Similarities and Differences

Lately, I've been reading a lot of books focusing on religion and spirituality. Books written by believers and practitioners, but also books written by outsiders and scholars - religious tourists, sociologists, anthropologists... One thing that strikes me over and over is that so many accounts from different religions have common elements or are even a re-telling of the same story but updated or changed to reflect the history, religion, language or culture of the ones telling the story. Reading accounts from different religions in regions that, as far as we know, never interacted before white Europeans started sailing around the world, laying claim to lands that were never theirs to lay claim to, and seeing how similar these accounts are, how many common factors there are, it makes me realise that when it comes to how we view religion and the divine, when it comes to the stories we tell regarding not just our own creation but the creation of the world and all living beings, we are ridiculously similar. Whether I'm reading a Mesopotamian creation story, a Native American tale, a Maori myth or an Aboriginal account - There are so many similarities and common factors that, no matter how much of a skeptic I can be, I can't help but wonder at the possibility of there really being a common source for the different stories. Just looking at Creation myths and Flood myths around the world, it is astonishing to see the similarities between accounts from people who never met, never even could have dreamed the other existed...

We live in an age where the internet connects us all, where we can travel to the other side of the world in less than a weekend, where communication with others, no matter where they are in the world, can happen in an instant. We are more connected now than ever before in the history of the humn race, know more about people in far-away countries, have a better understanding of what drives someone we've never met, who speaks a language we've never heard, practices a religion that makes no sense to us... Websites like YouTube and apps like Instagram allow us to share videos and photos with the world - videos or photos that need no written explanation and no communication using words. Even if you and I speak different languages or live on opposite sides of the world, you can share a video of your kitten doing something cute, and I will smile. I can share a photo of a sunset and you can appreciate it. No words needed. No language needed. We are human, and despite our many differences, we work the same way - we both laugh when we're happy, we cry when we're sad, we sleep when we're tired, we eat when we're hungry, we are born and we die. Despite having never met, despite having different dreams and thinking different thoughts, despite living in different countries and speaking different languages, we have so much in common. We are someone's child, someone's sibling or cousin, nephew or niece, someone's mother or father, someone's boss or employee, someone's neighbour or the person they happen to stand behind in the line at the supermarket...

Today's global connectivity, instant translation of texts written in different languages with the click of a button and the human willingness to share and communicate, to connect and reach out... All that together is connecting humanity into a whole like never before. Yes, we are still inhabitants of a certain city, citizens of a certain country, but we are also becoming inhabitants of planet earth, citizens of a united world, members of the human race... Black or white, pink or green, red or blue, yellow or orange... Whatever colour our skin, hair or eyes are does not matter. We are one family, one people. Or well, we are becoming that. Ever so slowly and with quite a lot of resistance, but yes, we are getting there. Religion is one of the factors that bind us, yet the human response to religion is one of the things tearing us apart.

Most of the world's religions teach love, compassion and empathy, they teach us to care for those weaker and less fortunate than we are... They teach us to cherish our children and appreciate our parents, to seek knowledge and understanding, to pray, meditate or read scripture to become closer to God... Again - so many similarities. Does it then really matter by which name we know God or the divine? Does it matter whether we believe that book A is more right than book B or book C? Does it matter, truly, if the specific details in your book are right, or if the details in my book are, when at their core, both your book and mine tell the same story and teach the same core values? Shouldn't we be focusing on the similarities instead of on the differences? Wouldn't that, more than anything else, connect and intertwine and unite us like never before in the history of the human race?