It's Really All About God: How Islam, Atheism, and Judaism Made Me a Better Christian

INTRODUCTION

The credits of the movie An Inconvenient Truth were still rolling when my wife, Vesna, and I sprang up from our sofa to tidy our apartment and move on with our lives. But our daughters, Leta (eleven) and Ena (thirteen) went silently to their room, so I followed to tuck them into bed.

What is it? I asked them as they looked up at me from their pillows.

What have you done? Leta said, without a trace of a smile.

I just stood there.

We just stood there. You and I.

Our children are looking at us, holding their breath in silence. Their unspoken accusations and mute hopes are not only about the physical environment of the world we are leaving for them; they are also about the spiritual environment they are inheriting.

I have been in the religion business for twenty years now, and this book is my way to enter this silence, grieve, ask for forgiveness, and look for signs of new life. Our religions—by which I mean any systems of meaning—are the caretakers of the spiritual environment of the world. What have we done?

We have come to the place where millions of people say, Religion? No thanks. I’d rather be spiritual than religious. But our departure from religion is at the very same time a departure from its rich treasures of community, insight, art, practice, organized action, and hard lessons. Without religion, we find ourselves isolated, incoherent, and naïve on our spiritual journeys.

As Phyllis Tickle, author of The Divine Hours and The Great Emergence, observed in an e-mail, All faiths are alike in their wisdom, more or less. It’s in our mysteries where we differ. An honest conversation about our religions is, therefore, an intimate endeavor. Only when we believe that the other is not there to hurt us—though the other may struggle to understand us—can we begin to share not only the light but also the shadows of our religion. To step into such conversations, we have to be ready to embrace the holy awkwardness that surrounds our God talk.

Life is so wide and so deep that our religions are barely adequate to help us take it in. It’s Really All About God is another way to say It’s Really Not All About Religion. This book is an attempt to step above, under, or sideways from our religions and look at them not merely as their adherents but as human beings. I wrote this book because I believe that love for our religion is meant to be as dynamic as any love relationship. There must be a distance and not only an embrace—a tension. It’s Really All About God is an invitation to acknowledge that distance and find a safe, honest, and hopeful relational place where wholesome love for our religions can thrive.

Religion, held properly, can change, and that gives me hope as we face our children. Religions are living things, and our children and our children’s children need to see us treating religions as such.

Some of my Muslim, atheist, Jewish, and Christian friends understand the subtitle of this book—Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian—as describing a person who embraces four religious traditions at once. I am not sure such a person exists. But the concept makes sense to them nevertheless. Hyphenated belonging is becoming a reality for many people who have found truth, beauty, and justice—in other words, life—in more than one Scripture, tradition, or practice. In their experience, being asked to make up their mind and renounce one religion in order to embrace another would be akin to being forced to choose one parent and deny the other or to rely on one sense at the expense of the others. The way religions contradict or collide with one another is not nearly as important to them as the way they complement and illuminate one another.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that the mystery that upholds my life is informed by Christian texts, history, and community. The cradle of my religious faith is Protestantism of a rather evangelical sort. For me, the subtitle of this book is a string of adjectives modifying the noun Christian. I embrace all the honor and shame that come with this identity. Yet I am not merely Christian. There is no such thing. None of us is a clone produced by our religion, not even people who try very hard to be one.

The other—individuals or groups that are not like us—is always there, affecting us, hurting us, blessing us, changing us. And because of this, we are all irrevocably unique. I would not have become or stayed Christian without the blessings of Islam, atheism, and Judaism. My hope is that Muslims, atheists, Jews, and Christians who read this book will hear one more voice affirming how indispensable our differing treasures are—and not just for ourselves, but for others, too. To maintain the breath of life in something as complex and beautiful as human experience, our mysteries need one another.

This book is mostly about four systems of meaning—the three Abrahamic faiths and atheism. As much as I had wanted to expand the pegs of the tent of this book, I soon realized that I cannot do everything at once. I am neither qualified nor capable. I do expect, though, that the treasures of other religions will reveal themselves between the lines in every chapter of this book and bless us more and more as our conversation deepens and expands.

This is not a book about Christian pluralism, so for those of you who are interested in my views on this matter, I direct you to a splendid article written by a friend who is one of my mentors, Professor Paul Knitter, My God Is Bigger than Your God,¹ as well as chapters I have contributed to two other books.²

Many questions raised in this book have been asked before. But questions that matter sooner or later reappear among us in new forms and with increased stakes. To address them, I do not offer a systematic interdisciplinary research work. Many fine books of that sort have already been written. Instead, I offer my personal stories and reflections, adding one voice to many others reporting from their life experience, the ultimate lab of all research.

Our Scriptures have spoken to us, and our lives ought to speak back. That’s how we love our religions, challenge them, care for them, transform them, and help them deliver their promises to the world.

Our children are gazing at us, hoping in us. Theirs is the gaze of God.

To enhance your reading experience and help include more voices in our conversation, I suggest the following:

1. Organize a book discussion group using the Reader’s Guide in the back of the book.

2. Visit the Web site http://www.itsreallyallaboutgod.com for additional information, podcasts, ideas, events, and links to social networking sites.

3. Write an It’s Really All About God book review for Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Borders.com, or a blog. Your experiences and candid comments will help others.

4. Suggest It’s Really All About God to a friend, colleague, book club, blogger, religious community, civic group, college class, or any group interested in diversity, cooperation, religion, spirituality, secular space, or interfaith issues. Together organize an event in your community. Serve together. Celebrate the gift of life together.

PROLOGUE

LIFE WINS

On a cold Saturday morning in December 2001, Soo Lee waited for her already-late friend on a busy street corner in Manhattan. She discovered she was standing in front of the doors of an old limestone church off Park Avenue where I was the pastor. Its large red doors were symbols of the large hands of God embracing everyone who ventured inside. That’s what God was all about, I thought—inviting people in.

That’s what God was all about, I thought—inviting people in.

For Soo and most of her friends, church was a treacherous place. But the cold was biting, and the doors were unlocked. It was Christmas, and I had titled my sermon The Magic of Christianity. Soo was a lively and tender young Korean woman who followed the spiritual path of White Magic and the Wicca religion, and the words magic and Christianity together drew her from the foyer into the sanctuary. She sat and listened to a story about a stable in Bethlehem, a magical moment in human history when, as Christians believe, the physical world as it appears to us humans and the spiritual world of God’s Kingdom—the world as it really is—interpenetrated and became one.

Soo, as I later learned, is a person of uncommon stamina, a single mom, an urbanite who had learned to handle the grind of New York City with the smile of a marathon runner who has found a groove in the midst of pain. My wife and I loved spending time with her. We liked the way she thoughtfully constructed her sentences. We liked the way she paid attention to what we didn’t say as much as to what we said. And we liked the way she treated everyone and everything around her. With compassion. Over the next several months, Soo and her little son, Tristan, became family friends. Soon we were caring for her boy and she was caring for our little daughters.

Some months after we met Soo, my church hosted the annual gathering of a national network I belonged to that consisted of mostly professional clergy and church leaders. The main service was going to include a closing segment we titled Testimonies of Failure, with six leaders who would tell us how they had failed in their religious work. It was not to be how God turned things around for me or how my failure has actually been a blessing. There would be no explanations, no justifications—just standing up, sharing the misery, and sitting down. I had a month to find someone who could address these hurting people with some healing words.

I thought of people who had cared for and encouraged me, and Soo immediately came to mind. But the thought seemed preposterous. Soo? How could I ask a witch to pray over a group of pastors? She could neither defend nor advocate for our religion—she was an outsider. But the experience of being a part of Soo’s life had opened a crack in the wall that separates us (those on the inside) from them (those on the outside). Then a thought broke through, a possibility that I found both burdensome and exhilarating. What if God is on the outside too? Does God have to be absent out there in order to be present in here?

The thought of inviting Soo into the inner sanctum of our Christian experience ripened like wine, intoxicating my orthodox faith. Everything I had been taught told me that God, in God’s infinite wisdom and love, has chosen to dwell in our religion. It was a kind of certainty one can stake one’s life on. But then everything I had experienced with Soo—and, as I began recalling, others like her over the years—told me that God dwells in the lives of people. All people. Drunk with these thoughts, I hesitated. Which should win? Religion? Or life? Should I use life to prop up my religion? Or should I use my religion to honor life?

Okay, I’ll do it, Soo said with a smile when I asked her. Then she added, But only if I can pray to God as Mother.

Soo, I said, and paused, taking time to swallow a momentary feeling of regret for approaching her at all, some of these religious leaders are worn out and beaten down, and on that day, our goal is not to expand their theology but to comfort them.

I understand, Pastor Samir. That’s all right. For now. Let’s leave the discussion about the Christian obsession with phallic power for some other time, she said with a gracious smile. Is it okay if I pray to God as Holy Spirit?

Wonderful, I said, relieved.

On the day of the gathering, after the six losers had shared their stories, the congregation was quiet, stunned by tales of the stark reality behind much of religious work and community organizing. Most of us religious people who go to our places of worship to receive religious goods and services assume that our faith is triumphantly marching forward on all fronts. Nobody wants to be a part of a losing battle. So talking about failures devoid of happy endings created an unbearably empty space in our hearts.

The sacred Scriptures say that in emptiness, God creates.

Then it was Soo’s turn to pray. After introducing her to the crowd, I stepped aside, regretting my choice again, my jaws tightening, my palms sweating. How did I get myself into a situation of bringing a witch to bless a conservative Christian crowd? Did I want to lose my job?

Or was I heeding the call of Jesus—losing my life in order to find it?

With the steady voice of a person who has no doubts that our ordinary lives are saturated with the Presence, she said, Dear Holy Spirit, I am not a Christian. But I and my son are cared for in this church. These people who follow you work very hard to make a difference in the world and love people like us. Now they are tired, disoriented, discouraged. Please, make them see how important their work really is. What would our world be without people like them? Help them continue caring so that people like me might find a better way.

There are religious experiences that have the power to restart our hearts, when fresh faith in God, humanity, and world is uploaded into our soul systems. This was one of those moments. A hush fell over the crowd, and Soo’s words lingered in the air like a sweet heathen scent. While some sat there paralyzed by the offense of her presence at the church pulpit, many of us basked in her compassion for us. We were hoping that if we just stayed quiet, there would be more words from her, interceding to our God on our behalf.

Life won.

After the crowd dispersed, I sat on a pew in the empty sanctuary to jot down these words in my notebook: "We are scared of finding our God in the other. Why do we fear something so wonderful?"

UNBEARABLE CERTAINTY

At different times in my life, I have belonged to Muslim, atheist, and Christian camps. In every one, I was rather certain. I believed that we—whichever we I was a part of—were right. And for us to be right, I thought, others had to be wrong. There were insiders and there were outsiders, and I found comfort in being on the inside.

Even now, in my early forties, I know I cannot survive without some kind of certainty. To live, I need some stable ground to live on, a soil from which I can sustain my life, a place where I can pitch my tent, a landing where I can make friends.

In the past several years, however, I have been questioning the certainty of my religious insider-outsider worldview. Such certainty had a tendency to divide my world and isolate me from the outsiders, who, as some of my co-religionists and I believed, could not teach me, bless me, or correct me in the matters of God.

Now I am looking for a better way to stand on the ground of my beloved religion, to hold the treasures of my faith differently. Now I am looking for a better kind of certainty.

To create new empty space within, I decided to let some uncertainty enter my life, and I wish I could say the experience has been wonderful. It hasn’t. It feels like stepping on a makeshift bridge, suspended, with firm ground left behind and no assurances of what I might find beyond the thick fog in the front. Questioning my own certainties has been a lonely, painful experience.

Uncertainty hurts.

Yet it is uncertainty that has been saving my life. Doubt would carry me. When I allowed more questions to serve as vessels of my faith, life could win. And expand. I could grow deeper, where fresh, strong new currents of faith could be found.

The thirteenth-century Sufi poet Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a great scholar of ancient Scriptures, theology, and law, confesses:

Those who don’t feel this Love

pulling them like a river,

those who don’t drink dawn

like a cup of spring water

or take in sunset like supper,

those who don’t want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,

that old trickery and hypocrisy.

If you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I’ve given up on my brain.

I’ve torn the cloth to shreds

and thrown it away.

If you’re not completely naked,

wrap your beautiful robe of words

around you,

and sleep.¹

Rumi doubts words, especially words about God, and trusts the experience of living instead. Not because words are a lie, but because in comparison with life itself, words that seek to explain life are sleeping pills. Our experience of living cannot be contained in mere language. Our formulations are shallow. Life spills over.

If you are drawn to stay on the solid ground beneath your feet, it might be best to follow that impulse and get rid of this book.

If you resonate even fleetingly with Rumi’s ecstasy of losing confidence in words that attempt to define or deny God, read on, and let’s take this difficult journey together.

On the other hand, if you are drawn to stay on the solid ground beneath your feet, it might be best to follow that impulse and get rid of this book. The blessing of firm ground is hard won and, I now know, can easily be underestimated.

For me, the certainty of my own isolating belief system became unbearable. For a long time, I tried to deny it. I kept telling myself I had to stay faithful to what I believed. But eventually I had to be honest about what was happening to me and decided to face my fears of uncertainty.

A GOD WORTH WORSHIPING

I made it a personal discipline to take trips outside the boundaries of Christianity. I did it, first, to find out whether my God is on the outside of my religion, woven into all of life, and second, to look at my religion from the outside in and experience the way my religion, like any other, excludes others. In the process, I have adopted a simple question that helps me navigate the journey: Is a God who favors anyone over anyone else worth worshiping?

It is here, staring into this obvious question, that traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam often become paralyzed. Throughout history, we have been struggling with this. Today, however, the other is rapidly moving into our political, economic, physical, conceptual, familial, and emotional neighborhoods. We have never been connected like this before.

And like never before, the presence of the other in all of its beauty, fragility, dignity, and need is demanding our answers. If God created all humanity but gave life-giving knowledge—usually referred to as revelation—to only some of humanity, could God in any meaningful sense be thought of as the One God and not only as a god?

To say that God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God.

Wouldn’t such a god be historically or geographically local and therefore either disinterested, powerless, or in some other way incapable of giving lifesaving knowledge to all humanity? To say that God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God.² Once I made this opening in my heart, difficult questions began bursting out with startling force.

I began to reason that either every human being has a genuine opportunity to know One God, or God cannot in any meaningful sense be the God of all humanity. In other words, if knowing God is a way to life, and if God has divided the world by revelation, then the destiny of those who don’t have access to a life-giving revelation of God would serve no other purpose than being a control group in a cosmic experiment, a vast human sacrifice.

In even more stark terms, Yahweh, Abba (meaning Daddy, a name for God that Jesus affectionately used), or Allah would not differ from Moloch, an ancient god of destruction reported in the Bible that required human sacrifice for his glory.

Most, or at least some, people would be created by God for one purpose—to die. Would such a God be worth worshiping?

Faith is an exercise in having high expectations of God.

I asked myself, Do we have the right to ask these questions about God? Can we question God’s motives, wisdom, and ability? and came to a conclusion that we have not only the right but an obligation. Faith is an exercise in having high expectations of God. Why wouldn’t we ask? Our sacred Scriptures urge us to insist that God is light in which there are no shadows. Rather than offending the name and character of God, such high expectations actually honor God. It is the way we distinguish God from nongods, the way we worship God.

At times, we tell ourselves, God is a mystery, and we cannot know God’s ways. So the questions that try to explain God and God’s ways are beyond our ability to understand. We are not God, and we have to accept that we cannot know. I get that. I get that we can’t get it. It’s true, we cannot know God as God is. We are mere human beings. But these questions about God did not seem pointless to me. To say God is a mystery is too often used as a self-serving conversation stopper, effectively avoiding the task of addressing questions we don’t yet know how to answer. We can keep our images of God safely unchallenged and protected from conclusions that might force us to concede the presence of God in people with whom we disagree. These questions, if entertained, might demand that we change our theologies, liturgies, and practices. The bondage of certainty can supplant the freedom of faith and make it impossible for us to say, We don’t know, We apologize, We want to change, and What can we do to make things right?

If we choose to interpret our sacred texts and cherished traditions in a way that fosters an image of God who withholds God-self from people outside our religion, would not such a choice make God not only less than divine but also less than human? Shouldn’t God at least match our human capacity for justice and compassion? These questions haunted me all the way into a confession of my doubt. Either everyone has a real opportunity to find God, and therefore life, or God is not worth worshiping. A view of God who mysteriously withholds God-self from everyone fails the moral sensibilities of the