Author Karen Armstrong's thoughts on God

I think the the personal image of God is there but with all religious imagery you need to look through it it's much meant to be transparent and you look through it just glimpse the transcendence beyond that goes beyond words I think what God that what God is supposed to do for us is take us outside ourselves and make us realize that we are in the presence of immensity Einstein said something similar that when you're to be in the presence of something that is beyond what we could grasp but he was talking about the indeterminate universe he had discovered is the sublime estoy and he who does not experience this is as good as dead that there should be a sense of absolute or and I think - we see the divine in other people and that the that that heads the Hindu thing and I think one of the meanings of incarnation is that you can't think God without thinking human and you can't think Hubert without thinking God we find the divine in one another and there's a there's a Muslim mystic who says that and and once you once you have the sense of that sense of the sacredness of each person you can't stigmatize them or jeer at their religion or or god forbid kill or maim that when that sense of the sanctity of the individual is totally lost you get out of its there's Muslim mystic says that every single one of us is a unique and unrepeatable and that's an exercise in reminding you if we think of everybody here as representing and enshrining a particular notion of God then it shows how impossible it is to some God up in any way and then there's this quotation that I found very he said this wonderful thing is he was 13th century mystic and I found this quite early in my studies and it has always resonated with me against its it's against sort of religious chauvinism he says do not praise your own faith so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest if you do this you will miss much good nay you'll fail to realize the real truth of the matter God the omnipresent and omniscient cannot be confined to any one creed for he says in the Koran wheresoever ye turn there is the face of Allah everybody praises what he knows his God is his own creature and in praising it he praises himself consequently he blames the beliefs of others which he would not do if he were just but his dislike is based on ignorance

Channel: MPR News

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Keywords: Karen Armstrong (Author), book, author, Literature (Media Genre), Talking Volumes, Kerri Miller, Minnesota Public Radio, MPR News, God (Deity), Religion (TV Genre)

Id: CnUPHieQEXU

Length: 3min 29sec (209 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 17 2014