Inter faith dialogue - More Good or Harm? - 2007/12/26 18:00I refer to the article in the Star dated 25.12.2007 by Md Asham Ahmad entitled "Is Dialogue What We Want?" http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/content/view/13089/2/ and wish to share my personal experience.
I was a panelist at a recent inter faith dialogue organized by the Multimedia University. The topic was, "Who is God? A View from Holy Scriptures".
The panelists had a very robust dialogue. I spoke for the Christian faith and there were many divergent views from the other panelists, especially the Muslim panelist. One of the central issue was this: "Is Jesus God?". The Christian position is that Jesus Christ is God and was incarnated as Man. That is the reason for the Christmas celebration, that God had come in the form of human flesh. However, the Muslim position is that Jesus is a mere prophet. The stakes were indeed very high and the Christian and Muslim cannot be both right. Jesus is either God or a mere man. We had a very interesting discussion on this issue and other matters as well.
But, what is more important is that the whole dialogue took place in an atmosphere of understanding, warmth and mutual respect. It is a great testament to our Malaysian spirit when people of different faiths can speak about their similarities and differences as friends and not enemies. I left the forum with a much deeper love and respect for my fellow panelists and their faiths.
I believe there is room for more inter faith dialogues in Malaysia on theological matters. Truth is absolute and not relative. When one faith system declares itself to be true, it implicitly declares any other contradictory truth claim to be false. This is the law of non-contradiction, i.e. two opposing truth claims cannot be both correct.
Yet, the beauty is that we can agree to disagree and we can discuss our differences in a civilized manner. What inter faith dialogues do is that we can clear a lot of misconceptions and prejudices about other faiths and see what each religion really teaches. Then, we can decide which truth claim is the most plausible and worthy of our belief and personal commitment.
Wong Fook Meng
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