Faith?

I found this short article from Herald Malaysia online. Time and again it serves a reminder what faith actually means, especially in our country where we seemed to lose our courtesy and other key values, and where religion is expressed without tolerance to the other faiths.

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True faith lies within. What is expressed without (from the outside) means nothing if there is no enlightenment within.

Self-righteousness in any religion and culture causes pain and conflict. And doing all this in the Name of God, mocks God.

One of the biggest problems we have today is, quite many religious people (including us Catholics, of course) practise the vertical form of spirituality.

We forget that there is a horizontal dimension to spiritual practices, and that happens to be a very crucial component.

It’s all about: how we treat our neighbour, how we relate to another, how we forgive the offender, how we serve and love those around us, how much help we render to those in need.

If praying 100 times a day don’t make us more compassionate and grace-filled, then we pray in vain.

For me, true faith is not about how we address God: Kyrie, Dominus, Allah, Lord, Yahweh, El-Shaddai... (and I suspect God doesn’t really care either). It's not how we address God that really matters. No, but what really matters is, how we address another person: brother, sister, friend, fellow-human being.

All beautiful, all worthy of respect, all children of the same God.