April 27, 2008 - "How Do We Talk About Our Faith In A Pluralistic World?"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Easter 6
April 27, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

HOW DO WE TALK
ABOUT OUR FAITH
IN A PLURALISTIC WORLD?

Acts 17:22-34; Psalm 66:8-20; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

A couple of weeks ago the city of Louisville awoke to the ground shifting beneath our feet. Tremors from a real live earthquake. For the past couple of decades the religious landscape has also been shifting beneath our feet. Tremors from a real live faithquake, to use a word by Leonard Sweet.

If you fell asleep in 1950 and woke up today you would perhaps feel as though you had traveled to another planet, religiously speaking. It is a very different world than the one in which most us grew up. In the 1950's cutting edge Interfaith Conversations would have taken place between Baptists and Catholics. Today the conversations take place between Christians and Jews and Buddhists and Muslims.

Back in 1950 many Christians did not even know someone of another religion. Today Buddhists and Jews and Muslims and Christians are neighbors.

Fifty years ago the Bible was the only holy book most of us knew existed. Now we are aware of the Koran, The Bhaghava Gita, and the Tao Te Ching. In this new world, there is no longer just one holy book embraced by all as the authority on religious truth. In this new world there are voices from various other religions calling for the freedom to express their faith and not be forced to practice Christianity by praying the Lord’s Prayer at a high school football game or going to court to find the Ten Commandments hanging there.

It’s a whole new world. We call it “postmodern” and “pluralistic,” even “post-Christian.” (And if you define being Christian according to the teachings of Jesus, I’m not sure our world or nation ever was Christian.)

“Pluralism” is the recognition of other voices of religious authority and the diversity of cultures living together in one place.

“Postmodernism” is a rejection of the idea that the only truth we can know is that which can be proven by the modern scientific method. In some of its forms, postmodernism denies the reality of absolute truth altogether. Many postmoderns do not believe there is a such thing as absolute truth: Whatever is true for me may not be true for you.

The faithquake that is taking place is a move beyond that which is logical and rational to the experiential. More and more people today are embracing what we have often called the supernatural. People are very much into spirituality these days. Spirituality of all stripes. All you need to do is check out the local bookstore.

And has this evermore created an earthquake within the church. Some within the church have so strongly rebelled against postmodernism and our pluralistic society that they have narrowed the definition of truth so thin that they exclude all who disagree with them. I do not think that is the most helpful response to the world in which we live.

This morning I want us to think together about what it means to share our faith in this new world. How do we go about fulfilling the Great Commission to go into all the world sharing the gospel and making disciples?

Let me begin by saying that I think we as genuine Baptists are best suited for a postmodern world because of our emphasis on individual freedom. The last thing our postmodern pluralistic world is going to listen to is the church telling them how wrong their beliefs are and forcing down their throats what we think are the right beliefs. No one is led to change their minds or to understand something in a new way when they are told their beliefs are stupid and that they must see things our way because we alone possess the truth about God. For us to be able to say as Baptist Christians that we respect every person’s right to believe as they feel led to believe will go a long way in gaining an audience for us to share our faith.

There is a fascinating conversation going on these days among those who call themselves part of the Emergent Church. Some within this group believe the church is in the midst of such a seismic shift it is not an understatement to call it a Reformation, equivalent to the changes that came with the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. I tend to agree with them. One of the leaders, Tony Jones, has written a remarkable book entitled The New Christians.

The Emergent Church includes conservatives and progressives who together are seeking a third way between fundamentalism and liberalism. They are creating faith communities made up of people from all political and theological perspectives. They do not all believe the same thing. But one thing they do hold in common is the conviction that God’s truth comes to us best as we talk about scripture and share our faith experiences together in community.

They are often accused of not believing in absolute truth, but as Jones writes, “We believe in absolute truth, we just don’t believe we can know what it is.” It is a humble and open approach to belief and faith. And I, for one, think it is the way church ought to be. Whenever we talk about God, Paul tells us we see through a glass dimly. We can only know in part. Therefore humility and openness is required.

That doesn’t mean we take the stance that all truth is relative. It does mean that as Christians we do not possess the whole truth about God or the world. And that humble acknowledgment is one of the best places to start when talking about our faith with others.

In our epistle lesson for today, Peter tells us to be prepared to give an account of the hope that is within us, to be ready to talk about our faith, but to do so with gentleness and reverence.

It is crucial, I think, to look at the world and realize why many of us hold to the particular faith that we do. If the truth be told, many of us are Christian simply because of the home in which we are raised. This is not the case with all Christians, but it is true about most of us. For most of us our parents or grandparents were Christian, and they made sure we were in a Christian church.

And if our home was not Christian chances were very strong that if we were going to adopt any religion it would be Christian simply because of the country in which we live.

Though other religions are growing in this country, the largest number of religious people in America are Christian. And if you are born into this country to parents of no religious persuasion, if you adopt a particular religion on your own, chances are in America it will be Christian. Even more so if you live in the American South, a South Flannery O’Connor characterized as not so much Christ-centered as Christ-haunted. Jesus is everywhere, distorted though he may be. He is the shining silver buckle on the Bible belt.

What I want us to realize is that being Christian for most of us wasn’t a choice as much as it was something into which we grew. Yes, we chose to be baptized and join the church, but for most of us there wasn’t much of a chance that we would choose another religion.

And the reason why this is important to realize is because the same is true for people who grow up in other parts of the world. If you had grown up in India you can almost be certain that you would be Hindu rather than Christian. If you were born in Iraq or Iran, you can almost be assured that you would be Muslim. You would know nothing else.

To be a Muslim and have a Christian missionary living near you in Iran, sharing with you about the Christian faith, would seem as strange to you as it would today to have a Muslim missionary living in your neighborhood now trying to evangelize you and your Christian family into the Muslim faith.

The truth of the matter is I cannot say, just as you cannot say, that we would be Christian today had we been raised in a Muslim or Jewish home. Chances are we would not. And we must rid ourselves of the notion that all Buddhists and Hindus and Jews and others of non-Christian religions are heathen pagans who recognize Christianity as true but refuse to accept it.

Muslim children sit on their grandma’s knee and hear stories of Mohammed. Buddhist children hear stories of Buddha and how to follow the path of Enlightenment. Jews gather as a family every year around the table at Passover to tell their defining story of how God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. These are not families who are intentionally leading their children astray from what they believe to be the truth of Christianity. Rather, they believe in their hearts just as we believe in ours that their particular path to God is real and true.

Other religions and those who practice them deserve our respect. Several years ago I was part of a series of interfaith conversations and one Jewish man shared how rare it is to find a Jewish child who has not been told by some Christian that they and their family are going to Hell. To tell a child that is not in the least bit Christian.

It makes me think of Southern Baptist evangelist Bailey Smith’s words on the platform of the Southern Baptist Convention when he proclaimed to a standing ovation, “God Almighty does not hear the prayers of a Jew.” Who are we to say whom God will or will not listen to!

I believe that God Almighty hears the prayers of every Jew and the prayers of every human being created in God’s image. And every person, no matter what their religion, deserves our respect for the beliefs they hold dear, as long as those beliefs do not bring harm to others.

We learn to respect one other’s religious beliefs by entering into conversation with those of other faiths. Recent books on evangelism are saying “count conversations, not conversions.” I believe it is a biblical model of evangelism, exemplified by Jesus and Paul.

You don’t have to share a person’s belief system to respect their faith. And we do not need to relinquish our beliefs and our convictions to the point of relativity whereby we say it doesn’t matter what you believe. It does matter. It matters to the Jew, to the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the Muslim, and they expect our beliefs to matter to us.

It is important as a Christian for you to maintain the centrality of Jesus for your life. Just do not be arrogant about it and force others to accept your beliefs. We must give others the same respect and freedom concerning their religion that we want for ourselves.

I want the freedom to personally believe in the centrality of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. I wholeheartedly believe that the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus point us to the one God of Creation more clearly than any other source of revelation we have known. Jesus brings God near to me. He is, to borrow John A. T. Robertson’s phrase, “the human face of God” for me. The Christian faith’s assertion is that Jesus Christ is our best glimpse into the mind and heart and being of God. Not the only revelation, but the most complete.

As for me, I seek to order my life around the Christian vision of reality, no doubt because it is what my parents and church have taught me since birth, but also because I find profound meaning in the Christian vision. The Christian story serves as the foundational lense through which I see and live in the world. The Christian story helps me make sense of the world. It provides me with a most meaningful way of relating to God, to others, and to all creation. The Christian vision envelopes my life and I believe the way of Jesus to be the way of truth and purposeful living. It is the basis of my hope for eternal life. And that is why I choose as an adult to be Christian and to be a pastor.

But in talking about my faith with others, I must realize that my Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers believe as wholeheartedly in their faith as I do in mine. They read and seek to follow their sacred writings as I seek to follow mine. Their faith stories help them make sense of their world as do mine.

So how do we go about sharing our faith in this kind of pluralistic world?

There are those who would say we should not even hope for conversion in our conversations with others about faith. I would agree that it would be unethical to develop relationships with others with the hidden agenda to convert them. It is also, I think, unethical to “target” Jews or Muslims or Buddhists for evangelism. That turns people into objects. As to seeking conversion, when faith forms the foundation of our lives, it is a bit difficult to expect us not to want others to have our faith experience. So it is not about giving up altogether on conversion; it has to do with how we go about sharing our faith.

Looking at the story from Acts we read earlier, their situation looks similar to ours today. The Athenians are described as those who would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new - much like postmodernism. And as Paul talks with them he compliments them on how extremely religious they are. He is respectful of their objects of worship. And then he points to their altar that bears the inscription: “to an unknown god.” There appears to be an openness on the part of the Athenians to learn more about an unknown god.

And notice how respectful Paul was in speaking with them. Meeting them where they were in their own faith journeys, he says, “Let me share with you what I believe about this unknown God.” And he shares the story of his faith.

He tells them this God who made the earth and all that is within it is very near to each one of us. That it is this One in whom we live and move and have our being. And quoting from their own poets, seeking to draw from their religious traditions, he agrees with them that we are all God’s offspring.

Paul shared his faith by engaging the world and culture of his hearers. So can we with the music, movies, literature and arts of our culture.

And they listened to him, the text says. Some scoffed at him. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” Because of his respectful conversation with them about their own religion, Paul gained a hearing.

And so it seems to me that with the acknowledgment that one’s religion has a great deal to do with where we were born and the religion of our parents, as well as the confession that no one holds all the truth about God, it seems that we should seek to share our faith in a way that I would call Relational, Conversational, Experiential Evangelism. Or what Time magazine writer Michael Kinsley calls “non-coercive conversion.” We do not press our faith onto those who are not interested. Jesus called us to be witnesses, not a God-squad that coerces others to believe as we do.

We develop relationships with people and we talk about our faith experiences with each other. There is a song by Ken Medema that goes “Don’t tell me you’ve got a friend in Jesus without showing me first I’ve got a friend in you.” It’s about building relationships with people outside of the church.

We are not called to practice “hit and run” evangelism, meeting someone on the street, shoving a gospel tract in their face, and giving a five minute schpiel on how to go to heaven when you die. You never see anyone in the Bible doing evangelism that way because that’s not what being Christian is all about. Biblical evangelism is centered in relationship and community and the invitation to walk in the way of Jesus.

A recent study shows that adult converts these days come to Christianity through relationships. They encounter the gospel through a community of faith that permits people to discover faith for themselves, at their own pace, able to ask any question, and free to share their convictions without the risk of ridicule. For most people, “belonging comes before believing.” That is why relationships are so important.

Jesus calls us to be witnesses. And all a witness does is take the stand and says what he or she has seen and experienced. It is to say, “I have a relationship with Jesus that brings meaning and fulfillment to my life and I want to share my experience with you.”

The psalmist for today serves as an example of sharing her faith, telling what God has done for her. And that’s all we can do.

To be a witness is to enter into a respectful, open conversation with others about our faith. It is to say, “I’m not here to tell you how wrong you are. I’m here to learn what your faith tradition has to teach me, as well as share with you what my faith means to me.” Evangelism is a two-way conversation, not a one-way presentation.

And let us never forget that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to change people. We don’t convert people. We don’t win anyone to the Lord. We don’t make Christians. God does.

When John the gospel writer talks about the Holy Spirit, he speaks of the Spirit as one who leads us into truth, who convicts us, who abides with us always, and who provides us with the words to say at the appropriate time.

And so we nurture the life of the Spirit within us so that we will know what to say and when and how to do so with gentleness and reverence.

Our task is to simply be a witness. A witness to the full truth about what it means to be Christian. Becoming Christian is more than just saying a prayer asking Jesus into your heart. It runs deeper than a set of beliefs about Jesus.

Becoming Christian is:
about making a decision about how you will live the rest of your life.

It is to say,

“I will follow in the way of Jesus -
loving God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength;
loving my neighbor as I love myself,
loving my enemy,
feeding the hungry,
standing on the side of the poor,
denying myself for the well-being of others,
living in community with other Christians in the body of Christ.”

And to do so empowered by God’s love. We follow in the way of Jesus basking in the warm glow of God’s grace, assured of God’s presence every step of the way.

To be Christian is to know you are accepted by God, loved by God, forgiven by God, and called by God to live life walking in the way of Jesus.

That is the faith we live. That is the faith to which we are we called to give witness. Not arrogantly or coercively, but humbly and freely, respectfully and lovingly. Simply go and tell what Jesus means to you. And with God’s help, may the life you live mirror the words you say.