Sunday, November 19, 2006

How relevant is too relevant?

This weekend has been fun and way too short. Last night I stayed out till 3am salsa dancing with Hooper and TJ. I love those girls. Can dancing with attractive Latino men really be classified as work?- yes, yes indeed. Well tonight after a long nap I went to Bwood for Sunday night service and then afterwards I went to the Singles Thanksgiving dinner. Holy social awkwardness! I went by myself and usually it doesn't bother me to go places by myself but tonight was just weird. Girls are really hard to get to know, especially in that kind of environment where everyone comes with their friends and they're comfortable with the friends they already have. So something crazy happened tonight, I talked to boys for half the night. And just when I was getting bored with surfacy chit chat this guy started talking to me about the insider movement in missions it was pretty dang interesting. When I first heard about the movement I was pretty skeptical and I must admit that I'm still not completely sure if I agree with it but I'm definitely interested in learning more. Here's the gist of it: Many missionaries are noticing that its not really Jesus that people are against its Western culture. They associate the term Christianity with everything from George Bush to the Crusades. So missionaries are taking out the middle man in a sense they are meeting Islamic people where they are. The Koran contains somewhere close to 70% of the Bible. So they are teaching them about Jesus through the Koran. But here's the thing I'm debating- when a Muslim becomes a follower of Jesus they don't stop going to the mosque, they don't get baptised or practice the sacraments, they stay in their culture as worshippers of Jesus and they share their beliefs with the people in their communities. They guy I was talking to was telling me about an entire mosque that had become worshippers of Jesus but still prayed 5 times a day toward Mecca and followed alot of cultural practices that weren't forbidden in the Bible. Ok, what I'm afraid about is syncretism. Symcretism is the attempt to meld together opposing beliefs. The Isrealites did it alot in the Old Testament and they were disciplined severely for it. Jesus + works in the East or Jesus + Money in the West - neither of those equal eternal life. I think the insider movement would make it easy for followers of Christ to just add Him on as a bonus to their faith. Where is there room to say that Hinduism, Mormonism, Islam, etc. are false and that their followers are unknowingly following Satan. I think it'd also be easy to use the insider movement as a safe and easy way to dodge persecution. What does God mean when He says come out from them and be seperate. All that to say I want to learn and think more about it. If you have any thoughts please let me know.

1 comment:

jeff said...

that is really interesting
Like you said, Jesus may be worshipped, but is he the only object in those peoples'faith? That would be my question about this movement. I'm always skeptical about new movements. Throughout history they seem to be prone to departing from the essentials of the Christian faith and adopt new ones they may look like the old ones.

oh about the awkwardness, good job on making the most of it. I think its funny that you termed it as: holy social awkwardness. Usually what I do is just look at people and chill out. Or make small talk, you know, revert back to what people are studying or what type of job they have....