No Exceptions

Last Monday, I participated in a dialogue with Muslims, Jews and Christians. God knows, we need to work and think and pray our way into mutual understanding and respect.

In the mid nineties, I realized that the only mosque I had ever been in was the El Asqa Mosque in Jerusalem. Since then I have accompanied youth and adults 3 times to the Islamic Canter. I still feel very ignorant, even though I have studied Islam some and read much of the Koran. At this conference, about 50 religiously diverse folks gathered around the theme of THE LOVE OF GOD.

For decades, I have been preoccupied with the question of whether God loves one particular group of people more than other groups. Did God love Abraham and his descendants and promise the land to them? Did God love the Jews and say you are my special people and the others are second rate and second class? Did the Christian Church then receive that mantle from God and with it a mandate to evangelize with water and with the sword, when necessary. Does God have favorites? Are there exceptional peoples? Are there nations or groups who are so favored of God, that the rules of life and history don't finally apply to them?

When I was in seminary in the late sixties, we read a classic theological text by G.Ernest Wright called THE MIGHTY ACTS OF GOD. Wright claimed that God acted in history, freeing the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, creating the kingdom of Israel, rewarding and punishing the people and the kings. Having sent the prophets for guidance and judgement, God came to dwell amongst God's people in the person of Jesue. Out of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus arises the church. God intervenes in history. God can be known in the rise and fall of the nations. God ultimately chooses who wins the wars. Oh, the wheels of justice grind slow, but they grand very fine.

I believe the truth lies elsewhere. There are no exceptions. The love of God flows to all peoples(as does the judgement and discipline of God). If the love of God flows to all people then the claim that God chooses one group over another or blesses one group and really doesn't care much about the other is exposed as an effort to capture the mantle of God's blessing for a group's selfish purposes.

'God wills it' proclaimed the crusaders a millennium ago. God wills it proclaim all crusaders. In the interviews that Richard Nixon gave to David Frost, Nixon finally says with wearied frustration but with deep conviction, 'If the president does it, it can't be illegal.' This notion that I as a person am above the law or that Russia or Israel or America or South Africa is above the law has birthed great evil.

When Christians and Jews and Muslims talk together, we must address these issues or we are just being nice and wasting time.

Years ago, with a group of wonderful 5th and 6th graders, we were studying the story of the Exodus. So what to you think I asked about what the Bible says here. It says that God killed the first born children of the Egyptians in order to force Pharaoh to let the peope of Israel go free. Do you think that God would have killed children?

Their answer brought joy to my heart.