A Journey into Understanding Other Religions for People of Faith

I teach a survey course on world religions each semester at the university where I serve as director of international programs. In that course, we begin with discussions on defining religion and how we can approach the study of religion. The university is an academic setting and in the course we approach the study of world religions from an academic position that is mostly philosophical, historical, and comparative.

But as a person who is a practicing Christian and a minister, I am also concerned with how people of faith might approach the study of other religions in their communities of faith. Certainly there is room to incorporate an academic approach in these settings, but because these settings mostly take place within religious congregations, there may be more at stake when believers from one tradition engage in the study of other traditions.

That’s why I think it is important to set the tone for such an endeavor that hopefully engages not only the more open minded believers, who are already receptive to other faiths, but perhaps also the more traditional believers who may not be as open minded and possibly uncomfortable with delving into understanding not only other faiths, but more importantly, those people who sincerely practice other faiths.

I think a good starting point would be to deconstruct the stereotypes about other religions that are fed to us through various mediums. In this sense, we must be honest to admit that the actions of a few within a religious tradition do not speak for the many. As a Christian, I would certainly not want the actions of particular groups or individuals who claim to be Christian to define what it means to be a Christian. Thus, we should not allow the actions of a minority who claim to be practitioners of a certain religion to define what we accept as that religion’s core values.

A second strategy to take is to reevaluate categories. Christians are so prone to thinking in their own categories that we also think those categories fit other religions. For example, we might think that other religions must believe in some deity, but many do not. Moreover, we might wrongly ask what other religions teach about salvation and heaven, when some do not even concern themselves with such questions. We cannot place the grid of our own faith categories onto other faiths hoping to come away with a clearer understanding; our grid does not always fit.

The third action in this approach may be the most challenging for people of faith. Yet, if we are to be sincere in our desire to understand other religions, then we must open ourselves to the faith of others by crossing over into their faith. This does not mean we embrace their belief system as our own, but it does mean that we embrace them in their faith, and we seek to understand, as best we can, why they believe what they believe and practice what they practice. To do this with authenticity, however, requires that we do not judge their faith through our own, but we allow them to speak about their faith on their own terms as we listen and seek understanding.

Such an action should lead to a fourth step in this process, which also may be difficult for many, but is perhaps necessary. We should be critical of our own religion. We live with the tenets of our faith so close to us that it may be difficult to see their weaknesses and faults. We have learned the teachings of our faith, perhaps since a young age, and we know them so well that it is hard to distance ourselves from them. But, if we are to be honest seekers of truth, we must be willing not only to admit the truths we might discover in other religions, but also the faults in our own.  

Fifth, we should also embrace differences as part of being human. In a real sense, the world’s faiths are all attempts to understand what it means to be human, although there are other ways of understanding what it means to be human outside of religion. Yet, in our humanity, we are limited in our ability to flesh out this meaning fully with absolute certainty. This has lead to differences in understanding that are also fed by cultural differences in which religions are born and grow.

The final two steps in this process will hopefully also be the results of seriously engaging in the first five steps. A course of genuine truth seeking should lead us to recognize the revelatory core of each religion as the basis on which to build common ground, despite how different we believe from others. Once we reach this step, we are deep in the process to the extent that the stereotypes we deconstructed in our first step are now replaced by a more truthful understanding, and we can honestly admit to ourselves and to others the value of other faiths.

This should lead us to the final step, where we not only reaffirm our own faith, but we also affirm the faith of another. Anyone that I have ever spoken with who has involved themselves in interfaith understanding with sincerity has reported that such a venture has led to a deepening of their own faith. Perhaps if we can authentically affirm the validity of another person’s faith, it grounds us deeper into our own beliefs and practices.

In taking these steps, people of faith can remain passionate about their own faith, but also encourage others to be passionate about their faith. We can also enrich our own lives by affirming the other instead of treating the other as opposition. In this way, barriers can be torn down and doors can be opened that move us beyond mere intellectual knowledge about other religions, into personal relationships with those of other faiths that focus on the common good

Jesus’ Cry from the Cross: A Good Friday Reflection

Today is Good Friday, the day on which we reflect on Jesus’ crucifixion. While we refer to it as Good Friday with the intention of focusing on Jesus’ death as sacrificial for us, when we read the narratives of Jesus’ last hours, we can find nothing really that good about that Friday. In fact, it is a very dark story of Jesus at his most vulnerable period.

Portrayed on stage, in film, and in church dramas, the passion story of Christ is fraught with human agony and pain that is unequal to any story we read from the Scriptures. And yet, despite the grotesque nature of the story, it is the focus of the Gospels and indeed the entirety of the New Testament. But what are we to make of this story?

This is certainly a difficult question to answer for many reasons. For one thing, the narratives of the Gospels tell the story in such vivid detail that we would be hard pressed to sum up the story in a few simple words. For another, details differ from Gospel to Gospel even though they agree at many points and all four tell essentially the same narrative. 

But one thing is certain about the story: The early Christians felt the need to tell this story, with all the details, no matter what it might have said about Jesus, their King and Messiah.

While we often look back on the crucifixion with a bit of sentimentality, probably because we are influenced by the introspective idea that “Jesus died for me”, the earliest Christians must have been out of their minds to portray their Messiah as a vulnerable human who hung on a vile Roman cross. Yet, this is exactly the story they told, without sanitizing it.

This straightforward telling of the story by these earliest Christians is epitomized very poignantly in Matthew and Mark through the only statement Jesus speaks from the cross in these two Gospels. It is a prayer of protest in which Jesus recites Psalm 22:1 and calls out in honest anger, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 

This is a cry of naked vulnerability through which the Crucified One expresses a deep resentment at the God who once called him the Beloved Son and the one in which he had placed his complete faith. The intimacy that once characterized the relationship of Father and Son was replaced by estrangement and abandonment, and the vulnerability that Jesus experienced in his life was at its most extreme in his death.

We cannot deny the fact that on the cross Jesus felt abandoned by God. This was real human emotion responding not only to the pain of death, but more tragically, to the feeling of abandonment by the one in whom Jesus had placed his full trust and obedience. Yet, Jesus’ cry is much more than a personal cry to God for his own feelings of desertion. It is also a cry he voices for vulnerable humans who also feel abandoned by God.

We often wrongly assume that the Gospels were written primarily to record the history of Jesus, so that future generations would have a biography of sorts about this famous Jewish Rabbi. But a more important reason that these narratives about Jesus were written was so that Jesus’ story would become the story through which the vulnerable could find hope. 

Thus, Jesus’ cry from the cross is the cry he expresses on behalf of those who suffer under the weight of a world system that produces inequality, injustice, oppression, and violence that marginalizes the most vulnerable. It is a cry for those who, like him, have been forsaken.

Yet, even as his cry expresses abandonment, it also holds forth continued hope. For one thing, Jesus continues to call out to God for he knows that it is only God who can help him. 

Moreover, in quoting the first part of Psalm 22, Jesus may also be using a rabbinical technique through which the one who quotes the beginning of the Psalm also invokes the entirety of the Psalm. Though Psalm 22 begins with a cry of abandonment, it ends in hope and victory.

But perhaps more important for our understanding of why the Gospel writers included this inauspicious statement voiced by the one who was crucified is the fact that they are telling a story that does not end at crucifixion. The Jesus on the cross, though experiencing vulnerability, death, and abandonment by God, will be raised by God. The narrative of death and despair will transform into a story of life and hope.

Lent Reflection: Jesus the Healer

One of my favorite healing narratives from the Gospels is found in Mark 5:21-43, where we find Jesus healing two different people. As we read the two stories, we should notice that these two stories are set in juxtaposition with one another, and they have become, in the hands of the author, intertwined into one story. This is intentional and leads us to some very important theological emphases that the author of Mark wants to bring out.

In fact, scholars of Mark have called the structure of these two stories a Markan Sandwich, one of a few that we find in the second Gospel. The Markan Sandwich is when the author tells a story, but that story is interrupted by another story, which is then told in its entirety, before the first story is finished. 

In the narrative of Mark 5, Jairus’ story begins, but is interrupted by the story of the bleeding woman, whose story is told in completion before the rest of Jairus’ story is told.  The two stories are intertwined into the sandwich to give meaning to both.

Yet, when we read the stories together, as we should, we also come away with the idea that the two individuals that come to Jesus could not be more different. Jairus, whose name we know, is a male.  The woman, who remains nameless, and therefore insignificant, is a female. 

Moreover, Jairus is a leader in the synagogue, a man of great religious and political stature and influence. The unnamed woman, who has been bleeding for 12 years, is an outcast, who has been shunned by her community because of her disease. Jairus can come to Jesus expecting to seek healing for his daughter, but the woman must approach Jesus from behind, hoping not to be noticed by him.

Perhaps one of the reasons these two stories are told together is so that all of us can face the reality that in our human existence none of us are free from the pain of sickness and death. Sickness and death, viewed as enemies of God’s good creation by the biblical authors, do not respect people of importance or sympathize with people of weakness and need. At some point in our lives we will all seek healing.

But what exactly is healing? 

The great founder of Methodism, John Wesley, described the intervention of sin into God’s creation as that which brought disease and death to humanity. He preached that healing was holistic union of a person’s body, mind, and soul that returned us to the unity and peace of the original creation

When we consider the plight of the woman who has bled for twelve years, and despite spending money on doctors and cures, she has not found healing from her disease, we find her seeking this kind of healing. Yes, she was tired of living with this disease that was making her feel sick and weak. She was tired of waking up each day having to deal with this sickness.  But she was seeking something more than physical healing.

Remember who this woman is. She is an unnamed, and therefore, insignificant, female. In fact, when Jesus says, who touched me, the disciples question him, “How can you say who touched me?”  The crowd was pressing in on them, and they simply were not aware that this woman even existed. And for that matter, no one else knew she existed.

Her physical ailment of bleeding was a social, and indeed, a religious stigma that caused her to be ostracized from her community. She had no purpose for living, no real connection to others, not much self-respect, and little, if any, control over her life. She was not only disheartened by the physical state of her illness, she was perhaps more troubled by the mental and social state of her existence.

It may be true that she comes to Jesus primarily for physical healing; something she desperately needed, but which she had not found from other healers. But it is conceivable that this woman approaches Jesus knowing that he can offer her more than the absence of a disease.  He can offer her more than physical healing. He can give her wholeness.

The clue to Jesus’ holistic healing of this woman, which leads to her full restoration as one of God’s children, is found in the way Jesus responds to her act of faith. When hearing the woman tell him that she is the one who touched him, Jesus replies, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

In calling this unnamed and ostracized woman, “daughter”, Jesus affirms her place in the people of Israel, as a daughter of Abraham. No longer is she to be cut off from her community, from her connection to significant others. Rather, she is restored to her community in which she can find love, acceptance, and self-worth.

Moreover, Jesus tells her that her faith has made her well. The word well used in the New Revised Standard Version is actually the word often translated as “saved”.  The salvation of which Jesus speaks is more than the “get me to heaven salvation”. The salvation Jesus offers affirms her holistic healing. Not only is she cured of her physical ailment, she is restored to full health in which she can find purpose and meaning. Her days of hopelessness have now changed to days of purpose and fulfillment as God’s child.

The same may be said for the daughter of Jairus. The death of innocence is a mockery of God’s goodness and blessing for life. Jesus knows this, and in raising this young girl to life, Jesus is not simply restoring physical existence to her. He is affirming the goodness and blessings of life. “Give her something to eat,” he tells those around him. She is alive; let her live life as God intends.

But there is something more this story tells us about healing. Jesus offers no preferential treatment to Jairus. Rather, he acknowledges the dignity of every human. In a market driven system of health care, Jesus would have passed by the unnamed woman and gone to assist the synagogue ruler in a home visit.  Instead, Jesus stops to recognize the stranger and outcast, not as a number among numbers, but as a person in need.

These two stories, intertwined into one narrative, tell us not only of the healing power of Jesus as a miracle worker; they also tell us what healing really is. It is the restoration of the whole person to the full potential of God’s gift of life, in which we find purpose and meaning, loving relationships in community, and self-love and respect.

This is the kind of healing we all need.

Lent Reflection: Jesus the Teacher

The Gospels offer representations of Jesus in word pictures that heighten our imaginations to wonder about Jesus. Included in these narrative portraits of Jesus we find what we might call images of Jesus. That is, we find titles, metaphors, and even vocations that offer to our imaginations a bit of who Jesus was.

As we have entered into this season of Lent, I have been thinking on some of these images, and in doing so, I thought I might offer some thoughts on some of these images of Jesus and what they may say to us about Jesus. The first image is Jesus the teacher.

Good teachers do not simply spew out information to detached student. Effective teachers speak with authority and connect with their students. These kinds of teachers are those who transform the lives of their students and who send them down new paths of discovery.

Jesus was this kind of teacher. While he certainly spoke with knowledge, he also spoke from a point of caring for those who opened their ears and lives to his transformational teachings. Jesus’ teaching was not simply conveyance of information. He came proclaiming the coming of God’s rule over the world and he taught his followers how to experience and live in the rule of God.

But there is something that the Gospels tell us concerning Jesus as a teacher that demonstrates the power of Jesus’ teachings. The Gospel writers often tell us that Jesus spoke with authority, or that the crowds who heard him teach were amazed at his authority. For example, the last two verses of Matthew 7 that close the Sermon on the Mount represent what all of the Gospel writers believed about Jesus as teacher:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:28-29)

Notice the contrast Matthew makes between Jesus’ teaching with authority and the authority of the scribes. Jesus teaches like no one else, exhibiting that his authority as teacher comes from God and is very different from the lawgivers known as the scribes. But, the question is, “Was Jesus simply a better teacher than the scribes, or was there something more?”

There is no doubt that Jesus was a gifted teacher, one who knew the value of communication. But this does not entirely explain his authority; an authority that surpasses all the religious authorities of Judaism.

What appears to make Matthew end the section we call the Sermon on the Mount with such a bold statement about Jesus’ authority is that Jesus’ teaching was a new teaching.

Yes, the Sermon on the Mount reiterates the Ten Commandments, as Jesus clearly states that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. So, Jesus is not about changing the law. He is concerned that people do not transgress anything found in the Ten Commandments. But, Jesus is also concerned for something more.

Indeed, in each interpretation of the commandments, Jesus begins with, “You have heard it said”, followed by a statement from the commandments, which is followed by, “But I say to you.”

In adding “But I say to you,” Jesus was expressing his authority as God’s teacher of God’s law. In doing so, he was confronting his listeners with a deeper and more powerful understanding of the law forbidding the acts found in the Ten Commandments.

When addressing the commandment against killing, the motive behind the taking of a life is equated with the actual physical killing of another. Jesus does not make a distinction between the deep seeded anger one can feel toward another and the physical act of taking the life of another.

When addressing the sin of adultery, Jesus again speaks about the inward thoughts of a person as equal to the act of committing adultery. Jesus draws out the deeper significance of the law and widens the actions that lead to entrapment to include the lustful gazes and thoughts one has toward another.

With each rehearsal of these longstanding commandments, Jesus presses his audience to see the connection between attitude and action; a connection that is inseparable.

So, at one level, Jesus’ teaching affirmed the law that Israel was still to follow, but his authority as God’s teacher comes through as he calls his hearers to look deeper into the law, at the intent of the law, and at the sin that resides inside of us, in our thoughts and intentions.

But the Sermon on the Mount also brings out another aspect of why Jesus’ authority was greater than that of the scribes. His teachings here, and in other places in the Gospels, offered a new way of existing in the world; a very radical way of existing.

In the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-11, Jesus offers an upside down way of living. In these statements, Jesus just about mentions every group that is forgotten by the world, and certainly forgotten by the political and religious elites. These are not just statements about some sort of spiritual status. When he mentions the poor in spirit, he is also thinking of those who are really poor. When he speaks about those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, he also thinks of those who really hunger and thirst.

Jesus is telling his audience that those who are on the underside of society are truly those loved and blessed by God. Indeed, these are those who are a part of God’s kingdom. And, in an implicit way, Jesus is calling all his followers to take on these characteristics. Jesus the teacher calls us to radical living.

This new way of living radically also calls us to radical relationships of love. In the Sermon on the Mount, we also find those infamous words, “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” And, yet again, Jesus follows this with a”but” statement: “But I say to you, when someone strikes you on the cheek, turn to him the other.”

But, perhaps one of Jesus’ most radical teachings in the Sermon digs deep inside everyone of us: “You have heard it said, ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy’, but I say to you love your enemies.” There is probably no more radial a statement about how Christians ought to live than this one.

As the inaugurator of the reign of God, Jesus teaches a new approach to ethical living within God’s rule. He is the authoritative teacher who redefines the law in terms that reflect a deeper and more radical approach to the old standard of living. 

Have we committed ourselves to following the ways he teaches? This Lenten Season might be a good time to start.