Dates of Interest
Who’s God Review
Published date: 3rd February 2011
On Wednesday 19 January 2011 there was a meeting at St. Ethelburga’s, in the heart of
London, where the representatives of different religious traditions met to share some moments
of reflection. They were mainly Christians and Muslims of diverse denominations, Catholics,
Protestants, Methodists, Pentecostals, Shi’ites and Sunnis, and also a Buddhist man.
It is always quite complicated to try to explain “who is God?”: the reflections include
philosophy and religious knowledge, without disregarding personal experience and its
mystical aspects. Is God an “objective” reality, or more of a “subjective” experience? This
was the starting question of the conversation: is this reality a far away, detached presence, or
more personal, with whom we can have an intimate relationship? The answers were many,
and very different: the first suggestion was that “nobody can know God, because He is much
bigger than any human representation”.
But, a few moments later, everyone present gave their personal answers, everyone them
showing that the two aspects of God are strictly connected, and that for a believer it’s not so
simple to keep them separate. Some of the answers were: “When you think of Him you know
that He is merciful, because He has told us, and both these recognitions give you relief and
makes you feel reassured”; and, “You know that He is a Father, and He loves you, no matter
what you did, and even if you don’t think of Him, He thinks of you”.
There were some “extreme” answers, and when one of our group said that the experience
of God is so subjective that “everybody can be God, if he respects him/herself and is able
to connects to the nature and the cosmic motion”, there were some unimpressed responses -
most of those present thought of God as perfect and as the creator of everything, and that we
will never able to be like this.
But the most interesting point, and the one most widely shared, was about the Love-reality of
God. Everyone contributed to defining His loving presence in the life of the human beings.
For Christians the main aspect of the Loving presence of God was His mercy: the message
of the Holy Trinity is that the Son was sent to the Earth to be a sacrifice for the mankind, to
redeem humans from sin. From love, to the equilibrium between forgiveness/punishment,
and to the opposition of heaven/hell -there were many responses to the Christian statement
about the mercy of God. Some said that He forgives those who repent, but punishes those
who endures in their sins. Islamically, it was said that God always forgives those who have
wronged Him if we are repentant, but if you wrong someone else: “He won’t forgive you,
unless you obtain forgiveness from the damaged person, and repair to the wrong” (and Jesus
clearly teaches this in the Gospels).
And then, it was said that: “punishment is more like a consequence for bad or harmful acts”,
and that “sin is more like the wrong to ourselves or the others” and that the consequence
flows directly from the action, i.e. karma. There was much agreement with this, in addition
to other beliefs of a predefined punishment to be given in the hereafter. Finally, an image of
heaven and hell – ‘Hell is described as a place where there are big round tables with many
people sitting trying to feed themselves using extremely long chopsticks. They tried to eat
but were not able to just because the sticks were too long. Further on, there were other big
round tables where the persons have the same chopsticks and all of them were eating, because
everyone was feeding somebody else.
The BBC were recording our conversations and we hope to hear the recording on the radio
in late Spring. If this taster has intrigued you keep an eye on this link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/faith
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/faith
Thuraya el-Kozeh, Volunteer
Julian Bond, Editor
