When we moved into our house in Garsington, Oxfordshire, four and a half years ago, we hired a local Muslim moving company. No complaints, they liked us, we liked them, we are accustomed to dealing with Muslims and understand them.
Oh, one oddity! Like clockwork, they stopped at certain times, put our boxes down, put their heads to the floor, their bums in the air, and prayed. When we hired them by the day, we were told that they would take prayer times off. And not move any alcohol or our massive Celtic cross. Fair enough. Then we needed odd bits of manual labour, and they worked for us at an hourly wage, on condition that we paid them for prayer breaks and lunch breaks. We did.
I thought there was something lovely about it–taking time off in the middle of a busy day, to prostrate yourself in a yogic posture and commune with the Almighty.
We are committed Christians. They cross-questioned us on how often we go to church, on how many times a day we pray. Once, in the sense of sitting down to pray, but many, many times, when it comes to asking for wisdom or guidance or help or protection, or saying, “thank you.” They were unimpressed!
Then I wondered if the God they were communing with, Allah, as they knew and understood him, was quite the same entity as the Jesus we knew and understood, a wonderful friend.
Jesus is unique among all Gods in being a fully rounded person. Who loves his friends, is hurt by them, betrayed by them. Who is hungry, thirsty, sleepy, exhausted. Who is confronted, mocked. Who feasts, weeps, is astonished. A wise story-teller. A magnetic teacher. Who faces our dilemmas with calm, with strength and wisdom.
But most of all, he is unique in his death. A most unlikely death for a God. He dies as an utter failure. Thereby redeeming failure and changing its meaning forever. He dies a shameful, humiliating, ignominious, excruciatingly painful death. The End. Apparently.
And from that, springs a second act of glory.
His death, as the historian H.G. Wells says, was the turning point of human history. More human beings define themselves by his name than by any other. It is the most common name of schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages. More to the point, his counter-intuitive teaching of paradoxes changes lives and changes hearts 21 centuries later.
The more I think about it, it is so unlikely–this humble life, ending in shame and ignominy, becoming the most potent transformer of history on a macro level, and individual lives and hearts on a microcosmic level–that it just has to be true. If it wasn’t true, it couldn’t, wouldn’t have survived with such potency. Though, perhaps this argument, like Christianity itself, is heart-logic, not head-logic.
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Sadhana, I have many facebook friends, but none knows me fully, though my husband, parents and daughters come the closest to it. Similarly, there are, and have been many religious systems. I do not believe that they are all equidistant from a full understanding of God. I believe some are closer than others. Jesus gave us a principle for testing the validity or goodness of things, peoples, teachings, ideas–“good trees bear good fruit. By their fruits shall you know them.”
Dear Anita, according to me GOD is like the yellow metal GOLD which can be moulded into various pieces of jewellery which are akin to different faiths,it does not matter how we Pray!-sadhana saxena