We lament because we believe in God passionately

By David Funk

Psalm 88 is terrible. It is the one psalm that has no ingredient of resolution, no praise, not even a commitment to praise in the future. The poet ends his prayer by stating:

“I have been afflicted and dying from my youth on;

I have suffered your terrors; I am desperate.

Your burning anger has crossed over me;

your terrors have annihilated me.

They swirl around me all day like water;

they have encompassed me completely.

You have removed lover and friend from me;

Darkness is my closest friend.”

The final word in Hebrew is “darkness.” Marty Martin, author of A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart, writes that “the Psalm is a scandal to anyone who isolates it from the biblical canon, a pain to anyone who must hear it apart from more lively words. Whoever devises from the Scriptures a philosophy in which everything turns out right has to begin by tearing out this page of the volume.”

What is this psalm doing in our Bibles, we who have a faith characterized by hope, joy and the love of the Lord? Part of the answer must be that sometimes we as God’s faithful people find ourselves in the shoes of this poet.

Life is a God-ward journey, but the road toward him sometimes takes us into valleys. In those valleys we are not able to see our goal. More than that, some of these valleys are so deep that not even a ray of light enters the bottom. This is the valley of Tzel-Maweth, Hebrew for “the shadow of death.” We need this prayer because sometimes we sojourn in the Valley of Tzel-Maweth.

Psalm 88 is the prayer of a person in unrelenting pain. We don’t know the exact situation the psalmist was in, and that is intentional. This psalm is written in such a way that it can be the prayer of any of us who experience insistent pain for any reason. But one of the more common experiences of the Valley of Tzel-Maweth is the pain that mental illness brings.

Mental illness touches almost all of us in some way, whether because it is your own personal experience or because someone you love is walking that valley. Perhaps you know what it is like to visit the psychiatric ward when someone you love is on suicide watch. It is said that 22.1 percent of all adults suffer from a diagnosable psychiatric disorder in any given year.

To be sure, mental illness is a physical event. It has to do with synapses, neurons and chemicals of the brain. But we believe that we are created beings, in inextricable relationship with our Creator. We believe that we are not just souls, but embodied souls. Matter matters. Mental illness is therefore a physical event that has profound spiritual fallout.

The experience of mental illness raises some profound and troubling questions. We wonder, “Is it God who sends this suffering? If so, why?” Theologian Kathryne Greene-McCreight writes of her experience with bipolar disorder and clinical depression in Darkness Is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness. She writes: “Why, with my religious convictions about the love and mercy of God, with my belief in that unconditional and free grace of God poured out in Jesus even in spite of my basest longings and actions, why would I not be filled with joy at every moment, eager to greet the day with the love of the Lord?”

The basic question on which all others return is, “What is the relation of God to my suffering?”

Enter Psalm 88. This prayer is terrible, but it is not ultimately hopeless. It is not a psalm of mute depression. The fact that it is not hopeless consists not in what it does or does not say but rather in how it is said. Hopelessness sounds like resignation. Hopelessness sounds like silence, like non-prayer. This psalm speaks to God, and therein lies all the difference.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “This psalm, like the faith of Israel, is utterly contained in the notion that Yahweh is there and must be addressed.” It is as if on the bottom of the Valley of Tzel-Maweth there is a pit, and it is prayer like this that is the lifeline that keeps us from falling into that pit.

Prayer like this is, therefore, an act of courage and an act of defiance. By it we remember and insist that in all things it is the Lord with whom we have to do. Even in that horrible valley we are on a journey towards God, and that terrible valley cannot be—is not—where that journey ends.

So, why do we have this prayer in our Scriptures, which are otherwise characterized by hope, joy and love? Because this is what faithfulness sounds like in situations of unrelenting pain. We’re in real trouble when we stop praying like this, when we cease our part in this difficult conversation with God. Then there truly is hopelessness and we slip into the pit on the bottom of Tzel-Maweth.

The majority of the prayers that God has given us to pray to him give some expression to brutally honest lament. If this awful kind of prayer is one of God’s provisions for us when we are in the Valley of Tzel-Maweth, then we must have room in our faith for this kind of prayer. But we don’t. Lament has been mostly exiled from our personal and corporate worship, and the loss is great indeed.

Lament is driven by a conviction that God cares and matters and is who he says he is. We lament not because we don’t believe, but because we believe so passionately. Conversely, loss of lament is a sign of unbelief. God has given us Psalm 88 and other laments because this is what faithfulness sounds like when we walk in the valleys. Even here it is the Lord with whom we have to do. Yes, Lord!

ADNet offers resources on mental illness

Mennonite Brethren congregations and individuals looking for resources on mental illness can explore Anabaptist Disabilities Network (ADNet), an inter-Mennonite organization whose mission is to encourage families and equip the church to include persons with disabilities fully in the life of the congregation and community. Disabilities are defined broadly to include physical, sensory, cognitive, and emotional disabilities, including mental illness.

ADNet is committed to making available to families and congregations the best in Christian resources related to all types of disabilities, including mental illness. The organization offers print resources, including classic titles originally published by their predecessor Mennonite advocacy ministries at Mennonite Mutual Aid and Mennonite Central Committee.

The classic booklet, Supportive Care in the Congregation, describes care circles, a method for congregations to offer supportive care to families and persons who deal with disabilities, mental illness, chronic illness or other needs. A more recent booklet, published in this decade, is Crystal Horning’s A Christian View of Mental Illness. The booklet provides background on the church’s historic response to mental illness and outlines a Christian response based on Scripture.

ADNet also offers newer titles by Christian and secular publishers and a variety of articles, papers and graphics online. VHS tapes and DVD discs are available for loan, with newer titles available also for purchase, including Mennonite Media’s widely used new video on mental illness, Shadow Voices.

ADNet’s newer periodical resources are the Connections newsletter, published three to four times a year, and a quarterly electronic newsletter called ADNotes, which offers tips and additional resources especially for churches. Their newest program is the Congregational Accessibility Network (CAN), that provides resources for congregations to evaluate the extent to which they include all persons.

Most of ADNet's resources are free; others are offered for sale at minimal cost. The ADNet Web site offers full details. Information is also available by writing adnet@adnetonline.org or by leaving a message via voicemail or fax at 1-877-214-9838.

Take a closer look at Luke 2 and find new meaning to old traditions

We relive with Mary and Joseph the long, grueling trip to Bethlehem that was just a bit much for a nine-month-pregnant woman and led to a short labor and delivery on the night of their arrival in Bethlehem.

We respond with astonishment once more that the arriving king is not born in a palace, not even in a house or a hotel room, but in a barn. His first bed is a feeding trough!

We hear the angels’ message, run with the shepherds to see, ponder with Mary. In short, we relive the old story that never changes.

We try to make the traditions come alive, and we supplement them with traditions of our own. Traditions about trees and gifts and guests and Christmas dinners and lots of things that are designed to make Christmas special but often make it a dizzying cycle of busy activity and stressed nerves. Perhaps the time has come to make some changes. And I don’t mean only in the trimmings we’ve added. What if we reimagined the Christmas story itself!

I don’t mean that we should invent a new story. I mean that we should take the Bible very seriously but fill in the gaps differently than we are accustomed to doing. Have you never noticed how much of the Christmas story we actually make up with our own imaginations?

• How many wise men are there? Who knows? The Bible doesn’t tell us…so we make it three. You know, standardize it so we can create the right number of figures for the Christmas display.

• Which animals are there in the stable? Who knows? The Bible doesn’t tell us…so we make it an ox and an ass. You know, “Ox and ass before him bow, and he is in the manger now.” Oh yes, the little shepherd boy was carrying a lamb, wasn’t he?

• We use great imagination on the evil innkeeper. He’s the bad guy in the story. Whole Sunday school plays center on his opportunism (taking advantage of market conditions to quadruple his rates), his callous blindness (not recognizing the coming of the Lord of Glory), his hard-heartedness (not even finding room for an expecting couple) and his economic chauvinism. Poor carpenters just don’t cut it; you have to be a Roman census official or a respected Jewish leader to find a room in his hotel on this busy night.

And having created our images of Bethlehem, we let the story challenge us—challenge us to be as peaceful and calm as the shepherds on the hillside, as filled with worship and praise as the angels, as generous as the wise men, as contemplative as Mary and as obedient as Joseph.

It’s a beautiful story, this one we’ve filled in for ourselves. Well, beautiful except for that old innkeeper. But we need him as our scapegoat. After all, the larger than life “good guys” in the story leave us with an impossible ideal. One thing comforts us: At least we aren’t as bad as the innkeeper.

Start with the innkeeper

I want to suggest a way of reimagining what happened. I begin with the question: “How did the innkeeper get into our story?” The New Testament doesn’t mention an innkeeper.

Well, we get the idea of the innkeeper from the mention of the inn. “No room in the inn” must mean that some innkeeper didn’t make room. But the story in Luke doesn’t actually refer to an inn either—not in the original language at least. When Luke says, “There was no room in the inn,” he used a word that could mean “inn,” but almost never does. It almost always means “guestroom,” as the TNIV now translates the word.

The word used is kataluma, a word used exactly three times in the Bible. It is used once in Luke 2 and twice more to refer to the room in which Jesus had the Last Supper with his disciples. But they didn’t go to an inn. Luke clearly describes the location as a “large upper room” (Luke 22:1; cf. Mark 14:14). It is a large guestroom built, as was common for Jewish families, on the top of a normal house.

So kataluma normally means “guestroom on top of a house.” Moreover, when Luke wants to speak of an inn, he uses a different term, pandocheion. This is the term used in the parable of the good Samaritan. The injured man is taken to an inn (a pandocheion)—not a guestroom in a house. And Jesus’ parable even refers to an innkeeper, a pandocheus. It means the TNIV version correctly interprets what Luke wrote: “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” Baby Jesus was laid in a manger because other guests already occupied the guest room on top of the house!

No stable either!

Perhaps you are saying, “Inn, guest room—who cares? Why does it matter whether Joseph and Mary had to go to the barn because the inn was full, or because the guest room was full? It comes out the same, doesn’t it?” Well, here is where everything gets interesting. More disappears from the story than just the inn—and of course with it, the evil innkeeper. There is no stable either.

Check your Bibles. Do they mention a stable? Nope.

“But,” we protest, “there must have been a stable. There was a manger and a manger means a stable.” Not necessarily.

Evidence from elsewhere in Scripture shows that a typical first-century Palestinian manger was not to be found in a stable, i.e. a separate building made just for animals. It is found in the living room of the family’s large, one-room split-level house. The typical Palestinian peasant’s house was one large room under a flat roof. It was built with two floor levels, an upper level where the family lived, ate and slept and a lower level where the animals normally spent the night. And then, of course, there might be a guest room on the roof.

So where is the manger? In the most logical place in such a house: built into the floor of the living area, right next to the lower level where the animals are kept. Animals can stand in their lower level and eat hay from the manger built into the floor of the higher level.

A typical manger was in the living room of a house. So the stable disappears along with the innkeeper and his inn.

So then Luke 2 does not say, “They had to go to a barn because the innkeeper was too hard-hearted to make a room available for the holy couple.” Rather it says, “They were taken right into the living room, because the guest room was already full.”

The story is not about a full hotel, an evil innkeeper and the cold, dark barn. It is about a typical Palestinian house—one that makes room for the holy couple, even though the guest room is already occupied by other friends or relatives crowding into Bethlehem for the census.

Gains and losses

If this way of reading the text is correct, what do we gain, and what do we lose?

Well, this way of reading the story actually saves us a lot of trouble. It makes more sense of what we read in the Bible.

We don’t have to imagine that Jesus was born on the very night that Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem. The way Luke tells the story, it sounds rather as though Mary spent the last weeks or months of her pregnancy there. We don’t have to wonder how Mary, who has relatives in the hill-country of Judea, and Joseph, who is a native son of the village, can’t find a single family (let alone one of their many relatives) who will take them in for the night, or for a week, or perhaps for the last months of Mary’s pregnancy. We’ve had to imagine Mary and Joseph arriving the night of Jesus’ birth in order to explain why they couldn’t find a decent place to sleep.

Best of all, we don’t have to invent a new house that the family moves to after Jesus’ birth, but before the wise men arrive. After all, if the shepherds came to a manger and the wise men to a house, we imagine Mary, Joseph and Jesus must have moved in the meantime. But with this new reading, they’re in the same house all the time!

And this means the wise men and the shepherds might actually have gathered together to worship Jesus—rich and poor, Jew and Gentile worshiping the one born to be King. And we can even imagine that the star leading the wise men to the place Jesus lay shone over the house not months later, but on that first Christmas night.

And so, instead of reimaging the story in such a way that we have to throw away all our manger scenes, we actually find a story that makes appropriate even those parts that we thought didn’t quite represent what actually happened. We lose nothing. There is still a manger and there are animals, and we can argue there was even a stable, though it was part of the house.

Oh yes, we lose the evil innkeeper—our scapegoat. But then, maybe we can find better motivations for enjoying a meaningful Christmas than staying a couple steps ahead of that old scrooge. Yes, we lose the innkeeper. But we gain a wonderful picture of what it really means for Jesus to come down from heaven to join humanity—a picture of God coming down to identify with common folks like you and me, coming down right where we are, being born in a normal home like all the other babies in Bethlehem. There were probably any number of babies enjoying the soft hay of mangers in the living rooms of other crowded homes in Bethlehem that year.

The story never changes

This reading of Luke 2 suggests a whole new internal motivation and spiritual resource for celebrating a meaningful Christmas. It challenges us to open our own living rooms for Jesus, making room for him not in the barn, not in the inn, but in our living rooms, right where the family lives, where the pets roam, where we work and sleep and play and eat—even when our homes are packed full of guests. If a home in Bethlehem can make room for Jesus in the hustle and bustle of census time, surely we can do it in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season.

This year I don’t want to imagine Jesus lying out in a barn while we prepare our Christmas celebrations and go through the activities of the season. And I don’t want to limit the worship part of Christmas to a few reverent trips out to that stable—you know, once or twice during church services and maybe Christmas Eve or Christmas morning before we open gifts.

Rather, I want to imagine Jesus living in our house as we celebrate. I want to imagine him joining me in the kitchen as I prepare part of our family meal. I want to imagine him present—not out there in the barn. After all, they called him Emmanuel, God with us—with us not only on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning but through all the hustle and bustle of the season.

I don’t usually think of Christmas as a time that is devoid of planning—when things happen by accident. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. We work ahead to decorate our homes and do all the baking that we associate with this time of year. We orchestrate gift shopping, wrapping and delivery and coordinate a full calendar of community, work, church and family programs, parties and events. In order to accomplish all the good stuff that makes our Christmas season memorable, we plan, plan and plan!

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we recognize that the reason we’re doing all of these things is to celebrate his birth. He is the Savior of all mankind, and celebrating his incarnation should reflect and worship him. Our Christmas celebrations are full and rich when they draw our attention to Jesus Christ and his message of grace, salvation, forgiveness and new life.

But our Christmas traditions and celebrations won’t have this focus unless we intend them to. We can’t leave something this important to chance. We must deliberately provide ways for Christ’s message to infuse our Christmas season.

Last year we invited Christian Leader readers to contribute to an article on being intentional about holiday traditions by answering the question: What do you do to keep your Christmas celebrations focused on Christ? Some people replied informally while others wrote more detailed descriptions and even sent samples. Read on and you will hear from seven readers. I am blessed by the way each of these individuals reflect on their Christmas traditions, and I trust you will be too.

I also invite you to add your comments at the end of the article, telling us how you and your family intentionally focus your Christmas celebrations on Jesus Christ. —Connie Faber

Lessons from the nativity

It was early December about five years ago that Marlene and i were talking about the upcoming Christmas season. My thoughts went back to the Christmases I shared with both sets of grandparents when I was a boy.

As Marlene and I were discussing our Christmas plans for our family, I suddenly realized that what goes around comes around. Now I am the grandpa and the family comes to my house!

What could I do to make the Christmas story memorable for longer than the few minutes before the Christmas presents become the focus. Marlene was putting up the nativity scene her mother had made for her when an idea came to me. Why not have a grandchild read the Christmas story, and then I choose one item from the set as an object lesson?

The first year I chose the star. I made a large star out of cardboard and covered it with tinfoil. Our star had five points and I assigned a letter to each point. The five letters spelled the word “Jesus,” the reason the star shone so brightly that night. Jesus is the light of the world, I told the children.

When I asked the kids to repeat what each point was, they didn’t miss one—and they received a dollar for each point they remembered. Even our youngest granddaughter, not yet one-year old, watched with interest what was going on.

The next Christmas, I made a manger out of wood for each grandchild. The mangers had a false bottom where we hid a five-dollar bill. The lesson was that God used a simple, common feed bunk to give the world the greatest Christmas gift ever. If we accept Jesus Christ, God’s gift to us, then God will use us too, even if we think that, like a manger, we can’t do much.

The next year the camel had its turn as the object lesson and the year after that it was the angels. I hear that already the older grandchildren are wondering what the “lesson” will be this Christmas. Grandpa is wondering too!

Cards tell the story

I may have friends and family who have never received the gift of Jesus as Savior and Lord. So in 2006 my husband and I composed a Christmas card with our testimonies telling how we were born into God’s family.

Emerson and I are in our mid-70s, and since our health is uncertain we are thinking more about eternity. How we love our friends and family and want them to be with us in heaven some day. This desire prompted us to share our stories. Now we give the results to God to use and bless.

Alternative giving

For the past several years, the members of my extended family and I have agreed that we have more material possessions than we ever wanted. So I suggested that we stop exchanging gifts and instead give the amount we would have spent on gifts to the Lord’s work. Some family members were aghast at the suggestion while others thought it was a great idea.

Each year I have given $1,000 either to missions or to a special project within my local church. I moved to Hillsboro from southern California in the summer of 2007, so my “alternative” Christmas gift last year went to a special project connected with the new building of my church here in Hillsboro.

It has been a great blessing to give to the Lord’s work and to keep him as the focus of Christmas. And I must confess, it certainly beats going to all the stores and trying to select gifts for people who already have too much!

Stephen Vincent,

Hillsboro, Kan.

Thinking of others

Our two sons are now grown, but when they were younger we lit an Advent candle with day-by-day marks. We burned the candle at the evening meal, and they both looked forward to lighting it. Then we would read through the Christmas cards we got that day and talk about the families who sent them. We tried to continue this through high school, although they were not as enthused by then. We hoped this would help our sons think about others during the Christmas season.

Focusing on Christ

Our daughters are 10 and seven. Here are some of our ideas for keeping Christ the focus of Christmas.

• Our advent celebrations include a daily advent calendar with nativity characters to add to the scene and lighting an advent wreath candle each week and discussing the significance.

• We fill a "Jesus stocking" with notes telling of kind acts done by our family members "as unto the Lord." When we open our stockings on Christmas morning, we also read what kind things we've done throughout the month. Credit goes to Lisa Schmidt of Millard Bible Church, Omaha, Neb., for this idea.

• I read aloud many books from our now extensive collection of Christmas picture books that give further insight into the Christmas story—books by Max Lucado like Alabaster's Song, The Crippled Lamb or Jacob's Gift; King of the Stable by Melody Carlson, Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg and Pine Tree Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs.

• Watching The Nativity movie as a family and sleeping in sleeping bags by the Christmas tree is something we started last year that I think we’ll continue.

• At meals from Christmas until Easter, we pull a couple Christmas cards, letters or pictures from our collection and pray for those friends.

Carols and cookies

One of the things my family does to make Christmas about Jesus and God is to go caroling with two or three other families at a nursing home during the supper meal. Then our families have a potluck. We’ve done it for a few years now. Our family also memorizes Christmas hymns. Each year we select one new hymn about the Christmas story, and we sing and memorize it during the Christmas season.

Another thing we have done is to bake Christmas cookies and then take plates of cookies to our neighbors to wish them a Merry Christmas. It is one of the few times we have been in some of these neighbors’ homes.

Up to me

Two years ago I realized consciously for the first time that I no longer have any real Christmas traditions and keeping Christ at the center is, well, up to me. My parents are divorced and so are my husband's. He grew up without Christ; I grew up with him. My dad used to read us the nativity story from Luke every Christmas Eve. No longer. I miss that.

My husband's family is a mix of Christian, nothing and Mormon; mine is a mix of Christian and not sure what. In trying to make everyone happy, we find ourselves driving to multiple houses in an effort to have a "family Christmas." Two years ago we spent Christmas Day with my mom's side of the family. My husband and I organized a nativity skit with competing sides and had a fun quiz with questions about the nativity. It was the only way I could find to make Christ a part of the celebrations without once again being the "annoying Christian" of the family. They seemed to enjoy it.

Last year I did my own nativity reading of Matthew and Luke. It wasn'tmuch—just me, my Bible and a cup of hot chocolate—but it was my one way of connecting to the real meaning of what this holiday, turned month of craziness, is all about.

This year my husband and I will spend our first Christmas as parents. We welcomed our son, Maddox, into the world in October. The responsibility to clothe and feed him and keep him well seems immense. Yet, we know our responsibility includes much more than that—introducing him to his Creator. The Christmas season can play a large role in doing this and we look forward to seeing how our traditions are shaped by it.

Megan Richard

Fresno, Calif.

It’s been years since we spent our last Christmas together before you died. Everyone converged at my sister Jane’s to celebrate Christmas Eve 1994 in the way that had been our ritual for decades. The table was laden with hamburgers and french fries.

That tradition, as strange at it was, had been set years before when the three oldest of your five children were small. You told me why: Manson (Iowa) Mennonite Church always held a Christmas Eve service, and you wanted to prepare something “easy” for the children in order to make it to the service on time. The tradition stuck through the years, even when your five children grew up and moved away from home. I know you smile in heaven when you see how no matter where anyone is spending Christmas Eve, the hosting family always sets the table with the simple, ritual fare. Following supper, we share gifts and attend a candlelight service.

Mom, I know now, many years later, that my heaviness came from sensing the shortness not only of your breath due to your failing heart but of the shortness of your days left on earth. The first sign came when I saw you pick at your plate of hamburger and fries, unable to eat. Even so, you tried your hardest to smile at your children, their spouses and your grandchildren.

You saved some of your most special smiles that night for Jordan Lee, the baby of my nephew, Seth, and his then-wife Dena. The baby was decked out in her Christmas finery, ready to eat her meal at her mother’s breast. She was the last great-grandchild you held. You seemed to know that out of all of us around the table, she and you were closest to God. She had just come into the world, and you soon would leave it.

Then, there was the way your face looked in the glow of the small fire of your candle as the congregation sang Silent Night. The lines on your face looked deeper, sadder. And the gaze of your eyes turned inward to a place where only you could go. As I looked down the aisle at you standing by Dad, your husband of 53 years, I wanted to stumble over family members between us and grab you and never let you go. I wanted you to take me to that place inside your soul that experienced Christ’s coming into the world differently because of your impending exit. But fear held me in its grip, as I remained glued to my spot.

Finally, there was the time in front of Jane’s fire the night before I flew back to New York City where I’d lived for the last eight years. As had been our well-worn path since I had moved to that city without your blessing, you asked me yet again when I would “come home.” I had hardened myself against this inevitable question with my usual answer, “I’m not sure—but God will let me know when the time is right.”

As the words came bumbling out with guilt, they tasted like metal of a heavy chain wrapping itself around my heart. I moved to New York because there was unresolved misunderstanding and conflict between us, compounded by lots of self-chosen sin and unresolved emotional and spiritual wounds in my life. I fled home, family and church, hoping to outrun myself and all the pain inside. But it didn’t work.

During my sojourn in the city, I reconnected with God as a prodigal daughter who wanted no longer to eat pig’s food. But there were still many miles between us. I had come home to my Heavenly Father in repentance for my sins. Yet you, my earthly mother, still waited at the window of your failing heart. You never ceased to watch for the first sign of me on that road coming back towards you so we could mend our broken relationship.

In the dancing shadows of the firelight against your weary face, I again felt compelled to rush into your arms and to hold you and be held by you. But the heavy cloak of denial—made heavier by my pride—held me in my seat on the sofa across from you. To sing out my sadness, I picked up the guitar and sang an old family favorite. The words bounced off the dark walls in lonely echoes, as I sang alone. You sat silent, behind the emotional miles you had tried unsuccessfully to bridge one more time.

Mom, you didn’t feel well enough to come with me to the airport, and I flew back to the city. Two months later, I boarded another plane bound for Arizona and the hospital where you were dying. You had told Dad you wanted all of us to be together with you in the intensive care unit. All five of us kids made it in time to say goodbye.

My brothers, Neil and Brian, had to go back to work before you passed. But my older sisters, Jane and Paula, and I stayed until the end. On a Sunday a couple of days before you died, Dad, you and I had devotions together at your bedside. It was one of the last times you had a conversation with us before you fell into a coma. In that time, you bequeathed your mother’s ring and wedding ring to me as a symbol of your forgiveness and desire to complete the long journey that had kept us apart.

As morning sun bounced off the rings, the tiny bright flash reminded me of the last Silent Night, and the tiny fire that flickered in your hands at church. That fire will forever burn in my heart, reminding of the tenacity of your loyalty. The flames of your last act of restoration reduced my bricks of pride to the soft ashes of a pain remembered forever but healed always. Your faithful love transformed the memories of our last common Christmas Eve meal into a royal banquet of belonging to God and to each other.

Your ever-grateful daughter,

Ivy clings with a million feet,
drinks dew that seeps into
the plaster of the house.
Symbol of eternity, they say,
its tenacious stems climbing
upward. seeking entry.
At each tip, one pale tendril
unfolds into leaf, then
another, a quiet invasion.
Not to hold us here, but
to embrace us with its green
arms. I clip from its bounty
and shape a wreathe,
an "O" of hope and wonder
suspended in winter's chill.

• Islam officially began with the prophet Mohammed in Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ and is more than 14 centuries old. “Islam,” itself means to “submission.” The Muslim is not asked to agree to the Islamic way of life but to submit.

• No statement is more important to a Muslim than, “God is one.” The name of God dominates the Quar’an and the speech of Muslims.

• The Quar’an is regarded as the last in a long series of books and supersedes former revelations. The Quar’an is four-fifths the length of the New Testament and is divided into 114 chapters called surahs.

• Jihad means, “to struggle.” According to Islam, there are two kinds of jihad—the great jihad is to struggle spiritually with oneself and the lesser jihad is to avenge wrongs done to Islam. Sometimes this takes the form of “holy war” or “just war.” Similarly, Islamic fundamentalism is of two kinds—to recover Islamic values or to avenge wrongs done to Islam by non-Muslims, even violently if necessary. Sept. 11, 2001, confirms that one interpretation of jihad and one interpretation of fundamentalism is violent, even terroristic. Unfortunately, this interpretation often dominates our consciousness.

• Mohammed identified five pillars upon which Islam is built: “bearing witness” in the Creed (“There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet”), prayer (said five times a day, bowing towards Mecca), almsgiving, fasting during the month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca (once in a lifetime).

• Eighty-five percent of Muslims are Sunnis and they are regarded as orthodox. Within this group are schools of interpretation that vary in their understanding of the place of the Qur’an, the traditions and human reason. The second largest group is the Shi’ite, which consists of about 14 percent of the modern population. They are found mainly in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. In Islam the concern for mystical union with God and love for God was expressed by the Sufis.

• Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. The principal reason for this rapid growth is that one born into a Muslim family is automatically a Muslim. This is biological growth. But Islam also believes in mission (dawah) and they strive to attract people to their faith.

• Islam is today the world’s second-largest religion, with an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide.

• Although many associate Islam with the Middle East, only 20 percent of Muslims live in Arabic-speaking world. Most live in Pakistan, with Indonesia claiming the world’s largest Muslim population.

• An estimated 7 million Muslims—2 percent of the population—live in the U.S., practicing their faith in almost 2,000 mosques, Islamic schools and centers. Only a quarter of U.S. Muslims are of Arab descent. Thirty-three percent are south-central Asian and 30 percent are African-American. States with the highest percentage of Muslim population are California, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.

The good news allows Christians to live in peace with people of other faiths

These questions are important, and happily Christians are not left alone in attempting to answer them. They have the guidance of the New Testament, a scripture written in the midst of the missionary discovery of new cultures and religions. Christians also have the wisdom of missionaries who have served Christ long-term among Muslims, and the vision of clear-eyed mission leaders for peaceable gospel witness among Muslims.

For Christians, the basic rule is to approach Muslims with love and respect. Out of that love comes the freedom both to be realistic about Islam and to share with Muslims the good news of God’s love demonstrated to the world through the death of Jesus on the cross. Christians will find that they disagree with Muslims on some very basic faith commitments. However, disagreement does not mean that Christians cannot get along well with Muslims. In fact, a commitment to the gospel means that Christians will seek to live in peace with Muslims no matter how deep the disagreement may be.

As people living together, Christians and Muslims have much in common. They share the same humanity and the same basic needs. Christians believe that Muslims are created in God’s image just like they are. They believe that Muslims are loved unconditionally by God, and that God demonstrated his love for all of humanity in history in an unmistakable way. Christians believe that all humans are imperfect sinners by God’s holy standard, and that Jesus gave his life to save Muslims just as much as any others. They believe that ethnic or cultural distinctions make no difference in the good things which God wants to do for people. All of these understandings carry great promise for peaceful coexistence in a multifaith society.

When Christians and Muslims converse together, they also find many things which are similar in their faiths. For example, they share a belief in a Creator God and the stories of many characters from the Hebrew Bible. Both Christians and Muslims believe that God gave his law to humanity and can expect from his creatures their obedience. Both confess only one God. Many Christians and Muslims—arguably a significant majority of each respective world community—also share a similar philosophical approach to truth.

However, beyond these and similar affirmations Christians and Muslims disagree over who God is and whether he has revealed himself in the world. One of the main reasons for this is that in the process of the formation of Islam, Muslims responded to their perceptions of Judaism and Christianity. They rejected the Christian confessions of the deity of Jesus and his redemptive death on the cross. These denials became part of the sourcebooks of Islam. Few have described this process as directly as has Dutch missionary-scholar Hendrik Kraemer in The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World:

In the years of its genesis Islam, having originally taken a friendly attitude towards Christianity as the valid religion of revelation for the “nation” of the Christians, became antagonistic towards it by the mouth of its prophet, that is virtually by the mouth of divine revelation. This antagonism to and indignant rejection of some cardinal elements of Christianity (Jesus’ Sonship, His death on the Cross and consequently such doctrines as the Trinity and Reconciliation or Atonement) are incorporated in the Qur’an, the basis of the Moslem faith, and so belong to the system of Islam. To reject Christianity is with Islam not merely the natural and intelligible reaction of every religion or world conception that has sufficient vigour in it to want to maintain itself: with Islam it belongs to its religious creed.

Because these matters are so central to the faith of both Christians and Muslims, to avoid them in faith conversation would be inauthentic and strangely artificial. Christians who hold to the truth of the New Testament will want to affirm both the deity and redemptive death of Jesus. They may also attempt to remove misunderstandings about the meaning of “Son of God,” a term with which Muslims have major difficulties.

Differences appear to reach back to the origins of Islam in the seventh century. According to the earliest biographies of Muhammad and earliest extant commentaries on the Qur’an, Christians from Najran (in Yemen) came to Medina to make terms with Muhammad when his conquest of the Arabian Peninsula seemed unavoidable. The Christians explained to Muhammad their belief in the deity of Jesus, and Muhammad denied their claims. According to Muqatil (died A.D. 767) and Wahidi (died 1076), when the Najran Christians first met Muhammad, they asked him, “Why do you vilify and dishonour our master?” In other words, the Christians perceived that the preaching of Muhammad included a belittling of the Lord they held dear.

There is also the evidence of the famous Dome of the Rock, built by the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in 691. The ruling caliph ordered a continuous Arabic message to be inscribed along the top of the inner and outer faces of the colonnade which circles the beautiful octagonal building. In the seventh century, the majority of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were Christian. The Arabic inscription proclaims repeatedly that God does not have a son, that God is not “three,” that Muhammad is the apostle of God, that God and the angels “pray upon the prophet” and that believers are to do the same. These Muslim statements appear to deny divine glory to Jesus and to claim authority and glory for the prophet of Islam.

The differences between the gospel and Islamic teaching, therefore, go to the heart of each respective faith. Another important example is that Islam does not offer humanity salvation from sin in the terms of New Testament preaching. Muslim scholars explain that in Islam, humanity is not considered to be in need of salvation; therefore, drastic measures like the sacrifice of a righteous prophet are not necessary. The Muslim teaching on crucifixion seems to match this doctrine. Muslims say that Jesus did not in fact die on the cross, but was rather “taken up” by God at the moment when the soldiers were about to seize him.

Partly because of the denials of the death and divine sonship of Jesus, Muslim teaching on the love of God is very different from what Christians affirm from the gospel. Statements on the love of God in the Qur’an, for example, make the love of God for humans conditional on their obedience to God’s law and on following the prophet of Islam. There is no command to love either God or humans, nor is human love based on the love of God. God is not “love” in the Qur’an.

Significantly for conflicts in the world today, Muslim teaching on response to situations of conflict is very different from what we find in the teaching and example of Jesus. All of the sourcebooks of Islam were written during the conquest and military domination of the Middle East by Muslims. The earliest biographies of Islam’s prophet tell a story of military engagement in Medina and throughout the Arabian peninsula. The Qur’an contains 12 commands to fight the enemy and five commands to kill. Islamic Law made these scriptural commands and the story of Islam’s prophet normative for Muslim behavior.

All of these matters are best checked in the sourcebooks of Islam themselves and in conversation with orthodox Muslims whom we have the privilege of meeting. There is a range of diversity in the way in which Muslims interpret their tradition, but there is virtual unanimity that the Qur’an and the traditional words and behavior of Islam’s prophet are the twin bases of authority for all.

There is no necessary link between disagreeing on crucial points of faith and Christian anger or antipathy toward Muslims—much less thoughts of political enmity or physical confrontation. Points of deep faith are not settled by force or threat of force, by raising one’s voice, by polemical skill or deception or manipulation. (Neither, of course, is anything settled by avoiding crucial issues or trying to smooth them over without open discussion.) Christians make their confession as clearly as possible and attempt to make the best case they can.

If they seek to follow Jesus in their manner, their approach will be invitation not compulsion. They listen carefully and sympathetically in turn to the confession which Muslims make and take the opportunity to challenge truth claims which seem to them false. However, beyond that Christians defer to the relationship between God and each individual and leave each person freedom to consider and respond as each sees fit. The response of the conversation partner does not affect the quality of the on-going relationship.

A model for the successful combination of compassion and open gospel witness among Muslims is the story of Herb and Ruth Friesen and their children, MBMS International missionaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Few knew more about how to serve the physical needs of Afghans in the operating theatre and at the front gate. At the same time they risked their lives to introduce Afghans in discrete, appropriate settings to the only One who could save their souls.

Many who wish for peace between Christians and Muslims today seem to assume that peace will be achieved through finding and highlighting similarities between the two faiths. This assumption deserves examination. Do the New Testament and the behaviour of the earliest Christians give us the impression that Christians understood peace to be established by the similarities between the gospel and other faiths? Or was it rather the particularity of the good news about Jesus which allowed Christians to live in peace with people of other faiths in the midst of public persecution and defamation?

“He himself is our peace,” writes Paul, and from that basis he hoped for the reconciliation of the most hostile groups of his day. God made peace “through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Jesus’ teaching and example of peace are unique. It is Jesus who blessed the peacemakers. His command to love the enemy rings out in a world addicted to revenge and the cold arithmetic of “justice.” No such command will be found in the Qur’an.

To the contrary, the Qur’an appears to forbid friendship with the enemy of Allah (Q. 60.1). Ultimately the distinction traces back to the respective concepts of God. In the New Testament concept, humans are to love their enemies because God first showed the way (Matt. 5:45-48).

The command of Jesus to love both neighbor and enemy gives Christians the amazing freedom to engage in significant ways with people of all cultural and religious backgrounds. Christians may use that freedom both to be realistic about Islam and to share with Muslims the good news of God’s love demonstrated to the world through the death of Jesus on the cross. Peace will be at the heart of their message, and their message will be the only sure anchor for their peace.

Answering this question requires asking some of my own

“What do you think of Islam?” I would have preferred the question, “What do you think of Muslims?” I know my answer to that question: I love Muslims, and I know that God loves them so much that he extends the same grace to them that he has extended to me, though his Son, Jesus Christ. I love to share the Good News but experience has shown me that time and many, many conversations are needed to gain the opportunity to speak and be heard.

There is great disagreement, even acrimony, about the nature of “true” Islam—and not just among Muslims. Before 2001, I held a small collection of books, articles and tapes on the topic of the nature of “true Islam.” Since the later part of that year, my collection has grown considerably.

That this is so reveals a bit of the diversity within the unity of Islam, but it also reveals the polarization within and without Islam over its relationship to 9/11 and similar acts of terror. So when asked by a Muslim what I think of their religion, I have found it useful to try to understand just what the inquirer thinks their religion happens to be.

There are accepted variations within Islam, different schools as to certain methodologies. There are also variations noteworthy in that each party views the other as something less than the true (or pure) Islam that they represent. The split between Sunni and Shi’a is familiar to many outside of Islam. Perhaps not so familiar are other divisions, contrasting the mystical with the sober, formal with the folk or Arab-based with the local manifestation of faith.

It is common for Christians to express ignorance of Islam, in any form. It has been and is less common for Muslims to express ignorance of Christianity. Why is this the case?

From the Christian standpoint, Islam is only anticipated in the Bible, not mentioned by name since it had not then been established. The informed student of the Bible has some idea of what to do with revelation different than that contained in Scripture. For example, Galatians 1:7–9 speaks of people who are “trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” At the same time, it should be acknowledged that during their earliest encounters with Islam, Christians wondered whether they were encountering a Christian heresy, a false religion or an instrument of God’s wrath.

Islam is a “post-Christian” religion, both in its advent and in its message. Its adherents see it as being the most ancient and true of religions, the natural religion of humanity. This can be a little confusing to the non-Muslim. It helps to understand that, as an article of faith, Muslims believe that Islam was always the will of Allah for humanity and that the first man, Adam, is among its prophets. Muslims also believe that Islam was revealed through a series of prophets, only to be corrupted into religions other than what had truly been revealed. So in one sense, Muslims see Islam as superior to other religions because it has always been Allah’s intent.

At the same time, it is an article of faith that this “true” religion was ultimately perfected during the lifetime of Muhammad. Muslims accept as evidence of this truth the fact that Allah gave this series of revelations to Muslims after other “religions of the book” were well established; the later word corrects and replaces the earlier word.

Here I am reminded of my years as a civil servant. Nearly every day I received in my inbox revisions to the regulations that guided my work. I would cast aside the old regulations in favor of the new; there was rarely cause to return to those earlier pages. And so Muslims feel little need to consult earlier works, except from curiosity or for polemical purposes.

Chronology is not the only proof, however; what timing suggests, revelation makes explicit. First of all, the Qur’an is self-identified as bringing correction, clarity and completeness to Allah’s history of revealed encounters with humanity. In Muslim eyes, the “books” given to the Jews and to the Christians, our Bible, isn’t worth reading because Jews and Christians have changed the words to confuse Allah’s message. If this were not the case, then there would have been no need for the corrective of Qur’anic revelation. Muslims see Islam as superior to other religions because Allah “capped” revelation with it; nothing else remains to be revealed or will be revealed. The Qur’an is not just Allah’s latest word; it is his last word and uncorrupted word on his will for humanity.

Secondly, the Qur’an itself has much to say about Christians and Jews, what they believe and how Muslims should relate to them. Thanks to the Internet, it is not at all difficult to cull every reference within the Qur’an to Christians and to list these references in chronological order of revelation. Doing so reveals a steady progression from suggesting common cause with Christians to warnings that those who claim to follow Christ will not rest until they cause you (the Muslim) to stumble away from the truth and embrace Christian lies.

The combined effect of these beliefs is to secure in Muslim hearts a sense of superiority over the Christian faith, a fear that Christians are relentless in their efforts to lead Muslims astray and a belief that they know everything that they need to know about Christianity—from the Qur’an. I have myself met Muslims who have offered that they were experts on Christianity, and indeed all religions, having studied them through the Qur’an. This also explains the audacity of the Pakistani Muslim who wrote editorials in local newspapers on the occasions of Christmas and Easter outlining the “true” significance of Jesus Christ, entirely from Muslim sources.

I know of no actual follower of Christ who lives the religion described in the Qur’an as Christianity. So Christians do well to inform Muslims of what they actually believe and practice as followers of Christ, recognizing that one’s testimony will have its effect, even if one cannot be expected that our words will lead Muslims to admit, “Well, the Qur’an got that wrong!”

Confronting our ignorance

It would be enough if Christians found themselves defending their understanding of their own religion against erroneous interpretations of it, but there is more. Muslims and Christians have had centuries of encounter, and Muslim arguments against Christianity and in favor of Islam amount to much more than knocking down the “straw men” Christians of the Qur’an. Does it surprise you when I say that, in confronting Muslim ignorance of Christianity, we must also confront our own ignorance?

Sure, Muslims will ask certain questions polemically, but that does not discount the fact that accepting important Christian beliefs on faith should not mean those questions are unanswerable or unthinkable. The Bible encourages us to “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15), and that does not mean the answer is “Because I said so!”

It is vital for a Christian to have a solid understanding of Christian basics because an inquiring (or merely engaging) Muslim will have questions about them. As U.S. and Canadian Mennonite Brethren, we have acknowledged 18 articles in our Confession of Faith as representing vital areas of Christian belief and practice. Are you prepared to answer Muslim questions about the Trinity? Do you understand the difference between Christian and Islamic perspectives on revelation? Can you explain the need for redemption from sin and how that must be accomplished? Is the use of violence within God’s will? If we cannot explain, defend and live our confession among ourselves, it is hard to see how we might do so before Muslims.

I have never wanted to be counted among those accused of comparing the “best” of my religion with the “worst” of another’s; neither do I want the other to treat me in that fashion. A “Golden Rule” in regards to religions need not, and I believe must not, require that I accept another’s religion as equal in truth to my own, but that each party be understood in truth and not in the projections or wishes of others.

Should Muslims understand Christianity and take the measure of me as a Christian through my adherence to the authority of the Bible and my success (and my weakness) in following the pattern of my master, Jesus Christ? Should Christians understand Islam and take the measure of Muslims through their adherence to the authority of the Qur’an and their success (and failure) in following the pattern of their master, Muhammad? I believe the answer to both questions must be “Yes.”

For many years, I struggled with the fact that my academic study of Islam appeared to give me a wider and deeper understanding of Islam than many Muslims. The many times that Muslims begged me to tell them more left me with the conviction that I was not called to make Muslims better, or at least better informed, Muslims. Given what I have already said here about letting the religious speak for themselves, I do not see myself in that role, but I do see the relative value of pressing both Christian and Muslim to be authentic to their foundations.

It is fair for a Muslim to ask a Christian why he or she claims to love Jesus (and live in obedience to the Father), but does not do what he has said or live a life according the pattern revealed within the Bible. It is also fair for a Christian to ask a Muslim why he or she claims to love Muhammad (and live in obedience to Allah), but does not do what he has revealed or live a life according to the pattern revealed in the Qur’an and sacred traditions.

It is on the basis of these shared values and requirements, the authority of our texts and our adherence to the model for living out each text, that the true nature of our faiths may be compared and contrasted fairly. And that Christian and Muslim can begin a conversation between those who would follow one who despised the sword and carried a cross, and those who would follow one who despised the cross and carried a sword.

Tim Bergdahl is currently pastor of Madera Avenue Bible Church, Madera, Calif. Bergdahl, a graduate of MB Biblical Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary served with his wife, Janine, as missionaries with MBMS International to Pakistan from 1990 to 1996. His academic work concentrated on topics related to Islam.

Understanding one another is a gift that we need to keep giving

W. Marshall Johnston teaches ancient history and classics at Fresno Pacific University, the Mennonite Brethren university in Fresno, Calif.