What does the Lord require of us?

Contents

Part 1: Setting the scene
1 People and places
2 The academic scene
3 Reading the Bible
Part 2: Reading the Old Testament
4 Peoples surrounding Israel, and their gods
5 Beginnings: Genesis
6 Development: the calling of a people
7 God’s nation among the nations
8 God, gods and nations
Part 3: Reading the New Testament
9 Setting the scene: the world behind the text
10 A new people
11 Facing Samaritan religion
12 Facing the Gentile religions
13 The questions we want to ask
Part 4: Seeing ourselves
14 The Bible as a mirror
15 What does the Lord require of us?

People and Places extract

Every sentence of this book is written in acute awareness of blood and tears being shed as human beings, made in the image of God, show the effects of their ‘fall’ in the contexts of their religions. It is also written in the belief that Jesus Christ is God’s gift to his fallen world.

As I started writing, people were looking for survivors under the rubble of the New York World Trade Center that was destroyed on 11 September 2001. People in Jos, Nigeria, were rebuilding their lives after mosques and churches were burnt down and many Christians and Muslims were killed and injured. The radio was carrying programmes about clashes between nationalistic Hindus and people of other faiths in India. Buddhists and Hindus continued the civil war in Sri Lanka, and Catholics and Protestants seemed unable to settle their political differences in Northern Ireland. No wonder the British atheist scientist Richard Dawkins sees religion as destructive! He calls his article about the attack on the World Trade Center ‘Religion’s misguided missiles’ and comments, ‘To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns.

What should Christians think about all this? And what should they do? What difference can Jesus Christ make to these results of the ‘fall’? I was asked to write a book on theology: a biblical theology of Christianity and other religions. I thought of all the questions Christian students ask about religions: Is Christ the only way? Is there any truth in religions? Where does it come from? Can people of other religions get to heaven? Are they worshipping God or the devil? Should we try to convert them? How can we convert them? Now, I am not sure that these are the right questions.

As I have studied the Bible, lived among people of different religions and talked with many Christians, I have realized that there are more urgent questions. How can we understand religions and the way they affect human beings? What has God done for people of different religions? What is he doing among them? And what does he require of us? How should we respond to their gods? How do the great commandments (Matt. 22:34–40) and the great commission (Matt. 28:16–20) relate to people of other religions? And to places of interreligious conflict?

Of course, the two sets of questions are related. What we believe about Christ and about the religions will change our ideas of how God relates to people and of what we should do. The difference is that the second set of questions focuses on other people’s welfare and our own responsibility. The first set is more about how we should judge other people. It is the second set that I find most urgent for actual relationships with people. ...