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Posted by binsar on 27 Aug 2007 at 10:32 am | Tagged as: Article, Christianity, Interreligious Dialogue
This is my paper that was presented at Caux, on the theme “Belief and Culture: Fuelling or Resolving Conflict? Theme of the Day in Caux”.
First of all I would like to thank you for this wonderful opportunity to share my experience and my conviction with these two wonderful people, Grand Rabbi Marc Raphael Guedj and Prof. Nasyr Abu Zayd. As introduced my name is Binsar Jonathan Pakpahan. I am a vicar of a protestant church and now doing my PhD in
Amsterdam. I am working on my dissertation with the title: “Towards theology of remembrance: a basis for forgiveness and reconciliation.” Basically I want to do my research on the importance of remembrance in order to be able to forgive and reconcile. So, instead of saying forgive and forget I want to say that we have to remember and forgive. This issue alone has been in the air throughout our conference.I think I need to be clear about my background before I will say my opinion on this topic. I am Indonesian which is the country with the biggest Moslem population in the world. I was born in a Christian family for quite a few generations, raised in Jakarta, a melting pot metropolitan where I met all kinds of people. I went to public school which means that most of my friends are Moslem. I still remember that 15 years ago I was able to exchange inter-religious jokes with my Moslem friends. I never realized that they were inter-religious until years later. One of my friends during primary school told me that we Christians only pray once a week, and he told me that we are kafir in a joking way. Then I asked him, “What does kafir mean? He said that kafir means pagan, then I said, “Well you must be mistaken because we have three Gods and our God outnumbered your God.”
Then things started getting bad after 9/11. The global situation gotten worse ever since and after Soeharto regime fell there are more groups in Indonesia that want to have the Syariah (Moslem law) to be implemented in Indonesia. This is the time when I entered my theological studies. During that time we organize an inter faith discussion group about theological questions among students. I also remember the time when we used to play soccer or badminton together with my Moslem friends from Islamic University. We often joked about having a bet on conversion, meaning whoever loses convert.
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