Reluctance to reach out to other faiths
 Regular Network Norwich and Norfolk columnist James Knight considers the Christian's responsibility to proclaim the Good News to those who are worshipping false Gods - or no God.
As the local election period comes to a close in our region and our newly elected Members take their seats, I think this is a good time to be mindful of celebrating what a great nation we live in. We should be keen to remind ourselves that principles such as the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, equalities, and freedoms of expression and conscience are not principles that every nation is blessed enough to have, so thank God we have them here.
Ethnic diversity has certainly enriched our society (as it does most others) – and multiethnic states are mostly vibrant and dynamic places that are strengthened by the varied contributions of their inhabitants. Our nation is all the better for its cultural and ethnic diversity, and evidence shows that the better we can integrate such diversity the better educated we will be and the more enriching and harmonious our nation will be as a place to live.
While it is true that peaceful coexistence of different values and traditions depends upon a high level of toleration from the country’s inhabitants, it is equally true that it is the responsibility of those living in such areas to discourage segregation and encourage positive integration. In a nation with many people of many different faiths, it cannot have gone unnoticed that ‘faith’ is a subject that everyone is talking about again, and as Christians keen to impact in people’s lives, this can only be a good thing. Whether it be the lack of Judeo-Christian values employed by so many questionable authority figures in Parliament, the success of the best-selling atheists’ books like Richard Dawkins’ ’The God Delusion’ and Christopher Hitchens’’ ‘God is not Great’, the bus campaign stating ‘There probably is no God’, or the prodigious amounts of people completing the many great Alpha courses available in their district or region, ‘faith’ is a subject high on people’s agenda again.
It is because of the resurgence in ‘faith’ discussions that one is reminded how quiet it has all been in many places this past few years. The philosopher Hegel once remarked that the owl of mineover doesn’t take wing until dusk; in other words they don’t fly until it starts to get dark. What he meant was that it is very often only at the close of an epoch that you can really say there was an epoch at all; you can give it some kind of measure and depth – it happened in 1989 with the fall of Communism and the fading out of the last seismic echoes of the cold war. The owls of evangelism are beginning to anticipate the dusk – the horizon looks brighter, and the quiet epoch seems to have drawn to a close. The next stage is already discernible, and it is up to us to keep the topics buzzing and keep the subjects on the tip of everyone’s tongues.
As Christians the fight is on to have the truth made known a lot better than is presently the case, and it is on this point that I would like to remind us of something very important that is often overlooked. It is not just the atheists we are trying to reach out to, it is all who do not know Jesus Christ – and that includes those of other faiths as well. We want them to know the truth about the love and grace of Jesus as much as anybody else, yet it seems we as Christians are less sure of ourselves when it comes to these matters.
Dispelling a myth about other people’s beliefs
The mistake is often made by Christians that Christ’s instruction to love everyone is incompatible with any desire to help people see the falsehood that is attached to the non-Christians belief systems – after all, we must not forget that Jesus warned us they would be with us and that each and every one of the false religions denies His Divinity. What is implied is that a gracious and loving Christian would not speak openly about these issues for fear of offending. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very embodiment of love is that it recognises the futility of falsehood – the whole wisdom of Christians is to love everybody, therefore our loving them must naturally will the removal of any falsehood that is holding others back from seeing God in Jesus. With Christ’s love we need to reach out to those who are worshipping false gods as well as those who have no belief in God at all - and I think this is a point that is often overlooked nowadays.
The true measure of a good thinker is one who can say (as St Paul did) that it is incumbent upon a man to depart from his opinion of something if better falsifying evidence comes along. Yet sadly many people would try to change or suppress the evidence rather than examine their deep-felt beliefs, and that is why religion has carved out for itself a protective niche whereby it becomes difficult to question, criticise or argue against someone’s religious beliefs. George Orwell said our prime responsibility, and thus our greatest asset if we can master it, is being able to tell people what they do not wish to hear - what Orwell himself called ‘the power of facing unpleasant facts’. Other people let themselves off this elementary task, but they see as well as you and I the lengths that people will go to in order to avoid analytical thinking; the contortions people will go through not to see a point. They are wedded to fooling themselves, and it is our job to prick the balloon of illusion that surrounds them.
Those who seek solace in the comfort of their beliefs are entitled to do so but solace does not always imply ‘true’. It is on this point at least that Karl Marx was right - that, while not applying to Christianity, spurious belief systems can bring some form of spirit into spiritless lives; the illusions in false religion is at the same time the demand to give up the condition that requires the illusion. He went on to say that criticism of such beliefs had plucked the flowers from the chain, not so that we could wear the chain with consolation, but so that we could break the chain. And that, I think is what we are called upon to do. Christ called us to help others break the chain.
And as I said a moment ago, one must also be careful with frivolous references to loving your neighbour and respecting each other’s beliefs – it is frivolous in the sense that to overlook the futility of false beliefs systems is to overlook the compassion and respect too. We must not duck the obligation upon us by the strength of the motion before us. Falsity is after all a sub-division of ultimate futility, as our Lord tells us that many will think they have known God only to find out that Christ, in fact, never knew them at all.
So you see as Christians it seems to me that many who profess to accept Jesus as Lord have overlooked the fact that this false feeling has been allowed to congeal in many Christian minds; a kind of view which is happy for people to carry on believing in whichever (non-Christian) faith they have chosen to believe in so long as they are not part of a group which causes harm to others. Let me reiterate - this seems to me to be a far too relaxed position to take; particularly as Christ told us to take the good news to all nations.
On this position alone, as a Christian one must be forced to admit that all other religions are therefore equally bad and at least latently equally harmful to the minds of those who subscribe to them. It should be remembered that virtually all of the adherents of other faiths are adherents for one of two reasons. Either the belief system has been inculcated at such a young age that they have never known, or never been introduced to, any better belief system; or secondly, they have adopted a belief system based upon a personal partisan almost always due to a misleading outside influence. It is true that to adopt either of these approaches is a bad thing; that is, both positions promote a keenness to discard the very ‘Truth’ that can given us salvation – Jesus Christ.
And of course as Christians we are not called to insult them or harass them or ridicule them or persecute them we are called to love them. And, in my view, the best way to love them is to try to bring them to Christ with love, grace and respect. But to overlook their position and say ‘well they do no harm to anyone’ or ‘live and let live’ or ‘we can’t question other people’s religious beliefs’ is to disregard the words of Jesus and judge their position irresponsibly.
As people we can make a difference
If ever we are to underestimate the difference that ‘the people’ can make, we shall limit ourselves in a very unhealthy way. This country has a long history of people who have made a difference by speaking out, and aside from through our democratic right to vote, there are countless examples of situations in which the power of the people have caused a change. Opposition to the poll tax (both legal and illegal) helped bring an end to Margaret Thatcher’s reign and indeed, to poll tax. Pressure groups and opinion polls were successful in persuading the government to ban handguns. The fuel protests, somewhat dubiously, did at least show that collectively the populace has the power to bring the country to a virtual standstill if it so wished. Edwina Currie was sacked as Health Minister in the late eighties over her comments about salmonella which infuriated many retailers. Pressure from Railtrack owners and shareholders brought about compensation when none looked likely, although admittedly it was a bit of a double indemnity (the government would find it more difficult to raise private finances for other public investments if they were seen to be unmindful of the Railtrack shareholders’ cause).
These incidents and many like them show just how the public can make a difference if such a difference is required. The voice of the minority can soon become the voice of the majority if the cause is worth speaking up for – and what better cause than the gospel that we are trying to share with a nation badly in need of salvation?
Some of the most disparate aspects of politics now involve identity politics rather than simple material differences. Many of the differences have arisen over cultural, national, religious, and ethnic identity - yet it is this shift which lies at the very heart of our influence. The identity politics which predominates in central government is the very thing which the public can use to their advantage; that is, we too can be architects of our own success by finding a unified identity as potential sons of God, one which transcends our cultural and ethnic identities (Galatians 3:38). We are, after all, much the same in our desire for equal opportunity, prosperity, tolerance, mutual respect, liberty, freedom and equality. We have much that we can be very proud of in this country, and we live in a country that because of its strong qualities gives us the perfect opportunity to take the good news to every corner of the nation. Now that everybody is talking about faith again – we might just find that this is the perfect opportunity to ensure that this continues and many more are reminded of the good news that Christianity has to bring.
The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norwich and Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users. We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here. You can also contact the author direct at james.knight@norfolk.gov.uk
James is a Norwich local government officer, author and Proclaimers church member in Norwich. You can access his current collections of columns here
Meanwhile, if you want to find out more about Christianity, visit: www.rejesus.co.uk | 