I believe that sometimes we get deaf to certain spiritual truths. Sometimes this happens when we have heard the same thing over and over again in the same form. "We know that", we think, and we fail to see the power and the majesty of the truth because it has become a commonplace. It blends into the background noise of our lives, instead of changing us and drawing us deeper into God and into a love for God and the things that God loves. Another way that we are deaf is when our own spiritual culture tends to focus on a particular set of spiritual truths while it ignores other truths that have just as much call on our lives.
There are several remedies for this. One is to study history, and to try to become aware of the ways in which the selective blindness of people has varied over time and space. It may be that the truths that people most need are the ones that come to the surface in any given age. Certainly, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit teaches the church might make this be the case. But still, it seems to me that each age has some aspects of the truth that the mass of people in that age are oblivious to, and that even as we cluck our tongues over their blindness--"How could they have ever thought that it was all right for them not only to keep slaves but to abuse them in that way?" we would do well to look for truths to which our own age or culture is blind.
We can refuse to be boxed in by the understandings of our own local church or theological stream. It is one thing to think that your own stream has some extremely valuable insights, and ways of doing things which you find very helpful. It is another thing to think that "the way we do things" is the only way that God moves, and that the insights of your own group are the only insights that are there to be had. Sometimes people feel like the only reason to have ecumenical discussion is to reconcile differences to such a point that two groups become one. And when that can happen, it can be very special. However, I think that there is a great deal to be gained just by interacting with each other and coming to see that there are other emphases, and other traditions than the one that is dear to our own heart, and that not all that the other group has or does is wrong. Sometimes it is just different.
Many Christians who would see the value of a Christian learning from the many different forms that Christianity has taken around the world would still be skeptical about learning from another religion, one that is not Christian. I want to say that I am not starting this project with a belief that all religions, or specifically Islam, say the same things about God as Christianity says. I do not, in fact, agree with a number of things that Islam teaches. It is possible, that as I go through these names, I will stumble upon one or more that I simply cannot reconcile with the understanding of God that is given in the Scriptures that I accept. I am not anticipating this, having done a bit of groundwork, but I am not going to rule it out a priori as a possibility. It is much more likely that I will find a name that becomes meaningful to me in a way that does not quite line up with the way that it would be meaningful to a Muslim scholar or mystic. And I am not going to let that trouble me too much. I am doing this work as a Christian, and it is as a Christian that I hope to gain from it.
At the same time, I think I am most likely to get value from the concepts that give me difficulty, because it is there that I am most likely to find one of these hidden pockets of truth that a different perspective can help with. So it will be precisely in the areas that I might be tempted to say, "That's wrong," that I plan to look hardest to see if there is something I have been missing all my life that is in fact also a part of Christianity, though one that I have overlooked.
Part of my reason for wanting to do this is because I think that many times Christians only look at other religions long enough to find places where they disagree with them.
Ihere is one popular idea that no one outside a tradition should "exploit" the spiritual capital of that tradition or religion. There is a sense in which this is seen as theft. I do appreciate aspects of this, but in the end, I disagree. The spiritual insights of any group, insofar as they are made public, are open. I do not diminish the stock of wisdom by using a piece of it. We may argue about whether my use of it adds to the store, but it surely does not make it less.
In 2007, a group of Muslim scholars issued an open letter to Christians called A Common Word between Us and You which issues an invitation.
Thus in obedience to the Holy Qur’an, we as Muslims invite Christians to come together with us on the basis of what is common to us, which is also what is most essential to our faith and practice: the Two Commandments of love.These two commandments, of course, are the love of God, and the love of our neighbors. This project then is a tiny effort on my part towards answering that call.
I believe thatthese names are windows into the greatness of God, and as the poet Sidney Lanier put it in his poem "The Marshes of Glynn", I want to be like the marsh grass, or the tiny marsh hen:
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
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