So this is something that's come up in my mind a few times. Having changed religion, the subject of all religions interests me. I like to know what other churches believed. In the mall I had a lot of people hand me pamphlets about their various churches and I liked reading them to see what they believed. I would always hand them a piece of paper with www.mormon.org on it too. I figured it's a good opportunity! And although there are other religions that have different symbols and beliefs and things that are sacred to them that are different from ours, I still feel a need to respect those. For example, at my place of work over the summer, we started selling rosaries (just for more info on rosaries). People would typically wear the ones that we were selling which, I've always been taught (I used to be Catholic) is sacrilegious. This kind of ticked me off a bit because you use rosaries to pray with and it's just not right to wear them. Even though I'm not Catholic anymore, it still upset me that someone would wear them when they mean so much to a lot of people. I just think that we can do better to respect those of other religions by not assuming that we know what they believe and actually trying to find out. We can be careful to be respectful of others beliefs even if others aren't respectful of ours. It's what Christ would do.
I guess what triggered this is I found a brochure from a Seventh Day Adventist Church that we got in the mail torn up outside my door (I have a weird roommate who likes to tear things up and leave it around the house, probably to tick me off). It was a brochure about a conference they were holding to educate people about Christianity and Islam and the connections between the two faiths. I love when I see inter-faith things like this, I think it's so cool! It kind of made me mad to see that she tore it up, because this conference probably means a lot to those at that Seventh Day Adventist church, and I realize it's not as important as rosary beads or anything else, but it still irks me for some reason. I guess it seems like if I gave someone a pass along card and just saw them rip it up and throw it away right after I gave it to them.
I don't know, maybe I'm just weird or overly sensitive...
I'm actually writing a journal entry for one of my classes right now about intolerance/prejudice within the church. Most people choose not to see it, but it's there and I would venture say that it's worse within the church than outside of it. I'm with you; I love reading other churches material. I was born in the church, but learning about what others believe is fascinating. I watched a documentary on Islam once and you wouldn't believe how many similarities there are between Islam and Mormonism. It's insane. I think people need to realize that we all worship the same God, we just do it differently. And that is perfectly okay.
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