Would God think less of orthodox Christians for praying with others who didn't share their beliefs?

I seem to be getting some post ideas from an ongoing discussion at TitusOneNine. Here's a thought experiment I posed there in response to a comment from one of that blog's more rigorously-orthodox participants.

THE SETTING: Imagine that:

• A group of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and doctrinally-orthodox Christians, meet regularly for prayers.
• All are devout, all their beliefs and prayers are sincere.
• When a specifically-Christian prayer is said aloud, the non-Christians mentally ‘translate’ the prayer into their own respective religious idioms. The same is true when a specifically-Hindu prayer is said, etc.

QUESTION 1: In general, does God take a lesser view of, say, Hindus than he does of Christians? How about orthodox Christians versus heretical ones?

QUESTION 2: Does God take a lesser view of Christians when they pray in a theologically-heterogeneous congregation?

QUESTION 3: Do Christians' prayers lose some portion of their effectiveness if they're prayed in a congregation that happens to include non-Christians?

If your answer to any of these is “yes,” then please explain.

Comments

[Fr Craig]

I can't stand to go there, but am curious how they responded. My answer to each is, of course, 'no.' I am fond of saying to those 'Jesus' folks, 'I don't believe for even a second that God loves Christian babies even an iota more than he loves Hindu, Moslem, etc babies.'

[D. C. Toedt]

Amen, Fr. Craig. (By the way, the participants at T19 basically ducked all these questions.)

[Knurd Nectar]

God loves everything He has created. If there is even so much as one thing that His perfect hands have created that He does not love, then what we have is a very very small little-g god with low self-esteem.

[Dave]

Hi DC. I personally think your questions are poorly phrased – no offense intended. Does God take a lesser view of Hindus/others than Christians? No, I don’t think so at all. God loves all, but more on this below.

I believe the bible to be the inspired word of God. (From some of your other posts, I gather we will have to agree to disagree about this?) I also therefore believe that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ and that eternal life comes through faith in Him. However, that is becoming an unpopular attitude (despite the fact that the bible teaches it, but that’s a separate discussion). So I don’t think it’s about God taking a lesser view of non-Christians (at least in this life) but rather about the fate of that person hereafter if they have rejected God’s method of coming to Him. (Who is God to dictate how I should come to Him? Well, He is God you know...) Now obviously that’s a sensitive issue, but my point is that I find it difficult to understand how somebody can take bits and pieces of the bible and build what really is their own religion. That’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it? I see a big trend worldwide for religions to come together to worship, but I struggle to reconcile this as there are mutually exclusive requirements in their beliefs... unless you start to exclude bits and pieces. I’ve never believed compromise to be a good thing.

Furthermore, I think Fr Craig has missed the point. (And the same applies to Knurd Nectar re the comments about God’s love. Of course God loves everything He has created, but that’s not the point.) If I may quote Jn 3:16, God loved the world enough to give His Son Jesus. (I would quote other verses to back up my thoughts, but it appears (to me at least) that you don’t accept the bible as the inspired word of truth. Let me know if I am incorrect?) Clearly God loves all, but as much as God loves, he also will judge in the future. God the Judge... hmm, now there’s a topic that doesn’t receive nearly as much commentary as God the Lover of the world!

Anyway, that’s how I see it. Questions 2 and 3 build on question 1, so I think I’ll end there.

Thanks.
Dave

[D. C. Toedt]

Dave, thanks for the thought-provoking comment.

Dave writes:

I would quote other verses to back up my thoughts, but it appears (to me at least) that you don’t accept the bible as the inspired word of truth. Let me know if I am incorrect?

I view the Bible in much the same way as the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, a noted physicist-turned-priest, who says that the Bible is like a collection of laboratory notebooks, recording gifted observers' experiences with the divine.

Putting it another way: Some passages in the Bible express what seem to be fundamental truths about Life. Other passages appear to miss the mark. So I view the Bible as including what we could call divinely-inspired thoughts; I have the same view of, say, Newton's Principia and Einstein's special-relativity papers.

Dave writes:

I find it difficult to understand how somebody can take bits and pieces of the bible and build what really is their own religion. That’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it?

No more so than what the early Christians did.

Look up Psalm 16, which Peter quoted in his speech to the crowd on Pentecost; you'll see he flagrantly misrepresented it.

For that matter, check out what Acts says the apostles preached in the very earliest days of the church: They said that Jesus was the long-awaited Anointed One, not that he was God Incarnate; later Christians seem to have come up with that one all by themselves.

I'm glad you stopped by.