Chasing the Wind

Coffeeswirls has a very nice article about faith and how it works. From my limited understanding of other major religions, he’s done a good job of capturing how each deals with faith:

• Buddhism: Ignorance is the roadblock to salvation. Ignorance is found in your belief that you and the world actually exist. If we stop believing this, we attain nothingness (nirvana: the blowing out) and break out of the cycle. Once you have achieved this state of mind, you cease to be encumbered by the belief that you exist. In other words, “Game Over.”
• Hinduism: The goal is to escape the endless cycle of birth death and rebirth through the dissolving of all personality into the oneness of the impersonal energy force, which is god (not unlike the Force from Star Wars) through practicing the four kinds of Yoga. Hinduism is a pantheistic religion, with the end goal of becoming a part of the flow of… the Force, I guess. So in “Episode IV: A New Hope” we can assume that Ben Kenobi reached the goal at the end of Hinduism… I mean the Force.
• Islam: Salvation comes from the actions and attitudes of us as individuals. We will account to Allah and our deeds will be weighed at the end. The measuring of deeds is not wholly different from the accounting of the deeds of those who are apart from Christ at the final judgment as shown in the Bible. The difference is, there is no grace. It is completely a belief system that is driven by the works of the Muslim.
• Christianity: God created us in His image, that we may reflect His glory upon all of creation. We tainted our reflective essence intended by God when we, through Adam, sinned against God. The penalty is a death that is both physical and spiritual. God came to Earth in human form to pay the penalty for our sins. Salvation comes from believing this and accepting this. Salvation is a free gift from God and there are no works we can accomplish on our own to restore our reflection of God’s glory upon the world.

When I hear somebody say something like “all religions are the same,” or “we all believe in the same god,” I cannot understand how one could think this. The matters of faith and salvation are entirely different from one religion to another.

I was thinking thoughts like this recently when I read a recent interview with Jim Carrey. Carrey is one of those actors you either like or dislike, but I like his range of acting. I liked Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar, The Mask, and recently a more serious side in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but did not care for the silliness of the Pet Detective series. Carrey has had a problem with mental ups and downs, was on Prozac for a long time. His interview says he’s become a lot more spiritual; when I first heard him on the news, they said he had built a garden where he could be close to God. I was thinking, “Cool, Jim Carrey’s a born-again Christian.” Then I got into the details:

Is he a Buddhist? “Jesus. I’m a Buddhist, I’m a Muslim, I’m a Christian. I’m whatever you want me to be,” says Carrey. “It all comes down to the same thing. … You are either in a loving place, or you are in an unloving place. If you are with me right now, you cannot be unhappy. It’s not possible, just try.”

Ahh… well, ok, he took a left hand turn somewhere and he’s paving his own road. But I don’t think he has studied what he professes to believe. You cannot be all those things and follow Jesus, too.