I just got in from an afternoon show at the Lewiston, Maine Root Cellar. The Root Cellar is an urban mission in Maine’s second largest city. The neighborhood that it is in may be the poorest urban neighborhood in the state. The Root Cellar volunteers and staff do a lot of good in this neighborhood, and I had the pleasure of doing my show for their after school care program.

Many families in this Lewiston neighborhood are African immigrants, and many of them are Muslims. While several of these families, I am told, avoid getting involved with the Root Cellar, which is unapologetically a Christian mission, many of the families do participate in a variety of the programs offered. This was the case with several of the children who came to the show today.

I was alone, as I went straight from work, and Rose had an away soccer game (When did she become an athlete?) After opening with two juggling routines, I began doing some magic tricks. There was one teenage boy from Africa, who left the room every time I talked about Jesus in one of my routines. Yet he always returned. By the end, he no longer walked out at the name of Jesus. In fact, I did a reprise of my swelling head trick, and I had him come up and created the illusion of his head growing. He was clearly very proud to be involved, and he even felt his face a few times to see if it really was growing!

I believe the Gospel was clear, the show was entertaining, and the performance was very good. But as I was driving home through another urban neighborhood, I was thinking about Abdul and his reaction to the name “Jesus”. Was it his own beliefs that caused him to walk out? Had his parents taught him to respond this way? Was it coming from a place of fear? Anger? Misunderstanding?

Then I noticed two gentlemen walking on the sidewalk in dark slacks, white shirts, ties and name tags. “Oh brother’” I thought, “Jehovah Witness evangelists!” Then it hit me. This was not very different from Abdul’s response in the show. Believing one’s religion is the truth is very different from bigotry towards those who believe differently. No one knew my snide thoughts toward the men walking down that Lewiston street, but the root of those thoughts is the same as the more blatant religious bigotry we see everywhere from all sides.

Does that mean I should compromise what I believe to be true? Does that mean I need to profess that all religions teach the same God? Of course not. But it does mean that we can have civil dialogues across religious – and even nonreligious – lines. In fact, we must.