I was raised with the Christian commandment of “there shall be no other gods before Me”. Basically, it means you will pray to God, and only God, and if you don’t, you’ll burn eternally in hell.
I always interpreted that line differently… Rather than saying “you will not”, I always read it as “you can not.” As in, it’s just not physically possible to pray to any other god, no matter how much you believe you are.
For that matter, I think there is a god up there, but how do I know that I’m praying to the right one? And who am I to tell other people who to pray to?
God is an all-powerful and omniscient being. He’s so far appeared as: a wanderer, a bush, sunny clouds, and various people. Is it too far-fetched to believe that perhaps he can appear as other gods?
If you pray to the Lion God of Strength, who’s to say that this isn’t just a facade leading to the one true god? What if all the various gods people pray to aren’t just mediums that transfer all prayers to the same place? What if Jesus is yet another facade?
That’s what I choose to believe. Whether it makes sense to you or not, I choose to believe that all prayers and beliefs go to the one true god that does exist, and it may not necessarily be the God that I think is real. I believe this because it doesn’t alienate people. It doesn’t sit well in my conscience to look at a good person who believes something different from me, and look down on them because they don’t believe what I do. What feels right to me is the thought that we’re all going to the same place, and that we’re not lessened as humans because we make different choices or take different paths to get to the same point.
By realizing this, you can more easily understand different perspectives. Every religion or mindset has its own way of dealing with hardship and challenges, and to me it’s vital to understand things from multiple approaches. In this manner, I can form my own solution that makes sense to me.
Don’t shut people out because they don’t believe what you believe… instead, try to see things from their angle, and apply any valid logic they give to your own logic. It strengthens your resolve, and reaffirms your approach to life.