It takes no faith to believe in the bad in someone else. It’s easy and it can be fed like an all-you-can-eat buffet line.
We live in a day of sound bytes that plays into the fears of people we don’t understand and many don’t like.
We are also in the West passing through a very nationalistic stage where followers of Jesus are confusing their message. When a Christian leader stands up and agrees with policies that go contrary the words of Jesus, then nationalism can get mixed up with our submission to being more like him, especially to those who need Christ the most.
If you agree with Donald Trump, then don’t do so as a follower of Jesus, he certainly isn’t. Any policy that is built around fear and not around compassion, is doomed to failure. It doesn’t matter their political affiliation.
The best way to deal with Muslims is to engage them in conversation and friendship. If you are afraid, find people who can help you. All Muslims are not the enemy any more than all Christians are the enemy to Muslims. This whole “who is against whom”gets blown out of proportion by the amount of fear you allow to dominate your life. If you feed it, it will grow.
I am not naive. I know there are bad guys around me as I work in the inner-city area of Madrid with 10 thousand Muslims and over 100 different nations living side-by-side in our neighborhood. I know that some of them are non-religious, some may carry knives, some are really immoral and bad people, while others are drug sellers, meth-addicts and possibly a few radicalized terrorist types. I also know the vast majority are good people who are not seeking to harm us, but rather are those who want to find the good in us (as we do in them). Yet, in spite of the risks, do I avoid our neighborhood, or are we motived to love our neighbors as we love God and ourselves? This takes faith and perseverance and flies in the face of current politics and sound bytes that sound macho and are opposed to the way we should live as followers of Jesus.
Take a deep breath. If you follow Jesus, what do you have to lose? That becomes the questions. What do you really lose if you love your neighbor and later find out they did bad things? Which is more like Jesus? We as followers of Jesus are given the Spirit of God with discernment. It is not 100% but if we walk in the Spirit I believe we can discern between good and evil. If we wrap ourselves up in anger and hate, we lose the faith to discern and our witness.
May God help us to know the difference. At the end of the day, love wins and hate destroys.
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Categories: Christian-Muslim Interaction
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