Guest post: Different gods are not at odds?
Last Saturday at an Iowa rally for McCain, a pastor delivered a prayer before the candidate appeared tbat dismissed the other side as followers of a different God whom their God needed to defeat.
The prayer said: “There are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that [Barack Obama] wins, for a variety of reasons” and they would think their god bigger than the Christian God if that happened.
The Pastor who prayed that prayer is Dr. Arnold Conrad, who is the director of an association of interim ministers. When I did an Internet search of his name, I found an e-mail address on his organization’s web site, interimpastors.com, and wrote him the following e-mail:
I am a pastor from Missouri and I am also a guest columnist in the local newspaper in St. Louis for the duration of the presidential election!
I would like to write an essay for the column I am writing about the prayer you offered at the rally, which caused a bit of an uproar. I wonder if you would be willing to write to me in an e-mail just to let me know what you were hoping to communicate with your prayer.
Do you believe that Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Jews have different gods or could it be that God is the same and we each view God differently?
I haven’t heard from Dr. Conrad, but if I do, I will share his response with you here.
The Rev. Conrad’s comments in his prayer are part of a disturbing trend in these lingering days of this election. I equate his adversarial words with other comments from the campaign trail that have leveled accusations that the opponents are anti-American and even communistic.
I understand that people feel that the faith and the patriotism that they adhere to are the best possible world view. If you did not feel that your tenets were the best, then you would not give them your passionate loyalty.
My motivation might even be to persuade you that my deeply held convictions are the most true, but our culture requires me to have some humility about my opinion and respect for yours.
Doesn’t it?
There is a glimmer of hope for me in the broadcast I recall hearing last May on NPR of an interview with a group of families of several different religions from a suburb in Virginia who come together each Sunday morning in order to teach their youngsters values that they affirm from all faiths.
One of the parents taught the following lesson at a Sunday school class: “…Religions are a lot like lamp shades. They may look different, they may be different colors or sit in different rooms, but they all have the light of God inside of them.”
So, here is the question: Won’t somebody please help put a stop to this mean-spirited and narrow-minded new McCarthy/Crusade mentality before it gets serious?
I want to believe that all of this is just the tough rhetoric of a hard-fought campaign and afterwards we will go back to normal. I do believe it is possible because I know that our gods are NOT at odds - even if we may be.
Guest blogger Scott Lohse is the winner of our "Five Minutes with a candidate" contest and will post guest blogs through the election.
He is the pastor of St. Martin's United Church of Christ in Dittmer, Mo. He has also served United Methodist Churches in Eastern Missouri towns over the past 30 years including Kennett, Bonne Terre, Jackson, Creve Coeur and Manchester. Scott has also worked as a hospice chaplain and a radio broadcaster. He is also an amateur magician.
Scott has been married for 30 years to his wife Lin. They have three children. He is an avid reader, a news junkie, and he spends more time online than he cares to admit. 
Forgive me, it is so unbelieveable that I am compelled to ask the obvious question, how did you confirm it?
Let me get this straight, you believe that Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Jews have the same god(s)? Did the great philosopher Peter Pan reveal this to you or what? You need to spend less time online and more time in your bible.Seriously dude you really floored me with this one. A lot like lampshades ?
I answered my own question, it is on YouTube. When I think I have seen it all, something else happens. I do not like this campaign!
Saw vid of pastor. A little goofy to say he knows God is in control of the outcome but feels compelled to remind God of its magnitude concerning Himself and how He may be viewed, but to say religions ultimately have the same God is equally goofy and,more importantly,its irresponsible.
LAMP SHADES?
I imagine if these any of these other religions believe that there is ONE
God who is the Creator of all things, then it would have to be the same God that we Christians also worship, wouldn’t it? Now, beyond that FACT is where we hold different beliefs and doctrines, and also differences about who Christ was and is.
Christians would agree that Issac and Ishmael shared the same God. And we are taught that from Ishmael birthed the Muslim religion. But, we want to also say that we share belief in a different God. Remember how the angel of God spoke to Hager, Ishmael’s mother?
Genesis 16
[7] The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. [8] And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
[9] Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” [10] The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.”
[11] The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now with child
and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
[12] He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.”
[13] She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” [14] That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
If it is true that the Muslim religion came by the way of Ishmael then there should be no doubts by Christians that we share the same God.
I have no doubts about my Christian faith and who Jesus was or Christ is when I compare and study other religions, but this ugliness we are witnessing here in the United States must stop because only evil will be birthed from it if it continues and, what a shame that men and who claim that they are representatives of God could take part and become the instigator of such non-sense that leads to much evil.
I believe that Jesus is the ‘way, truth and life’ just as the Christian Gospel proclaims but I am also more than willing, in fact very interested in, affirming the truth of God which exists in other expressions of faith just like the prophets and Jesus himself were willing to do. Briefly I think of the prophet Jeremiah who had a vision of a day when we might affirm that God would be recognized as embeded in every human heart - this seems pretty inclusive to me:
Jeremiah 31f “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD.
Another example which comes promptly to mind is when Peter the apostle struggled himself with reaching out to Gentiles and he receives a vision which causes him to confess the following:
Acts 10:34-38
Peter declares, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
In addition the disciples were concerned about ‘outsiders’ calling upon the name of God in a way which they did not confirm as ‘orghodox’ and Jesus says anyone who calls upon God in any manner is of the same mind and spirit:
Mark 9:38-40 (King James Version)
And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part.
Finally, for the moment anyway, this is a passage from Bahai website comparing Christianity, Judaism, Islam and their own faith’s concept of God which I find insightful:
(http://www.planetbahai.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?article=149)
The differences between these four religions are not so much about God as about who spoke for Him. A Jew might or might not regard Jesus as having been a true prophet. A Christian might well reject the idea that Muhammad was God’s prophet. A Muslim might discount the idea that Bahá’u'lláh was God’s messenger. Followers of any of these religions might claim that the other religions present inadequate or distorted beliefs about God. But at the core, all of them are talking about one and the same God, because each successive religion claims to add to, not take away from, the previous ones.
One more thing, I am only marginally familiar with Jungian pshychology, but I believe that he described God as the ‘collective unconscious’ which was a ’secular’ affirmation of the same thing which Jeremiah wrote as I see it!
Pastor Scott, I’m with you on this one. What I don’t understand is another part of what happens here. Those who sit firmly on the exclusivist side speak primarily from ignorance, and treat others as enemies without bothering to truly examine what their enemy is about.
I like the story about the group of families you mentioned. I think there is much to be gained by interfaith conversation. The bottom line is that “I” cannot understand God. I can only understand, following Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, as in a mirror dimly.
Pastor Scott, I found this from a religion class I had a few years ago. It kind of dispels your belief that all the Gods are really the same, would you agree. I also remember the first line from one of the readings, anyone who thinks that “basically, all religions are the same” simply doesnt know what he/she is talking about, would you disagree with that?
Anyway, here is the part about muslims.
Muslims believe in one, unique, incomparable God, Who has no son nor partner, and that none has the right to be worshipped but Him alone. He is the true God, and every other deity is false. He has the most magnificent names and sublime perfect attributes. No one shares His divinity, nor His attributes. In the Quran, God describes Himself:
I’ve had the good fortune to travel around much of our world. I have found sincere, loving, hard working people everywhere I have been. The religious beliefs of the people I’ve met may have differed from mine, but you wouldn’t have known. I really believe that it doesn’t matter what your religion is, a good person is a good person. I have found that the most dangerous and difficult people are those who presume to know what God wants.
Si,
How about giving us your take on the Jewish religion, they too worship the same God as we Christians, don’t they? That faith doesn’t believe that God had a Son nor, anyone sharing the same divinity as God.
The description you describe of God according to Muslims is the same description of the God we learn about in the Holy Scriptures Old Testament Books.
I am able to live respectably among other faiths in this country and elsewhere, why can’t you and so many others who identify themselves as Christians?