The
hells are unworthy of contemplation and appear to reflect vengeance
more than compassion. They are at best exaggerations to prod a
childish mind into a certain form of conduct. Islam
and Protestant Christianity furthermore deny the use of images in
religious worship and have historically gone so far as to encourage
destruction of the religious artifacts of other people. This denial
also betrays a partiality, an inability to understand various types
of worship and their efficacy, such as a universal path requires.
Image worship is a tool of the
devotional and artistic mind and is most significant relative to the
worship of the Goddess or the Divine Feminine. Rejecting this aspect
of human aspiration is narrow-minded and results in intolerance.
In this regard Greek Orthodox and,
to some extent, Catholic Christianity have been more tolerant,
perhaps because of the open-mindedness engendered by such use of
images. Judaism, on the other hand, though a non-imagistic
tradition, has been more tolerant than any form of Christianity or
Islam.
This is because it never was a
missionary religions and allowed other people to follow their own
and different religions without interference, even if these
religions used images. Hinduism also contains non-imagistic
approaches but these were never made into the exclusive truth but
only one of several approaches. |