Why Inter Faith Is the Gospel
First we need to ask — What is the Gospel?
If we stick with Jesus, and I think we should, there are two versions of the Gospel. The third comes with Paul, so be careful. These two versions are:
· The time is right, God is near/God’s work is happening right now. Tune in and hear the good news.
· Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.
The Gospel is always now, it is not a Gospel of history or a Gospel of the past. It arrives in expectant contexts — liberation from an oppressive regime, from tribal conflicts and sectarianism (yes, this is Islam), insecurity and anxiety about multicultural living — liberation can be achieved by the Gospel.
Basically, the Gospel is about God, it is not just about Jesus, nor does the Gospel just belong to Christianity. It is also about what God is doing and is diverse. God is not the ‘Christian God’, God is God for Muslims, Hindus and anyone else who calls on God. Yes, that’s the idea, call on God in whatever language, by whatever Name or within whatever belief system. God does not say, ‘Oh no, come back when you want to be a Christian.’ How ridiculous that would be.
Unfortunately, putting religion under human control through clergy or authoritative collections of scripture creates the impression of exclusivity. This is why we should resist the idea of John 14.6 being an exclusivist evangelistic manifesto — it isn’t.
And the ‘good news’? — The good news is God too. There is no additional theological content worth bothering with except implementation. The good news is therefore that God is active, at work in the world, society, people, other religions (they aren’t ‘other’). Think about it, this is what Jesus was saying in his parables. If we could see this then the Gospel would arrive in love, harmony and community cohesion — rather than hatred, suspicion and fear. The Gospel can indeed be seen in the sometimes maligned tea and samosas with Muslim friends, not hardline ‘evangelistic’ preaching which makes everyone feel bad and no one welcome (this is anti-evangelism). The Gospel is saying directly to us — consider whether you may have the wrong outlook and think inclusively instead. The Gospel may be all around you, it probably is, but you haven’t seen it. Don’t expect people to come into church to see the Gospel, they may not see it and they would be looking in the wrong place, the Gospel does not belong indoors.
You can check this against Jesus’ parables. Ask Jesus what the Gospel is and he will tell you, has already told all of us — baking bread, planting crops, rejoicing with others at a party. In fact, sharing with others, including strangers, at a banquet is one of Jesus’ frequent potent images of Heaven/the Kingdom of God/the Gospel. Consider this — there is more Gospel in Eid than Easter. So, when you go to a Big Iftar at a mosque you are all — Christians and Muslims — sharing in the Gospel. In fact, one of the common Eid Qur’an readings is from the Gospel! If you stay away due to theological ‘correctness’ you have taken the Gospel away, excluding yourself with foreign exclusive ideas while God is there enjoying the samosas and fellowship. You have made yourself into a ‘Pharisee’. This is a great opportunity to ask What Would Jesus Do?
So, in this first description of the Gospel the timing, context, God, God’s work and the process of engaging with God are all open to the other, it is inclusive of difference, diversity, multiculturalism, multiple religions. If we say that our ‘Gospel’ has no place for any of those things, remembering that it is God’s Gospel, not ours, then we have lost the Gospel. The Gospel does not support the exclusivism that we have created.
The other common description of the Gospel is based on the Law of Love — love of God and love of neighbour. We might think that this is Christian love but it is not, the words belong in their original Jewish context, but are also picked up, perhaps via Jesus, in the Islamic tradition — ‘no one is a believer until they love for their sister/brother what they love for themselves’. Christians might quibble and say that this law is not the Gospel, as it is still within the scope of the law and is not in fact the Gospel. This is, as may be clear from what has already been said, to be overly pedantic. The Shema, on which Jesus’ statement is based is at the core of the religion and at the core of Jesus’ own message, it is therefore at the centre of the Gospel. The unpacking of this Law of Love leads to the story of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan is exactly where you would look if you were seeking Jesus’ sermon on the Gospel — love and restoration coming from an unexpected direction. Jesus himself is a ‘Good Samaritan’, a distrusted Northerner outside the religious structures, of uncertain parentage (despite those well-known, but speculative, genealogies).
When Jesus, or God wants to introduce the Gospel it is through the foreigner. Its subversive message is that we do not need to be on the right path or even to be able to put a label on everything, for both giver and recipient, human interaction can be salvatory.
The command is, of course, almost too challenging and, in my understanding, is saying something like — as a committed follower of God, unless you are committed to other people in love, demonstrated by dialogue and interaction, then you are not on the right path, you have not shown love of God, you have not repented (apologised for your negative outlook towards other religions and their people), you are not contributing to God’s work of bringing peace and reconciliation. There are few things more hateful than the ‘devout’ Christian who proves their faith by confronting, antagonising and insulting Islam. These days even if you are not connected to any media source and live in a non-diverse areas you cannot say the Muslim is not my neighbour because they are part of our shared multicultural, no longer quite Christian, society. And we definitely should not be calling our society Christian if it does not have a warm welcoming place for Muslims and other faiths. Nor does God have any interest in negative takes on other religions.
We may think that the Bible, especially St Paul’s writings, gives us a basis for writing off, denouncing or passing judgement on other religions but it really doesn’t. Jesus’ multicultural parables and encounters show that God is open to anyone, only asking — do you love me, do you love your neighbour? And surprisingly, perhaps, this simple yet challenging phrase appears in all the world religions. This is just one of the realisations that should tell us that God is speaking, active and available in all the religious traditions, that none of them are privileged. This helps us not to interpret our Gospel texts in an exclusive way, as that was never the intention for them.
Written in July 2017 but not published until now, it has not been changed to reflect my conversion.
If you didn’t click on the various links as you were reading, I have listed them all here:
