COEXIST? Yes and No

 

It's a popular bumper sticker these days.  Spelled out with the symbols of a number of different - often conflicting - religions and groups, it sometimes seems like a desperate plea: "Can't all you folks just get along?!?"  Or maybe an authoritative command from someone who knows better than those conflicting adherents do?  It's hard to tell.

So can people from all these different faith commitments really coexist?  Should they?  I think the Gospel of Grace answers with both a "Yes" and a "No."

Yes

If by "Coexist" we mean "Can and should people of different faith commitments treat each other with civility and respect?" the Gospel of Grace would answer with a resounding "Yes!"

That is because every human is a bearer of the imago dei, the Image of God, and as such are objects of His love and affection.  All people - Muslims, hippies, Jews and all the rest - are valued by God, and by that alone deserve our respect and care.

The Gospel also reminds us that this world is not now as it was created to be, and that people are broken and incomplete expressions of our Creator's original intention.  That brokenness is why there are so many different religions and non-religions in the world.  We are all looking for a way to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves as well as the deep yearnings of our heart.  Because of this brokenness, Grace reminds us to expect confusion and disagreement.  We need to face these conflicts with humility and a willingness to extend forgiveness.

Finally, we know that the awakening of faith is something that the Father initiates.  The Gospel says that we are saved by grace, not by correct adherence to any particular religious expression, and faith is our response to that grace.  (Ephesians 2:8-10)  It's by the Father's grace that I have responded in faith to the Gospel.  This means that other people coming to faith are beyond any force of government or manipulation that I might exert.  The Gospel puts the first steps of salvation in the Father's hands, so I will drop any earthly or coercive force in establishing that Gospel of grace.  It's not grace any more when coercion or manipulation are used.  When through the course of history the church has violated this, it has not acted in line with the Gospel and has in fact repudiated grace.

No

But the question at hand moves further.

If I am being asked to "Coexist" because "all faiths are just different ways of serving the same god," then the Gospel of Grace responds with a firm, but civil, "No."  Such a statement demonstrates a lack of understanding of these different faiths or a gross oversimplification of their convictions.  The Gospel is built on the foundation of Jesus, the singular incarnation of God Himself in human form.  More than a prophet or teacher who speaks for God, Jesus is God Himself in human form.  Even those other religions that know and respect Jesus - like Islam - deny that conviction.  This fundamental disagreement cannot be glossed over.  We may need to be civil, but we must recognize that there are mutually exclusive convictions here.  While we may "Coexist" with respect, we cannot ignore the differences as if they did not exist.

As I've listened to people who carry the "Coexist" banner, I often hear something else behind their words that the Gospel says "No" to.  It's this sense that they know a "greater truth," that overrides the truth claims of these separate convictions.  

Some will use the illustration of the three blind men running into an elephant.  One feels it's trunk, one it's belly and one feels the leg of the elephant that they each cannot see.  They each have different, even conflicting descriptions of their experience.  But even though they do not realize it, they are all experiencing the same elephant.  My "Coexist" neighbors insinuate that my Muslim and Jewish neighbors along with myself are like those three blind men experiencing only a portion of the truth -- and that they are the ones with full-sighted perspective on the entire elephant.  As if they alone have reality figured out.

The Gospel of Grace reminds me that we are all blind in some way.  Any knowledge of God that I have is what He, by His grace, has made known to me. Even then, my brokenness may disrupt that knowledge.  But He keeps speaking and pursuing.  He takes the initiative in making Himself known.  That is what grace is about.  It's like the elephant taking the effort to make Himself known to all four of us blind men.  As before, others might disagree with my convictions, but they cannot change the unique and exclusive nature of those convictions for their own argument.

Because the Gospel is God's work and not mine, it frees me to treat my neighbors with kindness and respect, even while not compromising the differences in our convictions.  I can "Coexist" with others because of His grace.  That is why I can never let the Gospel of Grace be stripped of its uniqueness and reduced to something it is not, just one of many paths up the same mountain.