No Third Way

Romans 10:9

"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

What a pleasure it was to join the Holland V Christmas outreach this year! The preciousness of the Great Commission in our hearts is expressed in our acts of kindness, thoughts and prayers in our community. This looks like the culmination of my recent devotional thoughts here. I was struck by the fact that what happens at Holland V itself is maximizing our constitutional liberties despite Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's comments on us Christians reaching out to Muslims and others. I agree with Nancy that when we visited the elderly Muslim couple Suleiman and Kam Siah there was a "spirit of intimidation" that sought to 'neutralize' (a false idea, neutrality is an illusion) our efforts by invoking "celebrating in respect for the beliefs of others" (paraphrasing Mdm Kam Siah). When we started singing and sharing the Christmas story, I struggled because I knew the lyrics and the story itself is "shirk" to Muslims, the most offensive form of Islamic blasphemy we Christians attribute to Jesus. In the Qur'an, God supposedly speaks to Jesus (Isa ibin Maryam), "Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to people: "Take me and my mother for gods beside God?" and Jesus supposedly replies "Never!" (Surah 5:116) [An Islamic misconception of the Trinity]. But the Holy Spirit reminded me of exactly what I wrote in a previous devotion that "Jesus' Great Commission is this — that we express deep concern on the truth about the destiny of our neighbours, our friends and family; that, like God, we so love 'the world' and so we proclaim He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Real compassion, involves speaking the truth, and truth, by definition, is exclusive (John 14:6), but do take note, we dialogue, persuade, convince (convert?) our community in the manner of love (Eph 4:18), in graciousness, with gentleness and respect (1 Pet 3:5)". At that moment, I recognized it and I started praying for the couple's open hearts and minds. I found Nancy's comments during the recap, refreshing. I did not know for the most part what to make of your culture here because Singapore supposedly holds "shared values" that includes "racial and religious harmony" (whatever that means to each individual, and apparently, Mr. Lee and Nancy have different interpretations). This prompted me to review my own journey to Christianity from various worldviews, Islam being a major part of my personal history; and I am also surprised that the ammo is being literally delivered right to my mailbox —a special edition RZIM magazine on Islam, no less! I'll leave it at that, and would just finally emphasize that this is as much a spiritual battle as a physical outreach, casting out is necessary simultaneously with genuinely befriending. In the next weeks after Christmas, I will share two further devotions on Islam: One, on Muslims' really very special reverence for our Lord Jesus, and another on their most common objections to Christianity. Together these constitute a good foundation for effectively reaching out to our Muslim friends.

"In summary, one could say that today there is virtually a consensus concerning that wherein the historical in Jesus is to be seen. It consists in the fact that Jesus came on the scene with an unheard of authority, namely with the authority of God, with the claim of the authority to stand in God’s place and speak to us and bring us to salvation… This unheard of claim to authority, as it comes to expression in the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount, for example, is implicit Christology, since it presupposes a unity of Jesus with God that is deeper than that of all men, namely a unity of essence. This claim to authority is explicable only from the side of his deity. This authority only God himself can claim. With regard to Jesus there are only two possible modes of behavior: either to believe that in him God encounters us or to nail him to the cross as a blasphemer. Tertium non datur (There is no third way)." —Dr. Horst Georg Pöhlmann, Abriss der Dogmatik, 1980

~18.12.2015