Tuesday, July 29, 2008

is this obedience?

For instance a lot of Christians have really warped views about people from other religions. They don’t even know how to interact. They can’t even be human with someone who isn’t exactly like them. That’s a humanity issue and God calls us to respect the image of God in all of God’s image bearers. So we need to challenge the theology that wants to label all the world into these nice neat boxes and that wants to condemn these people because we’re so great. We need to challenge something because it gets in the way of the very thing Jesus calls us to be. Love your neighbor. If you can’t even conceive of your neighbor outside of this giant label, if you have never read their sacred texts and you can make these grand statements about their eternal destiny then how are you ever going to love your neighbor? You have no voice with them and Jesus called you to have a voice with them. So I am going to challenge that because I am trying to be obedient to Jesus.
Rob Bell, interview at theooze
http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1762
Jesus told us to go the all the world and take to Gospel to everyone, because it's only in believing Him that they can have eternal life.

Bell wants us to do...what? Not see people in other religions as they really are, people being deceived and needing to know about Christ? People who really are under God's judgment if they do not repent and believe in Christ?

Does the fact that a Christian may not read the Koran mean that it's ok that Muslims have many incorrect beliefs about Christ?

It's a shallow argument Bell has here, and seems to be more about accepting people in those religions as being ok then in trying to tell them to repent and believe in Christ.

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