Recently a friend and I had a discussion about good people who can’t seem to make up their mind as to which faith they are going to choose.
Names that immediately come to mind include hip-hop artist Common, who is at a crossroads between Christianity and Islam, and Jermaine Jackson, who after years of straying from his family’s Jehovah’s Witness es faith finally chose Islam.
Other celebrities, such as musician Isaac Hayes (who discovered Scientology after a long phase of soul searching), singer Erykah Badu and Earth, Wind and Fire leader Maurice White have adopted pagan practices or simply promoted a general belief that all religions serve the same god.
Some individuals view choosing a religion as a practice similar to eating at a buffet restaurant like Golden Corral or Ryan’s. For these well-meaning people selecting a god and a set of spiritual beliefs is like selecting food at a buffet dinner where you take a sample of one religion and then combine it with the sample of another.
It’s as if the person’s saying, “Let me have a cut of Christianity, a slice of Islam, a little Judaism and a slab of Buddhism. Oh and don’t forget to sprinkle that with some Hinduism, Egyptology and Wicca.”
Often the result of this practice is unhappiness and lack of fulfillment with a homemade “superfaith” that was supposed to combine the best aspects of several religions. The person, after becoming tired of looking at only one faith, starts out trying to weed out what they see as man’s faulty contributions to religion, only to discover that their “superfaith: is just a mass of unrelated, contradictory beliefs.
How can this be prevented?
Well, the sacred texts of virtually all religions encourage us to either believe everything a particular faith has to say or leave it alone. If we want to give a particular faith its due respect, we’re not supposed to say we endorse it then arrogantly nitpick what we won’t accept about it.
In Christianity, for example, prospective believers are encouraged to remain firm in their convictions. In Joshua 23:14-15, the prophet informs the Israelites that God wants them to serve him faithfully and get rid of the pagan gods.
“If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,” Joshua said to the Israelites, some of whom wanted to keep on receiving God’s blessings while holding on to pagan idols.
Like a loved one rightly asking for loyalty and fidelity, God through his son Jesus Christ, is asking us to simply make a choice. Scriptures indicate that God gives us free will. While he would love nothing more than to see us choose a relationship with him, he would appreciate honesty (instead of wavering) if we are not ready to accept him.
I’m sure Muhammad, Buddha, Brahma and Vishnu would also appreciate solid commitments.
Most religions have very distinct beliefs, and blending them only leads to confusion and instability for the individual. As the Apostle James wrote, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
Although spoken in purely political terms, even the famous words of Abraham Lincoln can also be applied in this context: “A house divided will not stand. Either it will become all one thing or another.
I don’t know about you but I would go crazy trying to figure out how to combine the principles of salvation (the acceptance of Christ as Savior), Muhammad as the messenger of Allah (Islam) and the path to Nirvana (Buddhism.)
Sure it’s not the end of the world if members of one faith adopt the administrative or non-spiritual cultural practices of another religion. More Christian churches are teaching the art of meditation, which has traditionally been associated with Eastern religions (although some Catholic and Jewish groups have long used meditation in their worship.)
In order to be more logistically viable in their outreach efforts, some Christian leaders are adopting the strong organizational abilities of Muslim groups such as the Nation of Islam. Sikhism has continued to thrive with its fusion of Islamic and Hindu social philosophies.
However, it is prudent to avoid the actual blending of core spiritual beliefs. Not only does that keep us from going insane, it also shows respect to the faiths that we claim to cherish.
