What Christians should understand about Muslims
The Digital Evangelism blog has a post up today about understanding followers of Islam. The Christian witness to Muslims is complicated these days by a huge array of challenges—political and cultural as much as theological—but Christians can be more effective in sharing their faith if they take the time to understand exactly what Muslims believe and what is important to them.
Of the various articles linked to in that blog post, I found this one about understanding “shame-based” cultures the most interesting. It illustrates how important it is to consider local culture and beliefs when presenting the Gospel—in this case, the importance of ritual cleanliness in Muslim culture—and how failing to respect non-Western cultural values can sometimes put additional roadblocks in between Muslims and the Gospel message. And it also challenges us to consider whether we can’t learn something from the Islamic emphasis on ritual purity and defilement; the essay’s author, Bruce Thomas, suggests that those concepts aren’t as foreign to a Christian worldview as you might think.
It’s an interesting set of articles for anyone interested in cross-cultural evangelism.
it is important and interesting to keep in mind the Muslims are just as diverse in their differences to one another as Christians are but that within our differences we are still all brothers and daughters of God needing a relationship with him.
Very good point, Nathan!
I think that its very important to learn about Muslims i’ve grown up around them all my life and i know their ways of thinking and their beliefs to me they play a important role in christianity and also think that they should learn about christianity because if it was’nt for christianity there would be no Muslims. And many may not no that Muslims and Christians have very simular ways weather we like it or not and God (Allah) loves us all and so does hEsa or Yusa (Jesus) as the Arabs, Muslims and Jews would say => God bless Ma salamah
William Blake,wrote in his poem the divine image the oneness of all me irrespective of thier culture. i will like to replace culture here with religion.to me all men are children of God and thus must live in harmony;it wouldn’t be right if we allow our religious differences to separate us from each other and from God.
Hello to all.
Greeting in teh name of our God.
We need to Evangelise the muslim Nation. They are good peole. But they need also christ. Beacuse Jesus christit told in the gospel of Mathew that go and preach the Gosple in all the nation.
Evangelist Paul Dauve (Pakistan)
I was given this website by The New Testament group- I requested a copy of the testament in Arabic or Hebrew. I have a neighbor that would benefit from God’s Word in these languages and New Testament told me that you may be able to provide me with that. Just let me know if you have scripture available in these languages. Thank you
We don’t have any physical Bibles to hand out, but you might find what you’re looking for on BibleGateway.com:
http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/index.php?action=getVersionInfo&vid=28
If that doesn’t suit your needs. I’d try contacting Biblica:
http://www.biblica.com/
http://www.biblica.com/guestbook/
You can Begin by explaining why you celebrate pagan holidays and eat pork.
Abdullah, thanks for poppingin!
You can read more about why Christians deem it okay to eat pork in Acts:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2010-11:18;&version=31;
And Paul, one of the early Christian leaders, writes in Romans about cleanliness/uncleanliness:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%2014:13-18;&version=31;
I’m not sure what you mean by celebrating pagan holidays though, can you explain that a bit more?
The reason for the pagan holiday is because Christmas and Easter were originally pagan holidays. The Romans had a holiday in December and persecuted all those that did not celebrate it; thus the Christians celebrated that holiday, but under a different reason, Jesus’s Birthday. We celebrate Christ’s Birthday on what was originally a pagan holiday.
Easter comes from the name of a pagan goddess, Estar. That too is a pagan holiday of fertility. The pagans, before the word of God spread throughout Europe including the Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, in the spring would celebrate the goddess Estar in hopes of having a bountiful harvest, and prosperous year. When the priests came to Europe, Britain, Ireland, and Scotland, they used the holiday to help convert the pagans to Christains by celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus.