Agreeing To Disagree

I am going to write today about religion, Gentle Reader.  More specifically I want to briefly explore an idea or two about how to commence a gentle and respectful dialogue between faiths where neither party has to compromise or forget the existence of any of their own respective key tenets and beliefs.  I was listening this morning at the crack of dawn to a program on BBC called Heart And Soul.  And just to reassure everybody that I have not turned hoity-toity on everyone, I don't normally listen to the BBC.  This is a program that our own CBC Radio One broadcasts every Tuesday at 5:30 am and it pertains to matters spiritual and religious, hence the very easily accessible scheduling for said radio program.

I learned something really very new on today's broadcast: that Islam honours the Virgin Mary with almost equal reverence to the Roman Catholics and that she is mentioned in the Koran thirty-four times (or is it thirty-seven?)  apparently, in Germany some Catholics and Muslims were actually meeting together to celebrate the Blessed Holy Mother.  Gobsmacked?  I sure am.

I have long had reservations about carrying interfaith dialogues too far.  I have long believed and held, as I still do, that Jesus makes interfaith dialogue somewhat problematic.  Christians, which is to say that Christians who have a sound grasp on Christian theological moorings, understand that there is something unique and in a way exclusive about Christ.  Not exclusive in the sense of driving away non-members, but in the sense that there is something irreplaceable and inimitable about Jesus: that he is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and that he came not simply as a prophet but as God manifesting his love in our simple and fallen humanity in order to span the chasm that sin had opened between humankind and God.  We do not have to accept in order to have a reasonable dialogue with Muslims that Mohammed is his prophet.  By the same token neither do they have to accept as valid anything we believe about Jesus.

The key word is respect.  Believing as we believe need not close our minds or shutter our hearts to those who believe differently.  Neither does this let us off the hook from learning from the other.  We have to accept and respect that the things we believe have power in our lives because somehow these things have been given us by revelation.  Or perhaps that this has been God's way of revealing himself to us.  We cannot reasonably expect nor assume that everyone else is going to think the way we do.  This does not make us right, neither does it make us superior.  It doesn't make us anything.  Simply we are Christians and that's all there is to it; or we are Muslims and that's all there is to it.

So what do we say to each other, as Muslims and Christians talking to each other?  How does one open the dialogue?  By saying "My God can beat up your God?"  Or maybe more like "My God is your God."  But we don't believe all the same things.  Well, why should we?  We all have good reasons for believing what we believe and one of the surest and quickest ways of shutting down dialogue occurs when one challenges the other's belief system.  If it comes to that then one side had might as well put up stakes with kindling and the other had might as well build crosses for crucifying because we have already insulted each other.  Of course, as Christians we are still going to want to keep on believing that Jesus is God made manifest and as Muslims we are still going to believe that Mohammed is the Prophet of God. 

So I will say to my Muslim friend that it really doesn't matter to me that you believe as I do.  We both still believe in the same God.  And from my Muslim friend I would like to hear that it doesn't matter that I believe as he does.  We are both passionate about what we believe.  We are also passionate about respect, kindness and mutual goodwill.  If God wants to reveal to me that Mohammed is his one true prophet then this will happen in God's time.  Should God want to reveal to my Muslim friend the divinity of Christ, then hunky-dory and tickety-boo.

We are still going to want to proclaim our respective faiths, and so much the better, but in order to do so, respective must be transformed into respectful.  We walk in love.