Sacred Paths

This book embodies a novel approach to the subject by bringing together contributors from a variety of spiritual traditions and asking them the same questions about the nature of God, Faith, evil, contemplation and what happens when we die. These traditions include two forms of both Christianity and Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Baha'i and paganism - there is no representative from Hinduism. Interestingly, a good many of the representatives are converts. The intent of the book is to engage fully with each tradition, and celebrate differences as well as similarities. Each contributor proposes and explains the symbol, which is subsequently used to identify their contributions. Sometimes words like faith are not used in all traditions or are understood very differently. I liked the definition that faith is a state of mind and soul it enables you to put your trust in something bigger than yourself. As one might expect, there are various perspectives on evil, not all of which try to reconcile the beneficence of God in classical theodicy. One approach is through the concept of karma. The section on contemplation brings in the experiential aspect, while the last chapter on eschatology shows up considerable contrasts although many contributors take a cyclical view. Given the origin of the book, there is considerable representation from Australia.