Chronic Murmuring

"They even referred to God as Allah, he said. The fundamental difference was that they claimed the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, yet did so culturally as Muslims"

It shouldn't be surprising that converts to Christianity would call God "Allah" as "Allah" is just the Arabic word for "God." Christians in the Middle East call God "Allah."

What if Bush intends to imply that because they worship the same God then their worship is accepted by God? (The many roads lead up the mountain approach). Does he mean that they are "saved" or that they are, ala Paul at Mar's Hill, grasping after God in their own way?

That, I think, is a different question. I didn't read the entirety of what Bush said; I only heard about it through that link I posted. But I'm going to guess that Bush didn't get into deeper theological questions like whether the worship was acceptable by the different groups. If he did mean that, then of course, that's not true from the Christian's perspective. Even though I don't quite understand all that is meant by our worship being acceptable to God, I assume that our worship cannot be acceptable to God if we ourselves are not acceptable to God. We are only acceptable to God in Christ. Our worship, too.

Of course, Bush could've meant that in which case, forget all that I just wrote. A long time ago, I read that Bush and Billy Graham were talking. This was shortly after Bush's conversion experience to Christianity, which occured in late adulthood for him. He made a remark in which he said that Jesus is the only way to God. Graham, from what I read, rebuked him somewhat, and made some mention of Mulsims and Jews, then made some comment about how we cannot know God's ways. I don't know if Graham actually said that or not. It could be one of those weird Internet rumors (although I remember reading it in a newspaper, and didn't get that from a blog or anything like that).

I'm just mainly thinking about the idea that, because we are of different "religions," then necessarily we worship different Gods. The object of our worship, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, is the Israeli God, Yahweh. There are meaningful differences in how each understands that deity, so I don't want to downplay that. But at what point do those differences dominate the continuity? And besides, what difference does it really make in the end? Does allegiance to Christ necessarily require leaving one's culture behind, even if that culture is informed by unbelief on some level? The Jews were rebuked by Paul for trying to make the Gentiles Jewish, and I wonder if sometimes the opposite could be true. We end up asking people to carry more than the simple yoke of Christ and his righteousness.

All of this to say, does one's unbelief necessarily skew the entire object of our worship so much that the phrase "we worship different deities" have meaning? I'm taken as given that we're talking about the Judeo-Christian context. I'm not addressing people who worship and adore Shiva or are pantheists. Christians do not worship God simply because they're Christians. Their worship is made perfect by their unity to Christ. That's the key point, I think.