.jpg)
Remember this name.He was introduced to me by my friend J. who sent this book last spring and I heard him speak twice yesterday. The second time, he was introduced as "the man who is changing the world."
Eboo Patel is the founder and director of the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, and his basic idea is that we need to equip young people to share their faith with cooperation rather than conflict. The conflict agitators are clearly among us and thriving in many parts of the world. But those of us who follow Christ, for example, have a different message to share. And there are Jews and Muslims with a similarly different message as well.
Think about the misinformation you've heard about other faiths. (Maybe you don't even know it's misinformation.) While some say that interfaith connections water down our individual faith beliefs, I'm finding that connecting with faithful Jews and Muslims actually makes my faith as a Christian stronger.
What do you think about this? Do interfaith relationships scare you? Inspire you? Confuse you?
Posts
7 comments:
To me, the fact of this world that there is more than one path to God and understanding is just one more proof of the abundance of the universe and the infinite wisdom of the divine -- why should a different culture with a different tradition, different geological and geographical concerns and challenges, think and pray exactly as I do? And it is the miracle of modern life that we, unlike our forebears, have the great opportunity to live side by side with these other cultures and faiths, and to share with each other and to learn and grow in our faith together.
Interfaith relationships scare me, inspire me, and confuse me.
They scare me because many Christians I know can't articulate their faith very well, and enter into these relationships with little more than the Golden Rule to describe their relationship with God. I push the people in my congregation really hard to say out loud what it is they believe. I think it is necessary to creating a deeper understanding of one's own faith.
Interfaith relationships inspire me because I have seen the power of what happens when Christians with different beliefs come together for a common cause. To see those of different faiths come together could have so much more of an impact.
Interfaith relationships confuse me because frankly, I don't always know how to act. As a Presbyterian (the denomination of Lutheran friend of mine calls "The Religion of Convenience") we don't have many rules/rituals/guidelines for our daily living. Is it offensive to the average Jew or Muslim if I don't observe their food laws when I am with them, etc? I have gotten to the point in my life where if I am confused I just ask. But there is still a lot we don't know about each other.
I am inspired by what I'm learning from our church office manager - who is Muslim. She has taught me so much, not only by what she says but also by the way she lives. We Christians have a lot to learn!
I think they are among the most important relationships I have. There is no doubt that my years of teaching students in an Orthodox Jewish school and collegial friendship with an imam have illuminated and strengthened my Christian faith, and I think has done the same for them in theirs.
One of my former Jewish students, now in Israel for a year between high school and college, sent me a lengthy FB message describing the abrasive efforts of a Christian to convert her and a friend as they sat on a park bench in Jerusalem. I wished he could have had the memory I do, of her (and some of her classmates') courageous visit to the funeral home after my son died. Although her rabbi father was with her, she must have felt considerable apprehension in entering an unfamiliar environment in which she might have worried about encountering Christian symbolism and ritual, and yet she came.
I always found my students eager to teach me about Judaism and eager to learn about Christianity -- I often told them that while they did have to learn about the Magna Carta and the French Revolution, our conversations about faith and practice were the most important part of our world history classes.
The advantage of sending our children to multicultural schools (i.e. with kids of different faiths) is that they are somewhat forced to articulate their faith in a way that I never had to articulate, growing up in a bubble of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. FBC tells me of sitting in the school cafeteria with Jewish and Muslim friends who asked him why he didn't have ashes on his head like the Catholic kids on "that day Christians do ashes" and he was forced to know why and then share that information.
It has made his faith stronger while respecting those who are different.
Eboo has inspired our congregation to great, simple things, like shared meals and book clubs. We are the richer.
He's the keynote speaker at the 2010 Montreat College Conference, should be pretty awesome.
Post a Comment