The traditional greetings of religious communities can offer some insight into the worldview of those communities. Greetings can illuminate the way in which human relationships are constituted within a specific religious framework. The Hindu’s traditional greeting, namaste, means “the Divine in me recognizes the Divine in you,” and suggests an imminent Creator that animates its creations. The Jews say shalom: offering “peace,” to those whom they greet, and the Islamic greeting of the same root, salaam – alaikum, translates into English as: “Peace be unto you”. These greetings suggest that it is right for one creation to wish the Creator’s good will and protection upon a fellow creation.
Likewise, the Protestant tradition gives the English goodbye, which is a contraction for “God be with you.”
Through greetings and other social customs, a religious tradition is able to regulate and govern the human relationships of its adherents. The tradition bestows meaning, value, and purpose to adherents’ social relationships. The role of human relationships in Christianity has been the subject of much discussion within both “believing” and “academic” circles, due to the seemingly contradictory nature of social relationships and a relationship with the Creator. Love of all humanity, for example, means love of no person in particular, for to love a particular means to favor a particular, to prefer one person above all other persons.
Transcendence from the bodily realm as a means of getting “closer to God” requires one to renounce earthly pleasures, and many saints have gone so far as to starve or torture themselves in the pursuit of transcendence. What, then, are we to make of human relationships in the context of divine purpose: is fellow man merely a distraction, or can we somehow find the divine through a specific enactment of our social relationships?
Richard Bach’s classic work Jonathan Livinsgton Seagull, the story of a seagull who learns to fly, sheds some light into the nature and purpose of social relationships for persons on the road to transcendence. I choose to read the story of Jonathan as an allegory for human transcendence through the religious experience, because it addresses the ideals of love, freedom, and the ultimate purpose of existence.
