UNITY

Unity (or epilogue to the RE: Forgiveness Series)

A young white man walks into a Bible Study at a black church and sits with them for an hour. And then he shoots them.

A white man claiming to be Christian drives 3 hours to Toledo and tries to set fire to the mosque there. Why did these men do these horrible acts?

Because someone taught them to hate.

We are at a crossroads in faith. We have two options. We can choose to become religious totalitarians, convinced that we have the one interpretation of religion and everyone else needs to be cowed, converted, condemned, or killed.

Or we can be people who believe that there is always some unity to be found. That we can be from different backgrounds and faiths and communities and still find a way to live together.[1]

Eboo Patel is a Muslim who lives in Chicago. As a youth he found a home in his local YMCA and was nominated to the leaders’ school. While he was there, they taught him a Christian hymn. When he came home, Eboo’s dad complained, “Do you think they are trying to teach Christianity to our kids?”

“I hope so,” his mom responded. “I hope they teach the kids Jewish and Hindu songs, too. That’s the kind of Muslims we want our kids to be.”[2]

Eboo now runs an interfaith youth movement. Eboo is trying to help the youth find unity.

Statue of Ganesha at Columbus Zoo

Growing up, I wanted to be the best Catholic I could be. My freshman year, a classmate of mine gave a presentation on his faith. I sat there and fumed. Shamir was Hindu, and he spoke of his family’s practices and of the god Ganesha. Ganesha is the son of Shiva. He grew fast and Shiva had a conference to attend over the weekend and when he returned he found a young man. Thinking he was a thief, Shiva cut off his head. When the mother said the young man was his son, Shiva cut off an elephant’s head and placed it on his son and that’s why Ganesha has an elephant’s head.

I was so mad and bitter. What an idiot! This story wasn’t true! So I put my hand up and told Shamir that this story couldn’t be true.

Shamir calmly stated that he knew that the story wasn’t historically true. But it does talk about how we often make rash decisions and harm those we love. He spoke of how Ganesha is the god of the arts and sciences. He’s known as the remover of obstacles. He is revered by both Hindus, Janists, and Buddhists which is rare, because Buddhists and Hindus often fight in India.

I wish I could say that I admitted I was wrong and that I learned something that day. That Shamir and I became great friends, and I learned so much from him… But I was on the track of a religious totalitarian.

I was only in my Catholic bubble. I thought all other religions were wrong and heading to hell. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Baptist and a Presbyterian, only that they were wrong. People fear the unknown. If we haven’t been exposed to it, we are nervous, if not fearful. That’s natural. What isn’t natural is to let those fears be unchecked and calcify into prejudice. Humans are naturally curious, we have to be taught to ignore and fear that curiosity.

I think curiosity is what has kept me open. I’m interested in people and in their stories. I kept exploring stories. Stories not like my own, stories like Shamir’s.

In college, I decided I wasn’t Catholic anymore, and I wasn’t even sure I was Christian. I thought of myself as a Buddhist, because I became interested in the religion after a World Religions class. I started doing yoga. I loved the private prayer practice. It was an amazing stress relief from my class load. I felt very centered.

Then 9/11 happened. The next day I went to the local mosque and met a good friend Alsaf. The more I learned about Islam and Buddhism, the more I started to return to Christianity. Without Islam and Buddhism, I wouldn’t be a Christian pastor. What I have learned is to be more welcoming and hospitable. I do this because inclusion and welcome have never ever made a single terrorist. Exclusion, inhospitality, and bad theology are the only things that have.

I’ve also told the story about my work with Syrian Refugees in Toledo and how we found unity with them. We discovered points of contact when we met at a park to play. How all couples bicker over cooking. How soccer and chess are universal languages. Some of the Syrian guys fawned over some historic cars. A mother spoke about how she was so confused how all of this had happened. She was grieving for her country. She was afraid of the reception here. She spoke about how her hometown had the largest Christmas tree in all of the Middle East and how her denomination of Islam celebrated Christmas like we do.

We found unity. We found unity because we were looking for it. We were curious about our new neighbors and wanted to learn about them and welcome them.

Sadly, there are many that aren’t interested in finding unity. They are only concerned about themselves. Their own point of view. They stick by their own preconceived ideas. They have managed to kill curiosity. How I wish everyone would have been open to gather in that park and play games and look at classic cars and eat a picnic until blue skies. Sadly, there are those who have their minds made up that all Muslims are bad. All are terrorists. And we should stop all refugees from coming in.

Some would even say that we have our own poor in this country we should worry about. A recent letter to the editor in the Medina Gazette and Post stated, “Let the churches, private organizations, and do-gooders help.” Yet I have found the more I listen to such voices, they aren’t much interested in helping our own poor either.

Yet even with the uncurious, while I think they are wrong, we do share humanity. Even the worst person you can think of is still a person. As Desmond Tutu states, “People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition. Children do not dream of growing up to be rapists or murderers, and yet every rapist and every murderer was once a child.”[3]

No child dreams of being a refugee, yet every refugee was once a child and many still are.

The text from Jeremiah states, “Woe to those who divide the flock.” This is not God’s vision for the people. At the center of Jeremiah’s vision is justice. The whole Hebrew Scriptures persistently insist on justice, and it’s narrowly defined. As scholar Patrick Miller states, “Justice is present in the way one treats the weakest members of the community, the powerless and the marginalized, the economically depressed, and the vulnerable. The judicial structures, including this appeal to the king,” are part of the process, but the content of justice rests in the treatment of the weak.[4]

Unity seems to be a hard thing to find these days. The news of division dominants our lives. People seem to feel as if their callousness toward the plight of others is a virtue and not a vice like that letter to the editor. How can we find unity in all this difference?

We must be willing to search for it. And when we don’t find it, to forgive one another. Unity doesn’t mean we all become the same, like we’re put through some cookie-cutter mold. No. Our God is a God of diversity, there is not just one of anything. There are so many species and subspecies of just about everything.

Yet when we find something or someone we can’t find unity with, then what do we do?

Desmond Tutu gives us four steps in his book, The Book of Forgiving. Those steps are Telling the Story, Naming the Hurt, Granting Forgiveness, and Renewing or Releasing the Relationship.

Telling the Story and Naming the Hurt are self-explanatory. Telling the Story and naming the hurt help us understand and begin to take back was has been taken from us. To get our story straight. Yet many can stay here and be the perpetual victim. Many are stuck and can’t get past this. Yet to forgive is to be free from that hurt. To say that what happened is so not okay that you refuse to be connected to it any longer.

This can be done alone or in conversation with the person you need to forgive. You can write down the story and name the hurt and then burn it. You can post it anonymously on the internet. Or you can sit down and have a cup of coffee. It all depends on what happened and how you want to confront it.

We then move into granting forgiveness. A victim is in a position of weakness and cannot determine what happens to them. A hero is someone who determines his or her own fate and future. They say, “I had no choice in what happened, but I choose what I do next.” Forgiveness grants that freedom. Yet forgiveness also recognizes the humanity in others. We all mess up and will need forgiveness sooner or later in our lives. We are flawed fragile human beings who can be thoughtless and cruel. We would hope that everyone would be thoughtful and kind, but we ourselves have forgotten that.

Then the fourth step is to renew or release the relationship. Renewing doesn’t mean acting like nothing happened but being stronger because of what happened. We couldn’t deny that those refugees were no longer in Syria. Here they were in Ohio. And they had to accept it or deny it. And every single one of them wanted to renew their relationship with a country and community. It just so happened that it was our community that they were in.

That meant the refugees had to release the relationship with those who harmed them. Who caused them to flee. They didn’t want to leave, but here they were. So they decided to make the best of it and hang out with these strange Americans in a park.

And because of that, we lived that passage from Ephesians, “you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household.” We found unity because we were curious. We searched for it.

When you called me, you called a religious pluralist. All faiths have some element of truth in them. Each has a spark of the divine. I have and will continue to teach lessons from other religions. That’s the type of Christian I want to be.

If we believe that there is one God, and that God is sovereign over everything and everyone… and God is infinite and we couldn’t possibly know God completely… and we recall that Jesus said, “I have other sheep than these. They will come when I call them so that there is one flock, one Shepherd.” (John 10:16)… then we can be more open. In learning about the faith of others, we learn about ours as well. That’s the type of Christians we want to be.

Biblography

Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Harper Collins, 1997.

Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The story of an American Muslim, the struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Beacon Press, 2007.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ. Riverhead Books, 1997.

Pastor Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon, Imam Jamal Rahman, Religion Gone Astray: What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith as well as Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi & an Imam.

Kenneth Rose, Pluralism: the future of faith. Bloomsbury Press 2014.

 

 

 

 Patel, Eboo. Acts of Faith. Page XV.

 Ibid, pages 16-17.

 The Book of Forgiving, page 23.

 New Interpreter’s Bible, Jeremiah, Page 745.

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