The A-Z of Believing: G is for God

Must belief in one deity mean hostility towards another? Ed Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute, presents the seventh part in a series on belief and scepticism

If all religions claim to be true, do they necessarily conflict? (Shutterstock/agsandrew)

Written and presented by Dr Ed Kessler MBE, founder and director of the Cambridge-based Woolf Institute, this compelling guide to religious belief and scepticism is a must-read for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Founded in 1998 to explore the relationship between religion and society, the Woolf Institute uses research and education to foster understanding between people of all beliefs with the aim of reducing prejudice and intolerance.

Says Dr Kessler: “Latest surveys suggest that 85 per cent of the world’s population identify themselves as belonging to a specific religion, and in many parts of the world the most powerful actors in civil society are religious. Understanding religion and belief, the role they play and their impact on behaviour and decision-making is, therefore, vital.”

Dr Kessler – who was awarded an MBE for services to interfaith relations in 2011 – is an affiliated lecturer with the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, a principal of the Cambridge Theological Federation and additionally teaches at the Cambridge Muslim College.

He says: “This A-Z of Believing aims to show how the encounter between religions has influenced and been influenced by the evolution of civilisation and culture, both for good and for ill. I hope that a better understanding of believing will lead people to realise that while each religion is separate, they are also profoundly connected.”

G is for... God

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. John 1:3

Imagine a critic, or even a child of yours or mine, asking, "How do you solve the problem that has led people to kill one another in the name of God since the birth of human civilisation? After all, each religion claims to be true, yet they conflict. Therefore, they cannot all be true. At most, one is. If Christianity is true, Judaism and Islam are false. If Islam is true, both Christianity and Judaism are false. It follows that these religions are bound to conflict whenever their devotees take their truth claims seriously."

"I, for my part," my critic continues, "take this as sufficient evidence that all are false. For how could the God of all humanity command his followers to deny the full and equal humanity of those who conceive Him differently? I would rather live with the uncertainty of doubt than the certainty of faith, for it is that very certainty that leads people, convinced of their righteousness, to commit unspeakable crimes."

I have reflected deeply on this for many years. Whilst I may be convinced of the truth of my faith, you may believe with equal fervour that yours, not mine, is true. How can we live peaceably together while at the same time honouring the Almighty’s commands, according to our respective faiths? One way is to reflect on relationships.

For example, I am plainly black-haired with a sprinkling of silver, short-sighted, and bespectacled. But I am, simultaneously, a child of my parents, the father of my children, the husband of my wife. I have colleagues, friends, neighbours and co-religionists. I am a citizen of England, the United Kingdom and Europe as well as belonging to humanity as a whole. And each of these relationships is covenantal in the sense that it involves reciprocal obligations. And these obligations can conflict. Should I accept a speaking invitation or spend the evening with my family? I am torn between my responsibilities as a leader in interfaith dialogue and my duties as a father and husband. But there is no principled incompatibility between these loyalties. The truth of one does not entail the falsity of others.

Hence, the profound difference between thinking if my faith is true and conflicts with yours, then yours is false. If I and my fellow believers have a relationship with God, that does not entail that you do not. I have my stories, rituals, memories, prayers, celebrations, laws and customs; and you have yours. And that is what makes me, me and you, you. It is what differentiates cultures, heritages and civilisations. The truth of one does not entail the falsity of the other. Indeed the very words ‘true’ and ‘false’ seem out of place here, as if we were using words from one domain to describe phenomena belonging to another.

And if I am convinced that I possess the truth while you are sunk in error, I may try to persuade you, but if you refuse to be persuaded, I may conquer or convert you, imposing my view by force in the name of truth. This thinking leads to the mindset of "I’m right, you’re wrong, go to hell".

However, acknowledgement of the multiplicity of relationships, interpretations, cultures and covenants, is fundamentally opposed to absolutism, exclusivity and displacement. It subverts them by offering counter-narratives in their place. The message is that, despite our differences, we each have integrity and dignity in the mind of God. In other words, God may be with us but also with those who are not like us; with friends but also with strangers.

If all of this is difficult, which it is, it can be said another way. My wife, Trisha, and I have three children. We love them equally and unconditionally. They are very different from one another. They have different strengths, skills, interests, temperaments and emotional needs and if we favoured one at the cost of the others, we would have failed as parents. Still more would we have failed if, having loved our firstborn, we then withdrew that affection on the birth of our subsequent children, transferring it each time to the youngest. Such behaviour would have damaged them all deeply, creating rivalries, insecurities and a sense of rejection.

If that is true of human parents, how much more so is it true of God? Can I really believe that God, having set his love on, and made a covenant with, the children of Israel, then rejected them when they continued to honour that covenant, choosing not to follow the new faith, Christianity? Can I believe that the God of love, in loving Christians, thereby abandoned Jews? Can I make sense of the idea that, six centuries after the birth of Christianity and 26 after the journey of Abraham, God revealed that Jews and Christians had been mistaken all along and that their religious destiny was other than they had believed it to be? I can perfectly well understand that Ptolemy, then Copernicus, then Newton – even Einstein – were shown to be wrong and that if religion is like science, it is open to such refutations. But to think of religion on this model is to think that God is a concept.

But actually, I think of God as a parent and that the truth of one faith does not entail the falsity of the other.

Next week: H is for Heresy

Listen to each episode of An A-Z of Believing: from Atheism to Zealotry on the Woolf Institute podcast site or wherever you get your podcasts