Our co-founder, Dr. Sadik Malki, called me from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia today with an impassioned plea that we renew our efforts to lift the Oneness of God above the sectarian strife that has not only infected the Middle East but the world. Coming from someone whose daily life experience is far more impacted by that strife than my own, his words struck a deep chord or urgency in me.

Why is what some might consider just a theological construct of any importance to those living in the so-called "real world"? Why should anyone care about a formulaic statement devised centuries ago, and what possible relevance or applicability could it have to the serious problems we face today? And what do we even mean by such words as God and Oneness in any case? Too easily we dismiss such terms as pietistic or out of touch with modern reality.

The answers to these questions speak to the core mission of FID and, I believe, address the fundamental problem fueling human suffering in all its many forms. To see how this is so, let me refer to both Asian philosophy and modern science.

As conflicted as the world may be, most of our daily lives are, nevertheless, governed by mutual agreements about the nature of reality. Though not all those agreements are shared globally, for the most part they at least hold true within a given society or culture. On the simplest level, such agreements are an elementary consensus defining everything from clothes to coffee cups as being what we call them. Yet on a purely material, physical level, look at any collection of disparate objects- a person, a chair, a telephone- under an electron microscope, and instead of seeing a person, a chair and a telephone, we see nothing but particles of energy in varying densities and constant motion. From the atom to a galaxy, all energy and motion is an interaction of polarities, without which there does not appear to be any existence. A single underlying dynamic rules all phenomena, all manifestation.

This paradox is lucidly expressed in Indian philosophy in a number of statements that define a single and eternal force as the substratum and source of all. It's nature, moreover, is said to be consciousness itself. A single conscious energy, self-aware and immutable, is the point from which all originates and to which all must eventually return. It is known by various names: Brahman, Paramatman, Paramashiva, but its essence is, like a rose, the same by any other name.

Such a unitive concept is not "Asian", but universal. However obscured by theological gamesmanship and semantic argumentation, that awareness is at least vestigially apparent in the etymologies of many Western definitions of what we call "God". "El" in Hebrew, and "Allah" in Arabic both indicate Oneness, or The One. Jewish and Muslim creedal statements affirm the Oneness of God explicitly. "Shema Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai EHAD"- "Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE." "La ilaha il Allahu"- "There is nothing [no God] but the One". Even Christianity insists, "There is but one God and Father of us all". The Rabbis, Jesus, and the mullahs go on to insist that it is incumbent upon us all to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself".

If, as each religion claims, the theology of Oneness is sound and true, and we are truly faithful to it, then logically our propensity for divisiveness, separation and limitation is both wrong-headed and groundless. How can we possibly claim to love God or the Absolute, while hating our neighbors or ourselves? If the scientists and the Asian philosophers are right, we are all intrinsically interconnected, like cells in a single organism. What affects one, affects us all. Whether viewed in the context of Genesis' proclamation that "God created humankind in God's own image and likeness, male and female", or from the view of the Sanskrit declaration "Brahma satyam, jagan mithya, jivo brahmaiva naparaha"- The Absolute is Real, the world is an illusion, the individual self is nothing but the Absolute" we end up with millennial confirmations of what others acknowledge as scientific fact: things are not what they appear to be, and all are interconnected by the laws of quantum physics.

So what? How is this helpful in a practical sense? Both science and Asian philosophy insist that the underlying One is intrinsically unlimited in the ways it can be manifested. Diversity is as inherent and necessary to existence as the underlying Oneness from which it springs. In our propensity to insist upon either/or solutions we continually seem to overlook the both/and reality of the symbiotic relationship between unity and diversity. Look at the news cycle of any average day. It is filled with the inanities of partisanship, the venomous competition of factionalism, and the cultural superiority trips perpetrated in the name of international relations. We see it in racism, classism, and elitism of all kinds, whose partisans are hell-bent to distinguish and separate one group from another in the name of ethnic pride, economic prosperity, national security, or the aristocracy of talent. And all of it is ultimately self-destructive, for it seeks to build a secure identity on the shifting sands of ever-changing conditions. The inevitable outcome is a perpetration of suffering.

Many years ago, when I was still a priest, a parishioner with a long pathology of first befriending and then attacking clergy confronted me. The pattern had been played out in at least four parishes before she joined mine, and was subsequently continued in several others that I know of after she left. Because I had always preached an inclusive message that was not limited to the constructs of Church doctrine, this woman had accused me of preaching heresy. Confronting me in my office one day, she trotted out the Nicene Creed as her litmus test of my authenticity. She avowed emphatically, "I BELIEVE in ONE GOD!". I congratulated her, and said so did I, but then asked her if she construed that saying "I believe in one God" implied that I believed in another. I then shared with her an anecdote about the great Protestant Theologian, Paul Tillich. Purportedly a student came to Tillich at Princeton one day and said, "Professor Tillich, I'm really sorry, but I just don't believe in God". Unperturbed, Tillich allegedly responded, "Well, describe and define the God in which you don't believe, and chances are, I won't believe in him either!" Though it may be apocryphal, the story hit the nail of our assumptions on the head.

To take seriously the notion of an underlying force that unites us all, and actually attempt to apply that as a fundamental criterion for decision making, could go a long way to sorting out many of our self-perpetuating conflicts. This is, of course, easier said than done, especially when we factor in the raw emotion and intellectual blindness that all too often results from suffering, especially when that pain is ostensibly inflicted on us by others. Our blindness must and can be systematically deconstructed so that we can actually learn to see that alternatives are possible. But it takes intentional commitment and practice to do so. Though initially such practice is likely to feel a bit contrived and uncomfortable, it does become easier and more natural with practice.

When serving as a hospital chaplain during my seminary training, I participated in a series of team-building workshops involving representatives of all departments of the facility's staff. Doctors, nurses, social workers, janitors, accountants- everyone had to engage in a series of problem solving tasks ruled by a single condition: the solutions each team offered had to be arrived at by consensus, not majority vote. This required that each department express clearly its needs and expectations, and be willing to hear those of others with equal clarity. There was no hierarchy allowed. The needs of each were weighted equally in the interest of our common goal to best serve the patients.

The experience was revelatory, for all of us were exposed to factors we had never considered or been aware of previously, and which ultimately contributed to a more satisfactory and efficient solution to each task assigned. It also broke down some previous competitive barriers and departmental territorialism, and made staff meetings not only more effective, but also more human and more fun. Clearly, the hope was that this would then spill over into the day-to-day decisions governing the function of the institution. As a summer intern, I was not there long enough to assess whether that was achieved, but it made me want to at least believe it was possible. It certainly helped me see that the many ways in which we identify ourselves often becomes more limiting than freeing, and that expanding our horizons with alternative information was generally liberating and helpful. The dynamic of self-identity seemed somehow to be a key.

Asian philosophy claims all suffering is spawned by the dynamic of self-identification- what they term the four basic afflictions of the human condition: we forget our true nature (i.e. that we are inherent participants in higher consciousness, or as St. Paul put it eloquently in his prayer to God "In You we live and move and have our being"}; once we forget or ignore our true and infinite nature, we proceed to identify with what we are not (i.e. the limitations of name, gender, age, profession, etc.); from there we are governed by the pendulum swings of identifying ourselves in terms of our attractions and aversions, likes and dislikes; and we end up attached to our perishable bodies and fearing death- the ultimate suffering.

To uphold and reinforce an awareness of the Oneness of God, both philosophically and practically, is to uphold and reinforce an awareness of our innate participation in and dependence upon that same oneness. The consequences of failing to do so are the painful realities in which we life every day. The benefits of doing so are a healthy and productive alternative. Are we so attached to the familiarity of our suffering and the self-imposed limitations of our identities that we cannot recognize which is the preferable choice?

Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright © 2006 by Faith In Diversity Institute