My Two Worst Witnessing Blunders Part I

“Give me a drink.”  --  Jesus Christ (John 4:7)

I share these two accounts neither to shame myself, nor to instill such high standards for others that no one can ever achieve them. The old adage, “hindsight is 20-20,” while sometimes painfully true, can instead serve the constructive purpose of inspiring Christians to consider how we may each speak more effectively in future encounters as God may give us, with people of other faiths. I am not suggesting that God cannot use our feeble endeavors. He not only can, He also does! So I am not urging tears of regret, but instead a joyful anticipation of our next opportunity to share with another person a portion of the Good News of Christ. God inspires helpful examples in Scripture, and most especially in His only Son. In the Gospel of John chapter 4, for example, Jesus employed the common human experience of thirst in his “chance” meeting of a single woman beside a well in Samaria, as a platform for lovingly leading her into the kingdom of God. The exciting question is what can we learn from His example?

Years ago when I was returning to America after a study tour of the countries of Israel and Jordan, I was sitting next to a native Jordanian who was also a Muslim, on a “Royal Jordanian” airliner. As a proud native he expressed much interest in my perceptions about his homeland as I recounted my experiences from the bottom to the top of Jordan. Far and away the three most important sites on that tour were Wadi Rum, Petra, and the ruins of the ancient “Decapolis” city of Jerash (Gerasa). Eventually we two travelers, one a Muslim and the other a Christian, then turned our conversation to religious questions.

I thought it important (at the time) to focus on the Holy Trinity. After all, I thought, that concept would clarify a major theological difference between Islam and Christianity. Well, to make a long story short, even though we parted at the end of the trip on friendly terms, this was not a productive discussion. Neither was it a long one. Indeed, we had early on come to the point where we agreed that it would be best for each of us to find something to read on our own for pleasure instead.

As I have thought back on that engagement I have often considered how I might instead have approached relating Christianity to a Muslim sitting next to me on a plane. I am not suggesting the simple avoiding of our differences. Indeed, the best alternative (as I imagine it) would still have been a controversial matter for a Muslim. But I would have focused directly on Jesus (Muslims do believe in Him in some sense, including the teaching that Jesus was born of a virgin). I would have highlighted the love of God (that God indeed is love) by connecting the heart of the Creator of the heavens and the earth, with His giving Jesus to the world, and further (if circumstances allowed it) tying Jesus with the very heart of God Himself. Muslims think of God as vastly more remote from His human creatures, than we Christians understand God to be in Jesus Christ (think of the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15).

To be continued...