By Lynne Hybels

We met with children who had watched their parents die and were now so traumatized that they sat in their schools all day and just chewed their fingernails.

I went to college to be a social worker and in the early 90s had a very pivotal experience that took all of that initial passion to a deeper level. I had the opportunity to travel with a humanitarian organization to Croatia and Bosnia twice during the war there. We met with women who had been widowed, who had lost everything. We met with refugees who had lost their country, their families, everything they had. We met with children who had watched their parents die and were now so traumatized that they sat in their schools all day and just chewed their fingernails. It was the first time I had seen war up close and it was devastating.  

My last day in Bosnia I was alone and went up on a hillside overlooking the country. I just cried and prayed for the people that I had met. While I was sitting there, the question going through my mind from the Old Testament was, am I my brother’s keeper? Am I my sister’s keeper?  

The answer that kept coming to me was yes, you are your brother’s keeper, and you are your sister’s keeper. And so I said okay, God, who is my brother? Who is my sister?  The impression that I got was God saying to me, they are all your brothers. They are all your sisters, the Croatian Catholics, the Serbian Orthodox, the Bosnian Muslims, they are all your brothers and all your sisters, because they are all my children that I created, even if they don’t know that. They’re my children and I love them. And that was very pivotal for me, because from that time on, I realized that I will never meet another man or another woman anywhere in the world who is not my brother and my sister, who is not radically loved by God, who is not part of my family.

In 2008, just from listening to the news, I became haunted by this thought that Christians, Muslims, and Jews are gonna blow up the world. As a follower of Jesus, as the Prince of Peace, I thought how can we just sit back and not try to do something about that. I certainly didn’t know what to do, but I remember thinking at that point, if there were a conversation between Christians and Muslims and Jews that wasn’t filled with hatred, I wish I could be part of it. And several months later I had the opportunity to go to Imam, Jordan, and attend a conference that was taught entirely by Arab Christians. That ended up being the first of six or seven trips during the next 18 months to the Middle East to listen and to learn from the Arab world.

What I’d like to see is Christians and Muslims and people of all faiths in relationship: just getting to know one another, getting beyond the differences of culture and religion and race. Let’s try to understand each other. I would like to see a commitment to a culture of listening. Everything would change if we would just learn to be better listeners and start there. I would love to see Christians getting to know people from all over the world, so that they can know Jesus in a different way. I would like to see Christians not be afraid to take Jesus into unfamiliar situations, and see what it’s like to walk with Jesus into that situation.

During one of my trips to the Middle East about two years ago I was in Egypt and had another one of those pivotal experiences where I really sensed that God is whispering something to my spirit. And I sensed God saying, “I am calling you to be an advocate to Americans on behalf of the Arab world, on behalf of Arabic speaking people.” And I was totally shocked by that. I did not expect that. I didn’t know what to do with that. But it just hit me with the weight of very profound gravity that I have to pay attention to that.

So when I came home, I just began doing what I always do when I don’t really know what God’s asking me to do, I start praying, saying please, God, give me guidance. Help me to know what  you want me to do. And then I said okay, God, I’m just gonna open myself up relationally and see who you bring across my path. And so if I would be sitting next to someone on a plane or my taxi driver as I was going to the airport, or someone standing in my line, I would just say, where are you from? That’s such a small thing, but many Americans have never talked one-on-one to a Muslim. That was true for me and many Muslims have never had the opportunity to talk with another Christian because they’re afraid to, or  they haven’t been approached. And so just something simple like that began to have a tremendous impact on me.

What has impacted me most and gripped my mind and my heart in terms of peacemaking is Jesus’ command to love your enemy. That’s the most radical thing we could possibly read, love our enemy. It doesn’t say try to be nice to your enemy. It says love your enemy. There are many other passages and concepts behind peace and Jesus as the Prince of Peace but I don’t think you really have to really go behind beyond that.

One thing that keeps good-hearted, peaceloving people from being vocal about their commitment to peacemaking or to multi-faith relationships is they know that if they venture out into that area, they are probably gonna get very severely criticized by other members of the Christian community who feel differently. So we tend to be silent. I think we need to speak up.

Lynne Hybels is an author, speaker, and activist who is part of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago and in recent years has become very concerned about critical needs around the world. She appeared in the Mennonite-produced documentary which premiered on ABC-TV, Oct. 2011 called Waging Peace: Muslim and Christian Alternatives. This interview traces some of her development and thinking regarding being an active peacemaker.

During February 2012, the executive producer of Waging Peace, Sheri Hartzler will be touring for eight days of screenings of the documentary in the Waterloo and Toronto, Canada areas. More information on the tour is here.