Toward Dialogue
I’d like to present us with a new challenge: dialogue. To the best of my knowledge, no Seventh-day Adventist congregation has ever had the vision to dialogue with Jewish people. Some Adventists have attempted to persuade Jews to become Christians, but no Seventh-day Adventist congregation has ever seen dialogue with Jews as part of their mission. For Seventh-day Adventists dialogue is unentered territory. But we need to dream big.
Some Christians of other denominations have already engaged in dialogue with Jewish people forty or fifty years ago. There are certain lessons we can learn from their experience, but because we are a unique people, what we might give and what we might receive cannot be determined by the experience of others. By definition, dialogue cannot be predetermined. By definition, in a dialogue, either partner is free to initiate the conversation, to reply or not reply, to evade or change the subject, to raise concerns of their own, or to end the conversation. Dialogue may be a one-time event or the partners may become such close friends that they’re always ready to hear what the other has to say.
Dialogue between different communities of God’s children is based an additional assumption. The assumption is that since God is leading his children in both communities, we ought to listen to one another not only out of common courtesy, but because God may be speaking to us through his other children. We listen because we want to hear God better and walk with him closer. When Jews and Christians dialogue there’s a spiritual dimension. When we share our experience, we share our God. Jews and Christians need to be open to the possibility that their partner has apprehended an aspect of God, which hasn’t been apparent from their own experience. Jews and Christians need to be open to the possibility that God has revealed himself to their partner differently than he has revealed himself to their own community.
The fact that Jews and Christians share historical origins and are both God’s children also means we’re siblings. Siblings have a biblical mandate to hold one another to accountability. Leviticus 19:17 instructs us.
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart; surely rebuke your colleague and do not bear sin on his account.”
As siblings we recognize that Christianity is too important to be left to Christians just as Judaism is too important to be left to the Jews. Mutual accountability doesn’t grant one community the right to meddle in the other’s affairs, but the exercise of accountability demands we’ve got to be on some sort of speaking terms.
For one community of God’s children to refuse to dialogue with another is worse than saying the other is all wrong. To refuse to communicate is to deny hope. For one people of God to deny another people of God hope is tantamount to denying God’s activity in his world. This is practical atheism. Jews and Christians must hope that God can redeem even communities with conflicting doctrines and clashing interests. It isn’t Jewish for Jews to refuse to communicate with Christians. It isn’t Christian for Christians to refuse to communicate with Jews. For God’s sake we must communicate!
Sometimes openness to others is perceived as a sign of weakness. On the contrary, we can only engage in dialogue from a position of strength. Only individuals who are confident in being who God has called them to be, can engage in Jewish/Christian dialogue. Dialogue is guaranteed to take you outside your comfort zone! Dialogue is not for people so unsure about their own spiritual identity that they’re liable to flip affiliation. Until recently Jews and Christians have been reluctant to engage one another in dialogue for just this reason. Even today, many Jews and Christians still feel the risk of conversion to the other side outweighs the potential benefits.
The risk of dialogue is that when you get to know somebody who also has a relationship to your God, but a different relationship than yours, you may question your own relationship to him. Up to now most Jews and Christians have simply assumed that their own particular relationship to God is the only relationship possible. Admittedly, the prospect of meeting somebody with a different relationship to your God is threatening. The risk is that you may have to reconceptualize your own place in God’s plan.
The history of Jewish/Christian dialogue has been one-sided. During the Middle Ages Christians sometimes forced the local Jewish community into public disputation. The penalty for Jews losing was forced conversion to Christianity or martyrdom. There was no corresponding penalty when Christians lost. These were not free and fair debates. While no record survives from the Christian side, there’s a whole literature of disputation that’s survived from the Jewish side. Obviously, the Jewish side had a higher stake in winning! In Hebrew they’re called sifre hanitzachon “the victory books.” I have reprints of several of these “victory books” in my personal library. The Jewish side recorded some of the debates for further reference. For Israel, victory over the Christian side was a matter of survival. If we allow our dialogue to deteriorate to the level of traditional disputation, to deteriorate to the exchange of prooftexts and accusations, Christians may easily lose. If we come to the table with traditional demands for capitulation, Jews have proven themselves capable of exposing the fallacies of traditional Christianity.
What’s worse than losing, by stooping to the level of Israel’s persecutors, we become unworthy partners. If our dialogue is poisoned by traditional rhetoric, God’s voice won’t be heard. Our dialogue will only be the sound of angry people on the defensive. Our dialogue will feed self-justification. Nothing good will come of such talk. It’s morally unacceptable to allow our dialogue to deteriorate to disputation. Both parties must exercise restraint in this regard.
But saying that dialogue is conditional on restraint, doesn’t mean that dialogue must be confined to polite exchanges on blandly neutral topics. The conversation between Jews and Christians cannot avoid a certain controversial zeal. Because our experience is different, substantive differences between us are unavoidable.
Praying Jews believe their community best understands God’s revealed will and they sincerely want for all human beings to come to the God of Israel their way through the covenant at Sinai. We Christians believe our community best understands God’s revealed will and we sincerely want for all human beings to come to the God of Israel our way through Jesus on the cross. It’s only natural that we should each think the way we ourselves have come to know God is best for everybody else. If we tried to hide our convictions born of experience, we wouldn’t be trustworthy partners in dialogue.
It’s no secret that Jews and Christians would each love to convert the other. We have to be upfront about our convictions. For Christians, God’s gift of himself embodied in Jesus is what makes us tick. For Jews, God’s election and his gift of himself embodied in his Torah are what make them tick. We can’t pretend otherwise. These convictions have made us who we are. We can’t help tell what God has done for us. But in dialogue we have to refrain from persuading our partner to leave his or her community to join ours. We can’t engage in recruitment and in dialogue simultaneously. When we’re doing the one, by definition we’re not doing the other. We can certainly engage in both recruitment and in dialogue, but not at the same time.
Dialogue is based on mutual trust. When we make ourselves transparent and vulnerable, we have the right to expect the same from our partner. If one partner discovers the other is not being transparent, but is operating with a hidden agenda, dialogue is over. Broken trust breaks off dialogue. In other words, both partners must be sensitive to the other’s concerns and careful to guard the boundaries that allow for trust. We can’t invite someone to dialogue and then launch into a missionary offensive. Dialogue is not an opportunity for bait-n-switch.
To expect Jewish/Christian dialogue to lead to a switch in religious affiliation is to ignore how spiritual commitment works. The candid exchange of experience and perspective doesn’t pose a threat to religious commitment. Religious commitment springs from other sources of knowing God, such as communal memory, formative experience, familiar worship habits, and the sense of God’s providence in an individual’s life. Dialogue may lead to reconciliation between Jews and Christians, but it is not likely to lead to many conversions over to the other side.
Traditionally, Seventh-day Adventists have communicated the gospel by rhetorical steps, with the goal of the listener capitulating to the speaker’s viewpoint. The traditional missionary attitude was that I deliver the package and you accept the package. I do the teaching and you the do the learning. It was an unequal relationship, where the missionary takes advantage of the potential convert’s psychological vulnerability in order to apply pressure. Manipulation has served us as an effective recruitment tactic, but manipulation isn’t the most effective model of interpersonal relationships. Spiritual arm-twisting isn’t dialogue.
Traditionally, Seventh-day Adventists have preferred to communicate the gospel by monologue rather than by dialogue. We don’t much like people who ask the wrong questions. For Seventh-day Adventists to engage in dialogue requires a major shift, not only in technique, but in our own perception of how we attain God’s truth. Up to now, we’ve operated on the premise that the truth is something we already have, and communication is the process of generously sharing what’s ours with others.
Dialogue implies openness to the possibility that the other person may also have something worth hearing. Dialogue implies a relationship between equals. Dialogue operates on the premise that God’s truth is something both partners have, but neither partner has it all. Communication then, is the process of mutual sharing, rather than simply sharing what our side has. In dialogue, communication is an ongoing process of discovery for both partners.
We can all improve our listening skills. It’s a matter of ear training. Because he listened, the Servant of the L-rd in Isaiah had the gift of saying just the right words at the right moment. Isaiah 50:4,
“HaShem God has given me the tongue of the taught, to know to speak a word to the weary. Morning by morning he awakes; he awakens my ear to listen like the taught.”
That gift of a ready tongue and a listening ear can be yours and mine too. Ask God for the tongue and the ear of the taught. Become an active listener. Instead of just unloading what you wish to say, help your partner in conversation express what he or she really wants to say. Ask clarifying questions. Become as interested in getting your partner’s message across clearly as you are in getting your own message across clearly. That’s being a good listener.
With all the risks entailed and with our horrible history of disputation, why should Jews and Christians even want to engage in dialogue? Let’s look at some of the potential benefits.
Number one, in today’s world neither Jews nor Seventh-day Adventists can afford to be isolationists. In this pagan world of ours we are both a minority people of God. God doesn’t have such an over-abundance of true worshipers that we can afford to ignore each another. It looks silly for Shabbat observant Jews and Shabbat observant Christians to act like the other doesn’t exist. Because we are different communities, who obviously don’t agree on a great many issues, doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate. Friendship, fortunately, doesn’t depend on being exactly alike. I can enjoy the company and companionship of people unlike myself. Even if Jews and Adventists might prefer to be isolationists, the fact is, we need allies. God has put us in the same world for our mutual benefit.
Number two, aside from their own experience of walking with him, Jews and Christians are each other’s best evidence of God’s faithfulness. The fact that Israel has survived these four thousand years since the call of Father Avraham and Mother Sara has to be a powerful testimony to Christians that our God is faithful. The fact that Christians have brought idolaters from every Gentile, tribe, tongue, and people to love and serve the God of Israel has to be a powerful testimony to Jews that God has indeed made Avraham father of many Gentiles, that God performs what he promises. We need to hear that testimony from one another’s lips and personally see the evidence. Jewish/Christian dialogue is a faith-strengthening exercise for both parties.
Number three, because of our understanding of last-day events, Adventists believe that all Shabbat observant worshipers share a common destiny. If someday Shabbat observant worshipers will be persecuted together, why can’t we be allies now? The least we can do is to tell our future allies we care about them and that we already feel we’re on their side. In many instances the time may not be ripe to share our detailed belief system with Jewish people, but at least we want them to know, that according to our understanding, Shabbat observance will someday put us in the same boat. When anti-Shabbat legislation threatens Jewish existence, we want Jewish people to turn to their Seventh-day Adventist friends who can explain what the upcoming crisis means for God’s commandment-keeping people.
Number four, practicing Jews cannot be reached by traditional Christian missionary tactics, but they can be reached insofar as they have a living relationship with the God of Israel, with whom we also have a living relationship. We must capitalize on our existing relationship to the same God. Dialogue is one of our few options for reaching practicing Jews with our unique Adventist message. (Secular Jews we must approach much as we approach other individuals alienated from their Creator.)
While I wouldn’t want to minimize the risks of dialogue, personally I believe the pluses outweigh the risks.
In the endtime we must rely on God himself to reconcile his broken family. I understand Malakhi to prophesy not only intergenerational reconciliation, but interfaith reconciliation. Malakhi [3:24 English 4:6] prophesies,
“Behold, I am sending you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of HaShem. He will turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the earth with an embargo.”
Even if our current self-definitions as faith communities might seem mutually exclusive, if we come before our God together as spiritual equals each freely sharing the truth he’s entrusted us with, God will lead us both further into his truth. God’s own reconciling love is the true basis of Jewish/Adventist dialogue. Our hope for success is God himself.
The challenge of dialogue is enormous for both sides, but we serve a big God. For Seventh-day Adventists the shift from monologue to dialogue is new, but God is not intimidated by new things the way his children are.
We don’t know where Jewish/Adventist dialogue will lead, but we know who is leading. We don’t know what lessons we’ll learn, but we do know our Teacher, who has given us his Torah. We don’t know what form success will take, but do we know who will crown his people’s efforts with success.
If dialogue means exposing ourselves, if it means being vulnerable, if it means spiritual risk, we do so for Jesus sake. In Jesus’ name let’s reach out in genuine friendship to our brothers and sisters.
