True Folk vs. Good Folk

Dear Pete

I saw the following post in MT under your article "So, teach me the 'jalan yang betul' then!" (inserted by Rev. Thomas on October 07, 2011 at 06:23:42):

"Correction: True Jews and Christians don't believe Allah is God. He is God of the Muslims. To the Jews and Christians He is YAHWEH ELOHIM or the English translation LORD GOD."

I looked hard to see what exactly Rev. Thomas was correcting, but I found nothing. I can only assume he must have been referring to the contents of a deleted post.

Nonetheless, this simple enough two-liner, coupled with the contents of your article and the other comments thereto, just kept bugging me all day long, to the point where I just had to put my thoughts into writing…….

Rev. T starts off his correction by stating that "True Jews and Christians don't believe Allah is God", and so I found myself wondering exactly what that meant. After all, the Christian concept of God as the Trinity, where one of the three is Jesus Christ the Son of God (God in the flesh), is not at all what the Jews believe. The commonality in the God of the Jews and the Christians precedes the concept of the Trinity and lies in the God of Abraham. Now, as it happens (and which you, Pete, know full well), the God of the Muslims is the same as the God of Abraham.

Thus, if the Jews can call that same God "Yahweh Elohim" while the Christians use the term "Lord God", then the Muslims using the name "Allah" does not alter the fact that it is the same God that all three religions are referring to. Any "thinking" Jew or Christian (in my book, one who has an open and enquiring mind) would have to agree that Allah, Yahweh and the Lord God are one and the same entity. So why does Rev. T say that the opposite is true.

Well, Rev. T did not refer to "thinking" Jews and Christians; instead, he used the term "true" to describe them. If the Rev. T means "true" in the sense that "true" Jews and Christians are 100% devoted to their respective religions, then what has that got to do with not readily accepting that the God of Abraham, called Allah by the Muslims, is not the same entity as the God of the Jews or the Christians? Sadly, I can only conclude that Rev. T's comment is the remark of a bigot, which means that he himself cannot therefore be a true Christian.

The next thing I wish to point out is that Rev. T, along with many others, happily ascribes the male gender to God. Why is that? After all, to be male means being a life form of the sexual orientation that cannot have babies. If it is an entity that can reproduce within itself, then it is hermaphrodite. If God could reproduce, even within God's own entity and without outside assistance, then God would presumably create a God replica, thus destroying the "one and only God" concept. This therefore leads to the conclusion that God is probably sexless. That being the case, who decided that God should be endowed with masculine qualities and addressed as a man (i.e. Lord God, instead of Lady God)?

Yes, you were right, Pete. We, personkind (women and men collectively), really don't know the first thing about God, do we?

Warmest Regards,

Wally