The missionary in the parking lot

I was in a busy shopping centre parking lot, outside the supermarket where my wife and I had just picked up a few things. While she was organising the grocery bags, I returned the cart to the rack. As I turned to head back to the car, a youngish woman in jeans and a “Jesus Is My Superhero” T-shirt came up to me.

“Hi!” she said brightly, with a knowing glance at my kippah, a head covering (also called a yarmulke) worn by traditionally observant Jews. “I’m Jewish, too.”

It was an odd thing to hear from a stranger, especially one who pretty clearly wasn’t Jewish.

“You are?” I replied. “That’s surprising.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Because your T-shirt tells me you are Christian,” I said. Noticing the small cross on a chain around her neck, I added, “So does your necklace.”

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“Listen,” she told me. “Jews need to be saved. Jesus has a message for you. I’d like to tell you about it.”

I’m never rude to missionaries, and I responded politely.

“I appreciate your offer,” I said, “but I’m committed to my own religion, and Jesus is not a part of it.” I turned to leave. “My wife is waiting for me, so I need to get going. Take care.”

The woman’s voice grew more strident. “This is important! You really should hear Jesus’ message before you go.” I gave a half-wave and said, “No, thanks, I’m okay.”

“That’s what you think” was her parting shot. “You’re not okay!”

Over the years I have been approached quite a few times by missionaries hoping to engage my interest in Christianity. Generally the would-be proselytisers are evangelical Christians, but I have also had such encounters with Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and Mormons. It doesn’t offend me in the least when Christians try to awaken in me an interest in their religion, so long as they are courteous about it. (The woman in the parking lot crossed the line, but in my experience she wasn’t typical.) As an observant Jew who takes his religion seriously and embraces its values and teachings, I can certainly understand why devout Christians might wish to interest me in the values and teachings of their religion.

Unlike some Jews and Jewish organisations, I have never regarded Christian attempts to convert Jews as hostile, indecent, or antisemitic. On the contrary: I recognise that for many Christians, it is a fundamental article of faith that no one can be spiritually saved except by faith in Jesus, and that Christians have an obligation to spread this “good news” — the original meaning of the word “gospel” — to those who haven’t received it. By their lights, proselytisers are offering Jews something of inestimable value: life eternal. They are also living up to Jesus’ injunction to make the conversion of Jews a priority: “Go not into the way of the gentiles,” he is quoted as telling his disciples in the Book of Matthew, “but only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  It should be noted that to worship a human being is considered idolatry.  God is One and His name is ONE.

Of course, I know that we Jewish “sheep” are not lost. The faith in which I was raised, a faith far older than Christianity, has always denied the claims made about Jesus. As I have sometimes explained to missionaries or others who seemed honestly perplexed by Jews’ adamant rejection of the divinity of Jesus, much of what Christianity professes is flatly incompatible with the deepest principles of Judaism.

The most fundamental of all Jewish doctrines — that God has no physical attributes, that his unity is singular and indivisible, and that it is absolutely prohibited to worship any person — are wholly at odds with the Christian view of Jesus. To the Jewish mind, the claim that God was born in human form and died on the cross to atone for the sins of mankind is not only incomprehensible, it is blasphemous. That is why countless Jews throughout history were willing to go to their deaths, or to be expelled from their homes, rather than convert to Christianity.

That is also why the idea of “Jews for Jesus” — the notion that Jewish identity is compatible with faith in Christ — is unequivocally repudiated by virtually all Jews, from the most devoutly Orthodox to the most secular and Reform. Memo to the woman in the parking lot: If you’re wearing a cross necklace and a Jesus T-shirt, the least believable thing you can say to a Jewish stranger is “I’m Jewish too.” I realise that Christians with a strong evangelical commitment might regard it as an act of love to encourage Jews to become “completed” by accepting Jesus. Seen through Jewish eyes, however, so-called “messianic” Jews are Christians. Full stop.

Unlike Christianity (and Islam), Judaism is not a proselytising faith. Jews are not encouraged to recruit converts, though sincere and self-motivated “Jews by choice” are welcomed and honored and loved. Jews have never believed that one must be Jewish to achieve salvation or go to heaven. A basic teaching in normative Judaism is that all good people, Jews and non-Jews alike, receive their ultimate reward in the world to come. For Christians certain that anyone who hasn’t accepted Jesus is destined for hell, proselytising to Jews is the greatest imaginable kindness. That is why I always tell missionaries that I appreciate their good intentions. I know they mean well. But they will never convince me that they are right.

To be sure, I wish that all Christian denominations would follow the example of the contemporary Catholic Church, which no longer seeks to convert Jews and no longer questions the enduring legitimacy of the faith by which Jesus and his first disciples were defined.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to live in a nation where freedom of religion — including the freedom to reject religion — is vigorously protected, and where my tiny Jewish minority has flourished for generations alongside numerous other faiths. The same Constitution that guarantees my liberty to practice my religion guarantees the liberty of evangelising Christians to try to talk me out of it. They are entitled to say “Come to Jesus” and I am entitled to say “No, thank you.” In a world where so much blood has been spilled over religious differences, the fact that Americans with profoundly incompatible religious beliefs can live peacefully as neighbors is an extraordinary blessing. Even if, now and then, it leads to an awkward encounter in a parking lot.

 *Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe