Theological humility: Is peace possible among the faithful?

Unfortunately I would have to say that popular religions will never come to peace, unless only one religion remains within this world or none at all. There are some who believe in theological humility which is the practice of teaching to love members of other faiths with the argument of God’s revelations amongst different groups of people are one and the same and we should move beyond tolerance and encourage love.

It's a daring concept in the attempt to find commonality and peace amongst western monotheistic religions as all three religions believe in the same Abrahamic God. However, I find this attempt quite limited. The concept is based amongst Christians, Jews and Muslims, yet ignoring other religions as well as newcomers or one’s that are left in a minority, such as Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca, Scientology…

There are many religions within this world and some that have gone extinct, yet no one tries to find commonality amongst the gods of ancient Greeks, or ancient Egyptians gods or even the Roman gods. Maybe because no one follows those religions anymore, either because of imperial conquests such as Muslim’s taking over Egypt, European’s invading newly discovered America or cultural influence such as Jewish religion influencing nearby cultures to form new monotheistic religions.

I do very much agree that tolerance is not always a positive value. One can tolerate another viewpoint but not necessarily respect it, but the alternative of teaching to love another from a different faith does not solve the problem either. For example, in the Five Pillars of Islam, it is clearly stated that the enemies of Islam are people who do not believe in Allah, the one and only God who is the same God of Christians and Jews. Another example taking from one of the ten commandments is God forbids in the worship of other gods for he is a jealous god. There is no other way to interpret this law, when it has been clearly stated.

This only brings me to question how would one expect to love others whose religion is quite alien to western perception of the divine such as eastern religions like Hinduism or what about non-believers? We have to understand that the opposite of love is hate. All three western monotheistic religions within their biblical scripture despise atheists, how are believers going to convince or interpret their scripture to love non-believers? This is not about interpretation, but a direct violation of God’s will. To love someone is to respect others beliefs and I doubt any Christian, Muslim or Jew is going to respect an atheist’s position, let alone love them.

These popular religions can’t even find consensus amongst their own sects! As for the underpinning argument that God works in mysterious ways amongst different religions seems to be a far cry for relativism. This type of tolerance is dangerous. In this case, any religious group can justify any sort of act by appealing to their scripture or God as truth, an excuse for extremist groups to commit atrocities to other people or violate human right laws.

This kind of mindset would encourage justification of female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa or Middle-East or the practice of Sati that still going on in some parts of India or the discrimination of the “untouchables”, even though both are now banned by the Indian government.