So, a friend informs me, (a certain) Brian McLaren is observing Ramadan this year. I was minding my own business, see, and my friend sent me this link. Check it out your own self here. He sent me the link, I am convinced, to see if I would go off like a bottle rocket, all the while trying to stay out of sin.
No, I do not go off like a bottle rocket. I sit here, solemn and thoughtful, stroking my beard. Hmmm, I muse to myself, thinking down the same lines that Cicero did when he o temporaed o moraed about ancient Roman monkeyshines. What shall the harvest be? I then turn to go back to whatever it was I was doing.
But then I ask myself, am I being selfish? Do I not have peculiar gifts in the arena of fisking? Was I not born for just such occasions? With a sigh, I put aside my casual evening, and go out to my shop to find the nine-pound sledge.
It is not as though McLaren just announced this, leaving us to figure out why. He 'splains it himself.
Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of fasting for spiritual renewal and purification. It commemorates the month during which Muslims believe Mohammed received the Quran through divine revelation, and it calls Muslims to self-control, sacrificial generosity and solidarity with the poor, diligent reading of the Quran, and intensified prayer.
And all God's people say ohhhh, their voices trailing off at the end. Then their faces bunch up that funny way that faces have. And then a cluster of hands go up, and the looks on some faces indicate that this might turn into a town hall meeting or something.
This year, I, along with a few Christian friends . . . will be joining Muslim friends in the fast which begins August 21. We are not doing so in order to become Muslims: we are deeply committed Christians. But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them.
That is, deeply committed Christians who believe that what matters is the deeply committed part, and not the object of the commitment. For, as we have just learned, being deeply committed to a diligent reading of false Scriptures, and intensified prayer to a false god, and sacrificial generosity as a means of ginning up some works righteousness around here, is something that deeply committed Christians can "come close" in order to "share." Sharing, that is, in the experience of getting all the fundamentals wrong.
It is as though deeply committed adherents of the notion that the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides decided to "come close" to those who thought that it wasn't even close to the sum of the square of the other two sides. But what the heck. What matters is being deeply committed to drawing what you think are triangles on a piece of paper. Is that not what really matters? We have pencils and papers in common. Come on, people. Don't you want to end wars?
Just as Jesus, a devout Jew, overcame religious prejudice and learned from a Syrophonecian woman and was inspired by her faith two thousand years ago (Matthew 15:21 ff, Mark 7:24 ff), we seek to learn from our Muslim sisters and brothers today.
In other words, we learn from a woman who came to Jesus the lesson of why coming to Jesus is totally not necessary.
Muslims observe Ramadan in the same basic way world-wide: they fast from food, water, sex, etc., from dawn to dusk. We Christians who are joining in the fast will share these four common commitments . . .
The dot dot dot at the end of the quote means that it gets even riper.
We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness. Each of us will have at least one Muslim friend who will serve as our partner in the fast. These friends welcome us in the same spirit of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness.
In exchange, each one of these Muslim friends will come over to our houses this Easter for our traditional Easter ham, the kind with the brown sugar glaze . . . oh, they won't come? Curious. Why not? Something about believing their religion . . .
We will seek to avoid being disrespectful or unfaithful to our own faith tradition in our desire to be respectful to the faith tradition of our friends. For example, since the Bible teaches us the importance of fasting and being generous to the poor, we can participate as Christians in fidelity to the Bible as our Muslim friends do so in fidelity to the Quran.
Tashlan! That's it! Tashlan! Fidelity to whatever is what matters, and so therefore fidelity to infidelity is cleansed and okay. Shift okayed it himself.
Among the core values of Ramadan are self control, expressing kindness, and resolving conflicts. For this reason, if we are criticized or misunderstood by Christians, Muslims, or others for this endeavor, we will avoid defending ourselves or engaging in arguments. Instead, we will seek to explain ourselves humbly, simply, and briefly when necessary, connecting with empathy to the needs and feelings of others as we express our own.
Core values. Core values are what you find in a mission statement for a community college in a medium sized city in the Midwest. Religions don't have core values, at least not the religions with a God. Moses didn't come down off the mountain with a set of core values. Or a mission statement, for that matter. And when he saw what the people were doing, he didn't connect with much empathy to the needs and feelings of those in the Golden Calf mosh pit.
But avoiding defending themselves is a good idea, actually. This kind of thing is why we have words like indefensible. Instead of defending or arguing, they will explain themselves humbly. Why does he keep telling us how humble he is? There are two reasons. First, he has confounded humility with the oozing of sentimentalist treacle out his pores, and secondly, he thinks we haven't noticed the treacle, which is why he points it out. But we have noticed, and so he can stop now.
Our main purpose for participating will be our own spiritual growth, health, learning, and maturity, but we also hope that our experience will inspire others to pray and work for peace and the common good, together with people of other faith traditions.
This is the kind of thing you expect to hear from contestants in a Miss America contest, when asked what they hope to do for mankind after they don't have to vamp around in a swimsuit anymore. The answer, as I understand it, is supposed to involve world peace somehow. And "working" for it.
May God bless all people, and teach us to love God and love one another, and so fulfill our calling as human beings.
We have here twenty-three consecutive words without a single positive, verified error. That's pretty good, considering.
I'll share my personal story about deciding to join in the fast in the next few days, and I'll also share regular updates and reflections here on this blog (brianmclaren.net) leading up to, during, and after Ramadan.
Ah, "my personal story." Personal stories trump everything. I hope it involves core values. And maybe a dragon. That always makes stories better. But then the dragon would eat the core values, and we would then need a knight to come. And when the knight came, he could put down his spear and shield, and ask the dragon if he could "come close" and "share" in the experience of eating the core values. And the dragon said, "Why not?" and winked at the camera.
First published in Blog and Mablog, 25th August, 2009
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