JESUS AND MUSLIMS: LESSONS FROM JOHN 4
by "Stuart Caldwell"
Special to VirtueOnline
November 20, 2008
I have spent most of the last 18 years of my life actively engaged in relationship with Muslims in order to share the Good News of Jesus with them. I have lived in two majority Muslim countries during that time, and also worked to develop training for others who want to pursue this calling.
We have been blessed to see increasing fruit in the form of a growing number of disciples, multiplication of house fellowships, and significant numbers of people coming into His Way from some of the more well known militant groups of Muslims. All of this gives me cause for what I would call a "sober hopefulness".
At the same I am aware of a growing atmosphere among American Christians that I would describe as fearful apprehension. I see responses among my fellow believers that call for political responses such as lobbying for the closures of mosques, or the censure of all immigration on the part of people from Islamic areas.
I can not help but ask the overly used question, "What would Jesus do?" What is He already doing? I will tip my hand: I believe He is drawing Muslims to our shores because He desires for them to know Him through Jesus. He has seen the critical shortage of workers" in the fields of majority Muslim lands, and in His mercy, He is bringing Muslims to His people here. The question is, what will we do in response?
Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well has long been a gold mine for Christians seeking to follow his example as effective communicators of the Gospel. The tremendous parallels between the obstacles Jesus faced when reaching Samaritans and the obstacles Christians face reaching Muslims renders this passage of scripture particularly apt for seeking to answer the question raised above: what WOULD Jesus do among Muslims?
Following Jesus' Approach to Ministry I do not have space to outline the details of my reading of John 4, though I have done that elsewhere. Instead I summarize four points from Jesus' approach to ministry in Samaria and apply them to our work among Muslims today.
Worship: A New People, In Community Let me begin from the end: Jesus left behind a believing village, or at least a village in which the majority of people believed in Him. At the time of Jesus, Samaritans were at best heretical in the eyes of Jews. More often, they were viewed by Jews as demonized. In reality, Jews felt about Samaritanism much the same way as many Christians feel about Islam. In spite of this fact, we see no command from Jesus to leave Samaritan "religion." Instead, Jesus planted a community of believers within Samaritan society. This was to be a community that would worship in spirit and truth, following the teachings of Jesus. Application to an Islamic context seems clear: Expect God to raise up a believing community of true worshippers who follow the teachings of Jesus within Islamic society.
Scripture: The Word Without Polemics Samaritan scripture differed from Jewish scripture in both content and form. How did Jesus handle this issue? Although He clearly assumed the priority of the Jewish scriptures, His approach did not focus on demonstrating the superiority of Jewish scripture. Instead, he provides two full days of living Scripture, teaching truth and letting it do its own work in Samaritan hearts.
Although every believer is a temple for the Holy Spirit, we are surely in no place to duplicate "living Scripture." We are not Jesus. Nevertheless, the principle we learn from Jesus remains: Give what biblical truth we can (written, audio, video, verbal, etc.), then let the Truth do its work in the hearts of Muslims. My repeated experience has been that when a new Muslim believer begins to drink in the Word, there is no need to argue about the Qur'an or the superiority of the Bible.
Religious Vocabulary: Adoption and Transformation of Religious Terminology. Samaritans and Jews had theological similarities akin to Christians and Muslims. This included a common stock of vocabulary. But there were also differences. The Jews, for example, expected a Messiah (at least some did). The Samaritans expected a "teacher" called the taheb, that would restore true worship. There are clear parallels between these facts and the sharing of terminology by Christians and Muslims. We share much in common, but also have significant differences.
In our work with various Muslims, should we use Islamic terms? If so, what will it mean to use such terms both freely and critically? We may freely adopt, for example, Qur'anic titles for Jesus such as Kalimatullah (Word of God), and Ruh-allah (Spirit of God). But to use these terms critically will mean that new biblical content must reshape and revise a Muslim's understanding of these terms. Just as Jesus assumed the role of the Samaritan Taheb and in the process transformed the word (Jn. 4:21-23), so too we can freely and critically adopt Islamic terminology. Like Jesus' own example, the end result of our effort must always point to him.
Ritual Purity: Adjusting to Islamic Ritual Purity. To accomplish his mission, Jesus was willing to cross this line and accept water "polluted" by an unclean and adulterous Samaritan woman. He stayed in the village for two days and ate Samaritan food prepared by Samaritan hands and slept in Samaritan homes. Jews believed Samaritans were unclean. This conviction was not merely cultural. The distinction between culture and religion may seem reasonable to our Western and disintegrated view of life, but such distinctions are meaningless to peoples whose worldview is like the Jews of Jesus' day and Muslims today.
Adjusting to Islamic concepts of ritual purity may require low usage of our left hand, abstinence from pork, and women dressing according to Muslim views of modesty, doing ablutions or prostrations in prayer, kissing our Bibles before reading them, or wrapping the Bible with special cloth and keeping it on the highest shelf.
Conclusion Contrary to our fears and apprehensions, even in today's highly charged context, I believe the Lord's "way" is still to be our "way" and that He is calling His people to a deeper, more relational, and more incarnational approach to our new Muslim neighbors.
As I conclude, let me share a vision of how this approach could be used. There is no substitute for the actual sharing of the Gospel through word and deed with our Muslim friends. In our training we teach people how to use the Quran to share the Gospel, how to overcome stumbling blocks and objections, and how to avoid misunderstanding. Such material can help remove blocks and it can create a different perspective for our Muslim friends from which to look at Islam. But this material is no substitute for the actual positive sharing of the Gospel through word and deed.
By communication of the Gospel, I mean the constant communication of the truth of who Jesus is, stories of what Jesus did taken right from the texts of scripture, stories of the Old Testament prophets. Communicating the word of God in personal ways with our Muslim friends is very powerful. In the end the spirit of God can use those things in amazing ways with our Muslim friends as He begins to work on our Muslim friends' hearts and minds.
I also said "by word and deed." By deed I mean actually allowing God to work directly as you pray for your Muslim friends, praying for them in their presence, praying for their sick, praying for their problems, praying for things that are going on in their lives. Ask God to send dreams and visions, and ask God to "show up." All of the major breakthroughs that we have seen in our work among Muslims have been the result of these miraculous things happening in combination with the approaches I have shared above.
Finally, BOTH "word" and "deed" require something of us that will force many American Christians to rethink their emotional reaction to Muslims in this era of our history. To approach Muslims in word and deed, and in the way Jesus showed us, requires that we actually get into relationship with Muslim people. It requires the same breaking of our hearts and prejudices that we see in the pages of the New Testament as the Gospel entered Samaritan and Gentile lives. My prayer is that God will soften OUR hearts so that He might use us to reach THEIR hearts.
---Stuart Caldwell is a pseudonym used for reasons of security. The author invites contact, questions and input via email at Qadirbaksh1@swissmail.org