Recently I was going through the new Uncover resource with a Hindu friend. During the conversation he stated that ultimately all religions are the same, because all religions are trying to create good.
There was a sense in which I agreed with him. Yes, there is something about us as humanity which loves to try and distinguish between good/bad, clean/unclean, honourable/shameful. Often these become formalised into religious philosophies. There is something wonderfully uniting about humanity and its quest for the “good”: we set boundaries, create laws, promote some behaviours, outlaw others.
Yet – if there is any consensus about the “good”, we don’t seem to have found it. Perhaps in 1948 after the horrors of a Second World War there was some consensus, written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However the title is misleading: although it was written as a universal document it was not universally accepted. There has been much discussion about its Western bias, its incompatibility with Shariah law, and its focus on the individual over society.
