February 10th, The Trinity Parish in Bergen Point hosted the Peace Islands Institute in an Abraham’s Table. Its theme was “How does our concept of God affect what we do in the World”.
Each speaker spoke from their own perspective’s on the topic.
Rabbi Gladstone started off by saying that Judaism is the oldest religion of the 3 represented religions here. He said, Jews praise God for what he has done, they petition God for what they would like for him to do, they study what he’s done in history, Jews don’t look for proof of the existence of God. Every time god speaks to an individual it is a commandment, there are 613 commandments. Be fruitful and multiply which is the first commandment. They do ritual commandments for a sense of holy life. Two kinds of commandments, regards between people and god. Commandments 1-5 have to do with God and one commandment has do with your parents and the rest of the commandments have to do with the people around you. Jews are the only religion where they have a clear reason why they are here on earth. In order to be a good Jew you’re supposed to be trying to make the world a better place. That is one reason why Jews are active in social action.
He ended by telling a story to the audience about a Jewish scholar and a student.
Rev Hassan
In Christian perspective– it is complicated in Christianity. Being a Christian follower of Christ, which means the word Christ means anointed, priests and kings were also anointed in that time He was holy in some way, which doesn’t mean Jesus was god. Lord, in scripture, was used in relationship of god.
She spoke briefly about her ordination with some of her favorite quotes.
She summed all her quotes up with just three words, “God loves us”.
We are commanded to love. Greatest commandment, love God with your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
Dr. Sahin
Started off by saying, that we all learned all our values very early in our lives. Those rules, honesty, truthfulness, fatefulness, knowing the difference between good and bad are what makes us human.
All of us have a concept of god, and what he has in store for us after we die. Our image, which we do not like to use because we believe he is unimaginable. Our concept of God affects all our values as we go through life.
What we learn in Christianity, Judaism and Islam is that God is loving.
In the Quran God describes himself in 600 pages, he has more than 90 names, each name describing himself.
He spoke about some of the meanings of God’s name.
Ar-Raḥmān -The Exceedingly Compassionate, The Exceedingly Beneficent, The Exceedingly Gracious
Ar-Raḥīm -The Exceedingly Merciful
Aṣ-Ṣabūr -The Timeless, The Patient
He ended by speaking about a couple Hadith’s of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
A Hadith is a saying or an act or tacit approval or disapproval ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
Pictures from the Event: