I believe God intends that faith in Him be a blessing and not a dividing line. I believe that God would have us work together with godly people from other faith traditions in our day and age, so as to be a blessing to a secular society in need of His grace.

God promised Abraham in Genesis chapter 12: "I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

God blesses me through the students I teach at Loma Linda University. They are not all Seventh-day Adventists, but they come to Loma Linda University because they know we take our faith seriously, and we respect and honor the faith of others.

Religious liberty is not just for us. How can we honor the faith of a Baptist? Or a Roman Catholic? Or a Jew? Or a Muslim? Or a Buddhist? The class I teach, “Ethical Issues in Public Health,” often has students from these and other non-Adventist faiths.

I learn a great deal from my students on a regular basis. Last week for instance, during class, a group of students made a formal presentation for our weekly session together. The topic for their presentation was not an easy one: “Health care access for Palestinians in the occupied territories of Israel.”

The well-prepared presentation might have caused a big fuss in class. It is a politically charged topic. But our student group and the class in general handled it extremely well. In the midst of their question and answer period after the formal presentation, I stopped the conversation to highlight what I took to be a monumental moment in the lives of those of us present. This group of students was a mixture of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular perspectives. Their ethnic background was similarly diverse, including one who is here from Palestine solely for the purpose of earning an LLU degree in public health.

After the presentation, during a break, I was chatting with the Palestinian student who had been quite passionate about the topic. She had handled her passion with professionalism and grace. As we were finishing our conversation, the Jewish student came up to us, smiled, put her arm around the Palestinian and walked off down the hall.

No doubt, at that very moment, hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians were actively engaged in hating each other. But for that moment in our class, there in the halls of Loma Linda University, we enjoyed the grace of God’s love for each other—a love that is much stronger and wide-reaching than the lines of division we normally surround ourselves with.

Our society and world desperately need these moments of interfaith dialogue and understanding. Our society needs the blessing of God through the children of Abraham to become a reality. What will you and your church do to help break down rather than build up the lines of division our society uses to keep us all fighting?