A senior cleric in Iran has issued a fatwa declaring that anyone who threatens Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “an enemy of God,” state media has reported.
Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi was responding to a question about any threats made by U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of Israel, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A fatwa is a ruling on how to interpret Islamic law issued by a clerical authority.
The thing I found out when I was a manager is you will get exactly what you measure. If you measure how long it takes to close tickets your customer service will suffer (that’s a stupid thing to measure anyway, but we had a stupid director). If you measure the number of tickets closed then you’ll get each step of a process as a ticket. If you measure billable hours you’ll get a bunch of time padding.
So since the religion is measuring the amount of sin and (in some denominations cases) good works performed, that’s what you’ll get. How many of the big 10 did you stay on the right side of? Did you put in 2 hours at the soup kitchen? Cool, here’s your ticket to heaven. It’s not measuring how good you are to your fellow humans. And they’re pissed if you don’t have to follow the same rules they do because you don’t believe in the same sins. So they try to force others to live by their dumb ass rules instead of trying to get others to be good people.
I like your example about foolish management, and you’re right in that’s what you’ll get when you “measure for holiness.” Hypocrites and holier-than-thous galore.
However, and I can only speak from a Christian experience, this is why “works based salvation” is not what is taught by Jesus Himself.
What you speak of with “How many of these laws did you follow enough to get a ticket to heaven?” is Hollywood theology at best, and not at all Biblical.
Numerous times He stresses doing good works in secret, and not to show off to others. (If you get attention for it, that’s your petty little reward, basically.)
A righteous life inspires good works naturally, and the Law makes sure we should never forget that none of us are perfect, therefore we are called to forgive others the way we’d wish to be forgiven.
We are not called to judge others. If you judge others, you’d best be ready to submit to being judged by the same metric. (And will likely be found wanting.)
I too, am I weary and sick of these religious cults, who want to wear the funniest big hats and stand on the highest podiums to look down their nose at all the lesser-thans. Surely, they’ve “already gotten their reward”, and those who use faith to mislead and abuse others do not know their God, and He will not remember them.