CNN featured a blog entry on their religion page by Carl Medearis. Titled My Take: Why evangelicals should stop evangelizing, it starts off with a picture of a grinning Carl posing with the number two man of Hezbollah, a terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, a group with an upraised fist grasping a rifle as their flag. All well and good, we are to go to those who hate us in love with the Gospel. Here is the thing though. We are to go to them with the Gospel. Not with Jesus as a wise teacher or Jesus as a great leader or Jesus as a prophet but Jesus as the incarnate Son of God, the Lamb who was slain.
The post starts off OK but then turns into a series of well meaning but I think ultimately dangerous statements. A few choice ones are below…
Even the Apostle Paul insisted that it’s faith in Jesus that matters, not converting to a new religion or a new socio-religious identity.
Paul certainly wasn’t interested in converting people to a new religion but he was hardly someone who was peddling some sort of fuzzy ecumenical “all religions are the same” monstrosity. Paul was bold about the Gospel and what exactly that Gospel means. What it means is a message that causes persecution and hatred, as Paul himself discovered first hand. If Paul were alive today I have no doubt he would be out taking the Gospel to the hardest places in the world and no doubt he would be persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and likely killed for it.
Jesus the uniter of humanity, not Jesus the divider. How might that change the way we look at others?
He is? Not really. It is true that Jesus breaks down the wall between Jew and Gentile but this creates a different divide, between those who believe and those who do not. We cannot overlook or brush over those differences. The words of Christ show this starkly (Matthew 10: 34-37) that the Gospel will divide even members of families.
When I used to think of myself as a missionary, I was obsessed with converting Muslims (or anybody for that matter) to what I thought of as “Christianity.” I had a set of doctrinal litmus tests that the potential convert had to pass before I would consider them “in” or one of “us.”
Funny thing is, Jesus never said, “Go into the world and convert people to Christianity.” What he said was, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”
Encouraging anyone and everyone to become an apprentice of Jesus, without manipulation, is a more open, dynamic and relational way of helping people who want to become more like Jesus — regardless of their religious identity.
There is a world of difference between “making disciples” which Jesus defined as including teaching them to observe all He has commanded us and baptizing them. Teaching people to emulate Jesus without acknowledging Him as Lord is not making disciples. Acting like Jesus isn’t the Gospel and isn’t saving anyone.
It may come as a surprise to many Christians that Muslims are generally open to studying the life of Jesus as a model for leadership because they revere him as a prophet.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. Lots of false religions like to invoke the name of Jesus while denying Him as the very Son of God: Islam, mormonism, the Watchtower, pretty much every pseudo-Christian cult out there. Jesus did not come to provide an example of great leadership, in fact by the worlds standards he is a pretty poor leader. What kind of leader takes pains to offend the rich and powerful and often seems bound and determined to drive off followers (John 6:66)?
I believe that doctrine is important, but it’s not more important than following Jesus.
Gee that sounds nice but lets ask a hard question. How do we know how to follow Jesus without doctrine, without studying the commandments and what He taught? The Gospel is not merely a set of doctrinal truths but it is in part a series of doctrinal truths. Either Jesus is God incarnate or He is not. He either died and rose again or He did not. He either claimed to be the only way of salvation or He did not.
Inviting people to love, trust, and follow Jesus is something the world can live with. And since evangelicals like to say that it’s not about religion, but rather a personal relationship with Jesus, perhaps we should practice what we preach.
That elicited an audible groan followed by a facepalm. The last thing Jesus was interested in (and by proxy the last thing His followers should care about) is proclaiming a message the world can “live with”. The world can “live with” an empty, fuzzy message but that same empty message that the world can “live with” is the same empty message the world will die with.
We need to stop exporting American churchianity to the world. I absolutely agree with that. There is no point in trying to get Christians in other parts of the world to look and act like American Christians. An elder in Tanzania or Haiti or Thailand doesn’t need to wear a western cut suit and tie. That does not mean that we need to abandon the truth of the Gospel, the divisive “His way or the highway” message that saves men’s souls.
I admit that I have no experience in evangelizing Muslims. There are plenty of other people with far more experience. I get that we need to use culturally sensitive methods to get a hearing for the Gospel but at some point we need to actually proclaim the Gospel. Nothing less than that is going to do. It may be offensive. In fact I am sure it is. The world is not going to find it to be something it can “live with” but those of us who have experienced the transforming power of the Gospel know that it is something that in the end the world cannot live without.
What do you think? Am I overreacting?
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