Monday, August 6

Can you be a Jew and Christian at the same time? or a Christian and Muslim at the same time?

A curious question indeed. Recently, two instances of this rather rare occurence came to mind. The first one was from USA where a woman priest in Seattle calls herself as both Muslim and Christian. The second one was from France where Cardinal Lustiger admitted that he is perfectly happy to be a Jew and Christian at the same time!. While many were quite accepting of this duality, very many people got very upset about it. Apparently, you cannot be both, you can only be one. And the objections were from Christians, Jews and Muslims.

I personally find this very interesting specially given my upbringing. My grandmother's prayer room had pictures of both the Kaaba and Vatican, it had an icon of Jesus Christ. Hinduism allows that, you can even be an atheist and be a Hindu. That is not to say that there are issues between religions or sects, but its perfectly fine to worship other saints and religions. Which is the reason why you have so many Hindu's worshipping at Muslim saint shrines and Muslims worshipping at the Hindu temples, this is extended to the Churches, Gurdwara's and Jain temples, not to mention the Buddhist shrines (which are a bit rare).

I am not a theologian but I find this possessiveness about religions and their respective Gods so strange. We ARE talking about GOD here, my friends, if somebody wants to worship two Gods, or the same God in 2 different ways, what exactly is the issue? That God will mind? That you mind the person worshipping YOUR God in a different manner? But most importantly, why cant you mind your own business? that is his/her business with God, nothing to do with you. So butt out!

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