comparative religious studies, i'm not even going to find out what Sikhism and the Japanese thing are, i assure you this is not from prejudice but from sheer laziness on my part. So the very incorrect and unofficial list are Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hindu.

Step Two: Christians who go against the teachings of Christ and reach positions of prominence. There are too many to even list. I may know this because i live where they live or i may know this because there are countless hucksters that prey on the faith of Christians. Usually it seems to revolve around "send me lots of money and Jesus will love you more". The Catholic church really started this idea in the early middle ages and it is now the largest land owner in the world and it has its own country (well done there). The protestant sects have picked up on the idea in the TV age and started with "send me money" and have evolved into a new idea where they preach a message that has nothing to do with Jesus and get you to like them for free and then get famous and sell books to people who are not real followers of the Christian teachings but can read a watered down, "Christ less", bastardized version of the prosperity gospel concept and feel good about themselves because the TV preacher told them that God loves them and wants them to be rich. The only one getting rich in this scenario is the guy writing the books (yes, you Joel Osteen) and there is no Jesus so that's kinda bad. Also worth mentioning is Pat Robertson and the doomsday brigade who believe in a god who hates everyone and makes things happen to kill them and the end of the world is always tomorrow and again there is no Jesus in any of that, so that is also bad.

Lots of Christian sects disagree about stuff but still believe in the message and divinity of Christ so for the sake of simplicity we'll say that their differences are really unimportant. I know that you're going to say that they've been killing each other for a thousand years over those "unimportant differences" and i'm going to argue that in most cases someone was using differences that were unimportant to achieve political gains and therefore do not count. So, check the Christian box for having people who preach against the core beliefs of the religion and still become prominent within the religion. But we knew that and knowing it was the catalyst of this discussion.

Step Three: Jews who preach against their core beliefs and rise to prominence. Although i know many Jewish people and have been to more bot/batmitvas that i have confirmation parties, the Jews that i know aren't devout and don't talk about religion and are really no help to me on this, also working against me here is the fact that the Jewish faith doesn't lend itself to preaching much of anything to us gentiles and so there's not a ton of examples. So here's the best i could do without doing any actual work; a long time ago there were two main sects of Judaism that co-existed and did not agree, the Sadducees and the Pharacies. One believed only in the written Word of God and the other believed in that and also the Holy oral tradition of the Jewish people. One was more political and the other more spiritual. Today there are many sects of Judaism; Orthodox, Conservative, Progressive, Humanistic and Messianic. The first three are similar but do differ in the interpretation of the rules of personal conduct (dress, diet, holy day observance, etc) The second two are exactly what we were looking for. The Humanistic Jews don't believe in God ... which is odd since the entire concept of Judaism revolves around being the chosen people of God, and if He does not exist they would be the chosen people of nothing and their entire history would be a bunch of persecution followed by deliverance by ... nobody. The Messianic Jews are equally at odds with their religion because they believe that Jesus was in fact the messiah (savior, Son of God, Christ) but don't profess to be Christians. This does not seem to fit together because the Jews are waiting for the coming messiah and if he was already here 2000 years ago the entire faith would have to be redefined. So although i have not researched enough to find examples of people who preach these concepts, they do exist and are at odds with the faith that they claim to be part of. And with that i'm checking the Jew's box too, even if their contradictors aren't as loud or dishonestly wealthy.

Step Four: Muslims who go against the teachings of Mohammed and reach positions of prominence. I did a bunch of research on this and i was going to tell you all about the discord within Islam and then it hit me. Mohammed promoted peace and telling teenagers to blow them selves up and kill innocent "infidels" is in direct conflict with everything Islam. I don't know for sure but i'm pretty sure that forming a theocratic regime and killing the citizens of that country for disagreeing with the iron-fisted government ruled by Islamic clerics is not exactly text book Koran following either. So, we check the Islam box twice, once for hypocrites and once for stupid violence.

Step Five: Hindu's who go against the teachings of ... um ... Hinduism. For starters they are trying to eradicate the caste system which is a basic tenet of their faith where by certain people are excluded from society because they behaved poorly in their past life and are also pacified with the "knowledge" that if they are really good at being completely excluded from everything (eating?) next time around things will be better, they might get to be a cow, or a person with food. There are four major sects of Hinduism but they are not very fun, in fact, "there is a healthy cross-pollination of ideas and logical debate that serves to refine each school's philosophy. It is not uncommon, or disallowed, for an individual to follow one school but take the point of view of another school for a certain issue." And we combine with that very un-religious cooperation and sanity with the fact that their teachings are not at all cohesive and barely coherent as a single faith ( i do know that Ganesha is an elephant and that Krishna is the super cool uber-god) and someone is not going to get their box checked. Way to go Hindus, you ruined our perfect streak of hypocrisy! (side note: when Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the first atomic bomb test he quoted the Bagavagita which is a sacred Hindu text "I am become death, the maker and destroyer of worlds" there is no evidence of it, but i think he let out an evil cackle after saying it.)

Step Six: Buddhists. Deep breath, here we go. I think that Buddhism is the most misunderstood religion in the world and we've seen glimpses of that and brushed them aside. The picture is of the quiet little Asian man living in a monastery wearing an orange robe and chanting and being peaceful and stuff ... and the Dali Lama who is cool because he laughs funny and is friends with Richard Gere. Anyway, try to justify that whole thing with the pictures you've seen of the monks in Vietnam lighting themselves on fire in the streets in protest of war. Peaceful solitude and self immolation do not go together, there is no passion in peaceful solitude and nothing in the world takes more passion then pouring gasoline on yourself and lighting a match to make a statement. So are there people going against the teachings of Buddha? What did he teach? Basically the eight fold path which is: 1. viewing reality as it is, not just as it appears to be. 2. intention of renunciation, freedom and harmlessness. 3. ethics or morality, or abstention from unwholesome deeds. 4. speaking in a truthful and non-hurtful way 5. acting in a non-harmful way 6. a non-harmful livelihood 7. mental discipline required to develop mastery over one’s own mind. This is done through the practice of various contemplative and meditative practices 8. making an effort to improve 9. awareness to see things for what they are with clear consciousness, being aware of the present reality within oneself, without any craving or aversion 10. correct meditation or concentration, explained as the first four jhāanash. Now ... doesn't that make sense, i know, it's complicated ... for example how can an 8 fold path have 10 steps? I don't know. But the Buddhists get a check as well due to the one and only Dorje Shugden. "Who?", you ask. He is a living Buddhist deity, reincarnated from some Lama guy and worshiped in Tibet as the guardian angel of Dharma ... the Dali Lama used to like him and in 1996 changed his mind ... now he does not like him, in fact the Dalai Lama stated during Buddhist Tantric initiation that Shugden was 'an evil spirit' whose actions were detrimental to the 'cause of Tibet'. The Dalai Lama concluded that henceforth he would not give Tantric initiation to worshipers of Shugden, since "the unbridgeable divergence of their respective positions would inevitably undermine the sacred guru-student relationship, and thus compromise his role as a teacher (and by extension his health)." Check mark for you Buddhism!

So i hope that clears all that up and it all makes sense now, only the Hindus don't get a check and that's only because their entire religion seems to be a "do what you want, worship who you want" kind of thing, that don't have a strong opinion on much except that they hate Pakistan. Happy Monday!