DO CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS PRAY TO THE SAME GOD...Prof. Hawkins dilemma...

A recent story in our paper caught my eye. It was a story about a professor at a Christian college who decided to start wearing a Muslim hijab (scarf head covering) to highlight the plight of Muslims who she feels are being unfairly blamed for the violent actions of a few Muslims.

The teacher, Dr. Larycia Hawkins, a tenured professor of political science at Christian Wheaton College near Chicago is being reprimanded and possibly fired, NOT for wearing a hijab but for saying that Muslims and Christians pray to the same God and should be treated with the same respect as Christians are.

Christianity and Islam are both termed as MONOTHEISTIC religions because they believe in a “single” god unlike other faiths that have “many” gods. To be fair, the Hindu religion has many gods but supposedly, they are all manifestations (expressions) of a “single” deity. The closest polytheistic religion we can point to is the old Roman and Greek religions where there was a “pantheon” of gods on Mt. Olympus, etc.

Anyway, the three great faiths of the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all MONOTHEISTIC religions believing in the existence of one God.

So on a simple, rational level, we could say that if they all believe there is only one God, then they all must logically believe in and pray to the same God which is what Professor Hawkins surmised.

Wheaton College objected because the Christian God is actually a TRINITY which includes Jesus as the son of the father and the Holy Ghost as who knows what. Muslims worship Jesus but only as a prophet and not as a god since there can only be one god (Allah) in monotheism.

Jesus never claimed he was a god and his disciples/apostles never did either. It was Paul and later Christians that made Jesus into a god and thus creating the totally absurd construct of a trinity (3 gods in one) and making a mockery of the whole concept of monotheism, invented by Jews and bringing a semblance of civilization to a world locked in perpetual wars between their individual gods.

I don’t blame Wheaton College for chastising their professor; after all, they have to defend their religious beliefs as does she as their employee.

I do relish the fact that this incident points out how religion divides us and prevents us from behaving like members of “humanity” or the single entity that is mankind on this planet.

I also enjoy how this points to Christianity and the absurdity of its creations of faith that are based on absolutely nothing but someone’s imaginings that many thousands of people have died for and continue to die to this very day.