CHRISTIAN COMMENT: Ring out the false, ring in the true

Answer, an urgent need to live out the true nature of their faith and expose false assumptions.

This means saying: “Many of us have got it wrong.” It means being honest with ourselves, the world and God, and facing the truth:

1. Western societies are no longer genuinely Christian.

2. Militant Muslims are not genuinely Muslim.

3. Many professing individuals of both faiths have failed to understand what their faith really requires of them.

Muhammed Yuseff, editor of Washington-area Voice of Islam newspaper, said: “No true Muslim would do anything like [these attacks], referring to September 11, 2001.

Kenneth Cragg, in The Call of Minaret, wrote “...the invisible exports of the Western world, – secularity, indulgence, cheap love and commercialised sex are all too visible. Trade relationships on the part of the West have been far too often conceived in terms of markets, not persons; of sales, not society. Diplomatic relationships are liable to be preoccupied with the global contributions of others to our security.”

Muslims see Christianity as hypocritical, – divorced from practice.

True Christianity is about valuing people, all people, as God does, not exploring them. Yet Western parents pamper their children with highly sophisticated and expensive toys, while 1,000 children under five die every hour through lack of health care, because of the gross injustice of large debt repayments to the rich West.

All religions seek spiritual truth and light. Centuries ago, the Muslim poet, Rumi, said: “There are many lamps but only one light.”

More recently, Hans Kung wrote: “No world peace without religious peace.”

All the world’s faiths contain the “golden rule” somewhere in their teaching. None of us really lives up to that rule. If we all did, in our family, society, national and international relationships, it would create a very different world, and ultimately bring world peace because we could trust one another. Simple, but not easy. Together, the world faiths could bring world peace if we really practiced their true teaching.