Aired September 29, 2001 - 9 pm ET
Tonight: Seeking meaning; in the aftermath of September 11, can faith heal
shattered hearts and lives? Joining us from San Diego Deepak Chopra, spiritual
adviser, best-selling author of "How to Know God." In at Boston, Rabbi Harold
Kushner, best-selling author of "Living a Life That Matters." In Atlanta, Bruce
Wilkinson, best-selling author of "The Prayer of Jabez" and founder of the Walk
Through the Bible Ministries. In Los Angeles Dr. Hathout, a scholar of Islam and
senior adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council. And with him the pastor of
the Grace Community Church, John MacArthur, also president of the Masters
College and Seminary......five prominent gentlemen will discuss a question being
asked by a lot of people: Where was God?
In San Diego, Deepak
Chopra, the best-selling author. His books include, "How to Know God"; CEO and
founder of the Chopra Center for Well-Being.
In Boston, the famed Rabbi
Harold Kushner, the best-selling author. His newest is "Living a Life That
Matters"; and his famous book, of course, "When Bad Things Happen to Good
People."
In Atlanta, Bruce Wilkinson, best-selling author of "The Prayer
of Jabez." It's been the No. 1 best-seller for months. He also wrote "Secrets of
the Vine." He's founder and president of Walk Through the Bible
Ministries.
Here in Los Angeles is Dr. Maher Hathout, scholar of Islam,
senior adviser at the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
And John MacArthur,
pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, president of the Masters College
and Seminary; best-selling author, and syndicated radio broadcaster.
All
right, if the overall topic of this group being is: "Where was God?",
where was he Deepak?
DEEPAK CHOPRA: God is infinity
creativity, infinite love, infinite compassion. In fact, those are the qualities
attributed to him in the holy Koran and in Islam also. God is not the problem,
Larry. It's our ignorance about our inseparability with each other and our
tribal instinct. We've sacrificed God. We've made a brand name out of God, and
we've gone to war. All the racism, all the hatred, all the prejudice, all the
bigotry, all the ethnocentrism, all the plundering of the world is in the name
of God, but the name of God is not "God." That's our essential
problem.
KING: Rabbi, if God is omnipotent, he could have
prevented this, could he not?
RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER: No,
because I think at the very outset God gave human beings the freedom to chose
between being good people and being bad people. And at tremendous risk to God's
creatures and God's creation, he will not take that power away from us, that
freedom, because we stop being human beings if he does. I don't find God in that
terrible accident -- in that act of cruelty. I find God in the courage of
firemen and police. I will continue to find God in the willingness of the
survivors to rebuild their lives. Remember, Larry, God's promise was not that
life would be fair, God's promise was that even if life is unfair we would not
have to face it alone, for he will be with us in the valley of the
shadow.
KING: Bruce, didn't you at least for a moment say to
yourself: I question my faith?
BRUCE WILKINSON: I did not
find myself questioning my faith. I began to put myself in God's shoes and
thought to myself, how would I feel if I was up there next to God with the
people that are there, the angels that are there; what would I see on God's --
you know, his personality. You remember in the Old Testament when the great
flood occurred, according to the Torah of Scriptures, it says that God was
grieved in his heart because violence filled the earth. And I really believe
what God felt at that moment is tremendous grief. It was so bad at the beginning
that he said I'm sorry that I made man; this isn't what I had to mind for
man. I can't imagine the grief that he must have felt.
KING: Doctor Hathout, when we read and learn of those
letters yesterday -- the letter written by one of the people who caused this
horror -- and he's a Muslim -- and he proclaims a love -- that he was going to
God. How do you balance that?
DR. MAHER HATHOUT, (SCHOLAR OF
ISLAM): Well, everybody can proclaim whatever he or she might want. But the
reality of the matter is God does not condone or accept that his creature could
be destroyed in this way, and does not accept cruelty. God is mercy and is love.
KING: So where were they getting that from?
HATHOUT:
Well, look at how many people kill and get killed in the name of democracy
or liberty or.
KING: Or Christianity.
HATHOUT: Or
Christianity or patriotism, or what have you. So people have that twisted
behavior sometimes.
KING: Nowhere in the Koran does it say: You
should kill to go to heaven?
HATHOUT: Absolutely not.
KING: John, do you question it? I mean, do you question
whether there is a God?
JOHN MACARTHUR, (PASTOR, GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH): I don't question
whether there is a God. I don't even question what God chooses to allow. It's
not a matter of my opinion. As a Bible teacher and one who believes that the
Bible is the authoritative Word of God, Scripture tells us that God is
absolutely sovereign; that everything that occurs, occurs within the framework
of his purpose.
That is not to say that God creates evil. The Bible says
He does not, nor does He do evil, nor does he tempt anybody to do evil. But evil
exists. It's everywhere. And God can overrule that for his own purpose. The
question is, what is his purpose in this? And that's a big question.
KING: And I want to pick up on that.
Our panel resumes.
We'll reduce them and they'll be our discussion the rest of the way on this
program. We'll include some phone calls. We're discussing God and June 11 -- and
September 11.
KING: We are back on LARRY KING LIVE, we will
reintroduce the panel. We'll include a lot of your phone calls. So many people
are interested in this, and questioning it probably. In San Diego is Deepak
Chopra, in Boston is Rabbi Harold Kushner, in Atlanta is Bruce Wilkinson, in Los
Angeles is Dr. Maher Hathout, and in Los Angeles is John MacArthur. And we go to
Tucson, Arizona. Hello.
CALLER: Larry, I wanted to ask your
panel, if these hijackers are in heaven or hell right now?
KING: Where do you think they are, Dr. Hathout?
HATHOUT: Well, we never second-guess God. What we can say is God
told us in the Koran that those who kill innocent people will be punished.
KING: Punished?
HATHOUT: Absolutely.
KING: What do you believe, John?
MACARTHUR: Well,
I believe there's only one way to go to heaven, and that's through faith in
Jesus Christ. And obviously, their faith was not in Christ, and that's evident
not because I know their religious background, but because if you know Christ
your life is transformed and you don't do things like that.
KING:
Rabbi Kushner, where are they?
KUSHNER: Well, I feel a little bit
excluded by that last statement, but you know, I have got problems with hell. I
have trouble believing in a God who would send people to eternal damnation. I
might be prepared to do it, I rather think God is beyond that. I think they're
not in heaven, I think heaven is reserved for people who have lived a good life.
I think they have simply disappeared. They had dreams of an afterlife, they had
dreams of pleasure and praise and being welcomed and all that, and I don't think
they are anywhere. They are nonexistent, and that's the best thing that can
happen to them.
KING: Bruce? Bruce Wilkinson, what do you think?
WILKINSON: I feel that they stand before the Lord, God himself,
and they have to answer to Him personally about what they've done in their life,
number one; and number two, how they had planned on handling the problem of
their sin, of their disobedience to Him.
The whole Bible is very clear,
that there's a penalty to sin, and it's not by them dying for their sin, but it
is the death penalty, the death penalty for their sin. And Jesus Christ is the
one person that came up to the bat and said, "I will take care of dying for
men's sin." Therefore, the question is, how are they going to deal with the
issue of their own personal sin when they stand before God and face the death
penalty for their choices.
KING: Deepak Chopra, where do you
think they are?
CHOPRA: Larry, I don't know where they are, only
God knows where they are. But I have a problem with some of your panelists,
because I don't think Christ was a Christian, I don't think Buddha was a
Buddhist, and I don't think that Mohammed was a Mohammedan. I think it's just
that kind of thing that says only the way of Jesus is right, then the others say
only the way of Mohammed is right, only the way of Buddha is right, only the way
of Krishna is right. We have sacrificed a universal being and created a tribal
chief with our gods, and that's the problem.
KING: Would you like
to counter that, John?
MACARTHUR: Yeah, I just don't think, all
due respect, that Deepak is the authority on that. I don't think Rabbi Kushner
is the authority either.
KING: Nor are you.
MACARTHUR: I don't think I'm the authority. Where are you going
to go? You have to go to an authoritative book.
KING: And that
is?
MACARTHUR: The Bible.
KING: Which Bible? The
Koran?
MACARTHUR: The Holy Bible.
KING: The Koran
is a bible. He believes in the Koran as much as...
MACARTHUR: I
know he does. I know he believes in the Koran. I don't believe in the Koran. I
don't believe that is this the holy book written by God.
KING:
So, why is your belief better than his belief? It's different, but
why...
MACARTHUR: It's not a question of comparing people's
beliefs. It's a question of what is the authority, and the word of God has --
the Bible has stood the test of time and been affirmed ever since Moses as a
divine word from God.
KING: So, any person who doesn't believe in Christ is doomed to hell,
whether he has lived a wonderful life?
MACARTHUR: This is what
the Bible teaches.
KING: Anaheim, hello.
CALLER:
I've been a follower of Deepak Chopra's teachings for many years, and I've woven
a lot of them into my own life. One of them is practicing forgiveness. And I've
heard very little about actually people practicing forgiveness at this time from
our spiritual leaders, and I wondered if you could comment about that.
KING: OK, I know Deepak preaches it. Let's go around the horn.
First, with Rabbi Kushner, does your religion -- do you forgive these
terrorists?
KUSHNER: It's not my job to forgive, because
I was not injured by them. Only the people who have been hurt by them can
forgive.
Yes, I can contemplate forgiving those hijackers if you
understand forgiveness not to mean excusing or condoning, but to mean
transcending and letting go, saying what you did was so despicable I'm not going
to rent you space in my head anymore, I'm not going permit you to scare me into
changing my life's ways, get out of my mind. That is the only kind of
forgiveness I can hold out for them.
KING: Dr. Hathout, what does
your faith say?
HATHOUT: I agree very much with what the rabbi
said, but there is a concept of justice. Justice has to be ratified. Life
without justice is intolerable, and it opens all the ways for extremes and for
taking the revenge and taking the law in your hands, et cetera. There must be a
just retribution. If God wants to forgive people, of course he can. He is the
merciful and forgiving.
KING: Bruce, as a Christian, do you
forgive?
WILKINSON: Yes. We are commanded to forgive, because
Christ forgave us for our sins. Forgiveness is a gift that you give someone
else. They don't have to deserve it. They don't even have to ask for it, and
they don't even have to change their behavior. I can give another person a gift
of forgiveness and not hold them against that act, but release it. And to
forgive them means not to hold that against them.
That doesn't mean,
however, that there's no justice that is a consequence for the negative behavior
in their life, and I would agree with the previous comments about the difference
of forgiving and just penalty.
KING: John.
MACARTHUR: Christianity is forgiveness. I mean, that's the essence of
the Christian faith.
KING: So, you do forgive them?
MACARTHUR: Oh, absolutely, and I can do that because I need
forgiveness. But God is on another level. God, who is perfectly holy, will bring
about a holy justice in the case of those individuals.
KING: He
doesn't have to forgive, you do.
MACARTHUR: Well, he has given a
condition by which he will forgive.
KING: And Deepak, what do you
believe about forgiveness?
CHOPRA: I think I agree with the
rabbi. I think also that justice and forgiveness are ultimately God's
prerogative, and I keep listening to everybody referring to God as a he, which
gives him a male sexist orientation, and I think God is the absolute power of
the universe and is neither a he nor a she.
The best we can do in this
situation is to have -- make sure that every thought of ours, every word of
ours, every act of ours has a nurturing effect on our loved ones, and that we
extend that love to our extended family, and ultimately all of humanity.
KING: You don't agree with that?
MACARTHUR: I just
want to go back to your original question and clear the air on something. Seven
thousand people died that day in that Holocaust. I did a little checking this
last week, 7,000 people die every day in America. That's like having 366 days
this year, that's all.
If you're going to ask, why didn't God stop that,
you have a huge question. Is God going to stop all dying? We feel more
comfortable when people die one at a time than when they die in groups of
hundreds or thousands, obviously. The bigger question is, why do people die? And
if you're going to die, how can you be prepared for the inevitability of that
death?
And Jesus said -- Jesus was asked by some people one day, they
said, "a tower in Siloam fell on 18 people and killed them," and they said to
Jesus, "were they worse than everybody else?" And he said, "you better repent,
or you'll likewise perish."
It was a severe mercy. It was God's way of
saying, look, you have grace, you enjoy life, but in the end there's death, and
you need to be ready for that.
KING: Burlington, Vermont, hello.
CALLER: My question is, is it an arrogant question to ask now,
7,000 people is horrific, but as the previous man stated, you know, people are
dying every day in terrible injustices all over the world.
KING:
Well, all right, Rabbi Kushner, is all death wrong?
KUSHNER: Death is inevitable. The question is, was death
preventable? These were people who didn't have to die, these were people who had
a lot to look forward to, who should have lived many more years.
I would
say if the hijackers ended up killing only one person, if somehow they had been
stopped after they murdered the flight attendant on American Airlines flight 11,
still what they did was absolutely inexcusable and absolutely unforgivable at
that level. So the death of any individual is a tragedy.
KING:
Dr. Hathout wanted to add something to what the rabbi said.
HATHOUT:
I'd like to build on what the rabbi said, because the concept in the Jewish
tradition is like in Islam, like in the Koran: If you waste one life like you
wasted the life of humanity, if you save one life like you save all humanity.
I don't like to see the trivialization of what happened by saying people
die every day. And we are not talking about death. We are talking about a crime
committed against innocent people. This is what we are talking
about.
KING: Deepak, we learned that two women hijacking victims
on different planes...Ruth McCourt on United Airlines 175, Page Hackel on
American flight 11 were going to California from Boston for a vacation. They
were planning to spend time at your center. Any reaction to that?
CHOPRA: They were coming to spend time at the center and do a
course with Debby Ford (ph), and I felt deep anguish when I heard that, and it
was really a very personal thing for me after that. And I could sense the
anguish that the family, the mother was feeling, and I believe they're still in
touch with their grief right now and don't want to talk too anyone. And I
think...
KING: Do you know them? Did you know
them?
CHOPRA: I don't know them personally. I didn't know them
personally, only I found out through the news that they were coming to the
center.
KING: Savannah, Georgia, hello.
CALLER:
Good evening, Larry. The Bush administration is engaged in a diplomatic
response to terrorism, perhaps a military response. What about the idea of a
spiritual response, what about trying to get to the terrorists by reeducating
them? What about a worldwide congregation of all faiths to try to seek
common ground among the faiths and ways to propose peace among all the different
religions?
KING: Rabbi Kushner, what do you make of that
idea?
KUSHNER: It's hard to disagree with, and it sounds a little
bit visionary. Worth a try. I would be immensely gratified if it did some good.
What worries me is that these are people who think they have a strong
religious faith, and they believe, erroneously I'm sure, that their religious
faith gives them permission to do what they did two and a half weeks ago. I
don't know how you're going to talk them out of that.
KING: John.
MACARTHUR: Well, I think what happened, again, was such a
horrible thing, and I don't want to minimize that at all. But the solution is
not superficial. It's not political and it's not social, it's the heart. There
has to be a transformation in the heart.
KING: So, what about a
conference of clerics, maybe going to Afghanistan?
MACARTHUR:
Well, if the right people go preaching the right message.
KING:
Then who chooses? Who decides what's right?
MACARTHUR: Well, you
know, again, I'm back to the source that I believe, you know, that Jesus Christ
alone is the Savior. There's no salvation in any other, and he's the answer.
KING: Bruce, what do you make of the idea?
WILKINSON:
I think it's a great idea, and if people would come together and talk to
each other and understand each other, there could perhaps be a starting place
for some peace. But as I evaluate the terrorists and their agenda, I think
that's the last thing they want to do is to sit down and talk about peace.
KING: Deepak, you think -- we are able to talk to them?
CHOPRA: I think, Larry, in the long term, the spiritual solution is
the only solution. I think what we need to do as a nation, we have to recognize
that as Americans we are the most loving, compassionate people in the world and
the most giving, but we are also unaware, we do not know the problems of the
world. We do not feel the anguish and suffering of the world. And it's partly
because of our lack of awareness. Until this major catastrophe occurred, our
whole nation was obsessed with Gary Condit's behavior or Anne Heche's childhood.
And as long as we are a nation that's caught up in the melodrama of triviality
and do not feel the anguish of the world, then there will be a deep rift in our
collective soul.
KING: Dr. Hathout, you want to...
HATHOUT: I like the idea, but practically if you want to build a
coalition of faiths, I think we will have a big trouble if part of the coalition
says, "unless you accept my Bible and my Jesus Christ and you take this way, you
are discounted." What kind of coalition is this? I mean, we have to transcend
that to the oneness of God, the sanctity of life, the oneness of the human
family and to try to deal on that basis.
KING: Very hard for the
deep believer to give up his belief, though.
HATHOUT: No, he
doesn't have to give it up, but we have to understand that when God created us,
deliberately he made us different, and we seek different ways to him, and
everybody is entitled and is glorified enough to try to find God.
KING: Got another call. Tucson, hello.
CALLER: You
got these guests on tonight, and they're all of different faiths, I guess, and
they talk about the extremists having problems. We all talk about it, they can't
agree on anything. But these fellows can't agree on who the authority is. The
authority's name is God, and I think we have to look at it in a more broad
sense, who God is. He's God, you know.
KING: Well,
that's what Deepak said, but we all have different versions. The Jews see
God as what, rabbi?
KUSHNER: Well, the first thing I want to say, Larry, is that I hope
that you and your viewers have noticed the amount of agreement and overlap
between your Jewish and your Muslim panelists. For me, that's the most
encouraging thing I have heard in the last 18 days.
Who is God? God is
the spirit that created the world and has been communicating with human beings
to teach us how to live and how to use our freedom in the world, And if we don't
listen to him and if we don't learn from our experience, we are all in trouble.
KING: Bruce, who is he?
WILKINSON: He's a supreme
being and the creator of all living beings. And...
KING: He's not
Christian, is he?
WILKINSON: No, he's the creator of all people.
KING: So he created the agnostic and he created the atheist?
WILKINSON: He created all people, and people have to choose,
Larry, what they're going to believe about God and how they're going to behave.
And I think that's one of the most exciting parts of what's taking place as a
result of the tragedy. I just came back from Washington and had a number of
meetings, and I find people everywhere asking the deeper questions, asking
questions about their own purpose, about why they're here, what they're trying
to accomplish, what they're giving their life to. And even deeper questions
about God and what happens to me if I was in the bottom of that Trade Center and
it fell, what would have happened to me?
And people I think have been
shaken up, not only from the tragedy but the results of their thoughts after the
tragedy, and I think there's a wonderful window here for our country to perhaps
take a deeper look at the purpose of life.
KING: John, couldn't
you agree with that?
MACARTHUR: Yes. Back to the question about
God -- again, I hear all these responses, but we have to go back to some
authority outside of ourselves. I mean, I can't define God for the universe from
starting with me. God in the scripture is the creator and sustainer of the
universe, he's the sovereign over everything...who was incarnated in Jesus
Christ, came down and died on a cross to provide atonement, so that the sins of
those who repent were paid for in full, and therefore heaven was open to them.
That is God revealed in scripture.
KING: A 2-year-old baby at the
bottom of the center, the World Trade Center?
MACARTHUR: Instant
heaven.
KING: Wasn't a sinner.
MACARTHUR: Instant heaven.
KING: And how do you see him, Dr. Hathout?
HATHOUT: Everything John said, except for the incarnation part,
because we don't believe in that. We believe that God is way beyond being
imprisoned in space or in place. He is beyond perception, beyond concretization.
KING: Is Mohammed to you what Christ is to him?
HATHOUT: No. To him, Christ is God. To me, Christ is a messenger
of God.
KING: As was Mohammed.
HATHOUT: Like
Mohammed.
KING: A messenger.
HATHOUT: A messenger of
God.
KING: And Deepak, you began the program by saying God is
everything?
CHOPRA: God is love.
KING: ...
mathematically, I could say everything is nothing.
CHOPRA: God is
love, God is the source of all that was, all that is, all that will be. Let's
not give God a brand name.
KING: Mobile, Alabama, quickly, hello.
CALLER: My question is this: How can we ask as Americans
where is God when we have taken him out of our schools, we have taken him out of
the courtroom, we are not allowed to pray in school. How can we as Americans in
our justice system and America say, where is God when we have thrown God out?
KING: John?
MACARTHUR: Oh, he's there.
Believe me, he is there. God is omnipresent. He's there. We may not want to
acknowledge him, but he is the unseen power in the universe. Everything fits
within his ultimate purpose, and his ultimate purpose is as a Savior.
And these things happen -- I think death happens as a wakeup call for us
to prepare for that, and then we see the weeping God through Jeremiah, the
weeping God through Jesus, who says, "why don't you come to me so that your sins
can be forgiven?" When you see a thing like this happen, that's the wakeup call.
KING: There's no one on this panel who questions his faith, his
own faith? None?
HATHOUT: No, I don't.
KING: No.
Rabbi?
KUSHNER: No, I don't. By the way, in response to the
Mobile question, I would say that as long as schools are dedicated to the life
of the mind and as long as courts are dedicated to justice without fear or
favor, God is in the schools and God is in the courts.
KING: We
are out of time. Deepak Chopra, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Bruce Wilkinson, Dr. Maher
Hathout and John MacArthur, we thank you all very much for an illuminated hour.
This transcript was edited from the original transcript of the show due
to additional interviews and breaks that did not concern the subject at
hand. For a complete transcript of the entire Larry King Live show on Sep
29th, 2001, go to: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/29/lklw.00.html
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