El Jefe

I went to a talk Saturday night by Carl Medearis, who lived with his family for several years in the Middle East. His message to the people there seemed to be summed up by 1 Cor. 2:2: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” His style seemed to be to tell stories of Jesus to the people he meets (usually Muslims), and today was similar: he told stories of how he has introduced various people to Jesus in the Middle East. It was fascinating to hear the stories of his experiences, and he made some good points about focusing on Jesus, but I was troubled by two aspects of what he said.

First, he seemed to be oversimplifying the gospel. In one story, he told of how he boldly strode into a Bedouin camp and offered to tell them about Jesus. The sheikh asked him, “What does Jesus do?” After hemming and hawing for a while, he said that Jesus used to heal people. This of course precipitated the advancement of folks with various maladies, with calls for prayer and healing. Long story short, he prayed over them, including the sheikh, and came back the next day to find that the sheikh was healed. It was a nice story, but nowhere did he seem to mention that Jesus heals more than the body. Hm.

In another story, he found himself talking to a Saudi princess in her luxurious palace. He told her of the Kingdom of Heaven and its King Jesus and how it was so much greater than her kingdom. He asked her if she wanted to follow this King. He asked us the same thing, in a kind of altar call. But never did he mention that Jesus was crucified and that He rose again, or anything about sin. Yes, he knew nothing except Jesus Christ, but he seemed to have forgotten about the last part of that verse.

I understand that there are a lot of cultural issues that we often mistake for essential to the gospel, but which can and should be abandoned when bringing Jesus to folks around the world. There is no reason that Christianity should be necessarily Western. But how much can you shed before you start to get heretical? It’s a tough question.

I was also bothered by some of the things he said about other Christians. In one story, he told of how he encouraged some Muslim seminarians to “take back Jesus” from the American Christians. In another, he empathized with a Colorado Springs man who disliked the Christian Right set who seem to be so prevalent there. Now, the Christian Right deserves some criticism, but telling someone that you find Jesus in his New Age bookstore instead of the biggest church in town is a little much. It’s another difficult question: how to constructively criticize other Christians while still showing love for the Church? I think it’s tempting for some folks to just turn their back on the Church and “just follow Jesus,” but that’s not what we’re taught in the Bible. Christ loves the Church, and so should we. (BTW, Derek Webb has some cool things to say on this topic in his music.)

Enough. Peace out folks.