WHAT
IS RELIGION?
“Religion” is a way of life. Dictionaries define it as “the belief in
the existence of a god or gods, and the activities that are connected with the
worship of them.
There are currently five big religions ----Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.
All religions provide their respective frameworks for understanding life, death,
universe and the ways of enjoying blissful existence.
By and large, religions do not change. They preach eternal
values. The followers of different religions are advised to respect each other’s
faith. All of them believe that there is one supreme God who is the creator of
this world.
Religions also have their histories of differences and
conflicts which are painful. Peaceful co-existence is the only remedy to forget
them. It is always better to overlook the past conflicts and find out current
ways of unanimity and harmony.
Always act co-operatively in the living present. Let the past
bury its dead.
Poets and preachers who believe “All Men Are
Brothers” and “No Men Are Foreign, No Lands Strange” are the best worshippers of
God. They are immortal in the pages of world history.
The American lawyer and statesman Daniel
Webster (1782-1852) said: Political and professional fame cannot last forever,
but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for
eternity.
Religion, therefore, is a necessary, an indispensable element
in any great human character. There is no living without it.
Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and
holds him to His throne. If that is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless
atom in the universe, its proper attraction all gone, its destiny thwarted, and
its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation and death.
Webster believed: A
man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe in so
terse but terrific a manner, as “living without hope and without God in the
world.
Such a man, said he, is out of his proper being, out of the
circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away,
far, far away from the purpose of his creation.
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G.R.Kanwal
18 March 2025
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