In the Name

I would rather talk about Star Wars today, but I can't just brush this one off.  I wanted to.  Quite frankly talking about this sort of idiocy is crushing my soul, because it's my people that are doing this.  I didn't go to Wheaton, but I do consider myself evangelical, because the root of the word evangelical is euaggelion, which in Greek means, "Good News."  I believe that Jesus is good news, I believe that the church is the body of Christ in the world, and that includes the knuckleheads that suspended Ms. Hawkins for her position that Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
I've got some news for you: they do.  And that's not a matter of opinion, it is not a mystery of the nature of God, it is quite simply a fact of the development of the three major monotheistic world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  If I were to say that Jews and Christians worship the same God, no one would have a problem.  There are plenty of Christians who love to toss around the name Yahweh, which is the Hebrew combination of letters that signifies THE LORD, and is derived from the verb "to be," which basically jives with the idea of God as being and the ground of all being.  The existence and the handling of the Name has always been complicated.  It's what Moses wanted to know before he went off on mission to liberate the Israelites from Egypt.  Flaming shrubbery wasn't going to cut it, if he was going to stick his neck out like that, he needed to know the name of The LORD.  The LORD is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, oh yeah and Ishmael, you remember Ishmael right? Abraham's other son, the one he had with Hagar and then had to run off because Sarah got jealous, but who God took care of anyway.  Ishmael, the reason why Muslims around the world refer to Jews and Christians as people of the Book.  In fact, Muslims who are not insane fundamentalists, will readily acknowledge the sacred text of the Bible, both testaments, including the Jesus stuff, as being the Word (capital W) of God, who they refer to as Allah, because that's the name they use for God.  All languages have different names for God: dios, theos, deus etc.
Now, does the fact that we are all talking about the same God mean our religions are the same? Well, no, but it does give us some rather interesting common ground to start from, if we could get over our ignorance and fear, which is really what Professor Hawkins was trying to do by wearing a Hijab and making the statement she made.  She's trying to remind us of how we're all in this together.
It goes back to the promise that God made to Abraham, the whole thing:

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." -Genesis 12: 1-3

Unless you happen to be Jewish (descended through Isaac and Jacob), it would behoove you to interpret that as broadly as possible.  Especially us Christians, because we're the adopted kids.  The Ishmaelites too, they are part of this great nation and the great name.  Look at the reason behind this: "So that you will be a blessing."  "...in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
What I see in this whole scenario is a conflict between two types of religion: a kind of religion that seeks the face of God in the stranger and the alien and even the enemy, and a kind of religion that puts on blinders and builds defenses.  To me, Professor Hawkins was doing something prophetic, and as such we should probably expect this sort of backlash from the palace and the temple.
We all have work to do, all of our religions can be distorted to violence.  The name of God is a powerful thing, which is probably why ancients people were hesitant to even pronounce it aloud.  You name your god, they name theirs, we choose up sides and start killing in the name that we just made up.  That says more about us than about God.
You know what would be really good news?  If we could remember what John told us in his first letter: "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." (1 John 4: 16b) That's good news for all of us children of Abraham, and the rest of the families of the earth. Let's try that scarf on for a while shall we?