As the reader clicks on the photos connected with this outreach we see several individuals from this ministry holding up signs that read "Muhammed Lied.com" as they stand outside a mosque in southern California with beaming smiles on their faces. ... Does anyone seriously think that Muslims will be favorably disposed to considering the message conveyed by these Christian communicators? What message might the Muslims infer from these signs? Can it in any way be viewed positively by Muslims? Is this an appropriate form of cross-cultural communication? And, do these evangelists intend on trying this approach in those parts of the world where Islam is dominant, such as Asia or the Middle East?
It seems to me that it illustrates a failure of a communicative strategy to embody love. Communication is about helping ones conversation partner to understand something. Love is about looking at things from the other's point of view, to some extent, and responding generously, compassionately and with the welfare of the other in mind. Loving communication, then, is about matching up what needs to be 'said' with the other's ability to understand and to take in what is at issue between us. In that perspective, John's questions are spot on.
I fear that the justification for behaving in this way is that Jesus was prepared to speak sharply and perhaps offensively to some Pharisees and Sadducees. I think that this is a hard case for what I have just outlined. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to think that I or anyone else has enough self-understanding and other-understanding in cases like the one above to say that we may simply and easily emulate Jesus in that matter. I believe that Jesus will have uttered those rebukes in love and because they were finely calculated to be the best hope of reaching those people who were, in any case, there physically before him in circumstances where dialogue had presumably been taking place (if I read aright he situation). It was not a contextless, semi-anonymous action action such as propogated by the group John mentions.
I may be reading this, actually I clearly am reading this, through the lenses of previous experience on both sides and an onlooker to similar kinds of actions by Christians. I note, from the comments, that the organisation concerned may not be acting in quite the way that this first appears. However the principles remain, and I am concerned that quite unloving, depersonalised /decontextualised communications are becoming too easily accepted by Christians. My imagining the biblical justification is drawn from personal dialogue with one such Christian who was a friend. So while it's possible that, in the end, these considerations don't apply fully to the situation John outlines, the principles, I think, still apply as a way of assessing whether it is an action that stands up to scrutiny from a Christian point of view.
I would be interested in think collegially some more about the way in which we appropriate this particular example of Christ... over to you, dear reader.
Morehead's Musings: Cross-Cultural Communication: What Can We Learn From an Extreme?
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