I believe in one God,
>> Saturday, November 20, 2010
I'm starting to worry that my religious views are at odds with the Church I am part of...you see, I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible...
....but I believe that your God is my God and my God is your God. A man I work with has gone to Mecca on pilgrimage, I am in awe. It is a 3 week stint of religious learning and renewal. When I go on pilgrimage, I go for 2 days and whilst beautifully renewing and spiritually deepening, it is also very tiring.
Before he left we sat and talked about pilgrimage in general, no question about the difference in faiths and that is really important to me. So many faiths seem to stem from the one maker, they involve prophets, the teaching of God in terms of word interpreted and written down. That word tends to boil down to "let's try to be nice to people for a change".
I've given up on denominational divides, on what we call it. I see myself worshipping in Church as the same as the person in the Mosque. It's a different way of doing the same thing and that's ok because the one God sent the word to be interpreted as fitted, if it was meant to be the same thing for every person then we would have been sent a prewritten manual. Yes, I know Moses came down from the mountain with the Commandments but they pretty much cover off the "look, just stop sleeping around and killing people. Let's be nice and charitable." and that can also be found in the Quran.
So I sit in Church and sometimes hear things said that go completely against my deep down belief that we are all one.
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said today: "The good thing about faith is that it builds communities. It takes a lot of 'mes' and turns them into an 'us', the bad news is that it can divide communities into a 'them' and an 'us'."
Next week is Interfaith week, it's time to extend the hand of friendship to someone who is not of your faith.