I ran across this Catch from last year and thought it would be good to run it again. As we approach an election, it seems animosity increases as each side has to prove it is 100% right. This does no one any good since it is not humanly possible in the first place. Examples like this woman and her conclusions about Christ’s encounter with a Samaritan are good examples of putting love and respect above being right.

A converted Muslim tells a remarkable story about how one December, she had four Muslim families come over to her house and wish her a Merry Christmas. The reason for this, she related, was that, as a gesture of friendship and respect, she had visited them on their important Muslim holy days, even after her conversion to Christianity. So impressed were they by what she had done, that they returned the gesture on her next Christmas as a Christian.

This was not her original approach. “For a time I tried to convert every Muslim I came across,” she wrote. But then she was studying the story in John 4 about Jesus and a Samaritan woman, and noticed how he treated her, coming from another culture. He respected her — He didn’t judge her — and He taught her something about God based on her own understanding of her culture and her religion. And even though he revealed to her that he knew all about her past sins, he did not reject her or condemn her, but spoke to her as to one whom he highly valued.

That’s when this converted Muslim realized that converting people was not as important a part of her job as showing them God’s love. So she is learning to love her Muslim friends — even engage in long discussions about God and His mercy with them, without having to convert them or correct every wrong thing they say.

This woman has already learned something as a new Christian that I am still learning as one who grew up believing — that you don’t have to make everyone relinquish everything they already believe in order to embrace Christ. Our mission is not to prove everyone wrong, but to share the love of Christ with everyone we meet through the reality of our own relationship with God. We are on a mission, not to shoot everybody down, or to straighten everybody out, but to simply love people and point them toward the truth.

“You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship,” Jesus told the woman at the well, “while we Jews know all about Him, for salvation comes through the Jews. But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way” (John 4:22-23).

Jesus completes the picture; he doesn’t erase what was there. He showed her how both their cultures worshiped, but then took her to a deeper place of worship that transcended them both. We can point anyone to Christ, confident that if they are truly seeking God, they will find Him in Jesus, regardless of where they might have been looking so far.