Friday, April 03, 2009

Thoughts on God (New Statesman, April 2)

What God Means to Me--highlights from the New Statesman.

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks
God, for me, represents the holiness of otherness. Through an encounter with the divine Other I come to value the encounter with the human other. What I ask God to do for me, God asks me to do for others: listen to them, empower them, believe in them, trust them, forgive them when they betray that trust, and love them for what they are, not what I would like them to be. More than we have faith in God, God has faith in us, and because he never loses that faith, we can never lose hope. God is the redemption of solitude.

Marina Mahathir
I grew up thinking of God as the biggest, most powerful, smartest and richest being there is . . . but also most definitely male. It took a long time to realise that God has no gender and that the Quran says that He or She takes men and women into equal consideration.
That realisation has been very liberating for a Muslim woman like me. Patriarchy is a human creation, not God’s.

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