Custom «Religious vs Secular World View» Essay Paper Sample

Introduction

In real life situations, people attribute the happenings in their lives to a supreme being. However, there are others who do not believe in the powers of a supreme being, they attribute happenings to fate or chance. The earlier is the religious view while the later is the secular view. These views make judgments on actions and their outcomes with consideration of presence of a God or without this presence of a God. The differences in secular views and religious views on life situations can be discussed by looking at the Aesop's fables and the Bible, the book of Job.

Discussion

The book of Job is one of the books in the Hebrew Bible and it gives details of a man known as Job who was a descendant of Abraham but not a Jew according to Jewish traditions. The book gives an account of Job's trials, his faith in God, discouragement from friends and then the healing of the problems of Job. Aesop's fables are a collection of many short stories written by Aesop. Aesop was a slave in ancient Greece who was well known for his story telling prowess. The fables are mostly used to educate children on good morals (Cech and Jarrie 34).

These two sets of accounts are sufficient to show the differences in secular and religious views in judging actions, situations and their consequences. From the book of Job, every occurrence is attributed to the power of God. The book of Job starts with Satan and God having a discussion about Job. Satan told God that if He (God) took all the possessions of Job, then Job would forsake God and curse him. God gave Satan the freedom to go and test Job (Job 1: 3-18).

From the, Satan set out to put Job into suffering in order to test his faith. First, Job's servants were killed while they were working on the farms and his oxen and asses were taken away. His daughters and sons were also killed by wind while they were in the house. After this first round, Job worshiped and exclaimed that he was born naked and he would die naked. In the second round, Satan made Job sick form boils and sores everywhere. Still, Job did not lament God even after his wife pleaded with him to forsake God. His friends mourned with him and pleaded with him to rebuke God but Job would hear none of it. He just cursed the day he was born. When Job pleaded to God, God answered him in form of a whirlwind and reminded Job that he was not anywhere when God created the universe. God blessed Job abundantly after seeing the trust Job had in God.

The Aesop's fables are many in number and they all seek to provide life lessons to people. Examples of these fables are the farmer and the stork, the fox and the stork, the frog and the ox, among many more. In these stories, there are actions which are not executed without the premise of existence of a God and the consequences that follow these actions can be attributed to a big extend to the actions. These fables are therefore good examples of the secular view of actions and their consequences. The writer used animals in most cases for symbolic purposes (Cech and Jarrie 56). Throughout the fables, actions by most of the characters do not depend on believes in God and their consequences are also not attributed to God.

When making choices in real life situations, there is a big difference between judging from a religious point of view and judging from a secular point of view. This difference is caused by the fact that secularism does not belief in any God while religion beliefs in existence of a God. According to secularism, thing happen by chance and their outcomes and consequences are also random. In most of the fables, the actions and their consequences do not have a logical relationship. In the fable of the three tradesmen, the consequences faced by each man do not reflect the actions of the man. This is the same for the fables of the peacock and the crane and the one eyed doe. On the other hand, in the book of Job all things happen with the influence of God and their consequences are as a result of the action taken. God blessed Job abundantly with life and wealth after he has seen the faith job had in him. The blessings were out of Job's acts of faith (Job 42: 1-17).

There are however cases in the Aesop's fables when actions seem to match with outcomes and consequences. For instance, in the story of the sick lion where the animals take advantage of the sick lion to settle points, the ass is killed by the weak lion. The other animals which had mistreated the lion before the ass were not killed but the ass is. This is purely due to fate and Aesop cautions people that fate can reward good actions as well as punish bad ones. This is similar in the fables of that ant and the dove, the ship wrecker impostor and the sick stag where evil actions are observed to cause bad consequences. This is similar to the religious views where God is viewed to bless those who do well and punish the evil. God blessed Job because Job demonstrated his faith in God throughout his suffering (Job 42: 1-17)

In real life situations, both the secular and religious views on actions and their consequences are applicable. For example, a person who intents to kill another will suffer consequences immediately of later (Jones, Rackham and Ashliman 35). This can happen by the person killing another person who is close to him or her. If a person intends to poison another through food, the person might make a mistake and end up poisoning himself instead of the intended person. In both cases, there is an element of fate as well as presence of a God. Therefore, both secular view and religious view are applicable in real life situations.