Growing up in the evangelical tradition that I did, it wasn’t just enough to believe the right things, we had to recognise and avoid those who believed the wrong things! In hindsight this position is somewhat ridiculous. Evangelicals make up just 13% of 2.2 billion Christians, and yet I was led to believe that we held 100% of the truth (and this ignored the fact that most evangelicals don’t even agree with each other!). But it’s obviously not just the evangelical tradition I was part of that was guilty of this. The existence of 40,000+ Christian denominations (most of whom have next to nothing to do with each other) would suggest that the wider Church struggles with the same problem.
Jesus however, wasn’t afraid to point to traditions that Jews despised as heretical, to show them what God was doing. He used a Samaritan, for example, to show how the Jews had begun to put religious observance above social concern. And he pointed to a Roman Centurion as a model of faith. But even more controversially, Paul pointed to the pagans of his time as being examples of people committed to the spiritual journey.
Could it be, then, that a particular Christian denomination – or even the Church as a whole – doesn’t have a monopoly on God’s Spirit?
Let me give you a couple of examples from my experience.
I grew up with the belief that Catholics were ‘dodgy’. But it’s been through Jesuits that I discovered contemplative forms of prayer, that have had radically transformed my faith.
And growing up, possibly the only groups ‘dodgier’ than Catholics, were Muslims and Pagans (of course we didn’t know anyone from either of these groups). But now I have a number of very good friends who are Muslims, and it has been through them that I have learnt to take more seriously the use of our bodies in prayer. And I have seen from Pagans the importance of finding God in nature.
In actual fact, contemplative prayer, body prayer, and connecting with God through nature, have been part of the Christian tradition for centuries, and have only been forgotten by parts of the modern church fairly recently. But it was through people from other traditions – people I’d be encouraged to steer clear of – that God reminded me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we can create our own ‘pic-and-mix’ spirituality. I’m still committed to the Christian tradition and am convinced that Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. So it is important to ‘weigh and test’ everything against Christian scripture, tradition, reason and experience (something I learnt from the Methodists!). But if we listen deeply to those who we suspect we’ll disagree with, I believe we’ll often find God speaking to us.
We live in a world that seems increasingly tribal and unable to hear the voice of the ‘other’ . So perhaps now more than ever, the Church needs to model what it means to hold true to our tradition, while remaining open to what we can learn from those around us.
Tim
For more on learning from other religions check out our fascinating conversation with Dave Andrews