Watering our Faith - It's Like Language Acquisition - All About Growth

This is further to my previous post on this topic which was entitled "Universal Spirituality - A Watering Down of Faiths or Watering them for Growth?" (I guess I'm concerned about it because there seems to be a little anti-inter-faith rhetoric around lately - in reaction to a lot of the contemporary spiritual thinkers and leaders who are promoting greater universalism.)

The question was: Does learning about or incorporating aspects of another spiritual approach or tradition water down our own original faith - or can it make it stronger?

A friend of mine (o.k., my dad) who does a lot of speaking and writing in the area of inter-faith understanding recently put it beautifully.

He made the comparison to that of language acquisition. He pointed out that one can know a language and have it as their mother tongue, and still benefit INCREDIBLY from learning more languages. In fact, it is in the very best interests of an individual to gain agility in additional languages – both in terms of personal development and in terms of his or her ability to relate to and contribute to the world around him or her.

In the end one’s understanding of his or her own first language is actually greatly enhanced rather than diluted or diminished.

As for the notion of dilution or loss, a mother tongue is simply never really lost in adults. That only usually ever happens with young children. Even with young children, additional language acquisition is considered highly developmental (most especially when exposure to and therefore retention of their native/original language continues).

Indeed, it is much the same with a person's faith development and spiritual growth. It's important to have a foundation, but so much can be built upon it. When I think of the way my own spiritual growth has occurred, I would certainly testify to that anyway.

At any rate, when it comes right down to it, our world is ever developing into more and more of a global culture. While we honour and respect each culture and tradition within it – there is a natural blending that is happening all around us. We need to honour the specific cultures and traditions from whence we come, but also embrace and relate to the increasingly unified and rich global world culture that is developing all around us.

So why not open our minds and hearts and arms in the name of growth, compassion and understanding? I think that's what that Jesus guy would do ... and Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha guy) too for that matter.

Growth is a good thing.