Jordan
After departing Kenya a week early and spending a few days in Uganda, I was eager to move on to the next stage of my itinerary. My plan was to visit Jerusalem for the second time, having only spent 3 days there previously on an earlier trip. But since I was in the vicinity I thought it would be a great opportunity to fly into Jordan, visit with some missionary friends, and then proceed down to the ancient city of Petra before returning to Amman and crossing the border into Israel. Everything went according to plan except for the small fact that my missionary friends were actually back home in Australia at the time. So I was on my own again.
I hired a car and drove down to Petra and spent a couple of nights there. Perhaps without being aware, many people will be familiar with Petra from the Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade, which featured the grand sandstone-carved treasury as the place where the cup of Christ was purportedly guarded by the legendary Knights Templar. This is all fiction of course, but it is no surprise that such an amazing location should give such flight to the imagination.
Petra (meaning rock) is aptly named because the city itself is literally made of rock — both grand and simple dwellings carved directly into towering sandstone rock faces. In Biblical times it was apparently home to the Edomites and was heavily fortified, accessible only by the long, winding narrow towering corridor through the rock, wide enough for a horse and cart but narrow enough to easily defend against would-be invaders. The city’s water was supplied by condensation and seepage from the cliff faces along that path. Water flowed down the cliff walls and into carved channels that ran along the walls into the city.
Despite Petra’s natural defences, the city was overthrown and abandoned long ago, some say as judgement from God for their cruelty to the people of Israel when they were fleeing from their enemies. Petra was ‘discovered’ again by the outside world only in fairly recent history — but obviously the locals knew it was there all along.
After exploring that amazing city, I went in search of Mount Nebo — the mountain in Jordan from which Moses viewed the promised land before he died. But given that my hire car had no maps, it wasn’t long before I was lost. This was my first brief trip to an Arab country and I was a little apprehensive about how the local [Muslim] population might treat a lone Christian traveller if I stopped in a remote place to ask directions. But my fears were soon to be revealed as unfounded.
I stopped to ask directions from a group of young men standing idly at the intersection of two major roads. Among them were a few who understood enough English by which to have a broken conversation with me. When they discovered that I needed directions, instead of directing me, they enthusiastically squeezed into my small car to personally escort me to the next road. As we drove, each of them tried their limited English with me — and were even more friendly toward me when it was clearly established that I was not, in fact, an American. Inevitably the question of religion came up and I had opportunity to put into practice some advice that had been given to me years earlier by my old boss at World Vision.
My former boss had spent a lot of time in the Middle East and explained that in the Arab world the term ‘Christian’ does not have the same associations for Muslims that it does for us. He explained that many Muslim people still associate the term ‘Christian’ with the history of the Crusades — and with American Foreign Policy and… perhaps most surprisingly… with current-day Hollywood immorality.
He explained that many Muslims see everything western as representing Christianity, just as many westerners make the huge mistake of assuming that all things Arab are Islamic. It should come as no surprise that ignorance exists on both sides of the cultural divide — after all, many western Christians are unaware of the fact that many Arabs are actually Christians and many of the world’s Muslims are not Arabs at all.
He explained that many Muslims see everything western as representing Christianity, just as many westerners make the huge mistake of assuming that all things Arab are Islamic. It should come as no surprise that ignorance exists on both sides of the cultural divide — after all, many western Christians are unaware of the fact that many Arabs are actually Christians and many of the world’s Muslims are not Arabs at all. I digress, so back to the main point: My old boss advised me that if I truly wanted to represent Christ in the Arab world, it may be helpful to avoid the use of the word ‘Christian’ because it may lead to misunderstandings. Instead, he wisely advised, I could substitute the word ‘Christian’ for ‘Believer’ (which they take to mean a truly ‘devout’ or ‘holy’ person) or better still, ‘Follower of Jesus’ — especially since the Koran instructs Muslims to treat followers of Jesus with great respect.
So with that advice in mind, that is exactly what I did.
When I explained to this car full of young [Muslim] men that I was a follower of Jesus, they began to treat me as if I was a holy man and asked lots of questions.
When I explained to this car full of young [Muslim] men that I was a follower of Jesus, they began to treat me as if I was a holy man and asked lots of questions. I had opportunity to share some of my spiritual journey with them as we drove, with each of them pooling their limited knowledge of English to translate to each other what I was saying. When we finally arrived at the intersection that marked our parting, I felt that I should offer them some money to catch a bus home, but they refused to accept anything, citing the Koran’s teaching that they should freely give assistance to strangers. God bless those young men for helping me.
Just to illustrate that this was not an isolated incident, my experience was repeated half an hour later when I found myself lost again! Once again I stopped to ask directions — this time from an elderly man with a small boy and, once again, he insisted on getting into the car to personally escort me me to the next road. And, once again, he refused any financial reward for his trouble.
Eventually I found Mount Nebo, where Moses gazed into the promised land. Then I went to the Jordan River, where Jesus was baptised, before heading back to spend one night in Amman. I took in as many of the sights and sounds of Jordan as I could during my short stay, but once again I found that the people I encountered along the way left much more of a lasting impression than any monument or cathedral ever could. And the holy encounters that I had so hoped to find, came not through gazing back into history, but through the people living in the here and now.
Jerusalem still lay ahead on my journey but I did not know that on the road ahead nothing would go according to plan, nor was I aware that another chance encounter with a stranger would eventually propel me into another chapter of discovery and adventure with God.
