Today’s
Scripture Reading (December 6, 2018): Deuteronomy 13
Mahatma Gandhi argued for a universality
of religious experience. And he was one of the first to use the analogy of a
river. “One may drink out of the same great river with others, but one need not
use the same cup.” Later he would assert that “the soul of religion is one, but
it is encased in a multitude of forms. My
position is that all the great religions are fundamentally equal.” Did Gandhi really believe that all roads led to God?
Maybe. But essentially the comment is a political one spoken in an age of
religious diversity. For any political leader in a contemporary nation, outside
of nations dedicated to Islam, political leaders need to have the ability to
speak to people of all religious backgrounds. And people seldom listen when
they are simply told that they are wrong.
Even Paul understood that in his famous interaction with the Greeks in
Athens. “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are
very religious. For as I walked around and looked
carefully at your objects of worship … (Acts 17:22b-23a). He understood that he was speaking to a
non-Jewish audience who did not find their identity in the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. And so his approach was very different from what he taught in
the synagogues of the Roman Empire.
In our current set-up of nations, the exception to
this spiritual diversity are the Islamic nations. There, Islam is not just a
religion or a set of spiritual beliefs. Islam in these nations is also a
political understanding. In these cases, violating the teachings of Islam often
result in imprisonment or even death, because Islamic belief is part of both the
political understanding of the nation and national security. It might be interesting to note that as the
second decade of the Twenty-First century draws to a close, it is this understanding
that has made Islam a political target in the United States. The move seems to
be to attempt to make Christianity the dominant political belief system, an
attempt that in North America’s political and spiritually diverse climate,
seems destined to fail.
Words like these spoken by Moses in Deuteronomy are
almost jarring to our contemporary political understanding. The “nones” in our
cultural, those who hold to no spiritual tradition, are on the rise. Spiritual
beliefs from many different cultures are
also gaining visibility in our society. A while back I attended a service at
the Hindu Temple that exists just across the street from the church that I
pastor. But as I read these words of Moses, I have to remind myself that he did
not live in my culture.
His culture was much more like the culture that exists
in contemporary Islamic nations. Judaism was not just the spiritual
understanding of the people. It was the political understanding as well as the
identity of the nation. To be led away from God was to betray Israel and her future.
And Moses was afraid that his people would not stand firm in their relationship
with God, and would consequently lose their identity
after he was gone. As a result, Israel would cease to exist.
And so Moses makes what we might understand more like a radical Islamic statement. Any violation of the religious norms must be punished by death because any violation of the spiritual norms would result in the
loss of the identity of the nation. The strategy during the days of Moses
worked because there was no spiritual diversity within Israel. The diversity
existed outside of its doors, and Moses wanted to do whatever he could to make
sure that it stayed on the outside.
For us, Moses strategy would fail precisely because of the spiritual diversity that exists
within our culture. Sometimes we fail to understand that the Christian
strategy, the one that is supported by our beliefs, prohibits us from being the
dominant spiritual understanding of the nation. We preach and teach Christ
crucified, a stumbling block to those on the outside, maintaining that Jesus is
the only way to father while loving and
trying to understand all who come from various spiritual understandings and
backgrounds. We do not rule. The act of ruling we leave to others. We love all
who will come, regardless of what they might believe.
And in doing so, we reveal the identity
that Christ has placed in us.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Deuteronomy 14
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