This week in religious studies...

I had some extra credits that I needed to fill this year so I decided to take a religious studies class. So far, I am enjoying learning about the different world religions. This past week we learned about Hinduism. Hinduism kinda intrigues me and made me explore it, comparing it to what I believe in. So here is what i think. Hinduism is not a static religion, and it doesn't exclude other religious like buddhism or even christianity. It's a polytheistic represented by Brahma, Saktas, Durga, Kali, Siva, Lingams, Parvati, Ganesh, Vishnu, Krishna, Lakshmi, and Rama. Because it is such an accomidating religion it means that there are many ways of coming to the ultimate, or a state of nirvana (beyond the metaphysical(i should clarify this that nirvana is a buddhist term, hinduists try to get out of the cycle of karma , and the best word that i could think of to describe it was nirvana, although the technical name for it is moksha). I have been thinking a lot about the postmoderism world that we live in. The basic premisises of postmoderism is that nothing is absolute, that what you think goes, it is accomodating. In the first class that we had, we explored questions of what is religion. I thought that it was interesting how many people answered the question with the same underlying message: that living a good life, God (or who ever you believed in) you would go to heaven. Most people who were answering said that they had Catholic roots. I would like to know where it says in scripture that " by living a happy life, try to be good, and don't worry about what you really believe in, as long as you think that there is a God, that's good enough". I look at our more conservative churches and I see that same attitude of postmoderism seeping through. Thomas Jefferson tried to rewrite the bible taking out all the miracles in the new testiment. Why does the power of God have to be dumbed down?. I have been reading through Acts and examining the life of the early believers. A word that jumps out to me is devoted. What does it mean to be devoted to something? It means that there lives were centered around to the thing they hold dear. In acts 3:42 it states that "they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer". How far does our devotion go in the church? Is church a ritual and emptied of all power? And what about scripture? When do we as a church exchange the authority of man over the authority of the bible? They early believers lived a radical life, because they didn't live on diet christainity. Our post modern church is making everything comfortable, but what about challenging? And if we were living a radical life, people of this world wouldn't understand the foolishness, "for it is the message of the cross that is foolishness to those who are perishing" (corinthians 1:18) And I wonder if people of this world see a differentiating line. I have been thinking about my own life, and letting myself digest it, because I know that I have allowed things to seep into my life. But when I was studying hinduism, I wondered how it was so different from some of the christianity being preached in north america. Some churches have adopted that "everything goes" mentality and that everybody has their own pathway to God; but where is Jesus?