Amica said:
Jewish people worship ONE G_D. Muslim people worship ONE GOD ('ALLAH' is The God in arabic language).
Christians worship Jesus, a Spirit and 'Father' God= a 'god' that is somehow three yet 'one'.
Do we worship the same God? My personal belief about this is:
--Jews and Muslims=yes;
--Christians--in my own personal opinion, may have a slight idea of oness of God Almighty, but they worship Jesus really since to them God 'incarnates' into a human being claiming to be 100% while still human. A bit confusing concept that only a Christian may understand and perhaps believers of other faiths who have similar or same religious concept of the deity/deities of worhsip.
I don't think it's confusing at all. I think there's a good reason why we have a concept of the Trinity.
One of the things we all have to do is understand that while our concepts of God may be different, the reason for these differences becomes more apparent if we understand the differing concepts of the "Word of God."
In Islam, the Quran is the Word of God. In Judaism, the Word of God is the Torah. In Judaism and Islam, the
Word of God is the same as
the Sacred Text (Torah/Quran). In Christianity, however, the Word of God and the Sacred Text are not the same thing. For Christians, Jesus was the Word of God. The Bible is the Sacred Text that tells us the secrets, character and personality of this Word of God figure.
Also, in Christianity, God and His Word are One. The Word is simply God expressing Himself. Actually, it is more than that. It is God revealing Himself, God projecting an image of Himself, God's Revelation of Himself. To Christians, this is the Ultimate Revelation.
Notice the differences. Jews and Muslims think of the Sacred Text as the Word, the Ultimate Revelation, but Christians believe the Ultimate Revelation was God Himself. Jesus was simply a medium, a mirror/television set projecting God's character and personality.
So why do Christians believe in a Trinity? I think this may explain it.
The Christian Gospel tells us to avoid confining our way of thinking to rules, protocols, traditions and institutions.
Today's Judaism revolves around traditions. Islam revolves around rules, protocols and institutions. Even some Christians will make the mistake of creating their own system of doctrines.
Look around you. The world is full of people who think that following rules, protocols, traditions and institutions is the way to live. We have nations and governments founded on systems of rules, protocols, traditions and institutions. It is full of people who think that by changing the rules of the world we live in, by making bigger, better and fatter rules and institutions that the world will be a better place.
Political systems, political structures, ideology and statecraft is what it's called.
All the political movements, revolutions and cults we've had are attempts by people to substitute one form of ideology/statecraft for another in the hope that it will bring about some kind of utopian perfection.
This makes me particularly suspicious as a Christian. What makes one tradition or one system of rules and institutions superior or closer to God than another? Rules and traditions don't always reflect the true attitudes of people. Attitudes and thoughts should be able to speak for themselves. Why build a system of rules, traditions and institutions around them?
When people start thinking that their rules and traditions is special, it starts becoming a form of idolatry. If you start believing in them, then the God you worship is not really the Yahweh God of Israel, but the rules, traditions, protocols, institutions, ideology and statecraft you have come to believe in so much. Your god is an
ideological god, a
statecraft god or an
institutional god. Your god may also be a cult, political structure, political system.
Believing in a "God" who gives you rules, traditions and institutions to follow, and a utopian political system to construct is the same as building a God out of wood, clay and stone. The Canaanite idolaters believed they could make gods out of wood and stone. What we have today is no different. We are simply building gods out of different materials and structures. We have substituted wood, clay and stone with rules, traditions, protocols, institutions, ideologies and statecraft.
Their error was not worshipping a Living God, but worshipping gods made of wood, clay and stone. Today many of us continue this error by building gods out of rules, traditions, protocols, institutions, ideologies and forms of statecraft instead of being intimate with a Living God.
I think this is where our concept of the Trinity comes in. "Father" means "Source." God is the Source of everything that is holy.
Jesus' character and personality was a projection of God's character and personality. Revelations from God in the past were in the form of dreams, visions, prophecy and speeches made by God. It now came as a human being. I see it as another way in which God expresses Himself. To me, Jesus was rather like a dream, vision, prophecy and speech combined into a single manifested phenomenon.
The purpose of Jesus' life was to demonstrate "the perfect human being." Because of Jesus' purity of behaviour and conduct, it means that rules, traditions, protocols or institutions are not really necessary to be "righteous." People follow rules and traditions because they don't trust each other. They think the world is going to fall apart if there are no rules.
To solve this problem they sign up a pact/treaty with each other. Follow these rules, stay with these boundaries or beware. They make these rules because they can't trust each other. Anyone who breaks the rules is violating that trust. It's not really God, but human cynicism that's involved in the process.
Because Jesus was not dependent on rules, it means we should follow his example by understanding our own human nature and making our thoughts pure just like those of Jesus. Love, patience, kindness, generosity, humility and contentment all come from God. God put these things in human nature, but we simply don't use them often enough. The reason why we sin is because we have other things in our human nature as alternates -- selfishness, arrogance, greed, lust and hatred.
The example of Jesus is to not choose these alternatives. Rules can't make us pure. Abstinence from the dark side of human nature is the key.
God is the Source. He makes us pure without needing rules and traditions. He lives in us by putting His Word and Spirit in us and growing us from within. The Source, Word and Spirit are really all the same thing but represent God performing different functions.
It sounds bizarre, but I actually think Christianity is in many ways more monotheistic than Judaism and Islam because it tells you the right and wrong way to conceptualise God. Judaism is about traditions. Islam is a form of statecraft where thieves have their hands cut off and apostates are taxed, put in prison or executed. This is to protect the integrity of the Islamic State.
In a sense, the God of Judaism and Islam does have partners -- their partners are the god of traditions/god of statecraft.
As a Christian I believe in One Living God, a God that is One in His Word and Spirit not a god made out of wood, clay and stone.
