It’s Really All About God
In our increasingly pluralistic societies, one of the most urgent questions facing Christianity--and Adventism--is how we relate to those who believe differently. Too often, the traditional approach seems to have been to dismiss these others--anyone and everyone who does not believe as we do. But our increasing interaction with those of other faiths forces us to re-examine these assumptions. Life is often not as black-and-white as we might like it to be.
Samir Selmanovic is one voice who can help Christians--and particularly Adventists--wrestle with these issues. Writing overtly as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian and pastor, his book It's Really All About God is published by a large mainstream press, Jossey-Bass, but highlights a number of distinctly Adventist contributions to Christian faith and how these also connect beyond Christianity.
In his introduction, Selmanovic is careful to emphasise the Christian foundation for this project. He acknowledges that some of his friends claim they are able to embrace four faiths--Muslim, atheist, Jewish and Christian--simultaneously but expresses his doubts that this is either possible or sustainable. Instead, he acknowledges that he "would not have become or stayed Christian without the blessings of Islam, atheism, and Judaism."
Yet, at the same time, Selmanovic maintains that it is his Christian faith that inspires him to seek good in and for other believers. It is precisely because he seeks to follow Jesus that he reaches out to others and has something of value and beauty to share with them. Applying such basic Christian tenets as the Golden Rule, he urges that we use these principles to guide us toward treating other religions as we would like them to treat ours--listening with respect, learning from their wisdom, standing up for their freedoms and serving their needs. Rather than watering down Christianity, Selmanovic seeks a more radical, costly and sometimes difficult engagement with our faith and each other.
Selmanovic has sought to model this approach to those of other faiths in the form of Faith House Manhattan, a multi-faith ministry project he founded in New York City. Described as "an experiment in the kingdom of God," Faith House seeks to create a space in which believers from the world's three major monotheistic religions can worship together, learn from each other's traditions and serve together in the world.
As someone who has spent portions of his life in a number of these faith traditions, Selmanovic is not merely a philosopher or theologian. He grew up in a nominally Muslim family in then-Communist Yugoslavia. When he became a Christian and Seventh-day Adventist while completing compulsory military service, Selmanovic was expelled from his family for a number of years. He eventually completed doctoral studies at Andrews University before pastoring on both coasts of the United States, including ministering in New York City at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
It's Really All About God takes its narrative direction from this story, with Selmanovic's own realisation of God, growth in faith, slowly repairing relationship with his family and life experience escorting readers through a similar journey. As such, the book is part spiritual memoir but with added depth of reflection and engagement with other religious traditions and literature. Appropriately, the narrative climax of the book is perhaps a seemingly small moment bringing together Selmanovic's family and church family, reading of which is rendered more poignant in light of his father's recent death.
It's Really All About God is both deeply philosophical and profoundly pragmatic. One of the book's recurring statements is "Life wins," meaning that our beliefs or theories about life and God must have practical applications and benefits, or risk fading into irrelevance. Written and published primarily for a Christian readership, It's Really All About God might have helped some readers by a more direct engagement with some of the Bible references used to launch the "exclusive claims" of Christianity--but Selmanovic's aim is to outline a vision more than argue apologetics.
Although it's easy to be distracted, It's Really All About God is really a book about God--as the title suggests. Any authentic discussion about religion must ultimately be about the God we are seeking to worship and serve, and what He is like. And that is the book's greatest achievement.
Through his sometimes funny, sometimes moving and sometimes poetic reflections, Selmanovic points us back to a God Who embraces, Who stoops to serve, Who pursues us relentlessly but lovingly, Who weeps at the tragedies, heartaches, fear and brokenness of our world, and Who is truly "our Father" to all His children. This is the God Who calls us to join with Him in serving our world, to value each other and to participate now in the wonderful and mysterious kingdom He offers to us all.
It's Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian by Samir Selmanovic, Jossey-Bass, 2009, hardback, 320 pages.
More information at www.samirselmanovic.com and www.faithhousemanhattan.org
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 | Nathan Brown | Nathan Brown is a book editor and former magazine editor for the Adventist Church in the South Pacific, based just out of Melbourne, Australia. He was also a regular columnist for Adventist Review for four years. He has degrees in law, literature and English. He is married to Angela and they have two mismatched dogs and sponsor kids in a number of countries. Nathan is the author of four books: a novel Nemesis Train (2008), the thought-provoking Relevation (2006), Seven Reasons Life is Better with God (2007) and Ordinary People, Extraordinary God (2007). |
Comments
Re: It’s Really All About God
A very nice, and provocative, review. It makes me want to read the book. However, I always get a bit nervous when the relevancy monitors show up: "One of the book's recurring statements is 'Life Wins,' meaning that our beliefs or theories about life and God must have practical applications and benefits, or risk fading into irrelevance." Intuitively appealing as this statement is, I don't find much support for it in the Gospels. Neither Christ's message, nor His life, had readily apparent practical applications and benefits. Had it not been for His death and resurrection, Christ's message would have faded into oblivion. The applications and benefits of "winning is losing," "to live is to die," "take up your cross," "deny yourself," etc., don't really resonate with the practical-minded crowd. Unlike other religions, practical, relevant theories about life and God have nothing to do with "Life Wins" in the Christian model. It is only through death - being crucified with Christ - that life wins in Christianity. Once the "old" life is buried, then we are free to rise to new life in Christ, and it is the incarnate power of resurrection life - not beliefs and theories - that gives our faith traction in the world.
You see, for Christians, it really is not all about God, at least not the amorphous, distant abstraction of other religious traditions. I fear that in our quest to find common ground with other faith traditions, the crucified, risen, Incarnate God - who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life - will fade into an ecumenical abstraction of beliefs and theories, magnificently embalmed in a relevancy-bedizened sarcophagus. Hopefully this book does not succumb to such a temptation.
Re: It’s Really All About God
As Nathan pointed out, Christanity is non-negotiable.
Or, as Peter said, "There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts 4:12
And Jesus said, "No one cometh to the Father except by me."
I suppose all religions teach something commendable. This hardly qualifies for a basis of some eccumencial unity.
And so Paul affirms, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism....."
Those who think otherwise are simply not Christian.
Bill Sorensen
Re: It’s Really All About God
Re: It’s Really All About God
Monte, obviously, Christians should careful in all their witnessing both in the church and the world.
As SDA's, we have been so "careful" not to offend anyone, few really take the church seriously in anything we say. We patronize apostate Protestantism and do our best to convince them we basically all believe the same thing.
The church I attend a couple years ago got a new pastor. I heard two sermons before I moved on. This is what he said....."When I fellowship with other pastors of other denominations, I want to convince them that SDA's are going to heaven too."
Now there is a SDA pastor who really knows what he is here for, ....eh? NOT. What happened to our message to call people "out of Babylon?"
Can't do that......"wouldn't be prudent" (Bush).
To fellowship with other pastors with the purpose of sharing our message is more than commendable. Neither do you have to dump the whole message on them at one time. But if your goal is to simply convince them SDA's are going to heaven too, it is doubtful this individual has a clue of what he is here for.
How about the story I heard told in my church over 30 years ago by the pastor.
A group of people are in heaven and there is a wall between them and others. They ask Jesus who the people are on the otherside of the wall. Jesus says, "Shhhhhh....be quiet, they are SDA's and they think they are the only ones here."
Now there is a real SDA minister who understands the three angels message....eh? NOT.
How many decades of these kinds of stories and ideas be advocated in the church before the next generation has no concept of our message and its meaning and import?
Is the SDA church today preparing people for the real second coming of Jesus,...or.....the antichrist? Far more of the spirit of antichrist is in the church than you may think or care to admit to.
Bob Brinsmead once said, "When it comes to theology, most SDA's hardly know more than what day to go to church on."
This was before his abandonment of his early mission. What he said was true then, and even more applicable today.
Oh, we still preach the Sabbath, state of the dead, the Pope as antichrist, the second coming.....etc. From one perspective, "So what?"
Many churches still teach "thou shalt not kill" "steal" "lie" etc....... But unless they advocate "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" they are impotent to prepare people for the coming of Christ.
We have "dumb down" the message for the sake of popularity and compromise as we patronize other faiths to find acceptance with them.
You can't honestly deny it either.......can you? Everybody knows its true. It is so obvious you have to stick your head in the sand not to see it.
I fear for my children and grandchildren. There will be no church left if God doesn't do something soon. The secular problems in the world are reflected by way of the spiritual problems in the church.
Bill Sorensen
Re: It’s Really All About God
Here is the bottom line of the article......
"Faith House seeks to create a space in which believers from the world's three major monotheistic religions can worship together, learn from each other's traditions and serve together in the world."
"Serve together in the world?" Hello? How can a seventh day Sabbath keeper serve with a Sunday keeper? How can we agree on evangelism? They tell people to keep Sunday and we tell them to keep the Sabbath.
This is not about social justice. Notice the phrase "Worship together". and "learn from each other's traditions."
Have you read the ECT documents? (Evangelicals and Catholics Together). At least some solid Protestant Christians knew this was an impossibility. John McCarther, R.C. Sproul, John Ankerberg, and the late D. James Kennedy.
While we don't support all their contentions, we can at least commend them for having the spiritual insights and guts to reject the document in spite of the many who commended it and embraced it.
Protestantism can not harmonize and/or fellowship and support the Catholic church. They knew and understood this.
Maybe we need to take a lesson in their rejection of the compromise.
Bill Sorensen
Re: It’s Really All About God
From Bill Sorensen:
Bill has repeatedly run his fellow SDA's into the ground, tossed his pastors under the bus, and trashed the leadership of the SDA denomination. I wonder if he worships in a church of one. At this point, I can't imagine that anyone is worthy in his eyes of his fellowship. Certainly, he feels that SDA leaders are clueless at the helm - how long before Bill just abandons ship?
As a follower of Brinsmead (and a current cheerleader of teachings long-since abandoned by Brinsmead himself) he's been weeping and gnashing his teeth for 30 years or so, crying about the imminent demise of the the SDA church, bemoaning the wayward flock. Heaven may suffer a glut of available real estate, with a housing crisis equal to that of modern day America, because, Bill - if he's right - will be the only resident living along those streets of gold.