The great commission and the great rebuff?
One thing we learned in our busy-bee studies leading up to “A Rabbi, A Priest, A Pastor & An Imam”… the three Abrahamic faiths have very different approaches to spreading their faith, creating tremendously different ripples in the world around them.
Muslims don’t evangelize. Their faith is all about the individual’s relationship to God, so one person simply isn’t responsible for another person’s behavior, salvation, or soul.
For Christianity, Jesus’ instructions to his disciples – or as it has come to be know “the great commission” – is central to the faith: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you…”
And then there’s Judaism, the colorful and quirky bird among them. If someone wants to convert, the Rabbi is required to deny them three times before, on the fourth inquiry, he will help them convert. Apparently they see the wisdom in someone first really (really, really) wanting it. Once converted, those not born into the faith are held in particularly high esteem.
Benyamin Cohen writes about the non-evangelizing nature of Judaism in his book My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders to the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith (uh – highly, highly recommended reading…)
Why don’t synagogues offer a goody bag of multimedia swag to take home with you on the way out? Hands down, Christians do a bang-up job at branding their religion, but we Jews-well, not so much. Supposedly we run the media, and yet we can’t cough up a gift basket and a take-home CD?
(Photo credit)
Add comment July 17th, 2009
