رحلة إلى الأردن: One Day in the "City of God" (Part 1)

Despite the fact that there were about 30 other people sleeping on the roof of the hostel, I still managed to sleep like a rock on Wednesday night. By 7:00 am on Thursday I was well rested and we were up and on our way to breakfast. We ate quickly and then walked to the Dome of the Rock, which was open during the morning. This mosque was quite a sight to see. There were many people from all over the world visiting it - Muslims and non-Muslims alike. As I said in my last post, this mosque is the 3rd holiest site in the Islamic world. It is the place where Muslims believe that Mohammed was taken up into heaven by the Angel Gabriel. The Dome of the Rock has its name because it is built around a rock that Mohammed is said to have stood on when he ascended. Another interesting fact is that the Dome was built on the site of the Second Jewish Temple. It's important to note that the Muslims did not destroy the Temple and built the Mosque on top of it. Rather, it was the Romans who destroyed it nearly 600 years before the Muslim armies arrived in Jerusalem.

While most of the guys that I was traveling with decided to leave from the Dome of the Rock fairly quickly and move on to another site, I decided to stay for awhile. I sat close to the mosque for a good portion of the morning and thought a lot about how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam converge in this city, on this spot. The Hebrews built a temple here about 3,000 years ago to worship the same God that I and millions of other people worship today. Just about 1,000 years after it's first construction, Jesus walked in the re-constructed Temple and preached the gospel. Then, 600 years later, Muslims believe that Mohammed ascended from the very same spot.

Of course, the importance of Jerusalem is not the only thing that these three religions share. Christians believe in the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament written by the Hebrews. Muslims, in turn, believe in Adam, Moses, David, Jesus, and many of the stories of the Bible. Just as the New Testament can be used to view the Old Testament in a new way, the Quran is used by Muslims to reinterpret the Bible.

All three religions share similar beliefs about the sovereignty of God, the brokenness of humankind, and the importance of love, peace, and service to the poor and disenfranchised people in society.

With so many overlapping beliefs and histories, I could not help but wonder about where the truth is located. Does only one of these three religions contain truth? Or, do they all manifest different truths in different ways, through different texts, and in different people. Honestly, I couldn't even begin to answer this question - no human really can with certainty. It is intriguing, though, to think about the ways in which these faiths converge, and to wonder what is the real truth about God.