Tag Archives: christianity

taxi

I turned the key. The engine chuntered, whirred…and stopped. I tried again, and again. Same result. I sighed. I was stuck by the side of a back street, somewhere in Pakistan, with an immobile vehicle.

This is not an ideal situation. Before coming to Pakistan we received thorough safety and security training, and much of it seemed to revolve around attempting to avoid precisely the kind of situation in which I found myself. Alone, stuck, on a hot day. Diplomats in this position would be calling their emergency contact number and having a helicopter buzz in to pick them up, but people in my position don’t have access to that kind of thing. The day was hot, and getting hotter. A trickle of sweat ran down my back in a particularly insidious manner.

Suddenly a taxi approached. It is always easy to tell when a Pakistani taxi is approaching. It makes a sound like two pounds of rusty screws inside a tin bathtub being thrown down a flight of stairs. The rusty bathtub approached and I hailed it with enthusiasm and not a small amount of panic. I explained to the friendly driver what my predicament was, though no explanation was really necessary: clueless foreigner, immobile car – breakdown. It’s not as though I was stopping to enjoy the view, which consisted of a few half-dead shrubs, a rusty dumpster, and a great deal of dust.

“No problem” said the taxi driver. “Push it, it’ll start ok”.

I went to the back of my own car and started pushing, regretting almost immediately my decision to buy a black car. The taxi driver was in the front seat. I pushed, and sweated, and my palms sizzled audibly, and the car started moving. After a few seconds I broke into a slow jog and the engine chugged into life. The car drove away, slowed down, turned round, and came back to me. I never once entertained the notion that the taxi driver would do anything else. Pakistan is rather wonderful in that way.

I thanked him and offered him some money. He refused, of course. I insisted, of course, and of course he refused again. I smiled and stuffed it into his top pocket.

The next day I got the battery changed. Fewer breakdowns, hopefully, but also fewer opportunities to be blessed by an unexpected person.

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

January 18, 2016

God, Pakistan

4 Comments

Sometimes it seems as though it is impossible for a week to pass without a confrontation between the worlds of Islam and Christianity. My family and I came to Pakistan to be ministers of peace, yet peace between these two faith movements, whether in Pakistan or elsewhere, is proving to be a rare and precious commodity.

It is not so much the headline-grabbing atrocities of Islamic State that worry me, though goodness knows there are too many of them. What worries me is that the fear and mistrust between Muslims and Christians is percolating down to every level of society: in government circles, in the media, and onto the streets of every city in the West. Battle-lines are becoming entrenched at a very personal and local level. This is deeply concerning, since it is at precisely those levels that this division needs to be healed.

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One recent example of this is the case of the Wheaton College Professor who is facing the sack for wearing a hijab to class and claiming that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. This thorny issue raises its head again and again and has become something of a litmus test for anyone working in Christian-Muslim relations, a divining rod for either religious intolerance or wishy-washy liberalism, depending on how you look at it.

So what do I think? Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? My answer is simple: which Muslims? And which Christians?

After all, this is a debate in which complexity is scorned. We all want an easy answer, a glib articulation of our belief, an opinion which can be defined in a single Facebook update, and yet the complexity of the question is too vast to contemplate. There are around 2.2 billion Christians in the world and perhaps 1.6 billion Muslims. Are we honestly saying that all Muslims have the same belief? Or, for that matter, all Christians? Are we really so arrogant as to presume that we can gaze into the head of every single Muslim on the planet to determine how they conceive the nature of God to be?

Do I worship the same God as the blood-soaked footsoldiers of Islamic State? Absolutely not. The question itself is repugnant. The nature of the God they serve is as far removed from that of Jesus Christ as the east is from the west. But what about my friend Saira, a devout Muslim who organises her local youth to clean up rubbish in her area and organises inter-faith events, at significant personal risk, to heal communal tensions? What about the Muslims in the UK who filled sandbags and organised food donations for those affected by flooding? Or my landlord, who pays for vegetables to be grown in his garden and leaves them for the poor to collect so that they can eat? I sometimes feel as though these Muslim men and women are better Christians than I am.

Or, to look at the question another way, do all Christians worship the same God? Donald Trump claims to be a Christian, yet his gun-toting, selfish, hateful idiocy is hardly redolent of the fragrance of Christ. The KKK claimed to be Christians, as did Fred Phelps, he of “God Hates Fags” notoriety. Yet so do the Catholic nuns who run a leprosy hospital in Rawalpindi, and Pope Francis who washed the feet of Muslim immigrants, and St Francis of Assisi who went to the Egyptian Sultan to preach peace during the height of the Crusades.

I believe in the uniqueness of Christ. I do not believe that all religions are the same. Yet it is foolish of us to think that Islam is homogenous, that everyone bearing the name “Muslim” has beliefs identical to everyone else. Is it possible that some seek to follow the same God as me? Not only possible, I believe it is certain. Jesus commended the faith of people as implausible as Roman centurions, tax collectors, and Samaritans (who, let’s not forget, were the enemies of the Jews). In this debate, as is so often the case in the collision between Islam and Christianity, we need to recognise complexity, act with compassion, and have the mind of a Christ who transcended narrow boundaries.

Sorry if you were expecting a single sentence answer…

As a Christian, I Respect Muslims

December 1, 2014

About us, God

Remembering Syria

November 18, 2014

God, Travel

2 Comments

Back in 2007 I went to Syria and Jordan on holiday. I flew with a friend to Damascus, travelled to Hama and Homs, visited the astonishing Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers, and wandered around the old city of Damascus with my jaw hanging down. I had long been interested in Byzantine history and the history of the Middle East and the experience of seeing everything first hand was unforgettable. We walked, took buses, ate in local restaurants, drank mint tea, and gaped at such a remarkable and historic country.

What struck me most was the hospitality with which we were greeted. That trip probably marked the beginning of my love affair with the Islamic world. Even in 2007 Syria was reckoned, at least in the West, to be a dangerous and hostile place – not quite noxious enough for Bush to include it in his notorious “Axis of Evil” speech but certainly worthy of an Honourable Mention. The reality we encountered was entirely different. On our first night we stayed at a Catholic guest-house run by nuns – and quite openly too, there being little to no hostility between Syrian Muslims and Christians. Armenian and Orthodox churches were everywhere. We walked down Straight Street in Damascus, site of St Paul’s historic meeting with Ananias, and were greeted warmly and with no fear whatsoever. We visited Christian monasteries which didn’t even bother to post security guards at the gate. Everyone we met was kind to us.

That was when I began to realise that we needed to start distinguishing between the politics of a country and the opinions of its citizens. The Syrian government was a long way from a democratic haven but I realised how unjust it was to connect those policies with the Syrian people. We Westerners affix labels to places like Iran, Syria and Pakistan and lazily assume that the labels are also transferable to the people of those countries – but this is not so.

And now I read the news and am heartbroken by what Syria has become. Millions of refugees forced from their homes by the barbarity of Islamic State. Thousands killed. A civil war that shows no signs of ending. Fundamentalists from around the world seemingly in competition with each other to reach new heights of murderous savagery. Who would have thought, in the aftermath of 9/11, that new evils would arise to make even that mass slaughter seem civilised by comparison?

I want to remember the Syria I encountered in 2007, a place of remarkable harmony and welcome, not the Syria that we see now. I also want to remember the words of Habbakuk, a prophet in the Bible, who looked at similar cruelty and barbarity and received consolation from God:

²How long, Lord, must I call for help,
    but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
    but you do not save?
³Why do you make me look at injustice?
    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    there is strife, and conflict abounds.
⁴Therefore the law is paralyzed,
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
    so that justice is perverted.

The Lord’s Answer

⁵“Look at the nations and watch—
    and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
    that you would not believe,
    even if you were told.

Celebrating Eid in Pakistan

October 7, 2014

God, Pakistan

Specks and Logs

February 10, 2013

God, Snippets

1 Comment

“Of course, the thing I most object to in their religion is the violence of it” said one man to the other. “It seems that they are unable to express their religious views without killing people who disagree with them.”

“I agree” said the second man to the first, stroking his beard pensively. “Their track record of combining their faith with military power speaks for itself. They claim that theirs is a religion of peace and yet we see them attacking others, declaring war, and invading foreign countries in the name of their God”.

“Not to mention persecuting people of their own faith whose interpretation of their scriptures differs from their own!” added the first man angrily.

Both men paused to reflect.

“And then there’s the fact that they always break their word. They make treaties with their enemies and then break them. Always have done, always will. Can’t trust anyone from that religion, history proves that quite well” snorted the second man.

“And don’t even get me started on their contempt for science and progress” said the first man, stabbing the air with an enraged finger to emphasise his point. “The way they persecuted scientists and constantly stand in the way of progress and development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are based on their religion”.

“Too true, too true” confirmed the second man sadly.

“Listen to that, the sound of their religious building calling the faithful to prayer” said the first man.

Both men stopped to listen to the noise of the church bells tolling. The sound, mournful and plangent, echoed from the top of the church tower. They listened sadly, then sat in thoughtful silence as the sound of Christian worship throbbed from the church.

“The thing is, though” said the first man quietly, “I can’t stop thinking about that Jesus of theirs.”

Another pause, then:

“If only they behaved more like him”.

—Sweaty Pilgrims

A blog about God, Pakistan, and parenthood

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