My recent trip to an Islamic Center put a few nagging thoughts into my head. (See my blog entry for April 6.)
You know how some people are always arguing over which is the “true religion” or the supreme belief system in the world? Well, what if everybody decided to hold a contest—a peaceable contest, sort of like the Olympics—where believers of all faiths competed to show who practiced the “true religion”.
What kind of “contests” would be held? Let’s look at the Five Pillars of Islam: faith, prayer, fasting, tithing, and pilgrimage. Surely followers of the “true religion” would demonstrate these traits in abundance, wouldn’t they?
How about a contest called “Who really prays?” Monitors would stand outside of sanctuaries and other religious gathering places and count how many people show up and actually go through the motions of praying… It would be harder to get a tally of those who pray at home or in secret, but possibly a self-survey of private prayer time could be given to believers who practice this type of prayer life.
Fasting? Easy enough—let’s put all the believers of a particular religion on the scales and see which group averages out as the lightest in weight. “To fast” means not to eat, you know.
A contest idea that’s really intriguing is “Which religion is the most charitable?” We could compare donations in cash, time and abilities to help others less fortunate—particularly those outside that particular belief system. The recipients of the charity could then rate how generous, kind and non-demanding the believers are as they share of their wealth.
Most religions practice so form of “pilgrimage” or traveling to a certain destination in order to focus on things of a spiritual nature and leave worldly cares behind. The Muslim travels to Mecca, the Catholic to the see the Pope, the Protestant to a spiritual retreat in the woods, the Jew to Jerusalem, the Buddhist to meditate on a mountaintop, the Mormon to the temple in Salt Lake City, the Neo-Pagan to Stonehenge, etc. A quick headcount of which religion has the most active pilgrims would determine the “winner”.
Now faith is a tricky thing to compare and measure… If we measured faith by attendance at worship services, this would favor the major religions and those sects who make attendance mandatory. If faith is denoted by those who verbally confess their faith and help spread its message, this would penalize those religions that tend to be on the more personal, private side. Possibly a well-written survey could rank a believer’s “commitment” to his or her particular faith and give a numerical rating? Sort of an “A.C.T.” number for religious folks...
So, if the world held a contest like this tomorrow, do you honestly think Christians would “win”?
And what would be the “prize”?
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