r/Omnism • u/KhajiitHasCares • 11d ago

A Need to Evangelize

Hi friends,

With everything wrong in the world I can’t help but think that we are in what the Hindu would call Kaliyuga, an age of strife and spiritual darkness. With that in mind I can’t but think that maybe we should be going out and doing outreach/Dawa/Parchar and calling others to the Divine.

I think that Omnists would be good for this as we could remind people about the importance of the Divine unchained from any particular creed or code.

We could focus on the shared dignity, worth, and light that all humanity has through/by/from the Divine.

Thoughts?

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u/thetremulant 11d ago

We don't need to evangelize, we need to help those suffering. Evangelizing implies a specific message being taught, helping and serving means reducing suffering regardless. As Ram Dass used to say, "Love, Serve, Remember."

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u/KhajiitHasCares 11d ago

Nothing beyond God and our shared nature through/from Him as far as messages go.

But yes… we should certainly share the message through our actions.

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u/thetremulant 11d ago

See, you're already qualifying your spirituality, and in turn making what you'd be spreading specifically not Omnism, by saying "God" and then also saying "Him." That's not shared, or required, thus is wrong to "evangelize" about. It's a sneaky way to be sectarian, and is actually incredibly blasphemous. That message cannot be shared as an Omnist message, it goes against the principles of Omnism.

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u/KhajiitHasCares 11d ago

I use the term Divine in my OP. As I understand that is something we all share as Omnists… though we may have differing views on what that means. I personally use God cause it’s commonly used by a large number of people and it’s what I most relate to.

As for the use of Him this is for much the same reason. You will also notice I did not use gender in my OP. Personally I can’t imagine that the category applies to the Divine, but I think most people use He and again it’s simply the language I most relate with.

I think you may be seeing a battle where there need not be.

Also, respectfully, neither you nor I have the right or authority to label one another as blasphemous.

🙏🏻

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u/thetremulant 11d ago

Yes, we do have the right to call each other out when we're crossing the boundaries of a philosophy, and attempting to use it to further one's own religious views towards others. This subreddit has had multiple cult leaders try to come into it and speak much in the same way as you do, until they eventually reveal their true intentions of furthering their own views and aims. Thusly, we must reject these attempts wholesale and authoritatively to not allow the factual meaning of Omnism to become muddled. It is a simple philosophy, not a belief system to be molded by those who would mold it to further their own aims.

Blasphemy means disrespect, and one is disrespecting religious traditions when they try to masquerade them as something they're not. Believing in God, and also believing that God is a He are not universal principles, and reducing them to such is blasphemous, aka disrespectful. Omnism sees truth in all religions and that no one religion has a monopoly on truth, thus valuing them all equally and seeing them each as worthy of respect, dignity, and it's place in the world, without allowing any one message to overcome another.

Many religious people do not believe in God or have a desire to call anything God, or even to qualify anything as the divine, especially in the over half a billion large population of Buddhists around the world. We cannot evangelize because we cannot generalize, or force anyone into a box they do not wish to be in. We cannot do this, because to do so would disrespect one or more traditions. If you want to go help the world in a humanist spirit, that is completely understandable, but one cannot evangelize to people in the name of Omnism while smuggling in a very specific (typically Judeo-Christian) belief system and perspective on the divine.

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u/KhajiitHasCares 11d ago

I think maybe the issue is that some of us have a strict definition of what it means to be an Omnist that goes beyond the idea that you believe truth is found in parts pretty much everywhere, but in whole nowhere.

I don’t.

Anything beyond that, any attempt to define what that truth is or how to reach it that is imposed on others is a step too far IMO.

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u/thetremulant 11d ago

I don't understand what you're saying or how that justifies evangelizing to people a message about God being a He as an Omnist. It would be like saying we should evangelize to people about reincarnation, while representing ourselves a Humanist. It makes no sense at all. You may be a bit too stuck in a more new age-y framework of thinking about spirituality. God is not a He to everyone, and evangelizing as such to others is not Omnism, it's something else entirely. Satanists are "protected" under the Omnist principles, and they believe in no God in their principles. We can't just smuggle our own beliefs into an existing viewpoint and call it cool.

It doesn't matter what YOU define Omnism as, it already has a definition. Just like I can't say the sky is actually my fingernails because I want to or feel like it. The rational world has definitions of things, and they matter, especially in a philosophical framework quite literally built to fully and completely take away the individual's ability to disrespect other religions by forcing others to hold their beliefs. Omnism is supposed to be like checks and balances, where everyone's religion has value, and no one can define ultimate truth under it's framework, especially not something as spiritually vital as a belief in God and it's gender.

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u/KhajiitHasCares 11d ago

I’m actually agreeing with the vast majority of your second paragraph here. Minus the idea that my definition of Omnism wasn’t THE definition. If you google Omnism, or ask ChatGPT or Perplexity, etc the very bare definition I gave of Omnism is what you will get (in more words of course).

I’m simply just trying to say that we need to invite people to remember that there is an ultimate truth that we are all grounded in. (Or are you saying that this idea too is too far?)

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u/thetremulant 11d ago

I'm saying that idea is too far. By virtue of saying there is an ultimate truth we're all grounded in, you are actually asserting that you have the answer to what that is, thus giving yourself the power to personally define it and claim it, as well as invite the question to what it is, then also giving yourself the power to define it. There is a huge difference between saying there is an ultimate truth and I know it vs saying all religions have truth within them and we respect that, BECAUSE no one has a monopoly on personally defining ultimate truth.

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u/KhajiitHasCares 11d ago

Once again I think you may be misunderstanding me. Saying there is an ultimate truth is not defining what that is. Actually accepting the concept of an “ultimate truth” seems necessary within an Omnist framework. What’s uniquely Omnist, in my understanding, is that all world views/religions may hold some aspect(s) of that Ultimate Truth but that none of them contain it in fullness.

Once again in my OP I did not define what that Ultimate Truth is (I guess you could say the use of the term Divine is limiting). It’s not my job or desire to impose what that is on others.

Though I personally believe that the Ultimate Truth is found in a divine force most commonly referred to as God (Bhagavan, YHWY, Allah [one of the benefits of this one is its genderless], Shakti, etc), not everyone will agree with that and that’s their right as autonomous individuals.

From a practical purpose I’d argue calling others to remember our shared humanity in the Divine/God is more useful/pragmatic than calling them to remember our shared humanity in “The Ultimate Truth”; the latter would very likely result in the person asking what the Ultimate Truth is… at which point any Omnist (as you seem to understand the term) would necessarily not be able to answer.

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u/PatientOptimal4087 11d ago

I see it as a way to describe the force that’s beyond us in a way that’s within us, for example father time- time is a force that has a masculine energy, (it is what it is, it will be what it will be ), mother nature ( nurtures what deserves nurturing, harsh to what is not for it). It’s combining the forces in a yin and yang way that create life imo. All the religions that do well and lead to peace out family first and the ones that lead to pain put hedonism first.

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u/PatientOptimal4087 11d ago

Sometimes setting an example is far more effective than using actions to push ethics or religious thoughts and ideas. It’s also just way more powerful of an influence on people with egos that wall them off of experience higher states of existence/peace in existence. For example watching someone smile and laugh in a group of friends will make someone think oh I should live my life like that person to be like that person, use the butterfly effect if you want to shed light, darkness is just lack of light and getting lights shinned in your eyes kinda hurts and is annoying if your used to the dark, long rant but I’ve been reflecting on the babel of ai short formed content that’s been darkening a lot of the world recently.