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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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For more than 20 years since my baptism (a ritual by which one publicly signals one has become a follower of Jesus Christ), people have often given me the opportunity to “tell my story”—to “give a testimony,” as we Christians like to call it. Despite the fact that my life with God was not only passionate but also conflicted and complicated, the story itself was easy to tell.
It was all one story. One life. One song.
But it is not that easy anymore.
Today, I find myself wondering which song I should sing. Should I look into my own soul and sing the song of the struggles and joys I encounter within? Or should I move beyond myself and sing the song of my people, followers of Jesus Christ? Or maybe I should rise above my Christian story and sing a song of all humanity, with all its heartache and dreams? Or should I spread my heart still wider and sing a song with all creation under God? Is the story of God a story of my own soul, a story of my religion, a story of humanity or a story of all that is? To accept all these stories as the stories of God is to imply that my religion then becomes only a part of the ultimate story of the world—not the ultimate story itself.
Orthodox rabbi David Hartman, concerned with the perennial conflict in Jerusalem, insists that different melodies of one God must be cherished: “Each group feels that its way is the only way: there is one God, therefore there has to be one truth. Christians build their story on the Jewish story and therefore feel they are inheritors of Judaism. Muslims built their story on the Bible, and therefore they feel that they are the perfect expression of monotheism.
Now, we’ve got to get out of each other’s story. We can’t feel that in order for me to tell my story, your story has to end. . . . In other words, affirmation [of my story] does not require that I demonise those who are different from me. I don’t have to build conviction out of hate and fear.” If my identity depends on annihilation of other stories, I cannot really sing all four songs of God.
What if God measures our religion by the way it contributes to stories other than one’s own? What if our religions will be judged by the good they bring to their nonadherents? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says this succinctly: “When in the afterglow of religious insight I can see a way that is good for all humans as it is for me—I will know it is His way.” In the same vein, the Qur’an reads, “Had God willed He would have made you into one religious community; but it was his will to test you in what He gave you. So compete with each other in doing good works” (Qur’an 5:48).
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, of George Washington University, contends that “there’s no more crucial problem for our day than to be able to cross religious frontiers while preserving our own integrity.
In fact, I think this the only exciting intellectual adventure of our times.”
So I find it hard to “give a testimony” today without offending people of my own religion, whose identity depends on a divided and conflicted world. As a follower of Christ, I have grown to believe in a world that is larger than Christianity. Jesus called this larger world the kingdom of God. It is the symphony made of all stories our magnanimous God is involved with in this world.
Only God is God. And Christianity is not. Nor Judaism. Nor Islam.
Paradoxically, this realisation about the greatness of God is a deeply Christian, Jewish and Muslim teaching.
When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, I begin with the first word, “Our . . .” (Matthew 6:9) and I stop and ask myself, “Who do I include in this our?” I remind myself that the story of God is bigger than my personal story, bigger than the story of my religion, bigger than the story of all humanity and bigger than the story of all Creation.
In the kingdom of God, these four stories are all my stories—all at the same time—woven together, giving meaning and life to each other.
Extract from Signs of the Times, January / February 2008 .
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