"Do you really think that you are the source of the word of
God or that you are the only people to whom it has come?"
- St Paul to the Corinthians
St Paul wrote numerous letters specifically addressed to each
of the Early Churches, a compelling recognition that, from the
outset, they were diverse, different cultures, different nations,
different problems.. DIFFERENT! Now there are thousands of Christian
denominations, and like Shia and Sunni, they have throughout history,
warred on one another, in pursuit of pointless claims to being
uniquely right. Only when their conflicts cease do they become the
One True Faith, diverse but united in obedience to God.
Dialogue, inter-faith and intra-faith, is an essential
component of the search for Truth.
"Religions are open houses which can teach and practice dialogue,
respect for the difference and the dignity of the whole person, the love
of the truth, awareness of belonging to the one great family of peoples
wanted by God and called to live under his watch in shared love."
That's a quote from Chrys McVey OP, "an American born Catholic priest
and member of the Dominican Order who has spent almost his entire
adult life living in Muslim Pakistan. He's been there over forty
years." If anyone understands Islam, from a Christian perspective,
this man has a claim:
"My debt to Pakistan is immense - a debt to the small but vibrant
Christian community, discriminated against and victimised, but all the
more faithful for that. I'm grateful to my Muslim friends, men and
especially women, from whom I learned to see another face of God. And I
am convinced that had I not lived there for so many years, I would today
have absolutely nothing to say.
In Pakistan 96 per cent of the population is Muslim, one per cent is
Christian and that is surely enough to start rethinking what mission is
all about. The disposition of openness to others is essential not only
to understand others but to realise that without them we will never come
to an understanding of who we are or who God is."
Some of you will need more than 40 years for that to sink in.
"What made Jesus so unique was this unqualified acceptance of others in
their difference and it is this that brought him to an awareness of what
he was and what he was called to do. We are becoming more aware of the
other from all points of view. Taking difference seriously is being
thrust upon us and the existence of the other can no longer be
peripheral to our faith. It is instead part of it. Making sense out of
this is the task of theologians."
Fr McVey delivered the 2007 Las Casas lecture at Blackfriars, Oxford:
"The Land of Unlikeness: The Risk and Promise of Interreligious
Dialogue.", parts of which are incorporated in a ABC program which
demonstrated just how alive the intellectual traditions remain
in Christianity, Judaism and Islam:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2008/2217348.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/encounter&d=rn/encounter/audio&r=eer_20042008_2856.ram&w=eer_20042008_28M.asx&t=Sunday%2020%20April%202008&p=1
http://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/events_item.php?id=18
Christianity and Islam are united in their understanding that
God has created diversity, in every ecology, in every unique
individual, in every leaf and snowflake, and while there is
One God, there are many understandings, and the One God has
made that clear to each religious dispensation;
"God can never be known or adequately represented by imperfect human
beings. Yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people
who claim to know for certain that God is on their side. Belief not
tempered by doubt poses a moral danger. The alternative to blind belief
is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief, one that embraces
uncertainty, and that enables us to respect others whom we do not
understand.
The Quran itself addresses this question: "To everyone one of you have
we appointed a different law and way of life and if God had so willed he
could surely have made you all one single community, but he willed it
otherwise in order to test you." St Paul is less gentle with the
Corinthians: "Do you really think that you are the source of the word of
God or that you are the only people to whom it has come?"
Those questions are directed TO each of the faiths, none has a claim
to be The One True Faith, except in a relationship of respect,
understanding and brotherly love to the other. Dialogue, disagreement
argument, are all not only permitted but ESSENTIAL for the clash of
differing opinions to produce the spark of understanding, but hate,
violent conflict and exclusion are not.
When you hear people preaching hatred of another faith, denouncing
and decrying every member of that group, think on this:
"The scriptural criterion for good action according to the Books of the
Law and the message of the Prophets was always dependant on how the
orphan, the widow and the stranger were treated."
Muslims in this country, just like Christians in Pakistan, are
strangers, and it is their treatment which determines the
validity of a faith tradition, not professions of unique
theological correctness.
This is where the limitations of Richard Dawkin's, whose work
demolishing sacred cows is as useful as it is relentless, show up...
when ancient texts are shown to be so insightful, so
absolutely relevant to modern life, so clearly
the LIVING word, that we feel our pulse race with
excitement.. THIS, we tell ourselves, is Wisdom;
....
"Thus in Deuteronomy: The Lord your God is not partial. He executes
justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving
him food and clothing. Love the stranger therefore, for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt. Leviticus is even more specific: When a
stranger sojourns with you in the land, you shall do him no wrong. The
stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you
and you shall love him as yourself for you were strangers in the land of
Egypt. And Exodus gives as a reason for not oppressing the stranger
this: you know the heart of the stranger for you were strangers in the
Land of Egypt."
....
"The Prophet Isaiah says we are all kin, of one flesh and blood, and
perhaps never more than now. We are presented today with the disturbing
reality, otherness - the simple fact of being different in some way,
Muslim or migrant - has come to be defined as, in and of itself, evil.
Increasingly we see that exclusion, us and them, has become the primary
sin, skewing all our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out
of fear and anger to all those who are not within in our ever narrowing
circle."
Isiah is a prophet to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The true faith of God is One.
You are free to disagree with Isiah, the history of
slaughter is littered with the acts of those who do,
but you cannot do so while claiming to be a genuine
Christian, Muslim or Jew.
Shalom and Salaam
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"They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears
into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore." — Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3
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"Where there is no vision, the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18
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