During a church luncheon recently, I landed in a long conversation with new friend who is on a self-imposed learning curve about Christian – Muslim relations. He is reading what Muslims themselves think about their religion, currently in the area of what Islam teaches about love and mercy.

Driving home that afternoon, I found myself giving this Christian high marks for reading original sources. He is avoiding a number of traps. (1) Of making up his mind about Islam based solely the news media’s continual barrage of reporting on terrorism. (2) Of drawing conclusions without having read anything other than non-Muslim sources. (3) Of taking his cues from the diabolic rantings of the militant extremists. I’m hear to warn you that if those are your only sources, that militant radicalism may subtly, over time, begin knocking even the most well-meaning Christians off their stride of following the Price of Peace.

I don’t mean that they will suddenly grab a gun and start shooting. It’s subtler than that. For instance, and briefly, in a milder form, the path of military solutions to the knotty problems of backing down the appeal and the spread of the jihadis militant ideology has displaced the tough slog of inter-religious dialogue and what Chris Seiple calls relational diplomacy.   And in extreme forms, even some long-churched believers can now be heard singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

All of this plunged me, not for the first time, meditatively into what it means to be an ongoing follower of Sar Shalom, the Prince of Peace, and this day my thoughts turned to those of Jesus’ followers whom he knew as “sons of thunder” (James and John; Mark 3:17). I want to conclude this post with the text I reflected on, and leave you to do your own soul-searching.

Now it came to pass, when the time had come for him to be received up, that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare [things] for him. But [the Samaritans] did not receive him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” But he turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”And they went to another village.  Luke 9:52-56 (NKJV)

The Son of God is not the son of Zeus, Ares, the god of war and of weapons of war. He is Jesus, the Prince of Peace, Sar Shalom. Just as those two first century sons of thunder needed that rebuke from Jesus, and then had to think through and work out the implications of being ongoing disciples of Sar Shalom in their own lives, perhaps Christianity’s sons of thunder today need a reminder that it is not the militants that Jesus pronounced as blessed.

©2015 by Charles Strohmer

Image by Christy Rush (permission via Creative Commons)