This article was posted on the Mukhtalita blog by Rich. The Mukhtalita blog is centred on living as part of communities of people who believe in the Messiah from mixed backgrounds. You can read the original post here.
In the previous two blog posts in this series, we have discussed how Muslims and Christians have lived with one another for over a thousand years. We have discussed how one group can have misunderstandings and stereotypical views of the other groups that hold back relationships. We have also seen that different Muslim communities and different Christian communities relate to one another in different ways. They do this because they have different theological interpretations, different experiences and live in different contexts. Living in mixed cities is a very diverse way of life.
In this, it is important to have a biblical theology of Muslims and Christian-Muslim relationships. This biblical foundation provides stability and stops us being pushed around by current political discourses or the stereotypical views we might have come to hold.
In this blog post, we will move on to look at a Biblical view of Muslims.
Genesis 1:28 says,
27فَخَلَقَاللهُالْإِنْسَانَعَلَىصُورَتِهِ،عَلَىصُورَةِاللهِخَلَقَهُمْذَكَرًاوَأُنْثَى.
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
We esteem Muslims as people created by God and whom bear the image of God along with us too. We recognise their reverence of God, their prayer, care for others and fasting in respect to God and their reverence for Jesus as a prophet while not acknowledging all that the Injil says about him.
We also recognise the many forms of encounter that have happened and continue between many different muslim and Christian people and families and communities and institutions. We mourn that doctrinal differences have been used as pretexts for acts of intolerance, discrimination, marginalisation and even violence. We also mourn that sectarian relations and community sensitivities have lead to people being insulted, made to feel uncomfortable, passed over for jobs, blocked from buying homes, and have attacked and suffered sexual violence because of their religion.
We also recognise that there are many areas of life where Muslims and Christians are putting their hands together to construct a better future and to promote a common good for all in a community, including urban planning projects, education, business ventures, tackling drug issues, violence and other social injustices of many kinds and building friendships.
We sadly recognise that selfish political and national interests, including territorial interests, economic interests and other means of control have lead to many people in the region being oppressed or abused for the interests of other peoples and nations, and that many of these oppressive and abusive dynamics continue today. We mourn that these oppressors and abusers have been associated with Isa al-Masih who only taught love and mercy and faith in God and the valuing of others over one’s own interests, and demonstrated this in his life and death and resurrection.
We also recognise that often Christian communities have practiced doctrinal arrogance, cultural superiority, self-entered interest towards one another. This has resulted in many incidents when Christians have practiced discrimination, racism, sectarianism and violences towards one another, and we confess that many of these continue today. We want to honour other Christian communities and appreciate them and wish to live in harmony with them too. We hear many Muslims saying similar things about their own communities too.
We recognise that Christians and Muslims today suffer from atheism, a lack of faith in God, alcohol and drug abuse, trauma and many other aspects of life that mean they feel lost or rejected by God or themselves have chosen to reject God.
Nobody is better than the other. We are all in need of God’s help.
We greatly appreciate Christian and Muslim people, men and women, boys and girls, of all denominations, economic classes, cultures and walks of life. We want to honour muslim friends and communities, and interact with them on the basis of humility, love, faith and honouring appreciation of them.
We want to encounter sayyidna al-Masih Isa together with our Muslim friends who also greatly respect him because we value their opinions and experiences and he is worth thinking about greatly.
We want to follow what God is doing and help each other to look at the life of Jesus and how he lived and what he believed to learn for ourselves who he is.
One day a religious scholar came to Jesus and said,
”يَا مُعَلِّمُ، نَحْنُ نَعْرِفُ أَنَّكَ مُعَلِّمٌ جِئْتَ مِنْ عِنْدِ اللهِ، لِأَنَّهُ لَا يَقْدِرُ أَحَدٌ أَنْ يَعْمَلَ هَذِهِ الْآيَاتِ الَّتِي تَعْمَلُهَا إِلَّا إِذَا كَانَ اللهُ مَعَهُ.“ 3أَجَابَهُ عِيسَى: ”أَقُولُ لَكَ الْحَقَّ، إِنْ لَمْ يُولَدِ الْإِنْسَانُ وِلَادَةً جَدِيدَةً مِنْ فَوْقُ، لَا يَقْدِرُ أَنْ يَرَى مَمْلَكَةَ اللهِ.“
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Jesus sometimes used words that have two meanings. The word born ‘again’ carries two meanings in Greek. It can mean ‘again’ as in a second time. It can also mean ‘from above.’ Both meanings come from the word. But, we do not need to choose between them. In fact, the Gospel of John intends us to hear both meanings and to hold them together. Jesus said we need to be born again from above.
When we were born the first time, or from below, we were born by two physical parents, a man and a woman. They were two members of particular religious communities. We came to inherit this. We are to respect one another in this because we are all born in the image of God, that all men and all women embody.
We also need to be born again from above. This gives us a new identity. God births new life in us and this is the only way someone can know God. We want God to birth new life in all of us regardless of our choices in life, or our name, or our religious identity or anything else that humans might use as a means of dividing people up based on some human judgement like a political view of others, or stereotypes that divide people.
We believe that God alone can bring all people, created in his image, back to himself, whether Christians or Muslims, and for that to happen we all need to be born again from above.
