Listen / Read
It would have been nice if Billings could have expanded a little more on his conclusion. He’d get bad marks if this were an essay, as he offers no explanation as to that final assertion. That’s a D+ I’m afraid, Reverend Doctor. Try harder next time.
But for those of us who are members of faith communities there is a particular obligation. We have to learn to live with religious pluralism; to recognise that it cannot be God’s will that the whole world must be made in our religious image. For it is with that idea that religious terrorism always begins.
It’s a curious thing. I was once asked by a presumptuous Christian if I accepted that Jesus Christ was the Lord. When I said no, she gave me a look as if I’d just told her that children are sexy. All the Christians I’ve known believe that the only way to live one’s life is via the acceptance of Christ. And they should, as it’s what they’re told in church and at Bible study groups. It’s what they read in the Bible; that’s what it says. It empowers them to spread the Word of God, because anyone who doesn’t accept Christ as their Lord and Personal Saviour doesn’t get a ticket to heaven. There’s no religious pluralism in there.
So I’d be fascinated to know how Billings’ reconciles his universal faith with religious relativism and pluralsm. Surely these things deny the basic assertions of his faith? Surely he see’s the almighty contradiction in what he’s saying? If it is with “that idea that relgious terrorism always begins”, surely ‘that idea’ was God’s when he said “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3).