Favoritism

This is expressed in numbers of situations around the world, possibly none so incendiary as the Palestinian-Israeli issue.  

Christians in the West have abandoned Palestinians, especially Palestinian Christians in their plight.  We've favored the state of Israel, aside from political and economic motives, out of a misplaced end-times infatuation that has perpetuated itself since 1948.  Tens of thousands of Palestinian Muslims, and Christians, residents in Israel and Palestine since the time of Christ, have had to flee because of systematic persecution at the hands of Jews, who themselves not only a few years ago, were suffering the same things at the hands of the Germans.  Hardliner Jews have been systematically persecuting, expelling and even exterminating Palestinians for over 50 years. There are always two sides to the story, and we have not bothered to care about the other half of the story, namely the discrimination and ethnic cleansing that has been wrought in the holy city of Jerusalem.

Palestinians, even Arab-Israeli citizens are routinely denied building permits, have to pay 5x higher taxes in many cases, and have difficulty finding employment.  In the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, water is rarely turned on, once every two weeks, while government subsidized Jewish settlements in neighboring areas have water 24 hours a day.  The settlement expansion continues, where Jewish settlers take over land that not even the UN recognizes as legally theirs, taking what little the Palestinians have. In these days, Western Evangelicals wouldn't be caught dead agreeing with a Democratic President Obama, who regularly speaks out for peace and the stopping of settlements.  Are we showing favoritism?  

Palestinians react in anger, throwing rocks, sowing dissent, blowing things up... this is a mess.  Palestinians play the role of the underdog, classically making things sound worse than they are, being unreasonable and refusing to reconcile, choosing violence over compromise. They are a hardened bunch, angry from years of oppression and conflict.

In favoring Jews over Palestinians, and not even caring to hear the other side of the story, the Muslim world has reacted in utter horror at how Western Christians have responded.  We have not come to the aid of the suffering, and the Muslim world has not forgiven us for it.  How can they believe a gospel message from us when we have ignored their suffering, and chosen sides? 

Muslim followers of Jesus - Article worth your read in Christianity Today

"Can one be a Muslim and a follower of Jesus? Tens of thousands believe so, and in this third installment of the Global Conversation, Yale University scholar Joseph Cumming describes the furious debate their example has fueled. The question of following Jesus while remaining within a practicing community of Muslims has great importance in regions where the two faiths contend. It also serves as an important example of a wider challenge. As the gospel moves across cultural boundaries, those who respond will answer its call in different ways. As missions historian Andrew Walls has written, "Conversion to Christ does not produce a bland universal citizenship; it produces distinctive discipleships, as diverse and variegated as human life itself." The gospel must be contextualized, but how far can contextualization go without violating the gospel? And who sets the boundaries?"

Article from an 'Insider'

Mazhar Mallouhi is an amazing man.  He has followed Christ from a Muslim background for many years, translated the Bible and commentaries for a Muslim audience, and has been persecuted for his faith. A book has been written about his faith journey called Pilgrims of Chrsit on the Muslim Road: Exploring a new path between two faiths.

He wrote an article recently for St. Francis magazine... a periodical about the topic of mission to Muslims.  I'd encourage you to read his writing on the issue if 'Insider movements' a recent phenomenon of missionaries seeking to reach Muslims by encouraging them to remain in their Islamic cultural context.  This is the latest and most heated debate among missioners in the Muslim world.  Those opposed say it crosses into syncretism, proponents argue for a more holistic view of life and faith.   

Read this month's and last month's issues of the magazine to understand more about both perspectives. Here are some poigniant quotes from Mr. Mallouhi's article:

"I am perplexed by the unfair treatment that Muslim people are given by the Protestant missions movement... If I were a Jewish believer continuing to call myself a Jew and remaining inside my Jewish community, I would be lauded by most of the Christian West. My experience is that most Jewish ideology rejects the entirety of the New Testament and often reviles our Lord; yet even with those obstacles, believers that remain inside Judaism do not undergo the same scrutiny by Christians."

"I realize that as Christians engaging with Muslims, some may want to act in a way that makes them feel triumphant - like St. Boniface triumphantly cutting down a tree in defiance of paganism - but we do not need to crush the other person in order to share our light and truth."

"I am convinced that Christians aren’t required to dislike Islam in order to engage it. Finally, I would like to encourage my friends, acquaintances and fellow laborers from the West to earnestly and honestly ask themselves how much of their attitude towards Muslims is a result of political opinions, xenophobia, a
post cold-war clash of civilizations, or being caught in the trap of dueling religions. Even as my brothers and sisters commit to this sort of self-introspection, I also pledge to search out the planks in my own eye. May the Peace of our Lord be upon us all."

May we all exhibit such humility.

The Church its own Obstacle

The next two Core Issues from the Lausanne list I'll lump in together:

3. Realizing that the Church itself may be that the biggest obstacle to the progress of world evangelization - the need for a 21st Century Reformation.
4. Celebrating the new realities of the global Church—a new face and a fresh voice.

The authors of this list express a growing realization by many that something is inherently wrong with the church these days.  It is seen in the symptoms of conflict, immorality and the lack of response from people groups such as Muslims.  It is my firm belief that most of the responsibility for the lack of positive response in the Muslim world to the gospel lies with Evangelicals themselves.  I feel strongly about this for a number of reasons which I have developed at length, and will continue to do so in the chapter 'Removing the Log.'

The Western church essentially needs to get out of the way of its message.  In desperate efforts, the Western church has become more interested in self-preservation, than in handing off the baton of evangelism and expansion to the next generation, and to other cultures.  In actuality what we're trying to preserve, (albeit unconsciously) is the form of Western Evangelicalism.  Excerpt from Frontiers in Mission by Ralph Winter:

"The first reformation was the shift from Jewish clothing to Greek and Latin clothing. A second happened when our faith went from Latin Christianity to German Christianity. This “second” reformation is THE Reformation that everyone talks about, of course. But now Western Christianity, if it really wants to give away its faith, is poised to recognize (and to become sensibly involved with) something already happening under our noses- a Third Reformation. Sorry to say, as before (both in the time of Paul and in the Reformation), this rising phenomenon probably will involve astonishment and antagonisms. The Bible itself describes vividly the profound antagonisms between Jewish and Greek forms of the faith. History records vividly the same thing between Latin and German forms of the faith. In each case the burning question has been “Just how Biblical are these various forms? ...The future is correspondingly bleak for the further extension of our faith into the vast blocs of Chinese, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists unless we are willing to allow our faith to leave behind the cultural clothing of the Christian movement itself. Do we preach Christ or Christianity?”(emphasis mine) (source)

For most Western Christians the thought of a Christianity wrapped up in the cultural clothing, language, and customs of the Middle East, is unthinkable, and even disturbing.  Forms we identify as 'Islamic' (turbans, beards, prostrate prayer, and flowing robes) are just that, only forms, and the sooner we let go of the non-essentials, and allow other cultural expressions of faith, the faster the gospel may advance in unknown places.  I am not just talking about simple contextualization, this assumes we understand what the essentials are so that we can communicate them clearly.  Much of the Western church has lost touch with the essentials and included forms, ideology and even theology that were never meant to be stood upon with the veracity of the 'death, burial and resurrection' of Christ.   I agree with Winter above that we need to go beyond just missions and seek Reformation.  

Reformation would start with an apology to the Muslim (and Buddhist and Hindu) world for the 'them and us' language of the last centuries of mission. It would then go back to the scripture, and find common ground.  It would mean letting go of the Republican party, American politics and 'democracy' as co-redeemers.   It would invite the persecuted church in these contexts to take the lead and tell the Western missions enterprise how to proceed.  It would trust God to preserve his word and stop exporting political ideology, doctrinal statements, and 'good Christian propriety' and let believers in new contexts figure out their own.  Reformation would mean the church taking up the case of the fatherless, the widow, the alien and the oppressed no matter their religion or location or doctrinal persuasion.  Until we're willing to 'get radical' and let go of our own comfort and self-preservation... it ain't gonna happen... and so our slumber continues.  One day we may wake up to realize God has moved on without us.