“He simply replied ‘Jesus. Jesus commanded me to love my neighbor'."

In 2004 the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was killed by a Muslim radical. In the aftermath of his death, with churches and mosques in the Netherlands experienced retaliatory attacks, including the bombing of an Islamic school. The outpouring of violent rage shook a Dutch nation that had prided itself on being a peaceful and open society. At this incendiary moment a Dutch Protestant minister, Reverend Kees Sybrandi, did something radical. Sybrandi was a very conservative, traditional Dutchman who lived in a community where poor Middle Eastern immigrants had brought much poverty and crime. Yet that week Sybrandi “walked to his neighborhood mosque. He knocked firmly on the door, and to the shock of the Muslims huddled inside, he announced that he would stand guard outside the mosque every night until the … attacks ceased. In the days and week that followed, the minister called on other churches in the area and they joined him, circling and guarding the mosques through out the region for more than three months.”

Why would Sybrandi have done such a thing? On interviewer tried to find out. Was it some experience that had made the change? No. The minister “recounted no stories of past friendship or dialogues with Muslims.”Perhaps the secular, liberal values had softened him? No. “Multicultural appeals for a celebration of difference had little pull on his heart.”So what had overcome his inherent traditionalism and temperamental conservatism? “[He] simply replied ‘Jesus. Jesus commanded me to love my neighbor - [and even] my enemy too.”

From Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (Viking, Random House). Also Associated Press, “Dutch Call for End to Religious Violence,”ABC News, November 9, 2004. And, Matthew Kaemingk , Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018).