When I had my very first experience in sharing Christ with a Muslim I found her to be excited about Jesus, thrilled with the personal freedoms and community that we share in the church. I found her seeking the feeling that she was a valued woman that God loved personally. When she began to make inquiries into baptism and conversion I was over the roof with joy! Here was someone coming to the Lord and making their way out of Islam, what more joy could there be? But, I ran into a road block unforeseen by me, when I began to talk about the questions I had about Muhammad as a person, or prophet. She became defensive immediately and had no desire to listen to any real questions about his authenticity as a prophet and remained loyal to him. This struck me as odd, seeing as she knew personally how Islam and Muhammad had personally darkened her life, but she remained stuck in her devotion to her beloved prophet. It was then I came to realize something, while she was eager to accept all the benefits of being a Christian she had no intention of rejecting Islam. 

Jesus told his disciples of the foolish man who built a house upon the sand and the wise man who built his house on the rock. My friend wanted to build a new house in Christianity but had no intention of tearing out her old foundation of sand. Her house was doomed, and indeed once storms came, the house fell and the foundation in Islam remained. 

There are a lot of differing methods of reaching Muslims for the Gospel, and I think that we as Christians are so eager to see them coming to Christ we will go to extreme lengths to watch it happen, which is wonderful. However, there are many methods out there right now that do not include tearing out the bad sand foundation of Islam from the Muslim's life and seeing this firsthand worries me a great deal. There seems to be this idea that we can just build on what they have already and just get them to see Christ as their savior and all will be well. This idea may have originated from the Jews For Jesus movement, as Jews who come to Christ can continue to be fully Jewish and accept Christ with no alteration in their traditions or practices, as Christianity's roots are in Judaism. This is not the truth in Islam. Their practices may have been strongly influenced by Judaism and Christianity in the early years, but the roots are of one man's vision of who he wanted Allah to be. One cannot hope to separate the poison from a drink. The drink must be thrown away. The idea that Islam is just a tradition, a culture is wrong. A convert from Islam should and can enjoy his/her culture, history, music, but the belief systems must be changed. Islam as a belief has no rich foundations but is made of sand, Islam grew in the mind of one man who had been given many ideas from many different sources, some were good and others were heresy and occult. He used those sources to plant his ideas in and made something new. 

Being friends with Muslims doesn't mean we have to accept their beliefs, or use the Quran to accomplish their respect. These methods end in confusion for both the Muslim trying to come to God and the Christian using them. We have encountered many good hearted Christians who find themselves entangled in the doctrines of lslam because they begin to immerse themselves in the teachings in an effort to show their Muslim friend how to see Christ. My friends, if you want to show someone Christ, fill your life with Him, your hours, your songs, your actions, your life will glow! We don't need to hide our lights under a bushel basket to camouflage it to the Muslim world, hoping to sneak Christ into their lives, but we need to place our lights high in our lives so they shine in the eyes of all who encounter us. There is no deception when leading someone to Christ, we are not secret agent spies who have to deceive in order to achieve our goals. We are living representatives of the Most High. It is time we lived like it. We have nothing to be ashamed of in Christ. His teachings are enough, we don't need to add any spices from anyone, no matter how we want to be respectful of someone else's beliefs.  When it comes to claiming a person for the Lord there are no short cuts, their lives have to change, their traditions have to change, their prayers have to change, their foundation has to be rebuilt. Christ is who we should be shining and reflecting into their lives, no more of what they already have had all their lives, but renewed hearts with new foundations on the solid rock, or all our efforts will be as sand in a storm, blown and shaped into nothing but mounds bearing no resemblance to Christ. 

As a nurse I have held the hands of patients who had to have wounds debrided, a painful process of having the damaged tissue that was dead removed so that the living could come back. It is excruciating often and yet without it the wounds don't heal properly, and scarring and reinfection are much more incapacitating. Seeing this in person and assisting in this process is  heart wrenching, but when the new pink live skin begins to grow and health is restored the painful process fades in the memory and only the new healthy tissue is the focus. I regretted terribly talking to my friend about Muhammad, thinking I had failed her by not accepting him. I have come to realize that the circumcision of a heart does not come without a painful step of removing the dead parts. These broken hearted must be ready to have the dead removed from their lives before the healing can begin and take over their lives. Without that removal they will be scarred in their hearts, handicapped in their walk with God and infection can very easily creep back in and endanger the life we tried to save. So before taking the short way, we should consider the long term and take on the challenge of the painful debridement of the soul.

Angela