September 19, 2004
Being Christian in a Pluralistic World, Part II
Linda A. Knieriemen

The knock on the door had been unexpected.  You had been sitting in your living room discussing the limits of salvation.  Each of your Christian friends had had a different perspective.  One spoke as an Exclusivist and pointed to John’s gospel where Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.”  He argued that only those who confessed Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior would receive the benefits of everlasting life.  Another friend spoke as an Inclusivist, quoting Luke where Jesus (talking with his disciples about who would receive eternal life) said, “By their fruits you shall know them.”  She believed that all people eventually benefited from Jesus' sacrifice for sin whether they called themselves Christian or not.  The third friend, who comfortably wore the title of Pluralist, said, "No, there are many 'truths' and many ‘roads’ to reach God.  Pretty much one is as good as the other." 

            The four of you identified the strengths and weaknesses in each of these positions, and now you were trying to figure out with whom you agreed.  Your head was starting to hurt so that knock was a welcomed distraction. You opened the door, and looked out to find a young couple.   He was olive skinned and bearded, she had deep brown eyes and a soft blue veil around her face.  The man said with a confident voice and wide smile, "I am Mustafa and this is my wife Aisha.  We are your neighbors next door."  Your conversation about Christian interaction with other faiths just moved from the abstract to the actual.  Your new neighbors are Muslim.  What would you be feeling -- curious, afraid, uncomfortable, zealous, shocked, or excited?  How will you relate to them?  Are you more inclined to invite them to church or to lunch?  How would their presence impact the conversation happening in the living room?

            Today we will set aside our discussion of who is “saved” (as I hope we all would as the first topic of conversation with the new neighbors).  I will not discard or suspend this difficult passage with which many mainline churches have great trouble, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me” as we explore a different Biblical version of God’s vision for the world.

            We find segments of this vision from Genesis to the Hebrew prophets, from the gospels to the dream of John in Revelation.

            Remember….Creation.  God desired and so created “all” the birds of the air and “all” the animals that crawl over the face of the earth.  The variety was very good.  God created male and female.  The variety was very good.  When the great flood came, God provided for the safety of the full array of created beings and placed two of each kind on the ark.  Variety was very good and had to be maintained.  God planned, and we are learning the hard way, that ecological diversity as in the rainforests and salt marshes is required for life.

            Remember…the Tower of Babel.  The Story of the Tower of Babel suggests that uniformity of language and peoples can be dangerous. God had commanded that the people occupy the whole earth, but they chose to embark on a building project attempting to secure their own future, isolating themselves in one corner of creation.  God intervened, established differences in language, and the people thus scattered across the earth, living with those who shared a common language. Variety was necessary, necessary to fulfill God’s design for humans to care for the whole earth.

            Remember….at Pentecost.  The miracle was not that all those gathered from every nation under heaven began to speak the same language (the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia), but that each one heard the message of God in their own language.  Again, variety served God’s purpose.

            Remember….the Peaceable Kingdom.  Isaiah’s vision of the new creation where the wolf and lamb will eat out of the same dish, the lion will no longer kill the ox for food but will be vegetarian, and eat only straw.  Children will play near snakes.  Those once predators will not be eliminated but rather transformed into a peaceful, non-violent state of being.  In this vision, diverse creatures (once enemies) live in peaceful co-existence.

            If variety in animals, language, and culture is part of God’s plan (and if God names it very good), what if a multi-religious world has purpose?  What if the development of different religions in different cultures even has value?  What if God even calls THIS “good”. 

            Is that uncomfortable?  Have I made a surprising leap?  It isn’t the historic Christian way of understanding world religions, is it?  But it is useful to remember that Jesus was far less critical of persons of other religions than he was of hypocrisy.  They believe they have the right answer and the result is the pain this story by Roman Catholic priest Anthony DeMello illustrates:

            My friend and I went to the fair.  The WORLD FAIR OF RELIGIONS.  Not a trade fair, but the competition was fierce and the propaganda loud.

            At the Jewish stall we were given handouts that said God was all-compassionate and the Jews were his Chosen People.  The Jews.  No other people were as chosen as they.

            At the Moslem stall we learned that God was all-merciful and Mohammed is his only Prophet.  Salvation comes from listening to God’s prophet.

            At the Christian stall we discovered that God is love and there is no salvation outside the Church.  Join the Church or risk eternal damnation.

            On the way out I asked my friend, “What do you think of God?”  He replied, “He is bigoted, fanatical, and cruel”.

            Back home I said to God, “How do you put up with this sort of thing Lord?  Don’t you see they have been giving you a bad name for centuries?"

            God said, "It wasn’t I who organized the fair.  In fact, I’d be too ashamed to visit it."

            Now before you throw me off a high cliff for heresy, stay with me.  Still suspended, not discarded is that verse from the gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  It’s still here waiting for us.

            Consider with me the possibility that as God interacts with and continues to call the world into being and as we respond, God’s loving guidance adapts, offering tailor-made programs suited for each unique situation.  So God’s ways of being present to a diverse world, God’s ways of interaction for our well-being, may look different not only in different time periods (we accept that as true, don’t we, Christianity doesn’t look the same today as it did 1000 years ago, or even 500 years ago), but also in different cultures and geographic locations.  United Methodist Theologian Marjorie Suchocki expresses this succinctly when she writes “surely we do not think that God was totally unaware of the Aborigines of Australia until England happened to notice that continent?  If God is God, then God is as surely creatively involved in the evolution of Aborigine culture as in Jewish and Christian culture.” ("Divinity and Diversity", pp. 34) Isn’t it possible, even probable, that God would care equally for the well-being of God’s good creation in Hindu India, in Muslim Saudi Arabia, in Christian Rome, and in Buddhist Vietnam?

            I don’t know if God is pleased with the variety of religious expressions in the world today.  I don’t know what God's plan is for people whose convictions are different but just as strong, just as peace-loving, just as compassionate toward other people as mine, but what I do know is that God’s deep desire for the world is for peace and we haven’t done well in promoting that peace but rather we persist in religiously motivated warfare. We have a propensity for taking the gift of diversity and turning it into a cause of antagonism and hatred often because we see ourselves as part of a unique, superior community whether Muslim or Christian fundamentalist/fanatical strains of each.  I don’t know if peace would prevail if all the world overnight converted to Christianity?  This I know -- God desperately desires for us to love one another and to know God’s love for us.  God became vulnerable and enfleshed to show it.  God in Christ pleads with us, and demonstrated for us (Jesus practiced what he preached), yes, God pleads with us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  But we keep finding barriers and excuses to doing so.  This I know -- without peace among the religions of the world, there will be no world peace.  And I know that the words and works of Jesus give us tools to build that kind of peace.  Maybe it’s time we use some of our energy to create a community of religions, a cooperative neighborhood of religions -- Jewish, Moslem, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist.  In this neighborhood each religious group stays committed to life-giving values of compassion existing in its tradition.  In this neighborhood a person of one faith may deepen their devotion and their practice of faith by being in relationship with someone of another faith.  Each religious group and its members respect the other and care enough to learn the basic principles of the other so as not to trample over each other in disinterested naiveté or careless misinformation.  By talking with each other, eating meals with each other, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless together, strangers become friends.  A diverse religious neighborhood of friends.  Simplistic?  Hopeless?  Unrealistic?

            Let’s turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan.  It's a simple story -- hopeful and real.

            What characterizes the behavior of the neighbor?

            “He was a Samaritan.”

            The neighbor can be a detested person of another culture, another religion.

            “When the Samaritan saw the wounded man, he went to him.”

            The neighbor willingly enters the potentially risky space of the stranger.

            “He bandaged his wounds.” 

            The neighbor takes time for urgent, merciful work.

            “He brought him to an inn and took care of him.”

            The neighbor treats the stranger like family.

            “He took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper.”

            The neighbor invests in the well-being of the stranger.

            Carefully we are going to retrieve that suspended phrase, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  What if being a neighbor, like this Samaritan neighbor, is our demonstration that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?  The way of Jesus is to enter the space of the other and create relationship.  The truth of Jesus is that God’s love for you and your love for your neighbor is the key to eternal life.  The life of Jesus is the life we live committed to the well-being and wholeness of the stranger (the Muslim, the Hindu, the Jew, the Buddhist).  What if God’s purpose in coming to live with us as Jesus, was to be absolutely clear about how to live in a peaceful world neighborhood?

            Martin Luther King introduced his talk “The World House” with these words:

Some years ago, a famous novelist died.  Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.  This is the great new problem of mankind.  We have inherited a large house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together -- black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu -- a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”

            Might it be that we should focus less on time converting the world to our own religion and spend more time converting the world toward friendship in this great world house?

            A different Biblical vision for the world is many religions, united in peaceful co-existence and embracing the attitude of the good neighbor.

            Yes, it has Biblical roots.  Those verses I read earlier from Micah suggest just such a vision. The promise of God to the people of Israel in exile was that one day they would return to the city of Jerusalem, the city of God, and they would live in peace.  Micah records the people of Israel, as well as the “nations” (the non-Jewish cultures and religions) will meet together on that holy hill and that between the nations there will be peace.  That neighborhood of peace is not a peace made of sameness; it is not a peace without difference, no, Micah writes that in this peace “all the people walk each in the name of its god” AND he continues, we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.  Get the picture?  Not a lowest common denominator conflation of religions and not a religious monolith, but a cooperative neighborhood of committed religious communities.   In this alternative vision the task of mission is that of reconciliation, relationship building, and conversion to loving not only God, not only self, but even the stranger.  In this vision, our witness efforts at telling another of the peace and comfort we know in Jesus the Christ will always arise from a place of care and love rather than what for some is out of duty or guilt.

            Two visions.  What if the Good News is as much about God’s transformation power to make strangers into neighbors as it is to make sinners into the saved?

Each of you will need to decide how is Jesus the way, the truth and the life for you.  And answer the question how does your belief help you to be a good neighbor to the Muslim couple who knocks on your door.  The world is smaller.  If we ever could, we no longer can ignore the variety of religions in this Grand Rapids neighborhood.  May God help us on this journey, and send us peace.

Bibliography

Arairajah, S. Wesley, "Reading the Bible in the Pluralistic Context", Ecumenical Review, Vol. 51, 1 January 1999, pp. 5 - 10.

DeMello, Anthony, "The Song of the Bird", The World Fair of Religions, pp. 144.

Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt, "Divinity and Diversity, a Christian Affirmation of Religious Pluralism", Abingdom Press.