Deep Calls to Deep - A New Kind of Christian - Blog � Faith Schools & Aslum Seekers is good and challenging. On Sunday we were fortunate at Raunds Methodist Church to have Rev Inderjit Bhogal preaching.
As you would expect from a preacher of Inderjits calibre it was challenging (yet also gentle and loving). He used Matthew 15: 21-28 to work through attitudes to outsiders in a most effective way.
I was particularly struck by a story he told of a group of German Christians who visited a synagogue (I think in Poland and I guess this must have been 15 or 20 years ago)). After the service ended none of them got up, eventually the Pastor who was getting concerned about the time went to one of the older members of the group and said it was time to leave. They replied "If only we had come and done this 50 years ago, wouldn't things be different".
The challenge from this scripture passage and from this story should be very clear to all Christians. We should be in dialogue with Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs etc. We can do so because we know that God loves them just as much as he loves us, we don't have to give up on we believe but we do have to show grace just as we are shown grace by God.
That also reminds me of The Christ of the Indian Road which I am reading at the moment. See the original place I found it for a classic quote jonnybaker: christ of the indian road 1 - in conversation with gandhi which I referenced in 42: The opposite of anti. Great book, pity we seem to forget these lessons so quickly.
Hi Dave
He sounds like an interesting bloke. I absoluely agree, it's so easy to get caught up with the rising tide of Islamaphobia, and I'm so glad that it seems that many churches haven't.
Cheers - Steve
Posted by: Steve | Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 05:33 PM