The trouble with Language
There has been something bothering me for quite some time. What is religion?
It’s something more than just wondering what the word means. It’s that nagging sensation that I’ve never been really tied to anything in my life, so sometimes it comes out as a crisis of faith. Anyway, I have always wondered how other people look at this. I’ve tried to understand how others cope with the real question and most of the time I am sickened with the answer.
To me, it is a question of how or what is God?
If I believe what others have told me, he is known by one name and unless you know that name you cannot be included in the idea of going to heaven. Yet how can we be so sure of ourselves? IF we go by the teachings of the book the whole faith is based from we know that by scripture it cannot be copied in part or placed in words not of the original text. Yet if you are part of the Christian faith I’m fairly sure the book you are reading is not in Aramaic. So the question comes up of how can we be sure that it is the original text? How can we be sure something wasn’t cut out because it wasn’t fit to be translated into a different language?
What we do know is that the Catholics of the middle ages we very intent to keep the bible written in Latin for this reason, yet the one thing we can be sure of is that it wasn’t for the religious piety, otherwise more people would be able to read Aramaic. If anything it was a form of control.
Aside form that I begin to question if the name we know really is the name he is to be known by. This is taking for granted the idea that we were at one point given a name to call him by. If the book we are reading no longer bears the same text it surely no longer bears the same name. Surly we have a close transliteration of it, or had one at one time, yet it will surly not bear the same weight. A name bears meaning with it, even one as common as Smith means that at some point in time a member of your family was a craftsman of some sort. It gives history. Yet we are basing a faith from a culture that still believes that you cannot say or write the name of G-d.
But then we bring ourselves to a corner; to limit a being we absolutely never fully understand we are putting limits to h-m. We are putting h-m within the confines of man.
Now there are some who are willing to kill for the purposes of their religion. Is there room for this kind of arrogance anymore? Since we have to admit that faith is when a person comes to realize that there is a greater spiritual nature out there that we cannot fully understand, how can we then try and argue that we are right in a debate that cannot be won? And in the mean time to Argue that we know the will of G-d is putting ourselves above him in the most arrogant of manners, and at the same time it is going against everything that religion is supposed to stand for, which is the absolute acceptance that there is something greater than ourselves out there.
(I will continue this later, now I have to get back to my homework. But by all means respond and tell me your thoughts or debate mine. I want the open conversation.)