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Talking to God and Tolerance
for Others’ Spiritual Conversations

All of the above is how I see it, anyway. In these difficult and terrifying days of nations warring as they invoke the name of God, of people who claim God to be their very own castigating others who also claim God as their own, I had some serious questions:

How can one prepare herself spiritually to be all she can be, if she’s still secretly wondering whether her own religion is the best or only way to connect to God—no matter what her parents tell her? And even more troubling, how can anyone be sure that her god hears her? Is there something we all should know about praying so we can be sure God is listening?

It seemed appropriate to ask the experts. I chose three prominent leaders within three major religious groups. Here is how they see spirituality.

Question: How Can You Be Faithful to Your Own Religion and Still Have Respect for Others?

Pastor A. R. Bernard, my own spiritual adviser, founder and leader of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York, a congregation of about 27,000 worshippers

Here’s a reality: when we talk about Christianity, we’re not just talking about a religion; we’re talking about what Christians absolutely believe to be the truth. And the nature of truth is that it is exclusive, it’s absolute. The moment we Christians accept the Biblical record and the truth of what Jesus said about himself, that truth becomes exclusive—because everything can’t be true. There’s something else: the moment we declare a truth, we also declare that everything else is false. Jesus said about himself, “I am the truth.” He didn’t say he was one of many truths, he said he was
the
truth. That is the Christian faith.

Now, this idea is attacked by many other religions that come from a more pluralistic view that embraces other faiths as alternate paths to God. In doing so, these faiths reject the notion that there’s one path and one path alone, but in that rejection, they themselves become exclusive because they exclude the concept of only one path to God.

Thus, as a matter of fact, every religion is exclusive, because when you come down to it, there are always basic tenets of faith which the believer insists is
the
path,
the
way. Even if I were to take the Universalist’s view of religion, which says all paths lead to God, again I’d be exclusive because I’d be saying Universalism is the only right way to believe.

Every religion, including Christianity, is exclusive.

So, how can Christianity, an exclusive religion, peacefully coexist in a world in which many faiths exist? How can I as a Christian who knows that Christ is the only truth, accept your path?

Well, of course I can’t accept your path. But I can accept your choice. We can live together in this world because we do not judge. Jesus said, “Whosoever wills to come to him as the light, let him come.” He has given us a marvelous gift called positive freedom—the power of choice. It’s as if Jesus says, I offer you a path, you have the power to choose that path or make your own. If you choose to
make your own path, I cannot promise you the path to Heaven—but that is always your choice.

So, how do you stay faithful to your own faith, never waver from believing your way is the only right way—and still live in peace with others? By accepting other people’s choices for themselves. God respects that. He does not force himself on anyone. And I, as a Christian, will never deny the exclusiveness of my own truth, but I must respect, even if I don’t accept, the truths of others: I respectfully allow choice to others, just as Christ does.

Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein, senior rabbi of
Central Synagogue, New York City

One should be able to believe in the possibility of conflicting truths. The Hebrew word for God is in the plural. I believe that Jews were signaled that our claim on a particular approach to God did not mean that other people didn’t have the right to claim God in different ways. The reason why the Talmud is so many volumes is because it never provides only one accepted position: it gives conclusions, and then leaves it to us to assess the discussions that helped the scholars reach the conclusions. The Talmud cites the authoritative opinion and the differing views of others. These are counterpoints and
no one
is denigrated. I think the Talmud gives honor to all opinions across the spectrum because it says—sometimes
THIS
is so, and sometimes
THAT
is so. Only God ultimately knows the truth. We, with our individual ideas of God, may think we approach the truth, but the nature of being human and not divine is that we will never know whether what we believe is
the
single truth.

It would be the worst hubris to believe that only we know what God says. Others’ ways of thinking and believing constantly challenge me to refine my own. I would like to know for certain how God wishes us to live and behave, but the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know anything for sure.

I do believe that the history of the Jewish people has given rise to a great sensitivity about God’s ways and the way we’re supposed to treat other people: that is why we
must
accept conflicting truths. To me, it is of vital importance to have multi-faith conversations in our world. Every person should have sufficient humility to say, “I have room in my life for those who speak differently about God, and who allow me to do the same.”

Sheikh Abdullah Adhami, outstanding Muslim scholar of the noble lineage of the family of the prophet Muhammad, and a leader in the North American Islamic community

How can we be faithful to our own religion and still have respect for others’ faiths? This is a central and perennial concern. From our Islamic perspective, every person is
born
faithful, born loving her creator, born yearning to be closer to her creator. People yearn for the freedom to worship God. It is a primordial spiritual essence within all of us that we are brought home to with an irresistible force—and that we can neither deny nor run away from. Along the journey of life, we encounter various obstacles and trials in our path of faithfulness. Aside from our own feebleness, one of the biggest obstacles we face is the people whose dogma and extremism actually lead us away from what faithfulness is supposed to be. Ironically, to the extremists—of every religion—people who have been scared away from “religion” appear to be disconnected, godless, and secular. These are the innumerable church, mosque, and synagogue refugees who are the products of self-righteousness and excess.

From a true Islamic perspective, there is one religion, one path, one God, one law, one system. God did not change his mind when he sent Moses, then sent Jesus, then Muhammad. Moses represents the Majesty of God
(jalâl).
Jesus represents the forgiveness and beauty of God
(jamâl).
Muhammad represents the sublime perfection of God
(kamâl).
May God’s peace be upon them all. I believe that if we had one universal religious language, there would be no disagreement about God, the one and only. True people of faith, true believers in God will have different but not conflicting ideas. Certainly, humans can be feeble and prone to error when they claim their own manifestation of a certain religious idea to be the only path to follow, but that’s because of our human limitations. I categorically believe that true Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists are all talking about the same thing—the sublime majesty and power of a universal God. That is why, in Islam, we can be faithful to our own religion and must always have respect for the faith of others.

Question: How Do You Pray to God? How Do You Know if He Hears?

Pastor A. R. Bernard

First of all, to whom do we pray? As a Christian, I believe, as the geneticist Dean Hamer said in his book
The God Gene,
that we all have a genetic disposition to spirituality—a built-in desire to find ourselves in the divine. But, for me, the revelation of God in Christ holds that man is incapable of discovering the Divine by himself, even if we have a genetic inclination toward faith; thus it’s necessary that the Divine reveal himself. And Christians believe that he did just that—in the person of Jesus Christ.

So, it’s easy to pray to a divinity who is a person, and personal in the very body of Christ. Jesus understands human frailty, is sensitive to our condition because he was one of us. I believe that to pray to an animal, a statue, or a tree is to make no connection whatsoever with God: it’s simply not the same as praying to another human being.

So, we pray, and all prayer is, is an invitation to communicate with God. But prayer must have two elements: one must pray in spirit and in truth. There has to be a connection between God and the very heart of you (not the facade you show the world). You must always, always pray in truth. And prayer is not about reciting something—we don’t have to read from books as long as we communicate in heart and spirit.

If we can talk to God, believe that he can talk back to you. But how can we be sure that God hears us?

Trust the deep knowingness inside you, the sense of confidence and assurance you have while and after you pray. The sense of calm and knowingness is how you know God hears. Christians believe absolutely that the Divine Intelligence hears and speaks to us.

And where should one pray? Well, we don’t go to church to be religious; we go to church to be spiritual. And we don’t go to church to have a relationship with God, we go to church because of a relationship with God. So, this is important—prayer should not be confined only to a church, a mosque, or a synagogue. Jesus said, “Your body is the temple of Christ, so once you enter a relationship with
God, your body becomes a temple—and you carry that temple with you, everywhere you go.” Thus, you can pray anywhere you go.

Do we have to be good to be spiritual? You are a good person as a result of entering a relationship with God. What’s required for true spirituality is a belief in the revelation of God. We don’t get to heaven based on our own bodies or work; we get to heaven solely on faith in the word of Christ.

Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein

I think we have to make a distinction between worship and prayer. Worship involves community prayers, rites, and rituals. For the Jew, being part of the community is important. Worship doesn’t need to take place in a sanctuary but needs the presence of the community. The Jew says, “my personal relationship with God is important but not only for me as an individual. God made a covenant with an entire people. If the world’s going to get better, it will happen in the midst of community. My individual salvation can be accomplished in the salvation of the community on every level—my family community, my Jewish community, my city, my nation, my world.”

I want to add that health is part of prayer. My body is God’s gift and when my body feels well, chances are my soul will feel well. I believe you have to care for yourself so that you’re able to take care of your family and then the larger community. Health becomes part of the totality of what humans are at their best. You must be the healthiest you can be but you need to know that even when struck by a nefarious disease, you still can be healthy in spirit and feel the rhythm of creation.

Personal prayer is different from worship. There are prayers of thanksgiving to acknowledge the gifts one has in life and there are prayers of blessing. When I bless my children in my home on
Shabbat
nights, I would love God to answer my prayers for them. But does God hear those petitional prayers of mine? I don’t know. One cannot know whether God hears. But, the blessing does more than ask God to answer. The prayer itself provides strength for me, and for those who have been blessed.

I think that prayers of petition in which we ask God to do something for us alone, are presumptuous as we try to make deals with God, with the idea that God will automatically respond to our prayers if we’re good enough. That is not
my definition of prayer. For me, praying to the God in whom I believe is, in itself, a force that strengthens me, and that is a perfect response from God. If you have a certainty about how God behaves, then you believe you have power over God.

But I don’t have such certainty and I don’t believe a prayer should ask, “What’s good for me?” I think that a prayer should not expect that God will cure and fix everything for me. In my relationship with God, I ask that God help me with the strength and the dignity to face whatever challenges, victories, or tragedies confront me. My act of praying does that. When I pray, it is for the purpose of losing myself in a conversation with God, to free myself of intellectualism and rationality, to believe that God will provide me with calm, comfort, and strength to do what I have to do. That’s how I pray. That’s what I pray. That’s what I really need.

Sheikh Abdullah Adhami

God categorically hears our prayers. There is no doubt about that.

How should we pray? There are two forms of “prayer” in Islamic tradition. One is the realm of remembering and exaltation of the Divine through supplication, invocation, and benediction. This can be a continual process that requires only the presence of heart and mind. The other is the
salah,
from the Arabic “to connect.” It is akin to the Aramaic
(shelayvah)
and Hebrew
(shalah)
for “to be at ease; to have quiet; [and also] to prosper.” It is the distinctive physical act of kneeling and genuflection at prescribed times of the day. It is a cosmic “connection” with one’s world. It involves the same physical limbs that one utilizes in the earthly, temporal world. These faculties are gifts that one is entrusted with, and how one chooses to use them can either honor or debase. The ritual washing preceding the Muslim prayer is a spiritual cleansing of one’s limbs to prepare the mortal human to connect with the eternal, heavenly realm.

Women in particular are endowed with a spiritual preeminence that stems from their devotion to genuineness and belonging. It is a yearning for what is viscerally authentic in all their connections and relationships—especially with God. It is this very essence that makes woman profoundly soulful in her giving and at once so insatiable in her yearning. It is also what makes her so bewilder
ingly enigmatic, so disarmingly incomprehensible—even to herself. Ironically, it is also this gift that makes her appear tentative, often uncertain—when all that she wishes is for everything that she ever does to be meaningful, authentic, and pure. Women usually need privacy when they pray to replenish their formidable repertoire of giving, though their very essence is a form of prayer; their speech is prayer; and—as distinct from their whims—their feelings are prayer too. Devotion is the secret behind a woman’s eloquence and the essence of her virtue. Incidentally, this is epitomized by Mary in the Quran, and Fatimah in the prophetic tradition.