Gathering with the pagans.

Christians either interact with other faiths because they’re trusting Jesus’s order to share Him with everyone, or because they don’t have any faith to begin with.

This month I’m experimenting with a new synchroblog, which is “interfaith”—unlike the other one I regularly participate in, it doesn’t solely consist of Christian bloggers. We’ve got a few folks from a few other faith backgrounds (which we Christians call “pagans,” which doesn’t mean someone who worships other things or beings or whatnot; it solely means someone who’s not a Christian). We’ll be writing some stuff and directing others towards other blogs. Maybe they’ll even read some of those other blogs. Maybe they’ll read mine. If you’re one of them, hi there.

I suppose I need to explain to everyone why on earth I’m doing this. My fellow Christians are likely gonna make the assumption that, because I’m interacting with pagans, I’m endorsing them in some way. I’m not. I have an ulterior motive—just like every Christian who interacts with pagans has an ulterior motive. I want to tell them about Jesus.

Lest you think, “Aw, nuts; the Christian guy is gonna try to convert me”—no. Jesus didn’t tell me to convert you; that’s His job. He told me to tell you about Him. Jesus told His students—which includes both His students in the first century and His students today—to go everywhere and teach everyone what He taught us. My job is to tell you; His job is to change you.

So naturally that means we Christians have to interact with pagans. Unfortunately there are a lot of lazy Christians who don’t want to do this. They would rather disobey Jesus than make themselves this kind of uncomfortable. They would rather interact with other Christians. It’s safer. There’s a lot less rejection. Because when you’re telling everyone about Jesus, you get a lot of rejection. (And it’s not just because Christians are utter a--holes when we present Him, though there certainly is a lot of that.) Not everyone can accept what Jesus taught; especially when it conflicts with their existing religion, or upbringing, education, experiences, state of mind, concepts of the universe, and plans for their future. (Especially when it’s presented by a Christian who’s behaving like a know-it-all.)

The bulk of interfaith stuff is done amongst two types of Christians: those like me, who have the ulterior motive of getting you to talk about Jesus; and those who believe that ultimately every god out there is the One True God, but the other religions misunderstand Him whereas the Christians got Him right. They won’t come out and say this—and in some cases, if they’re pagan enough, they won’t actually believe we Christians have got Him right; they’ll participate in interfaith events partly to see if they can glean some truth from the other religions to add to their mélange of theological ideas.

True, all religions have truth in them. But the reason we say we’re of one religion and not another is because when you boil it down, each of us believes our religion is more correct than the others. I believe Jesus is more right than anyone else. I may not personally be right about a whole lot of things—I’m not so arrogant as to believe otherwise—but I am arrogant enough to believe I’m right about Jesus being right. If you don’t have that kind of faith in your religion, you don’t really have a religion. A lot of Christians don’t have that kind of faith in Jesus, so as a result they either don’t interact with pagans at all, or they attend every interfaith function they can find, looking for something to put faith in.

So like I said, my ulterior motive is to tell folks about Jesus. And, by interacting with people of other religions, I get to see where they’re coming from, and replace any stereotypical ideas I might have about what they believe with truth. But again, this all goes towards the ulterior motive: If I understand where you’re coming from, I can present Jesus to you in a way that you’ll better understand.

Just thought I’d be up-front from the beginning.

The October ’08 interfaith synchroblog.

This is part of an interfaith synchroblog, and links to some of the other folks are below. Naturally, there are misunderstandings and such already, which was to be expected, but hopefully they’ll be ironed out. To read the posts, select from the menu and click, “Explore.”

Yvonne Aburrow: “Only connect.” Liz Dyer: “Interreligious dialogue: Risky business.” Steve Hayes: “Interreligious dialogue.” Jared Harris: “Interfaith relationships.” K.W. Leslie: “Gathering with the pagans.” J.R. Miller: “8 conditions for interfaith dialogue.” Beth Patterson: “Same stove, different teapots.” Matt Stone: “Is Interfaith interfaith enough?” Phil Wyman: “A Christian presenter at Pagan Pride?”