Taste and see that The Lord is good, really, really good

I'm sorry Shashi, but although I am quite familiar with this quote, I have no idea how it relates to my question.

Religions, as a rule, are one sided.

1. This is because they describe God and the means of attaining Him/Her/It from where they are, from their geographical location. From their perch, their view makes an angle with the Truth and this refracted truth is known as that religion. If the ray were straight and not refracted according to local customs and beliefs, their interpretation would be universal. But this is never so. ALL religions fail to be universal or catholic, because they interpret God according to their location in the world. So ALL religions fall short of the Truth/God in this regard. The Vedas declare that the glass bowl of Truth broke and many shards of Glass emerged, each claiming itself to be THE Truth, while being only PART of the Truth. So the Vedas go on to say that "What you ACCEPT to be the Truth and what you REJECT as the Truth, put TOGETHER, IS the Truth." So ALL religions are fragments of the same Truth claiming to be THE Truth. Therefore the Seers say " The Truth is One, the Wise call it by many names" or "There are many paths to the same Truth". So all religions are DESCRIPTIONS of the one Truth , but NOT the Truth.

2. But what is THE Truth? There cannot be many centers to a circle, only one exists, even if all claim to be the center.

There is only ONE sun, and there is no American sun, or an Arabian sun. Or a Buddhist God or an Islamic God. In reality, there are no religions. Christ did not create Christianity. Many years after his death, his followers did. Same with all religions of the world. No so-called religion founder created any religion. They instructed their friends and followers to lead life in a particular manner, follow his teachings, to reach God/Truth. "I have found the Truth, and you can too".But after their passing, they were deified, huge statues and institutions created in their name, wars fought and religions were established. The universal teachings of love and forgiveness were discarded and the founder's personality concentrated upon, because practicing is difficult than preaching.

3. But when all religions are studied inclusively and intuitively by the wise, trying to find commonalities instead of analyzing the differences, similar patterns begin to emerge, the differences, simply owing their origin to differences in location(space) and time, all revolving around a central Truth and ways of attaining the supreme goal, fall away to reveal the center.

4. The common basic theme of all religions is a description of the Creator(Spirit), the Creation(Matter) and the path to be followed by one to return to the Creator. They go on to give descriptions of the anatomy of the human body(Tree, Serpent, Garden..) to show that it is akin to the anatomy of the Universe and then declare that the path of return to God is superimposing the anatomy of the human on the anatomy of the universe to finally become One. This is achieved by stilling the mind from the influence of the external world perceived by the senses and then go deep within oneself. Thus shutting out the external world, the internal world is explored to find the Soul within Oneself, the Center,and become One. The separative individual identity of "I" ness disappears to become "One"ness. This practice is known as meditation in Yoga. Jesus practiced it, so did John the Baptist, Krishna, Buddha, all yogis... But they realized that there is no "One Size Fits All". So different ways were prescribed to suit the worker, the priest, the man of the world....the paths of Service, Work, Love, Knowledge, Devotion, Singing/Chanting....among many to suit the many temperaments of men. "Different Strokes for different Folks".This is the place of Religions of the world. All religions, even if they are distorted from the Central Truth, are only basic preparatory schools for later higher learning according to their own space and time. They prescribe to men what to do, and what not to do, basic hygiene, in body and mind... The novice students here are still evolving and their world appears to be the Center, thus giving rise to their One-sided picture(angle) of God. But for those who have evolved higher in Consciousness, and risen above space and time, and realized that all paths lead to the same Truth, the higher methods of meditation are prescribed, where space and time disappear. Thus religions are a necessary evil on the path to truth. This 'evil' is necessary, just like the eggshell protects the chick until it hatches, and is then discarded.

Hope this helps.

I've never personally met any Christian (or believer in any God) who believed something so fluffy that they would be comfortable with the way she has summarized their beliefs. There may be people who talk as if God is only love and their conception of God is so one-sided that they cannot bear the thought that their own Bible provides a narrative where God slaughters children (like Pharaoh's first born son and the first born sons of most Egyptians) or commands his people to slaughter men, women, children, and infants of another people in order to completely wipe out an entire culture or ethnic group (i.e. genocide). I can agree there are many Christians who have a hard time reconciling their view of God with the Old Testament.

Even still, Russell's comment (as best I can tell) commits the stereotype fallacy. It's similar to saying "In America people are fake. If Americans are honest at all, they are only honest about petty things that won't raise any eyebrows or force them into any serious introspection." There may be some out there that roughly fit such a generic (and in the case of Russell's comment - cheeky) description, yet it would be unfair and logically fallacious to assume that such a characteristic is an accurate description of the entire group in reference.

When you are a respected academician you should strive for representing the views of others in words they would recognize as accurately representing themselves, not in pejorative rhetoric designed to make their views look absurd. And furthermore academicians should strive to give representation to the most intellectually viable expressions of whatever viewpoint they are criticizing - not just cherry pick the most vulnerable proponents of a viewpoint to get in a cheap shot.

For these reasons (and more I won't go into right now) Russell's comment doesn't meet the standards of fair play I would expect from people in higher education.

God of candy is heretical god of modern humanity. The love of God teaches humanity to walk in tandem with His principles and guidelines. Unfortunately humanity has decided to construct their god and use remote to control him from earth. What separates humanity from real God is that tendency in human to always go for evil instead of good work. Those who preach prosperity and love of God, do they care to know whether they are pleasing to God they call the God of love. This is not how Paul and his colleagues presented God. God demands sanctity from humanity. That God who does not require righteousness and good work from humanity is "the god of candy" and should not be allowed to participate in the affairs of humanity. It is heretical to say that God does not demand righteousness and holiness from those that participate in worship.

The only way we have to show the love of God is to do that which is right in his sight.; that is to reciprocate his love. Remember the greatest commandment: "love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul and your spirit and love your neighbour as you love yourself"

Do christians have to accept all the (man-made) descriptions of God as they are presented in the Old Testament? Jesus came to fulfill the Law (Mt 5, 17-20) - there are of course different descriptions of God within the Gospel too, but the Father revealed by Christ is love (1 Jn 4,16). The trnintarian God of christianism is essentially relation, and their intra-trinatrian relation is love.

So, at least, Mary Russel got that right. What it implies to believe in this God has been very well explained by Godwin Etukumana (see supra) - though I personally refuse to believe that man has a natural tendancy to"always go for evil". This of course is another topic (which has been debated on from the very early stages of christianity (think of Augustine and Pelagius)!

To me religion has not caste,& creed .Every religion throu power of prayer moves towards the God.To me God is only one ,method of religion & prayer differs from the cultural atmosphere of upbringing from the family tied .Power of prayer with the concentration & firm faith in belief always bring the right path & desired result .As such the question of one sided picture does not arise .

Prayer rest with the mind & with concentration & quiteness will certainly avoid Tension -Worries & with this we can concentrate & also communicate within us .

I think Walter Breuggemann answered this question the best in his book on the Psalms :-

"Basically, the horizon of archetypes and repetition cannot be transcended with impunity unless we accept a philosophy of freedom that does not exclude God. And indeed this proved to be true when the horizon of archetypes and repetitions was transcended, for the first time, by Judeo-Christianism, which introduced a new category into religious experience, the category of faith."

Walter Brueggemann, "Impossibility" and Epistemology, ch.9 in The Psalms and the Life of the Church (ed.P.D.Miller; 1995, Fortress, Minneapolis), reprinted from Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 94 (1979) 615-634 (quoting Mircea Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Returns, Routledge Kegan Paul, London, 1955, pp.160-162) 

"Religion" is naturally "archetypal":  it is a status quo sort of thing.  People have "religion" to be comforted,  not to be disturbed.  So of course,  it is natural for it to: "paint an unrealistic and one-sided picture of relationship with God".  In this sense,  neither Judaism nor Christianity are, properly speaking,  "religions":  so for example,  Pompey famously in 63BC looked in the Holy of Holies and seeing no images concluded that the Jews were atheists;  and Christians were similarly prosecuted as atheists in the first century.  It is interesting that Socrates also was condemned for atheism.

The Psalms,  used by both Jews and Christians,  illustrate this point perfectly.  Kierkegaard was the first modern "existentialist" (to use Jasper's term),  but his point was to underline the existentialism of Abraham (I refer here to "Fear and Trembling" - "Frygt og Bæven", 1843).  But the psalmists were explicit and systematic existentialists.  Nothing very cosy about them!  It is ironic that Shashi Joyce Soans,  the first commenter on this thread,  in not answering the question quoted Psalm 34:8!  But "tasting" the Lord is usually very disturbing (see the story of the Great Lady of Shunem, 2 Kings 4);  also, having your eyes opened can end up being very uncomfortable (see John 9).