Christian mission requires love and respect
Lessons learned living among the Muslims
Minarets dominated the cityscape and prayer calls signaled the rhythms of daily life in the overwhelmingly Muslim city of Mombasa, a famous old port on the Indian Ocean where my family and I worked as missionaries to Muslims during 1985 and 1986.
We lived in a large house in a neighborhood where rich and poor, Christian, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim rubbed shoulders every day. Much of our activity revolved around a schedule of programs–showing films, operating a small lending library, teaching Bible studies and offering English lessons. While all of these programs had merit of their own, they were also a means to get to know people. And the underlying motive for establishing these relationships was a desire to share the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ with people who might otherwise have no reason to seriously consider it.
Two lessons stand out among the many I was taught during my brief sojourn in a predominantly Muslim culture. The first has to do with the relative fruitlessness of religious arguments. We had many opportunities to discuss the merits and drawbacks of both Christianity and Islam. It was all-too-easy to have these disputes; indeed, they were expected. But no matter how convincing the arguments from either side, minds rarely changed because of them. Disputation mode turns differences into points of attack or defense. Winning becomes more important than witness.
"Vain disputings"
Doubtless there are proper occasions to provide a reasonable defense for one’s faith and to question another. But this must be considered a side-eddy of Christian witness, not its main current. Certainly it is important to be prepared to answer such questions when they arise, if only because they will. But as one young Somali put it after a particularly vociferous session, "these are vain disputings."
A second thing I learned among the Muslims was how open they are to God-talk. What a refreshing change this was from life in the West, where faith is largely considered to be a private matter. In Mombasa I was expected not only to have religious convictions but also to have them govern my life. People who acknowledge dependency on God share something powerful in common, even when we proclaim different deities. Secular disdain of spiritual matters could well be a greater hindrance to effectively communicating a message of eternal salvation than the active opposition of people who own a different faith.
Love and respect
The history of Christian-Muslim relations includes a depressing litany of mutual misunderstanding, insensitivity and violence. Our religions demand better of us. A report from a 1978 Lausanne Committee conference on Muslim evangelism highlighted the need for Christians to demonstrate love and respect for Muslims, confessing that Christians throughout the centuries have "all too readily cherished and cultivated an antipathy" toward them.
The report also rejected the North American tendency to be critical of Islamic culture. "In our pride and ethnocentrism we have forgotten that our own culture is terribly flawed," it states, adding that Christ "would have us discern and appreciate the redeemable in Islamic culture."
Which brings to mind a third lesson I was taught during my stay among the Muslims–the value of regular prayer. Five times a day the city would resound with the cries of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Sounds that at first had seemed eerie and evil soon served as an inescapable reminder that God wants his followers to come to attention before him.
Developing a proper appreciation for Islamic culture and treating Muslims with love and respect is vitally important. Such an approach enhances Christianity’s great commission; it does not negate it. As the Lausanne report puts it, "as evangelicals, we refuse to confine our mission to the development of better Christian-Muslim relations or to involvement in social service on their behalf.
"Jesus Christ has defined our agenda, and because we love him we are constrained to embrace as well the mandate he has given the church to evangelize the Muslim world."
Doug
Koop
Editor
