Uncommon Ground:
Living Faithfully in a Diverse World

by the Rev. Dirk Ficca

at The 2000 Peacemaking Conference
July 26-29, 2000, Chapman University, Orange, California
Theme Presentation for Saturday, July 29, 2000

Posted 12-8-00

Diversity as conflict

Every day across the United States, week after week, people get in their cars and drive past churches and synagogues, mosques and temples, centers and gurdwaras to get to their own church or synagogue, mosque, temple, gurdwara or center. But if you're an Orthodox Jew you don't drive to Sabbath service on Friday night, because that would be an act of work. You must walk to Sabbath service, so you must live close enough to your synagogue that you can walk. So in Chicago most of the Orthodox Jews live in West Rodgers Park, where they can walk to synagogue each Friday night.

And last year on a Friday night early in July, as Orthodox Jewish men, women and their children and their rabbis were walking to synagogue, a man named Benjamin Smith pulled up in a car and began opening fire, shooting five adults and one child. He then drove up to a suburb just above Rodgers Parks, Skokie, where he found Ricky Birdsong, the African-American former basketball coach of Northwestern University, walking with his children, shot him and killed him. Drove further into Skokie and shot two other persons of Asian descent and then left the Chicago area. Several days later ended up in Bloomington, Indiana where he had been a student, shot and killed a Korean student and then he took his own life. He was a member of an organization called The Church of the Creator -- a kind of right-wing hate group.

Four days later, in Rodgers Park, there was a vigil in Indian Boundary Park. It was made up of about 800 members of the Rodgers Park community, and I'm proud to say, it was organized by a group of 18 churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, other religious communities that the Parliament of the World's Religions, the organizing group that I work with, had been working with for four years. And on a platform that night at that vigil, with their Orthodox Jewish brothers, sat Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, Buddhists and Unitarians, who came to the podium to decry what had happened and to say that, "We are brothers and sisters with our Orthodox neighbors. And they were not just gunned down last Friday night, we all were."

And that next Friday night, as Orthodox Jewish men, women and children and their rabbis walked to synagogue, accompanying them were Muslims and Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs. Now, I mention this incident because it shows us the very worst response to diversity, and, I believe, the very best response to diversity.

Of course, when we are talking about diversity, we are talking about the issue of our identities: Who am I in relationship to others and the world? And there is kind of a divide in how people think about who they are. Do they think about who they are over-against someone else or in relation to someone else? Do they think of themselves, primarily, as "Who I am not?" or "Who I am?" Do they see other people as a threat or as a source of enrichment? It's interesting in my work at the Parliament of the World's Religions, I find that people of all different religions can come to a table and talk about differences -- of beliefs and practices and views on issues. But when the issue is their identity, when the issue is not what you believe or practice, but who you are or who I am, it's very difficult to come to that table. And for Benjamin Smith, obviously, people who are different were a great threat, and his solution was to eliminate them.

Diversity as a problem to be solved

In fact, there are a lot of people who see diversity as a problem to be solved and we've seen a number of a solutions posed over the centuries. One solution to the problem of diversity is ethnic cleansing. Do away with those who are different. That's how you solve the problem. And who would have thought just forty or fifty years after the Holocaust, that we would be seeing, in places like Rwanda, East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, this kind of ethnic cleansing. So that's one response to diversity: Do away with those who are different.

Another approach has been utilized in the United States; it's called the "melting pot" approach. This approach aims to do away with differences. It tries somehow to boil everybody down -- melt everyone down -- to the most primitive kind of common denominators, which usually means boil everybody down to the dominant culture. That's how you respond to diversity.

Another approach I would call compartmentalizing. This approach says that it's all right for you to exist' and all right for you to be different, but we are not going to interact. You're going to be over there; we're going to be over here; we'll just try and co-exist.

And in response to ethnic cleansing and to the melting pot approach and to compartmentalizing, over the last twenty or thirty years we've seen a lot of anti-movements: anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-gender issues, saying that these things are wrong. But in my view, these efforts don't often help us get to what's right. If this is what it doesn't look like, then what does it look like?

Diversity as a reality

Another approach to diversity is to see it as a fact of human existence, and as a source of enrichment -- that we are not going to become the human beings we can become except in relationship to those who are different than we are. Now, if this is approach is followed then we have two questions before us. The first question is, "How do I live out the particularity of my own uniqueness in a diverse world?" And, more importantly, "How can I build into my identity a positive response to difference, so that, when I respond positively to those who are different, I'm not giving up something? This is, in fact, an expression of who I am."

Now for religious people, for Christians, it's interesting that often the biggest problem we have with diversity is religious. I don't know if you've all seen the Millennium Prayer. It was created by the mainline Protestant denominations, and I'm not sure whether Catholics and Orthodox Christians contributed to it as well. It was prayer for the millennium that we could all say. And there is a line in there about overcoming barriers of race, ethnicity and culture. It's interesting to me what barrier was left out of the Christian Millennium Prayer: the barrier of religion.

A matter of identity

And so, for Christians in an increasingly religiously plural world, the questions are: How do we maintain the integrity of our Christian identity while fully engaging in a religiously pluralistic world, and, more importantly, how do we build into our own sense of ourselves as Christian, a positive response to those who are religiously different, so that, when we do relate to them and engage with them, we don't feel that we are giving up anything of who we are, but in fact we are doing this because we are Christians? And that is the question that I would like to explore with you today.

I will share with you that in my work with people of other religions, they tell me that when Christians approach them, with the sole purpose of converting them to Christianity, it feels to them like a kind of ethnic cleansing. What we are basically saying is: Your religious identity is not acceptable, and my job is to eliminate it from the face of the earth. Is there another way to relate to people of other religions that maintains the integrity of who we are, but doesn't engage in a kind of religious ethnic cleansing? I think there is, and that's what I would like to explore today.

Now the place where we have to begin is with real live human beings -- not with Hinduism or Sikhism or Buddhism, in a textbook or as a tradition or just a lecture from somebody. But we have to begin as peacemakers, with actually getting to know, face-to-face, people of other traditions, because, otherwise, they remain a category to us, and we can't see them as human beings. They remain -- and I must tell you this word has just come to jar me over the years -- simply non-Christians; the way in which we identify them is simply that they are not us. Yet they are people who are as devoted and committed to their own religious tradition, and the path that it puts forth, as we are.

Twenty thousand Native Americans, representing 200 nations or tribes; 5,000 Sikhs; 5,000 Jains; 5,000 Unitarians; 500 Zoroastrians; and a whole host of other indigenous and New Age religions. If it's in the world, they live in Chicago. So, it was a wonderful place to host this big 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions.

Now, I became affiliated with the Parliament in 1992. I had been an inner-city pastor in a place called Benton Harbor, Michigan for eleven years -- eleven wonderful, satisfying and exhausting years. I wanted to take a little break, a little sabbatical, from the pastoral ministry and I ended up working half-time for this organizing effort for the Parliament. My job was to organize the local religious communities of Chicago to help them host this big event. I was to organize what were called host committees. Now, I didn't know anything about the world's religions at that point, and I chose not to read Houston Smith's The World's Religions. Instead, I just got into my little Plymouth Colt and I started driving to the religious communities of Chicago. That's how I learned about the world's religions: from the people.

A visit to a Sikh temple

So, I must use a few of my precious minutes with you this morning to share with you one of what I call my many close encounters of the inter-religious kind. I share this particular experience because its the reason why Im still doing inter-religious work today. In 1893, there was a World's Fair in Chicago which attracted twenty-five million people from around the world. And something unique and historic happened that year as the part of that: the Reverend John Barrows, a pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, sent 4000 letters around the world, inviting religious leaders to come to Chicago for a seventeen-day World Parliament of Religion in September of that year. Four hundred responded, and this was the first time in human history that East met West religiously on a formal platform. Ninety-five years later in Chicago, a group of people decided to commemorate that event and hold a centennial event, the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions.

If in 1893 the whole world came to Chicago for that first Parliament, in 1993 the whole world now lives in metropolitan Chicago. One out of every seven persons now in the metropolitan-Chicago area is a religious immigrant, who has come from somewhere else in the world and is of another religion than Christian or Jewish: 500,000 Muslims; 220,000 Buddhists; 80,000 Hindus; 20,000 Native Americans, representing 200 nations or tribes; 5,000 Sikhs; 5,000 Jains; 5,000 Unitarians; 500 Zoroastrians; and a whole host of other indigenous and New Age religions. If it's in the world, they live in Chicago. So, it was a wonderful place to host this big 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions.

Now, I became affiliated with the Parliament in 1992. I had been an inner-city pastor in a place called Benton Harbor, Michigan for eleven years -- eleven wonderful, satisfying and exhausting years. I wanted to take a little break, a little sabbatical, from the pastoral ministry and I ended up working half-time for this organizing effort for the Parliament. My job was to organize the local religious communities of Chicago to help them host this big event. I was to organize what were called host committees. Now, I didn't know anything about the world's religions at that point, and I chose not to read Houston Smith's The World's Religions. Instead, I just got into my little Plymouth Colt and I started driving to the religious communities of Chicago. That's how I learned about the world's religions: from the people.

I worked to establish the Hindu host committee and the Buddhist host committee and the Jewish host committee and the Protestant host committee and so on. They helped us raise money and bring their leaders. So, I visited them and about four months before the event I finally was getting around to the Sikh community. I had been invited. I remember the day, it was Sunday, April 4, 1993, four or five months before this big event, and I had been invited to Sikh Gurdwara of Palatine to talk with them about bringing their Sikh leaders and having a Sikh presence at this event. Now, although I had not done any reading about any of the religions, when I woke up that Sunday morning, I realized I knew not one iota -- not one thing -- about Sikhism. And so as not to be totally embarrassed, I went across the hall to my office, where -- thank God -- there was the National Conference of Christian and Jews interfaith calendar.

And -- praise Jesus -- October was on Sikhism, and from that calendar I learned that the word, Sikh, means "learner" or "disciple"; that the Sikh religion was established about 500 hundred years ago in India that it had ten founding Gurus, beginning with Guru Nanak; and, that its eleventh Guru was the sacred scriptures. Sikhs are monotheist; they believe in one God. Their place of worship is called the Gurdwara -- dwara meaning "dwelling of the Guru." Their word for God is "Wahaguru," the indescribable, the greatest guru. And that Sikhs believe in the equality of all people.

So, now, armed with that knowledge, I got in my Plymouth Colt and drove up to northern suburb called Palatine, where I found the Gurdwara, tucked away in a suburban neighborhood. It was a big square building, two stories, kind of built into a hill. The second story was ringed with clear glass windows, it had a sloping roof, and two large parking lots on either side were packed with cars. So I parked on the street and walked up through the parking lot. There were Sikh men with their turbans and beards talking together, Sikh women in their colored saris, chasing children around. I went to the back door and saw a sea of shoes and took my shoes off and went in to what we would call the first floor -- it kind of looks like a church fellowship hall -- one hundred to two hundred people, milling around, the sound of pots and pans and the smell of food coming from a room off to the side. A couple of Sikh men approached me and said, "Welcome, why are you here?" And I said I was looking for Dr. Balwant Singh Hansra, a professor of Natural Sciences at Daley Community College. He and I had become friends, and he had invited me to speak to the Sikhs.

By the way, every Sikh man's middle name is "Singh," which means "lion," and they choose that because courage is very important in the Sikh religion. Every Sikh woman's middle name is "Kaur," which means "princess." So if you ever meet a Sikh put that middle name in there, and you'll score some points.

Dr. Hansra came over. He was so excited to see me, he gave me a big hug. He welcomed me there, but before I could go upstairs to what I'll call the worship area, the service area, I had to cover my head. So he went over and got a card-board box and brought a brightly colored bandana out and was tying it on my head, and a couple of Sikh men look at me and smiled and said, "Just the opposite of Christian. Now in the Christian church, you take off your hat and you leave on your shoes, and here you take off your shoes and you cover you head." But at that point I had a beard and they both pointed at the beard and they said, "Now, that's good." It's the only time my beard has had a positive religious connotation.

Then Dr. Hansra took me upstairs to the second floor, what I'll call the service area: three or four hundred Sikh men sitting on the floor on the right side; three or four hundred Sikh women sitting on the floor on the other side; children wandering back and forth. Up front was a kind of a podium with a large canopy on which sat the holiest looking man I've ever seen with the longest beard in the world, waving a tassel of a very holy-looking book; then another smaller platform were some musicians playing harmonium and drums -- and I'm telling you, if I had a language to pick or a kind of music to pick for eternity, I'd pick Sikh music: some of the most melodic beautiful music in the world -- and then a podium.

Dr. Hansra quickly told me that the separation of men and women, on either side, was a cultural thing, but it said nothing about the relative worth of men and women in the Sikh religion. Now get this, five hundred years ago, in India, the Sikh religion declared that men and women were equal in every respect: that women could vote; that they could be political or religious leaders; that they could own their own business -- five hundred years ago in India. The separation was just kind of a cultural thing. He told me that Sikhs basically do three things every day: They meditate on God's name; they work hard for their living; and they share with those in need.

He took me up to sit behind the podium, but he apologized, he said, "I'm sorry you can't speak right away, because you happen to come to the moment in the service when the campaign speeches for the open three slots on the Sikh board are about to be given." Five men and one woman, so I would have to wait for those. And it was interesting; it was fun to hear these campaign speeches -- half in Punjabi and half in English and to hear kind of the American style that these immigrants had adopted: "We could pull the Gurdwara together. . ." and "I can lead the Gurdwara into the future.. ." and the hot button issue that year, the hot button campaign issue was "... And we could raise enough money to keep the bathrooms clean." I poked Dr. Hansra and said, "Now there's an issue that unites the world's religions."

Well, in between these campaign speeches, I learned about the five articles of Sikh clothing. Sikhs wear five articles of clothing, each of which have religious significance. Sikhs don't cut their hair, which to them is a sign of spirituality, and that's why Sikh men wear a turban. They each have a special comb that they use to comb their hair, which is a sign of purity and cleanliness. Each Sikh person you'll see wears a bangle or bracelet around their right wrist because we all tend to be right-handed. We do things with our right hands and it reminds us to do everything honestly and justly whatever we do. Sikhs wear a special kind of underwear, which is a sign of sexual purity and chastity. I stopped him right there and said, "You know I have a newborn son; he is about 12 months old, but some day he is going to be eighteen years old. How does that underwear work exactly?" He said it was no guarantee. And then finally, each Sikh man wears a sword or a dagger on their side. This is called the order of Khalsa; these five articles all start with the letter "K." This is the only one I remember, it's a Kirpon, and it's symbolic of courage in the face of religious persecution.

Finally it was my turn to speak, and Dr. Hansra gave me an invitation to come to the podium, and here I am, as so often in my work as a Westerner, facing a large crowd of immigrant people from somewhere else in the world, whose faces betray nothing of what they might be thinking or feeling. What was I going to say to them? How was I going to convince them to be a part of this Parliament? Well, what I said to them was that I had gotten to know the different religious communities, just me personally. I had discovered something about each one that I felt made a significant contribution to a better world: the non-violence of the Jains; the way that Native Americans are in touch with the earth; the way that Buddhists and Hindus say that you can't be at peace with others unless you work and are at peace with yourself. I love the way Jews argue with God. They feel so comfortable with God. You know Jews will say, "God, we're not going to pray to right now; we're not happy with you." I love that about Jews. So I shared what I had found personally in each of the world's religions, and I said, "In a world of great inequality, what I had learned that day, today, about the equality of all people in the eyes of the Sikhs." Would they come share that at the Parliament. Nobody's eyebrow flickered, nobody smiled, but I was told later it played well with the crowd.

So the service went on and on and on and on -- man did it go on. But, toward the end -- as we were singing Kirtan, this beautiful Sikh music -- they have a closing ritual where some people go around and start handing out napkins and others bring these beautiful silver pots and they scoop out a kind of sticky, gooey pudding, a kind of sweet-tasting pudding, and that's the last thing you do and you all eat that. And it reminds you of sweetness of Wahaguru, of God. Then they sang another hymn and some of these poker-face Sikh men had tears streaming down their eyes.

Well, after service, everyone goes downstairs; they sit on mats on the floor and they eat a meal together. It's called lunger -- open kitchen or generous kitchen -- and you can go to any Gurdwara at any time of the day or night, anywhere in the world, and be offered a meal. And I ended up sitting next to another immigrant, Raginder Singh Mago, a young man about my age who was an engineer, and he told me the origins of the Sikh religion.

He said the Sikh religion was formed largely in response to the Indian caste system. As you know, in the Indian caste system there were basically four castes: the Brahman caste or ruling caste, a kind of professional caste, the working caste and then a vast caste of Untouchables. And in the caste system you could not touch somebody of a higher caste, you could not sit on the same level as them, you could not marry them, you could not eat with them, and you certainly could not do anything religious with them. And because of this, the vast numbers of Untouchables could never participate in religious worship. The Sikh movement welcomed in the Untouchables. It became a movement amongst those who could not worship God. And suddenly the symbolism of the meal struck me: you all sit on the floor on the same level and you share a meal together, which is symbolic of the fact that we are all equal in the sight of God.

Now, I share that story with you, because it's one of those moments in my life. When I entered the Sikh gurdwara that morning at 10 o'clock and took my shoes off I was taking a brief sabbatical leave from the pastoral ministry; and, when I left the Sikh gurdwara at 3:00 o'clock that afternoon, I felt God calling me to a different kind of ministry.

An invitation to dialogue

My friends, if you take anything from our four days together, go out and meet somebody of another religion. Become their friend, get your congregation to meet real-life human beings of some other tradition. I trust if you do that, the rest will follow.

But now I want to do a little hard thinking with you. I want to do a little theological work together. Because if we don't get our theology right, we as Presbyterians, we get nervous. So I want to do a little of that work and the place to start is with the meaning of dialogue. I used to think dialogue meant reaching agreement or consensus, and while those are important, the purpose of dialogue is understanding. We can get to know each other and we can disagree with each other and know our commonalities and differences, but our relationship is not based on what we agree on; it's based on the mutual experience of understanding.

And in my own experience, it's as a Christian that I do this every day. I deal with people of all other religions. I've had to learn more about them, and I'm still a Presbyterian. This notion that somehow being in dialogue with others is going to dilute our faith is simply a myth. The paradox is that while my religious horizons are broadened, my own sense of my own religious identity is deepened. But once we've dialogued and we've come to understand each other there is still this thorny question of truth. If I were to ask everyone here what their definition of truth was, I would probably get as many different answers as there are people here today. So for the purposes of our discussion I'm going to give my definition for the moment. Truth is what's worth staking your life on. Again: Truth is what's worth staking your life on. And all the different religious traditions talk about what's worth staking your life on.

Dialogue and the question of truth

Now when we look at the matter of truth we have to realize that we all wear different lenses. We all have a different perspective on truth and I just want to list eight. I'm sure there are others.

There are the exclusivists, who say that they alone have the truth and nobody else does. Of course, given that, there is no reason to dialogue.

There are the inclusivists, who say that other people have a little bit of the truth, but we have the full and complete truth. So we will include them in our view of truth.

There are the reductionists, who want to boil all the differences down to a few common principles. Be good. God is love. They kind of want to do away with the differences in Truth.

There are the relativists, who say there is no such thing as Truth with a capital 'T,' that all truth is really kind of like your personal opinion. I mean what's a better flavor, chocolate or butterscotch? I mean what ultimate standard of flavorness would we appeal to, to decide that? Well you can't, it's personal opinion and the relativists say the same goes for religion.

There are the culturalists and humanists that remind us that we view our religion through the prominent cultural and humanistic values that dominate in our day.

The synchronists remind us that no religion comes to us in pure form, that every religion at every point is always mixture of religion and culture: the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church. What is Lutheranism, except Christianity meeting Germany? What is Presbyterianism, but Christianity meeting Geneva? Religion is always a mixture of culture and religion.

There are the pluralists who say that there are many paths to truth and that everybody has equal access.

And then there are the particularists, who say that whatever your view of truth is you are always coming from a particular point of view.

The first six of these positions are helpful, and maybe you see a little bit of yourself in some or all of them. But for me, and I believe for all of us, as we enter a new millennium and a new century, the dynamics in which we are going to have to live are a particularist-pluralistic dynamic. And here is the question: How can a Christian live out his or her own particular faith while fully engaged in a religiously pluralistic world?

Pluralism as a process

I want to say just a couple of nice things about pluralism because it has gotten a bad name. Now, I do not believe that anybody is a pluralist. I mean that nobody is objective and has risen above all the particularities. So for me, the value of pluralism is as a process. Pluralism helps us become honest about our choices. Let me give you a beautiful pluralistic image. Imagine a holy place ringed with windows, and light is shining from outside this holy place through stained-glass windows into the holy place. Do you have that image in your mind? Well in this analogy, the light is the truth, the windows are religions, and the holy place is the world. Light shines from outside through the windows into the holy place in the same way religions are a vehicle by which truth comes into the world. If you take anything of what I say today, take this next thing. The window is not the light. The window is not the light. And religions need to be distinguished from the truth that they let into the world. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time mistaking the window for the light and 99.9% of all religious conflict comes from that.

So pluralism says we have to realize that nobody has a corner on the truth -- that the light is larger. Because of that, Dr. Diana Eck, a leading comparative religion scholar and a United Methodist, makes this statement: "If you know only one religion, you know no religion." Is the only reason that you are a Christian here today because of your upbringing or the country you lived in? And does that mean that if you were born in Malaysia you'd be Muslim or in Punjab you'd be Sikh? She challenges us to make sure that our choices are real choices because if you are not free to say "No," you are not free to say "Yes." And she challenges every adult to learn about one other religion well enough that you can make an informed choice for it. And then if you choose the religion of your upbringing, you've really made a choice.

That's what pluralists do: they force us to be honest about our choices. And pluralists often say we should pay attention not so much to beliefs and practices, as to the kind of life that religion calls forth in its followers -- that's how we should evaluate other religions. What kind of life does Judaism call forth? What kind of life does following the Koran call forth? What kind of life does devotion to Shiva or Krishna call forth? In our tradition, a very wise person said, "By your fruits you shall know them." All right? This is what I love about pluralism: it forces us to be honest and open about our choices.

Christian particularism

But now I must tell you the one big weakness of pluralism. It's that as you look at those different stained-glass windows, and the light is shining through, pluralism doesn't tell which window to stand in front of. Once you've examined another religion and you know it well enough that you could make an informed choice, pluralism doesn't help you with that choice. And, ultimately, that is why I am a particularist -- that is, I acknowledge that we're always coming from some particular point of view. So, let's think about what Christian particularism might look like. And let's think about a kind of theological perspective that would allow one to retain the integrity of one's own Christian faith, and yet not have to convert someone of another religion.

Well, the place to begin is with a doctrine of the Spirit. Now, if I were to ask everyone in this room, "Who in here converted to Christianity?", who here would say that at one point you weren't a Christian and then either with a bolt of lightening or over a period of time you became a Christian? Some of you would raise your hands, and then if I were to ask you the question, "After you became a Christian, after you converted to Christianity, did you not look back in your life and see that God had already been at work in your life?" A hundred percent of the time, you will say "Yes." And for the rest of you who have always considered yourselves to be a Christian and were raised in a Christian family or Christian church, at some point you realized that's who you were. "Well, I'm a Christian." And after that realization, did you not look back in your life and see that God was at work in your life? And a hundred percent of the time you will have to say, "Yes." In fact, how can one convert to Christianity or be a Christian unless God is at work in one's life? Why is this so important? What it says is that God's ability to work in our lives is not determined by being a Christian. In fact, this is what we, as Reformed Presbyterians, believe when we say, "We believe in the sovereignty of God." And everything else I am going to say to you is based on that fundamental reality.

Two views of Jesus

Well, if God is at work in our lives whether we're Christian or not, what's the big deal about Jesus? I want to share with you two views or readings of Jesus -- reflecting the scriptures and Christian thought over the last two thousand years. Because I am telling you, my friends, whatever we think about the Christian faith, it is an interpretation. Nobody views the scriptures of the Christian faith without interpreting them. And there have been two basic streams in Christian thought over the last two thousand years. One I'm going to call "instrumental" and one I'm going to call "revelatory." And I'm going to argue --just from my personal opinion, and nobody has to buy it -- that the instrumental view is not helpful when dealing with people of other religions. It's problematic. But there is another way, a way with integrity that can be helpful. But let's look at the instrumental view for a moment.

In the instrumental view, salvation comes solely through Jesus. Jesus is the sole and only instrument of God's salvation. Through one person at a certain point in history, who lived and died in a certain way, only through this person does God's salvation come into the world. Here the Gospel is about Jesus; Jesus, himself, is the Good News. And the focus here is Christological. It is Jesus who saves us, and if Jesus is the sole instrument of God--if it is only through Jesus that salvation comes--then the only way for the world to be saved is for everyone to become a Christian. So the goal of the instrumental view is Christendom -- to make the whole world Christian.

The revelatory view says that salvation comes through the Spirit. And that the Good News is not the good news so much about Jesus, but the good news of Jesus: The Good News that Jesus preached. What this view says is that Jesus reveals how God has been at work in all times throughout history, in all places, in all people, to bring about salvation. In this view, it is God who saves us. And the goal is the kingdom of God -- that people would live as God would have them live. And part of the struggle in Western Christianity for the last two thousand years has been equating Christendom with the kingdom of God.

Now, what I am proposing to you is that when people go to the scriptures, they go reading the scriptures with one of these two interpretations. And I just want to say that the revelatory view fits with the biblical data. First of all, why in God's name do we have an Old Testament, if God had not been at work in the world prior to Jesus' coming on the scene? And what did Jesus go around doing? He preached. And what did he preach? The kingdom of God is at hand. What was the point of all of his parables? To point out where the kingdom of God was at work. In fact, what was the point of his ministry? To say the kingdom of God is a place where people do what I do: heal, forgive, befriend, reach out. And that Christians have found even in his death and his coming alive again that God can even look in the depths of evil and suffering and redeem that. What I am saying is that we can look at Jesus and see that he reveals how God is at work bringing the kingdom into every place.

Christ as the only way?

But, you say, there are some scriptures that just don't allow for that. "Go into all the world, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and make disciples of all nations." Boy, that sounds like Christendom, doesn't it? But is the Great Commission saying that we should make every person in every a nation a disciple, or is it saying that there should be some disciples in every nation, proclaiming the kingdom of God? Now, that Great Commission comes from Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus describes disciples as ... what? As salt of the earth. Light of the world. Leaven.

God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God's self. I believe that with all my heart. Does that mean that God can't be at work in other places, reconciling the world to God's self? "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me." I believe that; I believe no one can come to a parent/child, father/child relationship with God except through the likes of a human being. If a rock is the central symbol of your religion, it doesn't convey love, nor does a tree. But if a human being who came and loved us, without reservation -- if that's the central symbol of your religion, then that can help you understand God as a loving parent. So that means that Christians through Jesus of Nazareth have access to God in an intimate parent/child way; it does not rule out that other people don't have other kinds of relationships with God. Now we could get into a scripture war and go from here to eternity. My only point in sharing this is that are different ways to read these scriptures.

Shifting our understandings

This would mean a number of shifts now. If you shift from an instrumental view to a revelatory view, one shift has to do with what we think of in terms of the word "universal." We tend to think in the West of "universal" as meaning complete, comprehensive, but I've come to understand the word "universal" as meaning capable of going anywhere. The Christian faith is universal because we've seen over history it can go into any culture, into any language. But that does not mean that everyone has to subscribe to it. So we do not have to lose the universal character of Christianity; we don't need to give that up.

There is a shift here in terms of how one thinks about salvation. We've been obsessed with how we are saved, but is the more important question what does it mean to be saved? What do we look like, those of us who are saved? How do we live?

It means another shift in terms of discipleship. Is the purpose of being a Christian to make the world Christian, or is the real question of discipleship, what does it mean to be a Christian in the world? What does it mean to trust that God is saving the world and that we are called to be Jesus' disciples? It means a fundamental shift in how the church thinks about itself. For two thousand years, predominantly in western Christianity, we have said this: "The church has God's mission in the world." And the order has been very important. "The church has God's mission in the world." There is a wonderful, and somewhat wacky, nun I worked with in Benton Harbor, who said, "No, no! You've got the order all wrong. God's mission in the world has a church." The church thinks it's in possession of God's mission? No, God is in possession of God's mission. And this says two things. Number one: That God's mission in the world will not be accomplished without the church. But second, it says maybe God's mission can be accomplished with others beyond the church.

Ways of doing mission

Now this has some implications for how Christians have gone about mission, and I have just listed five or six of the classical ways Christians have gone about mission. One is proclamation of the Good News. And by the way, evangelism is different from proselytizing; proselytizing is for the purpose of converting people to Christianity, evangelizing is spreading the Good News. Christians have done mission by proclaiming the Gospel. They have done it by dialoguing with people of other perspectives, sharing their Good News and listening to others. Christians have accomplished mission by konvivenz -- they have lived among others; they've incarnationally been the presence of God in the midst of other people. Some missionaries and those in the mission field have taken Abraham as their model, with the idea that Abraham was to be a blessing to the nations, and so they have been a blessing to those around them. There are those who have striven to share the hospitality of Christ or to live in solidarity with the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized. Some have seen Christian mission as reconciling those who are at enmity with each other. These have been classical ways that Christians have sought to do mission in the world.

Now from an instrumental point of view, the purpose of this mission is to create Christians -- to convert people to Christianity. From a revelatory view, the reason to live this way is because this is how we are called to live.

Because this is the kingdom of God -- this is what it looks like. We live this way because this is how we intend to live for eternity and we want to welcome others to live in the same way.

Dialogue as a way into deeper truth

All I am proposing here are two ways of interpreting the Christian faith. All I am proposing here is for your examination and exploration. And look -- I have been wrestling with this for seven or eight years. How do I work at the Parliament of the World's Religions during the week -- working on behalf of all different religious communities -- and then go to my own church on Sunday? How do I do that without being theologically schizophrenic? So I've just tried to work out a way that doesn't change one iota of being a Christian, and yet allows for God to be at work in other people's lives.

Let me conclude with a story that's very powerful for me. A missionary was sent to India to preach the Gospel, and after he bad been there a number of years, it was time for a little vacation -- a little R&R back in the States. So he wired the missionary society who had sent him for some money to book passage on a boat home. But when he got to the port city in India from which he was to sail, he found it filled with Jews -- boatloads and boatloads of Jewish refugees, who at the end of World War II were literally sailing around the world, looking for some place to live. Port after port had turned them away, but India with its long tradition of openness to religious diversity let them put into port. It happened to be Christmas, and on Christmas Day, this missionary went into an attic or warehouse filled with Jews and he said, "Merry Christmas!" Yeah, it didn't bring too great a response. "What do you mean, 'Merry Christmas?' We are Jews. How dare you come and say 'Merry Christmas' to us?" And he said, "Well, it's Christmas Day; I'm a Christian. Merry Christmas!" And he said, "You know on Christmas we have a tradition as Christians. In the spirit of the great Gift that God gave us on Christmas Day, we give gifts to each other. What gift could I give to you?" You know what answer they came up with? Pastries! "You know what we miss sailing around the world all these months on this God-forsaken boat? Those wonderful pastries back from our homeland. If you want to give us a gift, buy us pastries." And they probably thought, "This is the end of this annoying person."

Well, what that missionary did was to go out and spend every last dime he was going to use to book passage on his boat home, and buy pastries for Jews all over that port city. Then he wired back to the missionary society for more money. And they wired back, What did you do with the money we sent you in the first place? And, yes, he wired back, I spent it on pastries for Jews. And they wired back, Why did you do that? They do not even believe in Christ! And he wired back, Yes, but I do.

Do we treat somebody a certain way, based on who they are, or based on who we are? Do we treat you a certain way and do we say that God treats you a certain way, based on who you are or based on who we are? "And who proved neighbor to the man in the ditch?" and he answered, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said, "Go and do likewise." Peace.

This presentation is copyrighted by Dirk Ficca. All rights reserved. Published here by permission of the author, and with thanks to him.

PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

Got more blogs to recommend?

Plan now for our 2010 Ghost Ranch Seminar!

GHOST RANCH SEMINAR

July 26-August 1, 2010

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