Also, I don’t want to sound and appear like a pastor or a priest, preaching sermon to my flock. I have always tried to keep my faith within my pocket and my religious practices within my own closet because I am always accounted and responsible for whatever I do with my life. It is not a general conclusion but my experience has told me that those who are very vocal about their church’s involvement and religious charismatic brouhaha are the number backbiters on earth. Those who are actively involve in the Church would always have the tendency to blow their own horn and announce to the entire world their recent charity work and among themselves, there is a deep silent competition as who has the best fashion and jewelry during this or that occasion. I am not pointing at anyone but just an observation while working in the Church myself. I could be wrong and if I am, so be it.

As I continue with my proposition on salvation as an ecumenical and generic term, let me explain two significant words related to this argument, i.e., salvation and God.

All religions whether it be Christianity (Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians, Born Again, etc.) Hinduism and Islam have two things in common namely, worship of the Supreme Creator and salvation of mankind.

Salvation is a private affair to every individual, of which no religion has exclusive possession and monopoly. It is a reward resulting from one’s good relationship with his God. Different religions may offer different ways to be saved but ultimately it is the individual who has full responsibility  to say “yes or no” to his own eternal destiny.

All of us are traveling to the same destination but only through different routes and directions. But certainly there are no short cuts because all roads are winding and crooked. The only road that is straight and full of short cuts is the way the way to eternal damnation.

If there is no salvation outside Christianity or Catholicism then billions of people are already condemned to hell even before they see the light of existence. This defies the purpose and law of creation and certainly it contradicts the very nature of God Himself. This leads to the idea of pre-destination, where those not born and baptized in the Christian or Catholic faith are already destined to Satan’s dwelling.

The affirmation of this argument is by simple human logic contrary to the very essence of God. God can never contradict Himself least He ceased to be God.

My theodicy class in college told me that God is an Absolute God, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Unmoved Mover and whose essence is identical with His existence. I have accepted this statement with an open heart and mind because I am convinced of its philosophical argument and it takes a whole semester course to discuss the entire proof of God’s existence and attributes. Since God is Absolute, He is necessarily good and His absolute goodness won’t permit pre-destination to eternal fire, to think otherwise is to deny absolute goodness in His being. The concept of God cannot be fully understood because the word itself is immeasurable and uncontainable within the limited framework of the human brain. I further argue that the word God is a matter of hermeneutics and semantics. The Creator or the Absolute is not necessarily called God in other religions; He may have other names in other Churches and thus allow other people to worship and pray to their own Creator. For the Muslims, they may call their Creator as Ala and the Hindus as Brahman.

Certainly, whatever religion there is, the concept of Creator is all but the same, it is only a matter of nominal differences.

I don’t want to sound philosophical in this article but I would encourage openness and religious tolerance among the faithful of different Churches in order to make life easy not only for you but that of others too. I would still insist that to debate on religion is an exercise of futility. Do you really think there is salvation? So far, no human being has come back to life to testify the existence of heaven and hell? Everything boils down to just one word -Faith. But as the saying goes, “we don’t have to die in order to know what is death". It is all a matter of “Leap of faith” in the words of Soren Kierkegaard, an existential philosopher from Denmark.