Veritas Invenere

I apologize, first off, for my long absence. The last few months have been fairly hectic, and what with writing papers, organizing club stuff, being an RA and applying to grad schools, I haven't put much effort into keeping this up.
I came back into Vernal yesterday. And while I'm not going to comment on Vernal right now, on the three hour car ride home, I had a lot of time to think about whatever it is that I wanted to contemplate. I utilized the ride to think about why it is that there are so many differing belief sets in the world.
It occurs to me that there must be a certain appeal to any given philosophy or faith. There must be some aspect of it that attracts men and women to it. I feel, then, that any given practice of beliefs must have some truth within it. I believe, as Socrates, that humans can recognize certain truths. This, of course, would be why there are similar beliefs in remote parts of the world--similar in how they conduct themselves and even, to a certain extent, what they believe about our final ends and the governing powers of the universe.
However, we observe that there are also a great deal of differences between the various beliefs. I would submit that this is because, as Aquinas says, it is possible to come to a fullness of truth, but not everyone could come to the truth, and it would only be done by long and arduous labor. So, often, when someone comes upon some great truth, he synthesizes doctrines based on this, though often erroneously.
Of course, these sets of beliefs get propagated because man eventually feels the compulsion to find the truth. As Blaise Pascal said, every man, eventually, comes to the realization that death is coming hurtling at him. When we come to grips with our temporality, we realize seek to find some kind of reason for our being. So often, men turn to philosophies or faiths, especially those wherein they see a truth that they recognize.
But it cannot be the case that every single philosophy or religion is right. So many of them openly contradict each other, that it would be utterly incomprehensible to have a pantheistic or panphilosophic attitude. So the task lies on us to figure out which ones we can embrace and which ones to reject.
Of course, with the differing doctrines within each one, it is impossible to take a look from any perspective of the schools of thought to examine what we should do. Plato thought we should seek to live virtuous lives. Luther taught that we are saved through our faith by Grace, and that our works cannot achieve heaven for us. Hedonists and Nihilists claim that nothing we do has any moral or eternal bearing. If we are already attached to one thought, we cannot fairly judge any other school.
So I will not lie and say my opinion is unbiased. But I will try to demonstrate what I think the correct answer is and why. If the Hedonists, Nihilsts, and even some of the Existentialists are right, then we have no moral obligation to anythin. However, this is not the case, because it is obvious through the ways that societies work that at some level, we have a moral obligation to fulfill. If Locke and Hobbes, and for that matter Caesar and all the current talk show hosts, are right, then our moral obligation is only to the state, and that is wherein our salvation lies. However, this cannot either be the case, since states rise and fall all the time, and oftne men outlive their own body politic (read: in a relatively recent example, East and West Germany, the Soviet Union, etc). So it must be to some greater force, for some greater good. If we follow Luther, then salvation requires faith. My biggest problem with this doctrine is not that we are saved through Grace, but rather that our faith is necessary. This seem ridiculous when there are people in parts of the world who have no access to the Gospel, nor did our ancestors if we go back far enough. Thus, salvation excludes a significant portion of the population, and Grace doesn't really seem like Grace.
So, I find myself taking on a more Platonic ideal. I will not say that we need to try to embrace every single virtue in either a Socratic or Aristotelian method, but we do need to live our lives with a sense of what it is to be a good person. Righteous living is the key to our salvation. Even Vatican II made provisions for the "virtuous pagan" an idea that suggests that morality is actually universal, though faith in Christ Jesus is not.
So, I think that whether or not we devote our entire lives to honoring God is irrelevent, but living our entire lives as if we were serving Him or His children is absolutely relevent. Our salvation lies not in how many times we pray, nor in how often we attend church, but it absolutely depends on how we see our brothers and sisters and how we honor the light of God within them.