Youth Sunday

August 29th was Youth Sunday. The following is what the youth read to us regarding the various religions they learned about...



The Law of Judaism
The heart of Judaism beats out in one sentence. This sentence has echoed through every civilization in the 3,000 years since Sinai. It is repeated by every devout Jew every morning and every evening of his life. It is the first prayer he learns as a child, and should be his last prayer before he dies. It is: “Hear, O Israel,the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” These tremendous words were first spoken to the Jewish people by Moses as the spokesman of God. They make a sharp dividing line in the world’s religions. For they created a new idea of God – the monotheistic belief that there is but one God of the Universe. Not only Judaism but Christianity and Islam rest on this idea of strict monotheism. The God is a personal God, not in the sense that He has a body, but in the He enters the life of every man and woman, with justice, anger and love. He is a God of hope, for His followers believe the world is climbing toward a goal, the Kingdom of God. Life is not a burden to be escaped, but God’s gift, to be lived fully according to His will. “Seek ye Me and life,” He commanded in the words of the prophet Amos.
This is a scripture from Isaiah 2:
And it shall come to pass in the end of days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And… out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares; and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

The World of Islam
Islam, the youngest of man’s great universal religions, is also in many ways the simplest and most clear-cut. It honors a single, all powerful God, who chose to speak through the prophet Mohammed. This God, whose Arabic name is Allah, is basically the God of Judaism and Christianity. The biblical prophets from Abraham to Christ are honored by Islam as prophets. But Mohammed was the last and the greatest, the Seal of the Prophets. The Jewish scriptures and the words of Jesus are respected, but the revelations of Mohammed, preserved in the Koran, and his sayings in less sacred writings, represent to his followers the final expression of the will of God, who is one in being, not a Trinity.
This is a passage from the Koran:
Allah is All-Embracing, All-Knowing. Those who spend their wealth for the cause of Allah and afterward make no reproach not let injury follow that which they have spent, their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them, neither shall they grieve. A kind word with forgiveness is better than almsgiving followed by injury. Allah is absolute, merciful! O ye who believe! Do not render your almsgiving vain by injury and reproach, like him who spends his wealth only to be seen and believes not in Allah and the Last Day.

The Path of Buddhism
From the island of Ceylon to the islands of Japan, and throughout large sections of the Asian mainland, hundreds of millions of people – perhaps as many as 300 million- believe in a gentle and peaceable religion called Buddhism. It is based on the teachings of a man named Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in the 6th century BC. This was the time of Confucius in China, of some of the finest prophets whose teachings we find in the Bible’s Old Testament. In this great age for religions, Gautama Buddha – Buddha means “the Enlightened One”- laid the foundation for one of the noblest structures of thought ever created by the human spirit.
This is a reading from the Dhammapada:
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts…If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him… Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love…Carpenters fashion wood; wise people fashion themselves.

The Spirit of Hinduism
Thousands of years ago, before Moses or Buddha or Christ had lived, sages stood on India’s river banks and sang. Their songs, Hindus say, were inspired “by the breath of God.”
Out of these chants -there were more than 15,000 stanzas in the earliest collection, known as the Rig Veda –and out of the wisdom and the spirituality of the sages since, has grown the religion known as Hinduism. It is the faith of more than 365 million human beings in India and of about 105 million more elsewhere. It has influenced thoughtful me of many lands through the centuries.
It has one God, Brahman, who is the eternal spirit. But it also has 330 million gods –enough so that each family can have a favorite to honor at its household shrine. Some Hindus look upon all these as separate gods. But both modern philosophers and ancient Hindu sages say they are only the infinite aspects of the one Brahman
The Universal Self
(A Hindu account of creation)
In the beginning this universe was Self alone, in the shape of a person. He, looking around, saw nothing but his Self. He first said, “This is I”; therefore he became by name. Therefore to this day, if a man is asked, he first says, “This is I,” and then says the other name which he may have…. In the beginning this was Self alone, one only. He desired, “Let there be a wife for me that I may have offspring, and let there be wealth so that I may offer sacrifices.” Truly this is the whole desire, and, even if one wishes, one cannot get more than this.
- From the Upanishads