Random study of alternate faiths.

[HumbleThinker]

I'm really searching for your opinion here actually do you think the study of other faiths is a negative impact of your own faith?

I have found faith what two years ago and this was due to searching for truth. However I stumbled across a relatives book shelf at Christmas lunch yesterday and there was almost a religious shelf with all three holy books and more. In your own opinion Is this not a negative impact on your own faith?

Not at all. Despite what a small minority of some I've encountered have warned (not speaking of here) , my faith has only been enhanced by the study of other faiths. I've read at least one major work/scripture (some faiths don't have "scripture" in the strictest sense or at least in the same sense as us) for most of the major faiths. I couldn't get through the Quaran, though, due to the massive amounts of repetition and it seems like the longest book is first which makes entry difficult. Speaking in purely objective terms, learning itself is never a bad thing as everything is part of God's Creation. From a subjective point. my faith has been enhanced by exploring different perspectives through which to view my own faith and relationship with God.

You may be interested in looking up information on Thomas Merton who actually used Buddhist ideas to rediscover a very spiritual discipline that had all but been forgotten (the meditative techniques of the Desert Fathers) that, IIRC, revitalized his faith. Hopefully I got the details right here as I'm just running off of memory.

 

I would be very careful what you feed your spirit and mind.  Thomas Merton was a Christian mystic.

Yes. And?

And make sure all your electrical appliances are up to code.

If you are wanting me to derive something from the fact that he is a Christian mystic, then I'm afraid you are going to have to be more blunt for me to grasp it.

 

 

Thomas Merton believed and promoted things that are not of God. He was into the occult and alternative religions. He regularly practiced various buddhist acts in order to attain a "connection" to God. All of this is against what the Lord tells us Christians should do and believe.

 

Merton was a Roman Catholic Trappist monk and a anti-war peace activist during the Vietnam war. He was a prolific writer who coined the term "centering prayer" to describe the style of mind-emptying meditation that seeks to empty oneself and lose oneself into the void he interchangeably calls "the life of the spirit" and Nirvana. He held to the belief that all religions had the same basic truth and Christianity could not lay claim to the whole counsel of God. This put him on shaky ground in his own religion that professes to be the "one true church."

 

(snip)

 

Merton believed that the Sufi, Zen, and Vedanta monks all shared in the same light as he did 

 

Merton actually believed that these men who worshiped false gods were given some great wisdom by God and that Pentecost is a holy day to celebrate a feast of wisdom given to all men irregardless of what God one puts faith in.

 

 

 

The whole article, and its just one of many on the internet that show the false beliefs of merton, cites the letters and publications of merton in which he claims these heretical views.

 

http://www.apostasyalert.org/Merton.htm

In what way are you using the word occult here and in what way does it apply to Merton? And he did not coin the term centering prayer (which is a pretty generic phrase in and of itself) nor did he invent the practice. In the Christian tradition, it goes back to somewhere around the 4th century with the Desert Fathers. And your post seems to be conflating a lot of things. The prayer technique that you are probably thinking of is called hesychasm, and from my limited understanding of it involves attempting to shut down the senses to attempt a spiritual union with God or, probably more accurately, some divine aspect of God. The retirement of the senses would probably be the best use of your word "void" here.

As far as Nirvana, Merton had no interest in the doctrines of other faiths, in this case Buddhism. As far as I've seen. he would speak of Nirvana as a Buddhist doctrine and usually for the purpose of trying to find common ground in Christian traditions or philosophies in order to have a dialogue. But he is quick to point out the differences, such as that Nirvana is no a union with anything whereas the Christian is seeking a union with the divine in one respect or another even if they are not as mystically bent as he is.

At the risk of oversimplifying here, Merton was essentially interested later in his life in the Eastern concept of selflessness and emptiness in contrast with the very entrenched Western idea of a permanent self/I and the "thatness" of everything. His approach to paralleling particularly Zen and certain strains of Christian thought evolved a lot, so there's nothing particularly monolithic about his treatment of either throughout any long stretch of time.

Your post seems to simply be lumping him in with New Age and Emergent stuff, which is at best superficially true from my perspective. A big part of New Age from my experience is an oversimplification and outright butchery of Buddhism that came about with late 19th and early 20th century misunderstandings of Buddhism derived from scant texts. Merton speaks out against this multiple times even in his own treatment as I stated earlier. And as I said earlier, Merton was not looking for any doctrine in other faiths but practice that could fill the spiritual void that he found the Western tradition sorely lacked because of its very object-oriented philosophy. Put another way, Merton seemed to feel that the Western tradition was more about doctrine and conceptions of God than a personal relationship with Him and knowing Him directly. I've experienced something like this even before I knew anything about Merton or much about other faiths.

You'll have to forgive me for being this skeptical, particularly when what you have posted goes against what I have read, even in a limited fashion and that your article is from a site called "Apostasy Alert." It doesn't strike me as a particularly authoritative or unbiased source. Sorry if this got too long, but I'm hoping for some interesting discussion on the subject.

[GoldenEagle]

Due to multiple reports this thread is closed for review. It may or may not be re-opened.