THis is EMily, I”m writing from Bangladesh…
I’ve been experiencing at the heart level different religions and lifestyles, Islam in Bangladesh and Bhuddism and Hinduism in Nepal, and it is confusing and scary and wonderful at the same time. Confusing because I see bits of Truth in all these religions and these are real people who are sincere in their beliefs and they are trying to be good people and I don’t know what “good news” to them would be. Scary because in a more complicated world there are no easy answers for anybody, even conventional “Christian” answers don’t seem sufficient and seem insensative to the deep history and faith of other religions. Wonderful because I’m seeing God as so much bigger than I let him be. I am in a state of confusion about whether these people play a part in the Kingdom of God, conventional wisdom tells me no, but one look into thier eyes and thier suffering and thier faith in whatever “god” and thier desire to love others and I am left speechless.
I feel like all I know is that the gospel we had doesn’t do the job, but I don’t feel equipped with another gospel. I just feel speechless. Sometimes I feel like I have words from the Spirit on some occasions that might or might not lead people to Jesus, like little pebbles of truth, but that’s about it.
We’ve been talking alot in Blacksoil about the need for a different gospel, as oppsosed to the one of our evangelical brothers and sisters which tends to miss much of what it means to be a Christian in an attempt to summarize and simplify.
After getting to know individuals of different faiths, I am beginning to think that Good News is different for everybody depending on their spiritual, cultural, historical and family background. That is an overwhelming task, just trying to create a way to explain the Gospel to out neightbors in Lansing that does justice to all the wonders and complexities of being a follower of Jesus and member of the Kingdom of God is daunting enough.
And when I try to think of how I would explain following Jesus to my Muslim friends, I feel at a loss of words because there are no ready-to-go ways of conversion that I can pull out of my pocket and easily explain for a people who have such a deep history with God. It is so complicated because to allow Jesus to draw himself to them, I need to respect their deep spirituality that already exists and which holds many Truths God can build from to bring them into deeper relationship with himself.
I don’t think God sees this Muslim community as “unsaved” in the way we usually understand the term - unspiritual, disconnected from God - I think he sees them as part of his redemption project, a people who are trying to communicate with him in a incomplete way, a people who are missing a key component of thier faith, a people who worship Him without fully knowing his character and a people who are trying to do God’s will in this world without a complete vision of the Kingdom of God.
So what words do I have for them? Muslims are already so skeptical of Jesus, of Christians, both sides are so incredibly misunderstood by eachother. And I think Christians need to be sensative of our bad reputation of incomplete gospels people have heard, of false witness. Pretending that the bad feelings arent there doesn’t help, pretending that the misconceptions don’t exist.
I guess my hope is to continue conversations we’ve had before. I’m wondering what people have learned experimenting with a new gospel in Lansing?