Pastor Ryun Chang (AMI Teaching Pastor, Ph.D.) will present a series of blogs, dealing with various issues raised in the recent election that showed a deep divide, impacting both society at large and the church. The thoughts presented are processed through the lens of the Radical-Middle (both/and), personal narratives, and pastoral concerns. Your rational feedback is welcomed.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the respective views of AMI pastors.
DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT FOR TODAY
Getting to Know Muslims While Praying with Them in the Same Room
Acts 17:28 (ESV)
For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we are indeed his offspring.”
Whenever I get stuck at an airport on a Sunday while traveling, I try to have a personal devotional time at an airport chapel. Typical airport chapels in East Asia don’t have any chairs in order to accommodate the way Muslims pray (prostration). Occasionally, praying in the same room with Muslims, I observed a few things that have helped me to somehow connect with them.
Last March, no one was in a small Narita airport chapel when I entered; later, while I was reading the Bible, a young Muslim walked in. I quickly felt uncomfortable because he prayed in a prostrated position directly in front of me. Upon seeing the ceiling compass, however, I realized that I sat in a direction toward Mecca. While the scene may have looked funny to some, no distraction was going to keep this Muslim from prostrating before Allah—that’s taking one’s faith seriously and we ought to respect that!
Shortly thereafter, a Muslim woman walked in; and before praying, she first put on her white prayer clothe. But when I glanced to see if she was praying, to my humor, I saw her fidgeting with her smartphone. I had no idea what she was searching, but seeing her sidetracked by the same gadget that distracts all of us had a strange effect of identifying with her humanity—that is, whether we are Christians and Muslims, we, as human beings, share a lot in common.
Agreeing with what was said by a pagan writer, the apostle Paul declares to the Athenians, “For we are indeed his offspring”—meaning God’s creation.
But to say that Christians and Muslims pray to the same God would be an insult to both. I tried to demonstrate that the first time I visited a prayer room at the Hong Kong airport. Seeing that only Muslims were praying, I also wanted them to know that Christians pray earnestly and take prayer seriously just as much as Muslims do, since they typically believe that Christians don’t really pray much. First, to distinguish myself as a Christian, I knelt facing the opposite direction from the wall faced by Muslims. At the outset, I was very conscious of wanting to show an earnest praying Christian, but as my prayer got more intense, I forgot all about my surroundings. It dawned on me only after I was done praying that I was the only one left in the chapel. To the extent that any Muslims in the chapel noticed a Christian praying as fervently and extendedly as they, I hope it was a moment of distinguishing our faith. That day, nothing really happened in the prayer room: They prayed, and I did too, with no one interfering on another.
Is fear of the Muslims rational? Not the Muslims whom I met at home or abroad. But, anytime a religion becomes toxic (extreme), whether it be Islam or Christianity, we have reason to be concerned. But, let’s do our part first: “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that . . . they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Pet. 2:12, ESV).
Prayer: Father, help me to get out of my Christian cocoon and interact with my surroundings with knowledge, the Spirit and love. Help me to see that the world is changing, and that I need to really know the Scripture as well as what others believe. Help me to be an effective ambassador for You. Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: Judges 3
LUNCH BREAK STUDY
Read Prov. 6:6 (ESV): Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
Acts 14:17: “Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
Questions to Consider
- If we humans can learn something from ants, what positive things can we learn from the Muslims?
- Acts 14:17 was what Paul said to the pagans in Lystra (today’s Turkey). While some may assume that God only cares about those who believe Him, how does God really feel toward those who don’t?
- We live at a time when the believers need to be on top of their “game” (i.e., faith)—meaning we really need to know how to articulate and defend our faith against both the thought-policing by some liberals and bigotry among some conservatives. In reflecting upon this morning’s devotional, what are some takeaways that can help you better relate to Muslims?
Notes
- Since Muslims take their prayer life very seriously, the Christians in the West should imitate that. The devout Muslims pray five times a day— that’s dedication! Since God tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), we ought to develop a life of constant prayer (which may include a lengthy uninterrupted time of prayer as well as brief prayers throughout the day).
- Paul declares very clearly that God is kind to those who don’t acknowledge him, making sure that they have plenty to eat. The fact that many still go hungry in the world has to do with corrupt political systems that won’t allow the aid to get to the needy people, rather than with God.
- Personal response.
EVENING REFLECTION
Seeing how people live on the other side of the globe broadens our perspectives and prompts us to appreciate the greatness of God’s love for all peoples. Have you ever had an opportunity to step outside of the comforts of America and step into the land of different religions, cultures, and living standards? The next time you travel, sit back and watch the people. I like to watch how outdoor merchants interact with their customers, or in some cases, sit idly while waiting for them. I see how industrious they are as well as their despondency; their joy as well as disappointments. Oh, how I desire that they know the God of this universe, who created them in His likeness (James 3:9), and sent His own Son to die for them! Would you pray for the people of the global south right now, where there are many Muslims? Pray earnestly for them, “for God so love the world that He gave his one and only Son.”
A Christian apologist writes, “Christianity is the only true faith, all other religions are of the Devil. . . .”
What’s substantially different among them is their afterlife strategy: Buddhism exhorts its followers to do good on earth to achieve a better reincarnation, while Islam demands that its adherents obey the Five Pillars of Faith (the confession, daily prayers, almsgiving, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca). In short, these are man’s effort to save himself. On the contrary, the Christian faith declares that since man cannot save himself because of sin, God saves him through the atoning death of His Son Jesus. In short, this is God’s effort to save man. On this account, we break with Eisenhower: Our salvation makes no sense unless it is founded on the belief in Jesus Christ.
After reading a story about Christian mission work in a Muslim country, a reader commented, “Since when did we consider the Muslims to be unbelievers? They do not need to be converted because the Christians and Muslims believe and worship the same God.” This person’s point isn’t entirely without merit, since both the Syrian Christians and Jews referred to God as Allah before the rise of Mohammed in the 6th century. But upon a closer examination, because the original meaning attached to the name Allah underwent a dramatic makeover in the Koran, anyone who says that the Christians and Muslims worship the same God is either ignorant or condescending toward religion itself.
As Bible-believing Christians, we ought to disagree with contrary beliefs, but if we are to love our “enemies” (i.e., those with whom we disagree), we should make some effort to know what they actually teach, and then disagree—rather than going just by secondary sources, or worse, hearsays. So when I started to study about Islam, I discovered—to my surprise— some agreeable things the Koran says about Christ.
There was a time in elementary school when my classmates and I would feel insecure about our friendships. The only way to definitively confirm whether we were friends with someone was by way of a note with checkboxes for “Yes” or “No” and the question, “Dear so-and-so, are you my friend?” Once we were assured of our friend status, we could begin freely sharing our lives – snacks, jokes, toys, secrets, etc. – and trust that our friends would reciprocate.
Every so often, I need to be reminded to clean my glasses. I frequently forget to do this, because it seems unnecessary— my glasses don’t look dirty. However, every time I wipe down the lenses, seeing becomes a whole new experience. I realize that over time, the small and steady accumulation of dust and dirt slowly built up and made everything unclear.
On the web, I found this statement: “Christians have invaded and colonized a dozen Muslim countries in the past 100 years.” My response: Why start the discussion from such an arbitrary point; why not begin from the very outset of their clash at the geopolitical level? Those who want to lay all the blame on the church may not want to go there, because it will not fit their revisionist and selective history.
Read Jonah 1:1-3 (NIV): The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord
On the heels of a deadly mass shooting in Southern California by a radicalized Muslim couple in December 2015, the then candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” But what really concerned the Muslims living in the U.S. was Trump’s suggestion to create a database of them, so as to better track suspicious Muslims and detain the radicalized ones before they strike. Now, most of us would agree that the threat of violence by radicalized Muslims in America, regardless of their number, is real—unless one is an ideologue who even refuses to use the term “Radical Islam.” The question is, then, whether restraining Muslim immigration and keeping a registry of Muslims in the states is a useful and just measure.
A Turkish man sitting next to me in our flight from Istanbul to Antalya in 2015 bore a striking resemblance to Manu Ginobili, an Argentinian basketball player from San Antonio Spurs. When I commented to him of this, he (who spoke some English) became quite pleased after seeing that Ginobili wasn’t bad looking. This then led to a pleasant conversation about religion, including acts of terrorism committed by those who do so in the name of Allah. In one poignant moment, the man said, “Had I seen these terrorists first, I wouldn’t be a Muslim, but I read the Koran first.” I took that to mean, first, the Koran doesn’t advocate violence; and second, the terroristic Muslims do not accurately represent the sacred book.
Soon after immigrating to the States, I began attending a middle school without understanding hardly any English. But I felt that I could handle math and geography, since it didn’t involve much English. Ironically, my intent to take tests put the teacher in an awkward position, since he had been excusing another immigrant boy from taking them but would give him a “B” anyway. Since I chose to take tests, the teacher could no longer excuse the other boy—who now had to work.