This past Friday at a Sunni mosque in West Philadelphia I met a man we’ll call Bob.

Bob came from the south, from Georgia, and like many southerners, he grew up in a small Baptist church. And unfortunately, like most of us, at some point he came of age and his church involvement ended for no apparent reason and certainly for all sorts of reasons at the same time.

One thing or another led Bob to Philadelphia, and after a while he came upon hard times which led to a lot of soul-searching questions. For a while he considered going back to church, in an effort to get his life back on track. One day, he stumbled upon Open Door Baptist Church and he took it as a sign from God that now was the time and this was the place, since his childhood church had the same name.

The next Sunday he attended this church’s morning service. In his sermon, the pastor shared with the congregation that one of his greatest fears is that his kids will find themselves “sitting next to a faggot on the school bus.” Bob thought silently about the fact that no one in this church knew who he was, and that there very well could have been others there that morning whose stories no one knew either. And if any of them were homosexuals, Bob concluded, they knew what they were doing was wrong and he was sure they had come to church specifically looking for hope, for peace, for healing.

But now they had been labeled, condemned.

That day Bob decided he didn’t need the church. And from what I gather, he has never been back. He told me he decided he could pray and maintain his relationship with Jesus without the church getting in the way.

Time passed and again Bob hit a rough patch and found himself without a place to rest his head. He approached a friend for help and this friend took him in under his roof until Bob could get on his feet again.

This friend was a Muslim. And over meals and other shared experiences he shared his faith with Bob.

Bob wasn’t too sure about the whole Muslim thing, because while it sounded compelling and he wasn’t exactly happy with his life as it was, he knew that if he came to believe that Mohammed was God’s final prophet, his relationship with Jesus would come to an end, and he wasn’t ready to let that happen. But then he read a tract that his friend had given him, explaining how Jesus fit in the line of prophets that culminated in Mohammed. After reading this, Bob said he prayed that God would show him what was true - was Jesus actually God’s son, and therefore our Lord and Savior? Or was Mohammed the final prophet, and Jesus just a lesser one? He knew both couldn’t be true.

Bob came to the conclusion that the Islamic teaching was true. But he wasn’t ready to become a Muslim because he wasn’t wild about the idea of giving up alcohol and praying five times a day and fasting during the month of Ramadan. The local imam, however, told him it was better to be a sinful “one who submits” (that is, a Muslim) than a mostly upright one who doesn’t.

And that was it for him. Bob became a Muslim.

So what am I left to make of all this? Well, first off, I am one of those old-fashioned, close-minded people who still believes in absolutes, so the wishful thinking idea that all mutually exclusive roads lead to the same place is unavailable to me. Meanwhile I am also a North American twentysomething in the early years of the twenty-first century, so I have postmodern tendencies which lead me to the new-fangled, open-minded conclusion that there are plenty of things we can (can’t afford not to) learn from even those we most disagree with. Then somewhere deep inside, all too often hidden beneath layers of pride and selfishness and comfort, there’s a Minor Prophet in me, pleading and screaming at the top of my lungs that it is not okay for the church to keep folks like Bob from finding abundant life.

Because finally, I am a follower of Jesus Christ and committed member of his Church, who believes that love is paramount. And it is unloving to be indifferent.