| |
PANELISTS included Stuart Federow, Duane Brooks and Miao Hong.
|
Five panelists explain diverse
world religions at HBU forum
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___HOUSTON--Representatives of five world religions came together at Houston Baptist University Jan. 29 for a three-hour discussion on the fundamentals of their faiths.
___The World Religions Forum, sponsored by HBU's College of Arts and Humanities, allowed each speaker to address three questions: Who is God? Why is there evil and suffering in this life? What is the ultimate destiny of human life?
___Throughout the three-hour event, the Jew, the Christian and the Muslim frequently appealed to the teachings of their written Scriptures. The Buddhist and the Hindu appealed to personal experience and tradition, only occasionally mentioning sacred writings.
| |
|
Sri Gaurang Nanavaty
|
Mahmoud El-Gamal
|
___All but the Buddhist described belief in one God, although the Hindu's description differed from the others in allowing for a multitude of expressions of the deity.
___The five offered different assessments of whether evil and suffering exist and if they do exist what causes them. The Christian, Muslim and Jew came closest to agreement on this point but still expressed significant variations.
___On the question of ultimate destiny, the speakers gave diverse answers, ranging from reincarnation for the Buddhist to resurrection for the Christian.
___More than 250 students and guests filled HBU's Mabee Theater for the program, which concluded with questions from the audience.
___Rabbi Stuart Federow, spiritual leader of Shaar Hashalom in Clear Lake City, represented the Jewish faith. He described God as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures--a God who is one, indivisible, unique, without form, omnipotent and different from man.
___"We are to love God, obey God, to be ever conscious about God and loyal to God," he said.
___God is known through the Scriptures and through the oral tradition, he said, explaining Jews believe it is impossible to completely know God.
___Duane Brooks, pastor of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, represented Christianity. He described God as one deity with three expressions in the Father, Son and Spirit.
___Brooks focused heavily on Jesus Christ as the expression of God sent to Earth. "We know that Jesus Christ is God not only because Scripture teaches that but because Jesus uniquely claimed that," he said.
___Humans, he said, were made to have a relationship with God, and that relationship is possible through faith in Jesus.
___Miao Hong, a nun from the Chung Mei Buddhist Temple in Stafford, represented the Buddhist faith.
___"God is everywhere" and may be
| |
DUNAE BROOKS talks with students during a break in the program
|
found in every person, she said. "In Buddhism, you could be the Buddha. ... I'm the Buddha."
___Sri Gaurang Nanavaty, teacher at Chinmaya Mission Houston and a chemical engineer by profession, represented the Hindu faith. He described the deity as "Visnu," meaning something that pervades all.
___"He is residing in every heart," Nanavaty said, urging participants to look inside themselves to find God.
___He further compared the connection between humans and the deity by talking about waves in the ocean. "God is as far away from each one of us as the ocean is from the wave," he said. "There is no distance."
___Mahmoud El-Gamal, professor of economics and statistics at Rice University, represented Islam. He identified God as "Allah" as revealed in the Koran and other teachings of the prophet Mohammed.
___"Because God transcends time and space, we cannot ponder his essence," El-Gamal said. "But we can ponder his nature."
___In written notes given to participants, El-Gamal explained Muslims believe God may be known through "introspection and reflection upon the world, as well as through revelation received by especially gifted men, commonly called prophets or messengers."
___On the second question, about the source of evil and suffering, the panelists took a more diverse path.
___"God creates both good and evil," said the rabbi. "To have it any other way is to have two gods."
___He placed responsibility for choosing between good and evil squarely on humans themselves but rejected the notion of original sin, the Christian teaching that Adam and Eve brought the punishment of death into the world.
___He acknowledged the existence of Satan, but not as an opposite of God. He compared Satan to a district attorney who works for God, the judge.
___From the Christian perspective, evil exists because humanity has been given free will by God and chooses to sin, Brooks said. He identified Satan as the tempter and source of evil and suffering.
___But God, he said, "is working all things together for good." And despite humanity's sin, "God chose to love us while we were at our worst."
___From the Buddhist perspective, happiness or suffering is a matter of choice, Hong said. "You can create happiness. You can create suffering. ... The condition is how you look at it."
___In Hindu belief, evil and suffering are the result of a person's own actions, Nanavaty said. "We have the freedom to change our lives."
___As a result, "we are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins," he said. "All the suffering is because of ignorance.
___"When one lives by values, the evil in the world gets eliminated. But when even one person does not live by values, there is suffering."
___To understand the Muslim perspective on evil and suffering, begin by understanding the Muslim belief that all of life on Earth is a temporary test, El-Gamal said. There are tests of affluence and tests of suffering, he added.
___All suffering ultimately comes from God, but it tends to manifest through the actions of humans, he said.
___On the third question, about ultimate destiny, three of the panelists expressed belief in some kind of different afterlife. The Buddhist spoke of reincarnation, and the Hindu identified no afterlife.
___"On an individual level, it is the destiny of the human being to die," said the rabbi. "Judaism believes this world is not the end. There is punishment of the soul in the next life for the sins we commit in this life, and then the soul goes back to God."
___This is true for all souls, he said, "except those that are inherently evil."
___Asked later who those "inherently evil" souls are, Federow said that decision rests solely with God. However, certain individuals like Hitler obviously fall into that category, he said.
___In the Christian perspective, "Christ will return to judge humankind and the world on the basis of whether we have accepted his mediation for sin," Brooks said.
___This is a free gift of salvation made possible by God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the pastor said. "All of us may accept his gift."
___Buddhists believe in reincarnation, Hong said, meaning the way a person lives as a human impacts what they will become in the next life.
___"You plant good seeds, you have a beautiful tree."
___The ultimate destiny for Hindus is to be happy, to know identity with the creator, Nanavaty said. "Happiness is within me. ... Bliss ... is every individual's destiny."
___Muslims see the next life as the main life, El-Gamal explained. The current life, which he called "transient," is "irrelevant" and merely a test to determine how the next life will be lived, he said.
___Judgment regarding the afterlife will be made by God based on how a person has lived on Earth, El-Gamal said.
___During the question-and-answer session, Brooks and El-Gamal were asked whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
___El-Gamal responded that the Koran presupposes the Christian teaching on the Trinity as a belief that has "gone astray." While the Koran acknowledges Jesus as one of many messengers of God, Islam does not accept the statement of Jesus that he is himself God, El-Gamal said.
___However, so long as Christians and Muslims focus on the teaching of God to do good and forbid evil, "we can live just fine, and as far as we're concerned, it's the same God."
___Brooks responded that Christianity "clearly teaches that God is three in one," yet Christianity still is a monotheistic religion.
___The one God reveals himself in three forms, Brooks said, drawing a comparison to water, which remains water in the form of a liquid, solid or gas.
___"It is critical to Christianity that Jesus was not just a prophet but God in the flesh," he explained.
___While Brooks and El-Gamal staked out more exclusive paths to God--Brooks emphasized faith in Jesus Christ as the only way to God--the Hindu representative painted a different picture.
___While the world's religions appear to worship many different gods, there is only one deity, Nanavaty asserted. "We call him by a different name."
___Nanavaty compared heaven to a party at a big Texas ranch. Some people may arrive at the party in Chevrolets, others in Fords and still others in Nissans, he said. "The real joy is in the party, not in how you get there."
___Another question asked Federow why Jews do not believe Jesus was the promised Messiah.
___The rabbi said Christians and Jews define the term "messiah" differently. Jesus does not meet the true Jewish criteria for what the messiah is prophesied to be, he explained. "None of the things the messiah is to do have happened."
___Further, he said, Christians should not project their non-Jewish understanding on Jewish expectations for the messiah. "It's our word. We define it."
___David Capes, chairman of HBU's Christianity department, moderated the program. The purpose of the event, he said, was to foster understanding--"to listen and learn and try to understand."
___Panelists included Stuart Federow, Duane Brooks and Miao Hong, all seated at the table in the top photo, as well as Sri Gaurang Nanavaty and Mahmoud El-Gamal.Duane Brooks talks with students during a break in the program.
___
The Baptist Standard
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
|