Interfaith debates

People often imagine worship as an act of lowering oneself before visible greatness. One bows before a throne, prostrates before majesty, trembles before power. That model works easily with the image of a mighty king. But it becomes deeply problematic when applied to Jesus, because whenever one goes looking for him in that mode, one finds not a monarch demanding ceremony, but a servant washing the feet of others.

For two thousand years, the figure of Jesus has generated something unusual in human history: a stable stalemate. There is enough evidence to persuade billions that he lived, taught, was crucified, and rose again. Yet there is also enough ambiguity to sustain serious doubt. Entire civilizations have formed around affirming him. Entire intellectual traditions have formed around questioning him. And neither side has eliminated the other.

I confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Lord.

I do not hide this. I do not soften it. I do not reinterpret it to make it socially acceptable. It is the center of my faith, and I proclaim it openly.

At the same time, I do not experience contradiction when standing in a Muslim house of prayer where strict monotheism is affirmed and where it is said that “God has no son.”

To many, this sounds impossible. It sounds like compromise, duplicity, or confusion. It is none of these.

Many people imagine divine revelation as though truths are periodically dropped into the world from some alien metaphysical realm, as if Heaven imports entirely new conceptual material into human history. Scripture is then treated almost like a supernatural package delivery from outside reality itself.

But this picture is deeply misleading.

At first glance, the Qur’an and the Gospels appear to stand in stark contradiction on the question of whether human beings may be called “children of God.” The Qur’an explicitly challenges and rejects such a claim, while the Gospels seem to affirm it in various forms. From a surface reading, one might conclude that the theological worlds they present are irreconcilable, and thus unlikely to originate from a unified divine source.

There is one God. He is perfect, self-sufficient, and in need of nothing. Yet, in His freedom, He chose relationship. He chose to elevate the one who is perfectly faithful, perfectly humble, the one who seeks no glory for himself—the Word, the Logos. In that relationship of love, there is no rivalry, no competition, no concern for rank. There is only mutual glorification: the Father delights in the Son, and the Son directs all glory back to the Father.

This is the reality that cannot be fully contained in human categories. In the heavens, it is whole. On Earth, it appears divided.