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I think that there is a great misconception that Christianity is a Western religion, which is understandable. For the past few hundred years, Christianity has been the predominant religion across Europe, spreading over to North America. It has also been an incredibly oppressing time of colonialism, slavery, and other great injustices, most often to people who were not "white." The term "Christianity" started to become synonymous with those things.
I find it very intriguing to remember that the Bible doesn't actually start in Europe, but closer to the Middle East & Northern Egypt, in Israel. Most of the major characters in the Bible, including Jesus, were Jewish- a group of people who have been persecuted time and time again throughout history. If we strip the layers of Christianity to its core, in the Bible, we can actually find that God loves all cultures and desires that ALL nations to come to him.
I want to first look at the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), where God scatters the peoples of the earth by creating different languages. This was a punishment for wanting to make a name for themselves by trying to build a tower up to heaven. It seems like a pretty hopeless point in time. Why did God do this? Why did he make it so much harder for the peoples of the earth? Why did he scatter them across the earth? But God's redemptive story does not end there.
“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
Genesis 12:2-3
God calls a man named Abram to leave his hometown and just "go to the land [he] will show [him]" (Genesis 12:1), and that if he does this, God is going to bless all the peoples on earth through him. What a strange promise! But as Abram, later called Abraham, puts his faith in God and obeys his commands, God continually promises Abraham that he will have many offspring, and they be a great nation (which ends up being Israel), and through him, all nations will be blessed.
There are many examples then, of non-Israelite people coming to know God through different means.
There is Rahab, who was a Canaanite prostitute but hid Israelite spies in her home. As a result, when the rest of her city was demolished, she was able to escape with her family and live with the Israelites.
There is King Darius of Babylon, who, after Daniel was found alive in the lions' den, proclaimed, “For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.” (Daniel 6:26-27).
There is Ruth, a Moabite who came to know God through her mother-in-law, Naomi.
There is Naaman, an Aramean commander who was healed from leprosy by Elisha the prophet.
The Psalms often talk about how the nations will praise God. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Everywhere through the Old Testament, we see glimpses of the redemption that is to come through Jesus to all peoples.
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."
Isaiah 49:6
This is one of my favourite verses to do with the idea that God is a god of all nations. God says to Isaiah that it is too small of a thing to just save Israel. God is so much bigger than that. His love does not stop with one culture but extends far and wide to the ends of the earth.
We have seen how the Old Testament is pointing to a greater redemption than just the people of Israel, but the New Testament is where that takes place! The same heart that God has for the Gentiles (non-Jews) is displayed in the works of Jesus Christ, who was both fully God and fully man. There are a number of examples of Jesus healing Gentiles from various diseases, including a demon-possessed man, lepers, and the servant of a Roman centurion. But one of the most interesting encounters Jesus has is with a Samaritan woman (a half-Jew, half-Gentile race) in John 4. As he passes through Samaria (which is already a bold move in the time as Samaritans and Jews did not get along), he chooses to stop and ask this woman at the well for water. In that time, men did not speak to women they did not know in public, much less women who were Samaritans. But as the woman at the well replies to him in shock, she discovers that Jesus is not any ordinary Jewish man. When she realizes that he must be a prophet or a religious man, she questions him about their worship, and where the appropriate place for worship is. Jesus says this:
“...believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks."
John 4:21-23
Jesus tells her about the future, where it won't matter where people are worshiping, but the true believers will simply worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, from the heart. We get a glimpse of the fact that it's not simply the Jewish people who will be saved, but all who come to know the Father. In Jesus' death on the cross, he chose to save all of us, no matter Jew or Gentile (Gal 3:28). This is confirmed in Jesus' last words to the disciples before he is taken up to heaven:
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1:8
For some, it may be confusing as to why God "chose" the Israelites to be his people. We will never know the exact reason, but we can see that God sends his people to go to the ends of the earth. This is the great fulfillment of God's covenant with Abraham! And in basically all of Acts, and Paul's letters, we see this becoming a truth. The Gospel spreads across cultural barriers amidst persecution, and continues to spread today in the midst of a pandemic.
Too often, people judge the God of the Bible by looking at its followers. The end result is bound to be unsatisfactory because all the followers of Jesus are still sinful humans. So many times in history, people have taken the words of the Bible and twisted them to please themselves, and that has resulted in wars, genocide, slavery, oppression of many cultures. But God's heart is so very different from ours, and so I urge everyone to consider Him instead of the people who claim to follow him.
I want to end off with a beautiful picture of heaven that God paints for us in Revelation. As a result of Jesus' sacrifice for us on the cross, we are able to be united as one under God again! May it be a reminder of the great love and unity that comes from knowing the true God.
"After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm
branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'"
Revelation 7:9-10
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