A reporter once told me he was puzzled about my relationships with the Jewish community. "You work closely with Jewish organizations dealing with religion and public life issues, yet you also lead a seminary that has a program in Jewish evangelism. How do you resolve that contradiction?"

I explained that as an evangelical I have a nonnegotiable commitment to evangelism—and this includes witnessing to Jewish people about my firm conviction that Jesus is the promised Messiah. But I also oppose treating Jews as if they were only "targets" for evangelism.

We evangelicals have much to learn from Jews, not only about issues of public life, but also about deeply religious topics (see Reflections, p. 40). And we must work alongside members of the Jewish community for justice and righteousness in the larger society.

Witnessing to, learning from, cooperating with Jews: this is an important agenda for evangelicals to pursue with the Jewish community. But it has not always been easy for Christians to pursue all three tasks. Those strong on evangelism have often been weak on learning and cooperation; those eager to nurture learning and cooperative relationships have often downplayed the evangelistic mandate.

Let's be clear about this: evangelism is a mandate. The Southern Baptists have taken much criticism for their resolution a year ago on evangelization of Jews (CT, July 15, 1996, p. 66; Nov. 11, 1996, p. 103); we can hope that this controversy will serve to inform the larger world that some of us really do believe we have an obligation to present the claims of the Christ to non-Christians.

We need to keep reminding Jewish friends that if they are serious about having better relations with evangelicals—which many of them are—they cannot demand that we think and act like liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics. That is a price of admission that we cannot pay. We are evangel people. Our proclamation that Jesus is the promised Messiah cannot be silenced for the sake of interreligious civility.

But faithfulness to the gospel also requires more than evangelism. Corrie Ten Boom looms large in my gallery of special saints. Every other year or so I make a point of rereading her account of her efforts to protect Jewish people from the horrible designs of the Nazis. There can be no doubt that she wanted everyone—Jew and Gentile alike—to come to know Jesus. She knew that the only truly safe "hiding place" was to be found in the Savior's embrace. But evangelism was not the sole motivation in her relations with Jews. She was willing to risk her life to work for their physical safety, even if those efforts did not afford opportunities to lead them to Christ.

Learning from Jews
We have much to learn from the Jewish people. For one thing, our relationships with Jewish brothers and sisters who have come to faith in Christ have been precious to many of us and have deepened our understanding of the gospel. Non-Christian Jews also have much to teach us about spiritual matters. Any Christian who thinks otherwise should read Abraham Joshua Heschel on the prophets or the Sabbath, or the fiction of Chaim Potok. We cannot simply classify Judaism under "other religions." We share with Jewish people a common spiritual heritage that is grounded in God's revelation to Moses and the Hebrew prophets.

We must also learn about the suffering of the Jewish people. Evangelicals need to think more deeply about what it means to evangelize Jews after the Holocaust. Much has happened in Jewish-Christian relations since the New Testament was written. The Christian record during that two thousand years of history is not an admirable one. Indeed, Christians have often committed atrocious deeds against Jews. I will never forget the tears of a Jewish friend as he told me about his childhood in a Midwest town when his classmates taunted him by chanting "Christ killer" as they followed him home from school.

Evangelicals need to weep with Jews as we hear their stories of suffering. And we must repent of our sins, even as we testify about the One who came to save us while we were yet sinners. We cannot simply quote Paul—who wrote when the church was a minority religion struggling to clarify both continuities and differences with a Jewish majority—without recognizing that we do so from this side of Auschwitz.

When Jews, both religious and secular, complain that evangelistic efforts threaten to destroy their very identity as a people, we must listen carefully. And we must recognize that our responses—however theologically appropriate they may seem from a Christian perspective—will not be very convincing to people who have vivid collective memories of forced "conversions." None of this cancels our obligation to evangelize, but it does highlight an obligation to avoid unnecessary offense and to understand the challenges we face.

Cooperation with Jews
Finally, we must cooperate with Jews in working for the health of society. One obvious threat to justice today was described succinctly several years ago when the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism denounced the "proliferation of racism and Jew-hatred in our world today"; this concern should rank high on the agenda for evangelical-Jewish cooperation. We can also work together in seeking creative resolutions to conflicts in the Middle East.

Evangelicals in the United States have a special obligation to show through action that we are committed to a pluralistic society. Regular references to America as "a Christian nation," however well-intended in debates with secularists, are hurtful in our relationship with Judaism. We need to demonstrate that we are willing to work with Jews and others as cobelligerents in finding a common moral basis for promoting a good order in a pluralistic society.

Dialogue and cooperation with Jews have their own genuine value. They should not be construed as mere "setups" for evangelism. But the connections to Christian witness are also very real. Evangelism is witnessing to the marvelous message of the God who has drawn near to us in Jesus Christ. If we want to tell of the power of the gospel "to the Jew first" (Rom. 1:16) in our context, we may need to draw near to our Jewish friends, first of all, in order to learn from them and work with them on matters of profound significance in our contemporary world.

Originally published in Christianity Today, August 11, 1997.

Copyright © 1997 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christianity Today magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail cteditor@christianitytoday.com.
August 11, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 9, Page 12

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