I have no idea where I was, nor what I was reading, but two or three weeks ago I ran across a Christian's claim that "the Muslim God is not the God of the Christian." Hmmm. Well, this statement could have just as easily been made by a Muslim, or by anybody else for that matter, but I have to say that my understanding of Islam, extremely limited though it may be, is that Christians and Muslims do indeed refer to the same God. At least, certainly, if I was to sit down with a Muslim and talk about God, my underlying assumption would be that we were both talking about the Father of Abram/Abraham.

I suppose what the author of that line might have been implying is that Muslim and Christian would disagree, of course, about the idea of a trinity. But then again, so do Jews and Christians, and nobody says that the God of the Jew is not the God of the Christian. Sometimes I think that there are many things said out of pure fear and/or ignorance and/or malice.

What I was thinking, anyway, is that it's sort of a moot point for me. It seems to me that if you are a monotheist, then whenever somebody talks about worshipping the One or Supreme being, they are talking about God. That's the word I use, but the word is not magical; it's three characters of the particular alphabetic script I use, arranged in one of six possible ways. Even Paul, on Mars Hill, used this idea. He referenced a local statue labeled "to an unknown god" as an inroad to a sermon. So I see you have an unknown god. Well, let me tell you about this unknown God…

Just to clarify a little more, I understand the opinion that if you claim to worship God, but your concept of God is radically different from mine, then we are in some sense worshipping a "different" God. And I think this opinion has merit. So to be more to the point, what I am saying is that God is God irrespective of whether your idea and/or my idea as to the nature of that God is/are correct or not. God's Being does not depend upon a human's concept of God. Whatever God is, God is. And if you are claiming to worship that One Being, then whether or not any of us are conceiving correctly or not, the Being we are pointing to is still the same Being. I guess my point is simply that the Lord our God is one God. Muslim, Christian, Jew; the same Being begat us all, and the same Being is worshipped by us all. And, it's about the Being, after all. It's not about us. It is in this sense that the Muslim God is the Christian God, is the Jewish God, is the God of other monotheistic faiths.

Must it be so difficult, really, for us all to begin here?