Lausanne World Pulse – Contextualizing Western Workers—Gifts from the Muslim World
By Don Heckman
When we focus mostly on grace and salvation from specific acts of wrong, it is hard to have the needed compassion and sense of urgency for people trapped in murky defilement.
A better consideration for evangelization is telling Muslims of Adam and Eve. Tell them that Adam and Eve were created without shame. They sinned and had to hide from their shame and defilement. Our Muslim background believer (MBB) church in Paris is led by an Algerian convert who came to Christ by reading the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. He saw that while Adam and Eve were defiled, God never left them. God called for the defiled couple, he clothed them, he corrected them, he gave a promise to them and he kept them alive.
Muslims have never heard that God “associates with” or dialogues with and cherishes and even loves defiled people. In fact, the greatest form of blasphemy in Islam is the concept of syirik, or associating with impure people. For Muslims, relational involvement with people diminishes God’s greatness. (God, they believe, never associates with humans because of an extreme view of defilement.) But in Christ, the Samaritan woman (John 4) went from “worthless and defiled” to useful and valuable to God. In Christ, Onesimus, who was branded for life as useless, became useful and valuable to Philemon and to the Lord.
Our understanding of holiness and defilement is also a gift to us. We are learning to minister with compassion to people with defilement or addictions and codependency issues. Muslims do not feel that they are worthy or capable of being in relationship with God, due to their defilement. Jesus’ carrying their sorrows and entering their darkness is more compelling to Muslims than logical steps or “to do” lists.
4. The Gift of the Story
The vast majority of the world’s unreached are oral peoples (literate and non-literate), for whom the nature of communication is telling stories. For these people, storytelling is not only the way they communicate, it is also the most effective way to spread the gospel. Oral peoples can usually recite back eighty percent or more of the stories they hear. By comparison, Western people can usually recite back twenty-five percent or less of what they hear.
Jesus used parables to communicate with the Jews, who were also an oral people. The Parable of the Sower allowed the listener to become an active participant in the story. No parable can so demonstrate the call of the gospel to be freed from religion as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The vast majority of the world’s unreached are oral peoples (literate and non-literate), for whom the nature of communication is telling stories.
Each story is a mirror of the heart. A nomadic Tuareg pilgrim to Mecca came to me and asked for more and more stories from the Bible. He was trained in Quranic verses. I wondered how he would ever allow me to share openly with him in a Western cultural form. Yet, as a storyteller, I was able to enter into his oral tradition world. He kept saying, “Don, tell me more stories from the Bible.”
David, for example, noted the importance of always being ready to communicate stories. Psalm 45:1 reads, “My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.” Meaning? My tongue is always ready to communicate my heart and the heart of God my king, whether through stories, laments or songs.
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Don Heckman and his wife Evey work with Muslims in North Africa and Southeastern France. Previously, he was involved with planting disciple training centers with YWAM. He also planted a bilingual French/English church, a Tamil church for Sri Lankans and two French churches. He is the author of Christ Loves My Muslim Friend. He can be reached at [email protected]. |