Making Friends

Enough of hate, enough of divisions, enough of war and violence in God’s name. We have caused too many tears. The time has come for us to stand together. Let us stand together.

What is your message of interreligious harmony, and how can religion serve as a bond rather than a barrier?

At the beginning of the Bible we are told how God created every human being in His image, according to his likeness. Now, we know that no two human beings are alike, so what the Bible is telling us is that even somebody who is not in my image, whose language, whose culture, whose creed, whose traditions are different from mine, is nonetheless in God’s image. The Bible is challenging me to see a trace of God in the face of a stranger. And that is how religion should lead us to extend our imaginative embrace and our hand of friendship across the boundaries between the faiths

God is so much bigger than any of us in our particular tradition can comprehend. It is by coming to see that trace of God in the face of his stranger that faith allows us to come together across all the barriers that otherwise divide us.

What have you learned from other religions that has made you aware of the deeper bond between the religions?

Coming to know leaders of other faiths - Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, and so many others, you begin to realise the number of different ways people have a sense of the same things that inspire us: the sense of the holy, the sublime, the sanctity of life, what makes each individual precious, the idea of hospitality, the idea of working for the welfare of others - all of these things we do, but we do in such different ways. So the more I encounter people of other faiths, the more ways I realise that we can be true to something within us that is bigger than all of us. And that is the way different faiths give us so much wider a perspective on the way God works through the human spirit.

Should differences in faith be an obstacle to deeper unity or interreligious harmony?

In Judaism we have a wonderful idea. It’s called ’arguments for the sake of heaven’, because Judaism is all about arguments. Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Job all argue with God. In the writings of our sages, it’s always Rabbi X says this, Rabbi Y says that. This is a wonderful idea. Arguments for the sake of heaven. This means that we hear many different views, many different opinions.

And when we do this, our grasp of the truth expands as we realise how many individual strands there are in the tapestry of faith, how many different languages there in which human beings come together to pray to - and give their thanks to - God. When we realise the complex harmonies of the Divine choral symphony, as we as humanity sing our praises to our Creator. It is that diversity that means that our vision of God becomes ever wider the more differences it embraces.

Why should people of different faiths come together to know each other?

One of the wonderful things about spending time with people completely unlike you, is you discover how much you have in common: the same fears, the same hopes, the same concerns: what kind of world are we building for our grandchildren not yet born? what are the prospects for peace? how are we going to negotiate the turbulent seas that lie ahead? And suddenly we discover that our shared humanity transcends our religious and cultural differences, and something magic happens, a little epiphany, as soul speaks to soul cross all the barriers that divide us.

Why should we share wisdom across religious differences?

Religions and cultures are very often very different, but there is a universal strand that you find in virtually every culture, linking it to virtually every other. And that is the strand called Wisdom. Because wisdom doesn’t so much depend on Revelation. It depends on the combined reflective experience of humankind, as it is faced with the same kind of difficulties. We find the wisdom literature of the ancient Near East. We find the wisdom literature of the great Hellenistic civilisation, the oriental mysticisms, the wisdom traditions of China, and so on, very very similar indeed to the wisdom traditions of Judaism.

Wisdom is the universal language of humankind, and it is through those wisdom elements in our different faiths that we find we have the most in common.

Why should people of different faiths pray together for the common good?

One of the beautiful things about prayer is it lifts and broadens our horizons. Very often at a soccer match I pray that my team beat the opposition. But then, deep down, I know that God is on the side of the game, not the side of the team. So He is on the side of humanity as a whole, not my little bit when it’s fighting your little bit.

So when we truly but truly pray, our prayers have to be broad enough to include all of humankind, and all that divides and separates us, all that causes us to hate one another or fight one another, God forbid. When we pray, we pray to the Author of all, the Parent of all, the Source of all life. And that is why the deepest prayer is for the common human good.

Please provide inspiration for working together in service for the welfare of others

There are two fundamentally different ways in which we can construct relationships between the faiths. One I call ‘face-to-face’. The other I call ‘side-by-side’.

Face-to-face is interfaith dialogue. I tell you about my faith, you tell me about yours, and out of that mutual understanding emerges. But it tends to be quite elevated in rarefied settings, among very very distinguished leaders of the respective faiths.

Side-by-side is something much more street-level. It means that if there’s a problem that fronts us all in a neighbourhood - there’s graffiti, there’s street crime, there are drug dealers, well that is going to affect the members of that neighbourhood, be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or whatever... and when we stand side-by-side to address those problems, friendships emerge naturally without any theological dialogue, simply by the fact that we’ve been there helping one another solve a problem that none of us can solve alone. That is why working together to address common problems is so productive. It creates friendships, and friendships that last. And out of those friendships comes new harmony between the faiths.