Interfaith Relationships

There was a discussion on the radio this morning as I was driving in to work: It seems that a pastor has been suspended from his church because he participated in an interfaith event where he prayed with a group of people from other faiths (or other denominations--I'm not clear on the details, the discussion started before I got in the car). From what I heard, most of the callers didn't seem to think that the suspension made sense, but some did. Some of the callers didn't seem clear on the details, either, one caller commented something to the effect of, "Why would you invite someone to pray at your church when they aren't even praying to Jesus, so you know their prayers aren't going anywhere?" and the announcer reminded her that they weren't talking about at his church, that he was invited to speak at a public function.

Personally, I have to disagree with the caller, anyway. I mean, I understand her viewpoint, but I think she's taking the wrong approach. It's interesting, because we had a Muslim man visit our church yesterday, and our pastor asked him to come up and speak. Understand, that, first, this man and my pastor have been friends for a very long time. This is not the first time he's attended our service. He came, yesterday, to ask us to attend a dedication (a road in our town is being renamed for a former mayor [who is not Muslim, by the way]). Why did our pastor invite him to speak? Well, for starters, he wasn't talking about doctrine. Quite frankly, even if he was, he knows what we believe, and has enough respect for us, as a church, and for my pastor, as a friend, that he wouldn't have stepped outside of the common ground (I know the man well enough to be sure of that). Secondly, it's hard enough to get non-believers into the building to start with. If we treat the man as though he's not worthy to even talk to us (is any of us really worthy of anything anyway?), how in the world can we expect to see him saved? Yes, I understand that he already thinks that he is saved, and I have no intention of arguing that point with him.

Now, I will grant you, this sort of thing can be misconstrued into a belief that the pastor thinks that Muslim doctrine is okay. He doesn't, and I don't. I think that there are a whole lot worse things out there than being Muslim. I also think that if you don't have friends outside of your church, then you're not going to be able to bring people into your church. Apostle Paul told Timothy to "do the work of an evangelist." You can't do that if you are pushing people out the door.

I should also point out that we have a man in our church who was raised Muslim. I'm not going to go into a lot of details, but, at one point in his life, someone very close to him was very close to death. He had been taught that praying for a situation like that was a waste of time, that Allah wasn't going to lower himself to intervene in a situation like that, but, this was a person that he couldn't bear to lose. So he prayed. Hard. And he got an answer. The answer he got was, "You are praying to a god who cannot save." (BTW, we're not talking about hearing voices, here, we're talking about an understanding and a feeling that was just inarguable.) He felt like Saul on the road to Damascus, so sure that he had been serving God for so long, only to have incontrovertible evidence that God was not at all who he thought he was. This began a journey that ended with him finding Jesus real to his life.

So many times, we, as Christians, act like anyone who is not of Christ is evil. Let's be honest with ourselves: Any one of us is capable of evil, Christian or not. There are a lot of good people that have not accepted Jesus as Lord. We need to be patient with them, and compassionate towards them; setting the example, and encouraging them to follow.