Can a Muslim Be God's Voice to Me?

I once lived with a Muslim family for two years. It was extremely challenging, but not in the ways I expected it would be.

I lived with the Muslim family in their house near the center square of the capital city of Albania. There were nine of us in a relatively small space. Added to the cramped conditions was the fact that running water flowed only a few hours a day, electricity was intermittent, and food variety was limited. But I found none of this too difficult, even though Albania (Muslim, Balkan, post-Communist, poor, Mediterranean) could not have been more jarring to my affluent, American, “white,” Baptist upbringing.

What I found most challenging was this: They loved me. They loved me not only in a pat-you-on-the-back landlord sort of way. My Muslim family loved me like a son, which included caring for me as their spiritual responsibility.

This took particular force in the person of my hunched and humming Albanian grandmother. She was the first face I saw each morning, and at night she would lovingly touch my shoulder and say “sweet sleep.” She also pastored me. She encouraged me when I was low, blessed me as I went about my work (which, by the way, was Christian missionary work) and she told me about God’s love for me. She challenged my Christian training and my American pragmatism. She was a dawdling, superstitious Muslim. How could I allow her to be God’s voice in my life?

Tough questions

What am I to do? Seriously.

How do I understand all the folks who cross my path and don’t fit my theological categories? As a devout Christian, what am I supposed to do with the non-Christians I have known who are kinder than most Christians, purer than most Christians, and seemingly more connected to God than most Christians? Even more troubling, what am I to do with religious outsiders who are spiritually wise and speak that wisdom into my life? Am I allowed to accept their wisdom or am I required to sit in perpetual suspicion?

I recently had a conversation with Bob. Bob is a very learned and highly regarded scholar and advocate for Christianity. I was telling him about my Albanian grandmother, as well as several other folks in whom I’ve encountered love and wisdom that don’t belong to my faith. Bob was troubled by my words. He asked me repeatedly, “How can you claim that God can speak through anyone and still hold to our Christian dogma?” (I am not exaggerating his word usage; he really did say “dogma.” I didn’t think anybody even said “dogma” anymore.)

Regardless of his word choice, Bob was asking an important question. It is a question that has followed me for most of my adult life. Bob feared that my stories (full of Muslims, Atheists, and drunkards) was dangerous and the product of weak faith.

So, what am I to do? What am I to do with my Albanian grandmother? What am I to believe regarding my wise and spiritually insightful (even faith-filled) agnostic neighbor or my lovely Buddhist housemate or the tipsy advisor sitting next to me at the local pub?

With any question truly worth asking (and I believe these questions are of the highest significance), there are a few foundational things I feel I need to ask myself.

What do I believe about God?

For this, I may need to go back to a Sunday school question: Just how “omni” is God anyway? From my earliest days, I was taught that God is omniscient (all-powerful) and omnipresent (in all places) but is God also “omni-creative?” Is God limited (finite) in God’s capacity to creatively communicate?

When we think about the Transcendent, we need to decide just how transcendent that being is. Whether we view the transcendent as a person (the way that theists do) or if we think of the Transcendent as a “force” like most of my neighbors in Portland do, we need to process whether or not that Being is limited in its creative capacity.

Jesus said that God spoke through lilies and sparrows. The Psalmist says that God cries out through rocks. Once God even spoke through an ass.

So I have to decide for myself, Is God creatively restrained or infinite?

What do I believe about the “other?”

This one is a little trickier for me.

Can anyone be my spiritual teacher?

When I was young, I believed that I had one of two choices when it comes to understanding people as spiritual beings. Option one said that the world is filled by two teams: Christians and non-Christians. The Christians spoke for God and everyone else could not. Option two was to believe that everyone could know spiritual truth. But if that was true, I also had to believe that what one believed didn’t matter and everyone was spiritually the same, regardless of beliefs. I had only two options.

Today, I believe in spiritual identity. I believe that that identity is more than just subjective. The Bible, for instance, uses redeemed and unredeemed categories and links those categories to a person’s destiny.

That being said, I wonder if I have conflated my belief about spiritual identity with my belief about spiritual capacity. To put that another way, maybe I should separate the conversations about identity (whether a person is a Christian or a non-Christian) and capacity (whether or not someone is able to express truth, righteousness and moral goodness.)

In a similar vein, maybe one does not have to be a Christian to recognize and express the ways of God. And if that is true, anyone has the potential to be my spiritual teacher.

What have I witnessed in Jesus?

It only takes a cursory overview to see that Jesus made identity statements that divided people. He referred to nations as “sheep” and “goats” (Matthew 25). He said to some, “you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me (John 10:26-27).”

However, when I observe some of Jesus behaviors, the question of spiritual capacity becomes a bit more complicated. Jesus repeatedly surprises me in his response to the person who is religiously “other.”

In Jesus first sermon, found in Luke 4, Jesus pulls from biblical history. From the hundreds of people Jesus could have chosen, Jesus’ first sermon spotlighted two religious “outsiders” as spiritual heroes: a widow of Sidon and a leper from Syria. Interesting. Jesus also composed many fictional short stories. In one of his most famous, The Good Samaritan, Jesus fabricates his story around a spiritual outsider, a Samaritan, a person that his audience had been trained to distrust simply because of who they were (just like I had been trained to distrust my Albanian grandmother.)

Jesus rarely has complimentary words to say about the faith of the religious teachers and “insiders” of his day. Only once does the Bible say that Jesus marveled at someone and that someone (Matthew 8:10) was a Roman Centurion, a man who was probably a pagan, a pluralist and an idolater. In another rare scene of faith-affirmation, Jesus said to a Canaanite woman (religious outsider), “your faith is great (Matthew 15:28).”

In a related way, Jesus relied on a Samaritan woman to tend to his thirst (John 4), he submitted to a sinner to anoint him with oil (Luke 7:37) and it was an outlaw that he chose to minister to him the rite of baptism (Mark 1:9). In his birth story, Jesus is “saved” by stargazers from Eastern lands (Matthew 2:1-12).

Jesus’ words and behaviors are surprising indeed.

Expecting God’s voice

Can anyone be my spiritual teacher? Can anyone have insight and epiphanies about the ways and values of God, regardless of their religious identity?

In asking this, we are not asking the question, “Is everything that anyone says at any time spiritually helpful or healing?” Of course not. I only have to examine my heart and life to know the answer to that. So much of what comes out of my mouth or is demonstrated by my life is in direct opposition to God’s ways. I am often driven by selfishness, manipulation, arrogance, prejudice and disdain. I can only assume that this is also true of most anybody that I might come across.

However, am I open to the possibility that any person who crosses my path, regardless of creed or background, could be my spiritual teacher? Do I live in perpetual expectation of God’s voice? Do I hope that every person has something to show me about the goodness, truth and beauty of the Kingdom of God?

There is an ancient Christian prayer by St. Patrick.

“Christ, the lowly and the meek,
Christ, the all-powerful
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak
Be in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.”

Does someone have to be an artist to recognize beauty when they see it? Does one have to be a judge to proclaim justice to the world? Does one have to be a doctor to practice healing?

Identity and capacity are not the same thing.

Do I live in perpetual expectation of God’s voice? If not, maybe it is not God who is limited. Maybe just I am.

Tony “The Beat Poet” Kriz is a teacher and speaker on faith and culture. His most recent book is Neighbors and Wise Men: Sacred Encounters in a Portland Pub and Other Unexpected Places (Thomas Nelson, 2012).