Religion, Confidence and Peaceful Coexistence

I was born in a village in Central Java, Indonesia, in late 1956. In the early 1960s, my parents became more devout Christians with the coming of pastors to serve our small town. And we as children — my three siblings and I — also started getting acquainted with baby Jesus Christ, Jonah and the whale, and Daniel in the lions’ den.

But, the vast majority of the residents were Moslems, including most of my neighbours. So, my best friend when I was seven to nine years old was Jumari, who lived next door. His parents were Moslems.

My parents nurtured close and mutual relationship with all the neighbours, including Jumari’s parents. Religion differences never hampered their respect for each other. And so, Jumari and I become soul mates to explore our small worlds: observing the birds at the paddy fields, watching antique train stopping at the station right across our houses, or roaming free at the football fields some 300 meters away. Several times, Jumari even took me to the mosque, just 150 meters to the west. We heartily chat and even took a nap at the cool cemented-floor veranda of the mosque.

During my senior high school, I joined a Christian youth fellowship in Surabaya, East Java. And I got to know more about my Christian faith. I decided to embrace my faith with more mature understanding. Through the years, I had faced my highs and lows with my faith in Christ. But, all through the years I had enjoyed much peaceful and contented mind and life through my faith.

At the same time, as I grew up amidst such heterogeneous environment in terms of faith, I almost had no difficulties to nurture close relationship with my varied neighbours or school friends. This mutual, respectful, and peaceful relations continued until I started my career as a journalist and then also as a social worker — and growing older and older.

I deeply mourned when my neighbour, a haj and a devout Moslem, passed away several years ago. We had had very close friendship since I moved to this neighbourhood about 15 years earlier. We warmly shared our life stories and even our views of all the social and political developments that always made Indonesia lively. Often, we were laughing uncontrollably when we talked about politicians who ambitiously wanted to grab top positions in the country whereas we all know exactly that they had no capacity at all for such a responsibility.

Yes… It’s very true. My days have been much boring since he no longer there around me.

Religion and Confidence

We either ‘inherit’ our religion from our parents or discover it by ourselves from our own research when we are in our mature age. Whatever our paths to come across with the religion we abide by, it is critical for us to deeply understand the essence of our religion. When we have decided to choose our faith in the religion, we have to live with grateful heart and peace of mind; the religion should make us confidence with our lives and in interacting with other people, including those adhering to other religions.

The religion we believe should also give us confidence to respect people with different faith. We should remember that each of us have had to walk our own special path to get to understand and choose the religion of our preference. This is a very personal process of each person and we should accept and respect his or her decision.

As a believer, we should treat other people – whether those with the same or different religion from us – as our brothers or sisters in this life journey. Each of our religions teaches the way to find the real meaning of our existence and even the eternal lives. Our struggles or ‘competition’ in these life journeys is not to conquer one another. Our utmost purpose is how we could live faithfully, effectively and productively as human beings; how we could help our neighbours, including those with different faith, to be more grateful with their lives and how our environment could become a much more conducive place to live in.

All religions have their own strengths and weaknesses. Let us focus on their positive aspects and refrain from undermining others.

God could not be contained with our limited wisdom. God has his own plan when he created different faiths – or religions – in this world. We should accept the fact that any religion that has been followed by hundreds of millions (!) – moreover over one billion or even two billons – of adherents have existed with his consent.

These world religions should get our respect and our acceptance. What we should encourage each other is how the believers of each religion could get the right teachings about the essence of their respective religion as a sacred path to the eternal lives. The leaders of each religion should strive to discourage anyone whose goal is only to sow and spread hatred to those of other faiths.

Peaceful Coexistence

In Indonesia, we are fortunate to have the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Moslem organisation with more than 90 million members, which has just celebrated its 100^th anniversary. NU has been at the forefront in promoting peaceful coexistence with those of other faiths, including Christians. NU leaders and members embrace their faith with strong confidence in Islam as a religion of peace. With this understanding, they could easily accept and respect believers of other religions as brothers and sisters in the pilgrimage to find God and to live our lives as fruitful as we can here on earth.

Their belief on peaceful coexistence has even been translated through sending their young cadres during the Christmas seasons to help safeguard the churches in many cities and towns in Java so that their Christian brothers and sisters could enjoy solemn and peaceful gatherings.

Religions should not separate us as human beings. Religions should unite us instead.

The secret to realize such a condition is to internalize the values and the essence of each of the religion we adhere to and put them into practice in our daily lives, particularly in interacting and nurturing our coexistence with other believers.

The world is at a critical stage right now. So many problems threatened us all – about eight billions of people living together in this fatigue planet.

It is high-time for us all to revisit our lives and our faith, whatever our religion is. It is high-time to be more contented and confidence – and enjoy – our own faith and religion. It is high-time to respect and embrace differences with greater confidence that we are all brothers and sisters on the same journey. We are all on the same pilgrimage to realize our calling to make this world a much more peaceful and liveable place to live.

Together. In peace. And to embrace the eternity.

Who knows that somewhere up there, I will again live in the same neighboorhood with my haj brother. It would be hilarious to be able to chat again with him on so many issues…including our own foolishness and frailty. (HS)