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Where's Love?
"Where's Love?": The Role of Contextualization in the Distinctiveness of the Christian Gospel
When I last posted shared an article, I was in an intense season of interreligious dialogue and evangelism. Well, I'm still in that season. Right now, I'm in a Facebook conversation with a Muslim friend who I interviewed for my YouTube channel (see www.youtube.com/kwaselizabroham), and his friend about the theological implications of our interview. I am also praying with my friend from church as he dialogues with a Hebrew Israelite who responded to our interactions when we went on a trip to talk with some of them (which I discussed in the last blog).
With this in mind, I'm thinking about how Muslim culture (and culture in general) influences which parts of the Gospel are repulsive (like Jesus being the Son of God, for instance), and how believers from and missionaries sent to this cultural group should have a revelation of the beauty of these otherwise-repulsive truths (like Jesus as divine Son), whereas believers from other groups might not care about these particular truths as much. This hits home for me because this week, as a result of a conversation I had during a church meeting, I began thinking about cultures like the one that my father comes from (the Ewe people of Ghana, West Africa).
I was exhorted during a "covenant couples" meeting at my church, by one of the leaders, to learn my father's language so that I can teach it to my son. This really challenged me because although I was able to begin the process of reuniting with my dad during my semester abroad back in college, I am sensitive to each word we share as I cautiously walk towards this work of reconciliation that God has called me to with my dad. However, I can't teach Abraham to be a father if I can't receive mine. And I can't teach Abraham how to be a son if I can't be proactive in my relationship with my father.
This is the Christian Gospel, that God so loved us that he initiates the process of not only justifying his children, but reconciling them to himself. In a sermon entitled "Breaking the Cycle of Broken Relationships," Pastor Brooks taught us how to apply the glorious truths of the Gospel as a pattern for how we follow God in this work of reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5:17-20). However, this sermon would have been nonsense if we didn't believe in Christ as the Son of God. If we believed (as do Jehovah's Witnesses and Hebrew Israelites and Muslims) that Jesus was sent by God, and even was the way to Him in a limited sense, but that He isn’t the Son, we wouldn't have the divine pattern of reconciliation to follow, only submission.
However, unlike in these other religions, submission without intimacy is not an appropriate response to the Christian Gospel. We love Him, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). This is the love that evicts fear from our hearts (verse 18), and allows us to rest confident and eternally secure in our relationship with God (John 13-17). Without this, we'd be eternally insecure, looking for something to do or someone to be when God clearly reveals through the Person of Jesus Christ that it's okay to have a personality and language and a social life that didn't come from heaven.
This is why Muslims are so repulsed by the Gospel, and frankly, this is why I was too. I thought that, as much as those who witnessed to me said they loved me, they really wanted to clean me up and make me an usher. But, and if I may offer my two cents to the debate in this month's Christianity Today article entitled "the Son and the Crescent," our job is not to make that which appears to be ugly in the Bible any more appealing to people, it's to pray for God to reveal himself to us. And when he does, and we respond, this usually involves what missionaries call "contexualization." (for the article “the Son and the Crescent,” you may go to http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/february/soncrescent.html)
God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son. To add to the miracle of Incarnation, God made it possible us Gentiles to not only appreciate His work on the earth, but to be part of it. Therefore, I’m taking the challenge of learning my father’s language. You can view the language for yourself and read John 3:16 in Ewe by going to the following link: www.bible.is/EWEIBS/John/3#16 .
Kwasi Agbottah
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Prayer Request
"Ask and You Will Receive"
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