If I am Right...

https://weheartit.com/entry/60586323

     There is a thing about religion that I have never really resolved. Actually, it is about all the religions and their seeming inability to get along.
     Sure, we have our World Council of Churches and who knows how many other high and low level meetings of leaders of this sect and that religion, this branch and that synod, and so forth. There are divisions within what seems like the same religion, e.g. Protestants and Catholics, Sunnis and Shia, Jews and, sadly, just about everyone else.
     I grew up with division. The Armenians are a small, but I am required to add, proud and enterprising, people. We will proudly tell you that we are the first Christian nation. We are a people of devotion and dedication to our sacred church and its rites and sacraments. But, we have the equivalent of two popes though we call them Catholicos and that is but one of the things that divides us.     Don’t get me wrong. Religions and faith are so very important. They help us answer the questions that have no empirical answers. This biggest of these questions is “What happens when we die?” Do we just die and basically cease to exist? Aesthetics would say “yep!.” Agnostics would say “can’t really tell, now can we?” These answers are OK for atheists and agnostics, but they leave so many more people view this as a hopeless perspective. It makes them uneasy and unsettled. Most of us want someone to tell us that, “death is only the end of this life, your essence will live on.” Maybe we will be reincarnated, over and over, until we get it right. Maybe if we lived a good exemplary life we will go to Heaven, Nirvana, or Valhalla. In essence, the vast majority of the world’s religions assure us of an afterlife of some sort. This is important stuff. We want to know. We need to know. We need to believe and have faith in the answer to this question. Religions help us answer this question. They are good, they are necessary, and everyone has faith in the beliefs, teachings, and writings that fortify this faith.
     Herein lies the rub. We do believe, truly we do. We believe so hard and have so much faith that for so many of us when confronted with a person with a different set of beliefs we are confused and start thinking, “We can’t both be right.” The next thoughts are, “For my belief system to be right, yours has to be wrong. For what I believe to be true means that your, different beliefs are false.” It often comes down to just that. If what I believe is the word of God and what you believe isn’t. It can easily evolve to “What I believe is the word of God and what you believe is evil… and thus you are evil.”
     Of course, this doesn’t universally apply. People are capable of seeing similarities as much as they can see differences. But, in the history of the world, rulers have often played to these kinds of differences to motivate the populace to do what they want from fighting wars to ridding a country of a particular ethnic or religious group. Yes, the rulers are motivated by economic and political gain and the use of these differences are used to get the people to do their bidding. This is not just a historical thing, it happens in our world today.
     Also, I know that theologians and biblical scholars have well thought out theories, commentaries, and commentaries on other commentaries that clears all this up using rhetoric, languages, and references that laymen have no hope of understanding. In my naïveté  I almost think they make things unnecessarily complicated and erudite.
     These differences are in base beliefs. No amount of reasoning or preaching will easily sway someone who fundamentally believes differently.