Culminating Activity
How the understanding of God/the Divine as interpreted in sacred scripture and traditions shapes the moral/ethical life of people of faith
Identify how religious rituals and celebrations promote the community, fellowship and intimate human relationships and within society.
For the three of the Abrahamic faiths we learned in the class, they all have a sacred scripture that they believe in. For Christianity and Judaism, they share the Bible as the words from God. And for Muslim, they have Quran.
The sacred scripture and traditions are how they communicate to the God and how the God are leading them to do what they should do. For the everyday prayer, I think it’s also a way for them to communicate daily with God, to keep showing their love to God and knowing that they are being blessed by God. That also give them an explanation about how they should deal with things in their life, how they supposed to treat other people and so on. It shaped their moral and ethical life by being the principles for them to follow, and how they can communicate with God in their life.
I also think the understanding or God and the Divine made people kinder and treat people around them better, because they know that God is watching them, supervising them, to stop them from doing bad things. It also will make them purer, to clean them from their heart, what they think and what they say.
Describe how suffering is part of the human condition and how faith brings believers hope.
And for the stories in their sacred scripture, it explained to them about some questions, like how the earth has formed, why there are so many fantastic things happening, how they became a human, and all sort of questions. I think it also help shaped their moral and ethical life by letting them know how they are, who they are believing in and why to believe in him.
I believe that life can’t always be plain sailing, but always have challenges and hard time. I think suffering is for people to improve, like what in the Bible, God helped people to clear their sins, he suffered on the cross, but saved lots more people.
And for sins, I think are the mistakes we have made or even things we think that are right but are wrong. We have to always trying to clean our sins by doing good things, being nice to others and to avoiding to do things bad for others in the future.
In my understanding, faith can bring believers hope for that they believe that if they can clear their sins and always be a good person, after they died, they will be able to go to heaven, have a good after life, or they may have a better life in their next life. And to give them hope when they want to give up on themself.
For the Aboriginal peoples, although they don’t have certain books that describes their faith, but there are stories that are told by their ancestors like the Creation story and their love and respect to the nature. That also answered some of the questions for them, and shaped their moral and ethical life, helped them understand things around them better.
Lots of the communities has their own churches, as they go to church every Friday, it’s a good way to communicate with people in the community. If someone just moved into a new community and know nothing about people in the community or things are happening there, go to church is a good way for them to get to know their community better.
The Powwow of the Indigenous people is a celebration of them. It’s a kind of dancing of renewal for the restoration of right relationships and the healing of all of creation. It’s to celebrate one’s identity, heritage, and language. And when the Indigenous people are celebrating it, everybody are welcome to join them, to celebrate it with them and communicate with them about each other's culture.
And for everyone can join the Powwow, it is certainly a wonderful way to get to know the Indigenous people better, to understand what they believe in, what’s their attitude towards things, so the Indigenous Canadians and Canadians can live better life together in the same land, same country.
Not only for Interreligious communicate, even if someone doesn't believe in any religion, if they are interested in the celebration, the rituals those religions have, it’s also a good thing to let people from different culture know about more faiths, to respect the faiths better, and at the same time, the believers can also know about their culture, so they can respect each other better.
I believe those communication and understanding can bring world peace and make people’s life better.