Points of Contention

The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." (John 4:19-20)

I have been noticing all through this story that Jesus has treated this woman with the unexpected. He has steadfastly steered away from bringing up points of difference between them and has instead treated her with the most kindness possible. Even with full knowledge of her moral situation back at home He has never used His advantages over her to cause the slightest insinuations against her. He only stated the facts of her life as a means of highlighting how much He was not saying about her.

This is in stark contrast to the way most everyone I know including myself, might treat this woman. If they came upon a woman like this and had knowledge of her weak position, they would either exploit her and try to create a relationship with her for their own pleasure or they would feel compelled to point out her sins as a way of making themselves look better and to induce more guilt in her heart.

Many Christians take for granted that the way people are supposed to be led to repentance is by highlighting their sins, by exposing them and enforcing upon them a sense of enormous guilt until they are so afraid of punishment and wrath to come that in fear they turn to God for deliverance. This has been the standard approach in Christianity and in fact other major world religions as well for centuries. Fear has been the main approach for producing what people believe is obedience – conformance to a list of rules and moral standards. If people don't conform enough for our satisfaction we look for ways to make them feel more guilty because somehow we believe that guilt is the best way to induce repentance.

But what I have been learning to my amazement over the past few years is nearly exactly the opposite. Even though I was raised squarely in the middle of this kind of religion and being treated with this carrot and stick approach, I am learning that God actually relates to all of us very different than the way most of us treat each other in the name of Christ. And while there is certainly a lot of guilt and condemnation and fear present in our minds and hearts when we learn truth, it does not necessarily follow that those feelings are being placed there by God, imposed upon us to strong-arm us into succumbing to His authority through force. If that were true, then why didn't Jesus use that tactic when speaking with this woman who clearly could have been a prime candidate for reproof and correction?

But Jesus does not approach us with condemnation trying to induce fear of wrath to come as the means of attracting us to Himself. He does not need to, in spite of our false assumptions about Him. He is not looking to highlight everything we are doing wrong, all the ways in which we are out of sync with perfection and holiness. That can happen on its own. This is one of the most difficult things that my heart struggles to grasp about God. In spite of all that my mind has learned about His ways over the past few years it seems that my heart in some respects still reacts to Him based on very outdated and disproved theories about how God feels toward me.

What I see in this woman's response to Jesus at this point in the conversation is that she moves toward the more typical way that religious discussions are often carried on. She wants to bring up points of contention to get Jesus' opinion about them. That is the kind of debate that I am very familiar with for most of my life. When the subject of religion comes up it seems that the first questions out of our mouth concern the differences that we have with other people's opinions and beliefs. We want to know what makes them different instead of what we share in common.

Why do we do this? Or is the question itself even misleading? Is it simply because sin has wired us to be controversial from the get-go? Is our picture of God so rooted in conflict and fault-finding that it is inescapable to view religion in any other way? Obviously the world is filled with sharp divisions all based on differing opinions about what is true and what is necessary to get right with God. And I am certainly not saying that it is not important to know what is true. But why this knee-jerk bent toward focusing on what separates us from others instead of creating an atmosphere of attraction that will encourage bonds of sympathy and mutual respect?

I am personally hesitant to insist that this woman was only using this question as a means of sidestepping her personal discomfort that was stirred up by Jesus' revelations about her moral situation. While I certainly don't discount that idea, I sense that very possibly this woman really did have serious questions in her mind and heart about these things in religion that she wanted someone to address who was not already filled with prejudices and bigotry. And seeing that Jesus had just demonstrated that He was not going to exploit her or bring up things for the sake of controversy like nearly everyone else she had ever met, she may have felt that this was the chance of a lifetime to get some answers to questions that she did not trust anyone else to answer without undo bias.

If that is true, it also may imply that this woman was not so out of touch with religion as many around her might have supposed. And this is true many times in our lives as well. Many who are without formal education or marginalized and considered to be of no account when it comes to things of religion by those in positions of responsibility are sometimes very insightful in ways that may surprise even the most highly educated. But because few care enough to engage them in a serious conversation and actually listen to them with an open mind, they are left out of most discussions altogether and are generally considered as ignorant and irreligious and only in need of instruction.

But I think it is very possible that this woman may have pondered the difficult questions of controversy that swirled around her on religious topics and had chosen to view them from perspectives that were not popular either to her fellow Samaritans or to anyone else she knew. As a result she had largely kept her thoughts and opinions to herself maybe feeling that she might never meet anyone open-minded enough to actually listen to her without prejudice. But after being treated in such a surprising manner by this stranger whom she immediately sensed was both free of prejudices and also very insightful and caring about spiritual things, she decided to jump at the chance to see if He just might be able to help her with some of the most troubling issues in religion that seemed unsolvable in her mind.

Because of Jesus' kindness, gentleness and avoidance of bringing up controversy, He won the confidence and trust of this woman in only a few moments. He accomplished what we may take years to bring about because we fail to reflect the true Spirit of the Father who never uses force or condemnation to bring people to His love. This is yet another classic example of how Jesus related to hurting, frightened, wounded hearts in a way that allowed them to open up quickly and come to belief in Him with very little resistance.

I love that. And I want to become like that myself. I want to allow Jesus to live in me so fully that my interactions with wounded hearts can likewise induce trust and confidence instead of fear and controversy. I want my conversations about religious points of conflict to reflect the true realities behind those issues as heaven sees them and in the spirit of Jesus. Then people will be drawn to want to know God better and be less afraid to come closer to Him to receive living water for themselves.