Saudi Arabia to Host Major Interfaith Conference in Madrid

Tynegate »

Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:14 am Agree: 1   Disagree: 0

The solution to the problem of interfaith intolerance is at once astonishingly simple in theory and yet seems after two millennia almost hopelessly difficult in practice for most of us.

For Christians, the solution would surely consist of simply following (or should we say at least attempting to follow?) Jesus' two great commandments: To love God (Truth) with all your mind heart and soul, and, in a similar spirit, love your neighbor as yourself. And the neighbor, as it appears from his Parable of the Good Samaritan, emphatically includes those with whom you may have religious differences.

Jesus distilled these moral principles from the very heart of Judaism, and for Muslims we may say they were uttered by a prophet generally recognized in Islam (where God can hardly be named without reference to His Compassion and Mercy!) as second only in authority to Mohammed himself (on him and Jesus be peace).

All scriptural and doctrinal speculation in any religion that is out of harmony with these two Great Commandments is at best irrelevant, at worst a horrendous sin. (To apply the Wisdom of this World to divine revelation can be not only foolishness, as St Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth, but downright blasphemous, should it stir up contempt or hatred.) And yet this sin is so widespread in all religions that it can reduce such a pious and ethically sensitive iconoclast as Christopher Hitchens (recent author of “God is not Great”) into repudiating the very existence of a God whom we religious people claim to be worshiping.

The Great Commandments are simple. The inner jihad necessary to turn them into our personal realities is evidently the hardest thing in the world, to judge by the historical record. So the easiest way to cut and run from that supreme spiritual battle is to turn the jihad against your brother. So, in his jealousy, Cain slew Abel. Who amongst us today escapes the brand of Cain?

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in following the Great Commandments is thatyou have to sacrifice all those comfortable feelings of superiority to your religious neighbors. Spiritual pride is the deadliest of sins, the one that Jesus most persistently denounced. Nowhere in his gospel utterances do I find “Be ye Orthodox, even as your fathers were Orthodox. The purity of a loving heart is a surer passport to Heaven than an imagined purity of doctrine.

Thus, all blessings upon King Abdullah’s surely god-inspired endeavors in Madrid.