After a long day capped by a late-afternoon meeting at the church, I called my wife to say that, meeting over, I was going to stop at our local Aldi store to pick up some salad mixes.
As is usually true when I go to Aldi, I ended up going down every aisle, picking up a jar of grape preserves, two loaves of whole grain bread, a package of gluten-free protein bars, a bottle of Canola oil, and a bag of potato chips for my wife.
At aisle two, a man, another customer, greeted me. Later, as I rolled down the last aisle, the freezer section, the same man, having noticed my clerical collar, asked me if I was a Roman Catholic priest. "I'm a Lutheran pastor," I told him. That simple exchange began a thirty-minute conversation. Although I was weary from having awakened at 3:30 this morning, I was glad that God had orchestrated my day so that, at that moment, I met Amir.
Amir explained that he was originally from Teheran. He came to this country during the lead-up to the Iran-Iraq War and became a follower of Jesus Christ here in the United States in 2005. The story of his coming to new and everlasting life through faith in Jesus reminded me of that of the late Nabeel Qureshi, whose autobiographical book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, I recommended to him.
As was true of Qureshi, Amir was a devout Muslim who sought to know Allah, the Muslim name for God. In the midst of his seeking, he had an encounter with the risen Jesus in which he as healed of an illness. He was overwhelmed and has been a Christian ever since.
Although he lives in Dayton, where he works in financial services, Amir commutes to Columbus every week to worship with other Muslims who have come to faith in Jesus. "You wouldn't believe how many Muslims from Iran are now Christians. The people back in Iran say, 'You're only a Christian now because you're around Christians in America' I tell them, 'No, I have met Jesus and so have others from Iran.'"
He told me about a woman who is part of his fellowship. "She also was trying to know Allah. She had no peace of mind because, even though every chapter of the Koran begins by extolling Allah's mercy, Allah is always angry. It was written long after the New Testament, but it replaces the gospel of grace with the law and leaves people far from God.
"But in her quest for Allah, this woman felt led to call on the name of Jesus. God saw her sincere desire for Him and the Holy Spirit prompted her to call out to Jesus. She wasn't even sure why she'd said Jesus' name.
"But as soon as the words left her mouth, there was a knock at her door. She went to find a man dressed in a white cloak who had olive skin, dark hair and beard, and piercing brown eyes. She immediately fell at his feet and began to weep, wiping the stranger's feet with her tears, long before she had ever read of the woman who had done the same thing for Jesus."
I told him about my own personal encounter with Jesus, one that came as this one-time atheist wrestled to understand the faith of the Lutheran Christians that I had come to know. Although it happened in a dream forty years ago, I remember meeting and being embrace by Jesus distinctly.
Amir told me more stories of his personal walk with Jesus. "I'm sorry I took so much of your time," he told me toward the end of our conversation. "Not at all," I told him. "I thank God that I had the chance to meet you. You have inspired me."
I may never see Amir again. But I won't ever forget him.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Sunday, April 07, 2019
Saturday, April 01, 2017
Fear is no excuse for hatred
Fear is no excuse for hate.
In Portland, a man who is not Muslim and escaped his homeland because of religious persecution, came back home from a recent trip to find his place vandalized, painted with anti-Muslim messages. Such hatred is neither Christian nor American.
It is stupid and misinformed.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
In Portland, a man who is not Muslim and escaped his homeland because of religious persecution, came back home from a recent trip to find his place vandalized, painted with anti-Muslim messages. Such hatred is neither Christian nor American.
It is stupid and misinformed.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
John 14:6
Acts 4:12
A week ago, I attended the Centerville mayor’s annual Faith Leaders Breakfast. A representative from each of the faith organizations was asked to say a few words. A man from a local Islamic mosque told us, “We all worship one God.”
Muslims are told this and taught to say this to non-Muslims. In Quran 29:46, Muslims are instructed to tell Jews and Christians: “And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him."
That’s great PR. But is it the truth?
Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
Nabeel Qureshi, the noted author and Christian apologist, a convert from Islam, writes in his book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward, that even after he had become a Christian, he thought that the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam were essentially the same. After all, Christianity is the fulfillment of the promises God made to the world through ancient Israel, and Islam, like Mormonism, is a legalistic derivative of Christianity. The Bible and the Quran both mention people like Adam and Eve, Abraham, and so on.
But, after he'd spent time in God's Word, Qureshi came to realize that the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam are very different in nature, being, and attitude toward the human race.
Above all, we see this through the prism of the Trinity, the Christian belief that God has revealed Himself to be one God in three Persons. Jesus and the apostles taught this reality without ever using the term “trinity.”
Before He ascended to heaven, for example, the risen Jesus told His Church, “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19), putting Himself and the Holy Spirit on the same level as God the Father.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus claimed: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
And one of the most famous benedictions in the New Testament invokes our three-in-one God: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).
For Jesus and the early Church to claim that He and the Holy Spirit were co-equal to God the Father would have been blasphemous if it weren’t true. Yet Jesus and the first Christians could never be rightly accused of being blasphemous or disrespectful of God.
Even the Old Testament implies the existence of this mysterious three-in-one God in several places. One example: When God creates the universe in the Old Testament, we read that God said: “Let us make mankind in our image…” (Genesis 1:26). Who was God speaking to when He said “let us make” the human race? He certainly wasn’t suggesting that the animals, plants, moon, stars, or planets join Him in doing what only He could do, give life. And there's absolutely nothing to support the idea that God was using the royal "we." No, God was talking to Himself: “Let us make…”
But the Trinity is more than an arcane teaching, the Trinity just makes sense. First John 4:8 tells us that “God is love.” Only a God Who knows what love is and how to give love away would have even thought of creating the universe. If God weren’t practiced in and committed to love, He would have preferred to, as the Brits say, “keep himself to himself.” But when God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who has experienced from all eternity, the joy of giving love away, that superabundance of love feels compelled to express itself in every molecule and every supernova and every human being God has ever made, every part of the universe for which He became human, died, and rose.
This understanding of God is central to what we believe as Christians.
It’s simple:
We can also see how different the Christian and Muslim views of God are when we consider one of the most common names we Christians use in talking to God.
When Jesus was asked by the disciples how to pray, He began the prayer with: ‘Our Father in heaven…’” (Matthew 6:9).
Jesus was telling all who approach God in His name to regard God as our loving Father.
Islam, on the other hand, is revolted by the idea of God being our Father. Quran 5:18 says: “the Jews and the Christians say, "We are the children of Allah and His beloved." [Tell them] ‘Then why does He punish you for your sins?’ Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills, and He punishes whom He wills.”
Notice that repentance, faith, or a heart open to God mean nothing to Allah. To Islam, Allah is a mercurial dictator who may give you a break...or not. Allah rules entirely by fiat. And Muslims don’t see how Christians can believe that God would dirty His hands by claiming to be related to human beings as our Father.
Islam also rejects the idea that Jesus, Who said, “...before Abraham was, I AM” (in other words, “before Abraham was, Yahweh”) (John 8:58) and Who accepted the worship of people like Thomas, Peter, and the blind man from this past Sunday’s Gospel lesson, is God.
Quran 5:72 insists that anyone who believes that Jesus is God, the One we Christians proclaim as “the Word made flesh” (John 1:14) will be forbidden a place in Paradise, their only refuge fire, from which they can receive no help. In other words, the Quran teaches that if we believe that Jesus is God, we are going to hell.
Islam also rejects the idea that Jesus is God’s Son.
Jesus teaches, famously of course, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
But the Quran says: “No son did Allah beget, nor is there any god along with Him.”
Jesus says, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Quran says, effectively, that Jesus is lying.
Islam tries to have it both ways: to claim a share in the God of Israel ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus, Who they rename Allah, as their own, while repudiating much of what God has revealed to the world in Jesus.
The God of the Bible is a heartsick lover Who beckons us to turn from sin and turn to Him to live, a God Who despised His own dignity so that by sacrificing Himself on the cross, He could win us back from from sin and death.
The Allah of Islam is like the Greek and Roman gods, who neither give nor promise grace, who sport with the human race while floating above it all, moving only from indifference to anger with humanity.
Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God.
But this shouldn’t make Christians smug. Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Rather than being smug, we should be thankful for Christ’s gift of salvation and new life to us.
We are blessed to be baptized and to have heard the Gospel from faithful people so that we have the chance to know God! We’ve been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. That’s a lot to be thankful for, but we can claim no credit for it; it's God's work alone!
And from sheer ratitude, we have every reason to be faithful to the great commission Jesus has given to us, to make disciples of all peoples.
That includes those who are trapped in Islam.
May we be grateful and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, may we be faithful in lifting up Christ to our neighbors, all of our neighbors.
For we believe exactly what the first century Church believed of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
Let’s show and tell the world this truth in every way God opens to us!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message is the fourth installment of the midweek Lenten series at Living Water, Tough Questions.]
Acts 4:12
A week ago, I attended the Centerville mayor’s annual Faith Leaders Breakfast. A representative from each of the faith organizations was asked to say a few words. A man from a local Islamic mosque told us, “We all worship one God.”
Muslims are told this and taught to say this to non-Muslims. In Quran 29:46, Muslims are instructed to tell Jews and Christians: “And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him."
That’s great PR. But is it the truth?
Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
Nabeel Qureshi, the noted author and Christian apologist, a convert from Islam, writes in his book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward, that even after he had become a Christian, he thought that the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam were essentially the same. After all, Christianity is the fulfillment of the promises God made to the world through ancient Israel, and Islam, like Mormonism, is a legalistic derivative of Christianity. The Bible and the Quran both mention people like Adam and Eve, Abraham, and so on.
But, after he'd spent time in God's Word, Qureshi came to realize that the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam are very different in nature, being, and attitude toward the human race.
Above all, we see this through the prism of the Trinity, the Christian belief that God has revealed Himself to be one God in three Persons. Jesus and the apostles taught this reality without ever using the term “trinity.”
Before He ascended to heaven, for example, the risen Jesus told His Church, “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19), putting Himself and the Holy Spirit on the same level as God the Father.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus claimed: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
And one of the most famous benedictions in the New Testament invokes our three-in-one God: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).
For Jesus and the early Church to claim that He and the Holy Spirit were co-equal to God the Father would have been blasphemous if it weren’t true. Yet Jesus and the first Christians could never be rightly accused of being blasphemous or disrespectful of God.
Even the Old Testament implies the existence of this mysterious three-in-one God in several places. One example: When God creates the universe in the Old Testament, we read that God said: “Let us make mankind in our image…” (Genesis 1:26). Who was God speaking to when He said “let us make” the human race? He certainly wasn’t suggesting that the animals, plants, moon, stars, or planets join Him in doing what only He could do, give life. And there's absolutely nothing to support the idea that God was using the royal "we." No, God was talking to Himself: “Let us make…”
But the Trinity is more than an arcane teaching, the Trinity just makes sense. First John 4:8 tells us that “God is love.” Only a God Who knows what love is and how to give love away would have even thought of creating the universe. If God weren’t practiced in and committed to love, He would have preferred to, as the Brits say, “keep himself to himself.” But when God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who has experienced from all eternity, the joy of giving love away, that superabundance of love feels compelled to express itself in every molecule and every supernova and every human being God has ever made, every part of the universe for which He became human, died, and rose.
This understanding of God is central to what we believe as Christians.
It’s simple:
- No Trinity; no creation.
- No Trinity; no salvation.
- No Trinity; no Gospel.
- No Trinity; no Church.
We can also see how different the Christian and Muslim views of God are when we consider one of the most common names we Christians use in talking to God.
When Jesus was asked by the disciples how to pray, He began the prayer with: ‘Our Father in heaven…’” (Matthew 6:9).
Jesus was telling all who approach God in His name to regard God as our loving Father.
Islam, on the other hand, is revolted by the idea of God being our Father. Quran 5:18 says: “the Jews and the Christians say, "We are the children of Allah and His beloved." [Tell them] ‘Then why does He punish you for your sins?’ Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills, and He punishes whom He wills.”
Notice that repentance, faith, or a heart open to God mean nothing to Allah. To Islam, Allah is a mercurial dictator who may give you a break...or not. Allah rules entirely by fiat. And Muslims don’t see how Christians can believe that God would dirty His hands by claiming to be related to human beings as our Father.
Islam also rejects the idea that Jesus, Who said, “...before Abraham was, I AM” (in other words, “before Abraham was, Yahweh”) (John 8:58) and Who accepted the worship of people like Thomas, Peter, and the blind man from this past Sunday’s Gospel lesson, is God.
Quran 5:72 insists that anyone who believes that Jesus is God, the One we Christians proclaim as “the Word made flesh” (John 1:14) will be forbidden a place in Paradise, their only refuge fire, from which they can receive no help. In other words, the Quran teaches that if we believe that Jesus is God, we are going to hell.
Islam also rejects the idea that Jesus is God’s Son.
Jesus teaches, famously of course, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
But the Quran says: “No son did Allah beget, nor is there any god along with Him.”
Jesus says, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Quran says, effectively, that Jesus is lying.
Islam tries to have it both ways: to claim a share in the God of Israel ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus, Who they rename Allah, as their own, while repudiating much of what God has revealed to the world in Jesus.
The God of the Bible is a heartsick lover Who beckons us to turn from sin and turn to Him to live, a God Who despised His own dignity so that by sacrificing Himself on the cross, He could win us back from from sin and death.
The Allah of Islam is like the Greek and Roman gods, who neither give nor promise grace, who sport with the human race while floating above it all, moving only from indifference to anger with humanity.
Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God.
But this shouldn’t make Christians smug. Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Rather than being smug, we should be thankful for Christ’s gift of salvation and new life to us.
We are blessed to be baptized and to have heard the Gospel from faithful people so that we have the chance to know God! We’ve been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. That’s a lot to be thankful for, but we can claim no credit for it; it's God's work alone!
And from sheer ratitude, we have every reason to be faithful to the great commission Jesus has given to us, to make disciples of all peoples.
That includes those who are trapped in Islam.
May we be grateful and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, may we be faithful in lifting up Christ to our neighbors, all of our neighbors.
For we believe exactly what the first century Church believed of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
Let’s show and tell the world this truth in every way God opens to us!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message is the fourth installment of the midweek Lenten series at Living Water, Tough Questions.]
Thursday, October 13, 2016
3 Books
Recently, I finished reading two books and listening to another.
I'd started reading Nabeel Qureshi's Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus, a while ago, but had set it aside in order to turn my attention to two other books--one that my Navigators coach, Bill Mowry, wanted me to read and another one recommended me to by my son.
The Qureshi book is an important one, especially given the penchant of some in the post-911 US, who erroneously think that all religions are the same and when others, in the name of tolerance, claim that all religions can lead people to God.
Qureshi was raised in a devout Muslim home and was himself an avid believer. But when he went to Old Dominion University, on his way to medical school, he met David, a mate on the school debate team, who was a deeply committed follower of Jesus.
In the context of their friendship, Qureshi became committed to proving the superiority of Islam and the errors of David's Christianity.
To do so, he dug into not just the Qu'ran and Muslim teaching, but also the Bible and Christian teaching. Qureshi chronicles a series of jarring insights that led him, with heart, head, and will to accept that Jesus is the crucified and risen "way,...truth,..and life" (John 14:6) and that Islam isn't a witness of God. As he writes in the book's introduction: "As I studied Islam more carefully, what I learned shook my world: there is no good reason to believe that either Muhammad or the Quran teaches the truth about God."
It hasn't been an easy road for Qureshi since coming to faith in Christ. But he has remained steadfast in following Christ, even now as he fights stomach cancer.
This book is not a rabid polemic against Islam. Qureshi sensitively and lovingly explains Islamic belief with a love for his own family members and for Muslims alike. In the bargain, he helps Christians and others to more clearly and sensitively understand Islam.
I can't recommend Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus highly enough.
My wife and I (and our kids when they were young) have always made a habit of reading books in the car on jaunts of any distance. I'm the reader, since, as I've explained here before, I'm the only family member who can read while traveling without barfing.
But, a few weeks ago, I found the audio version of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, a book which was made into an unfortunate and less than faithful to the text movie by producer Angelina Jolie. So, instead of my reading, we listened to the late, great Edward Herman read Hillenbrand's riveting telling of the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic gold medalist and World War II hero and POW.
Much of the book is taken up with Zamperini's wartime experiences, which included a harrowing time on a raft in the Pacific after the bomber on which he was a crew member was shot down and his even more harrowing experiences in Japanese POW camps. He endured almost unimaginable privations, daily beatings, and starvation. His survival is certainly in miracle territory.
After the war, Zamperini met and fell in love with Cynthia Applewhite and they married. But the war hadn't ended for Louis. Like many veterans, he suffered from PTSD, horrible flashbacks, and increasing intervals of sullen hatefulness. He sank into alcoholism.
Eventually, Cynthia filed for divorce and Zamperini's life seemed to spiral ever more out of control. He'd never had much exposure to or interest in religion. In fact, it turned him off completely. And though he'd had what can be described as encounters with God during some of his worst experiences of the war, he never seemed to give God a thought.
Neither really had Cynthia. But not long after she filed for divorce, she attended Billy Graham's famed Los Angeles mission. The year was 1949. Cynthia received Christ by faith for the first time and His presence in her life made an immediate change in her outlook. She announced, to Zamperini's surprise and delight, that she wasn't divorcing him.
But soon his delight was mixed with anger as Cynthia pressed Louis to attend one of Graham's crusade events and meet Christ for himself. He resisted, but finally relented. He attended one night, but left as soon as Graham completed his sermon. Implausibly, he told Cynthia he would attend one more gathering if she would promise to never pester him about it again. It was that night, through Graham's preaching, the God's grace given in Christ, met Zamperini's deepest needs: forgiveness, the ability to let go of his past, freedom from his addiction, a purpose for living, life with God.
He never drank again. He never experienced another horrific dream of the beatings he endured during the war. His desire for vengeance, a desire that had grown so deep that he had been saving money in order to go to Japan in order to kill his primary tormentor.
Eventually, Zamperini became the director of a camp that transformed the lives of troubled kids like he had been and an evangelist who preached around the world about the power Jesus gives to His believers to forgive those who have hurt us so that we can live the life God has in mind for us. He even forgave and called to faith those who had menaced and beaten him when he was a POW.
He died in 2014 at the age of 97. In January, 1998, before the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay, passing the camp where he had been interned.
Whether you read it or listen to it, Hillenbrand's riveting narrative of this remarkable man's life is moving and inspiring. Like Qureshi, Zamperini found life in Jesus Christ. So can anyone.
The final book I'll mention is pure and delightful brain candy: Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, a 1937 book that features her famous fictional detective (who she came to detest), Hercule Poirot. I love Christie's books and picked this one up for ten cents at a library book sale in Georgetown, Texas earlier this year. It's a great read.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
I'd started reading Nabeel Qureshi's Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus, a while ago, but had set it aside in order to turn my attention to two other books--one that my Navigators coach, Bill Mowry, wanted me to read and another one recommended me to by my son.
The Qureshi book is an important one, especially given the penchant of some in the post-911 US, who erroneously think that all religions are the same and when others, in the name of tolerance, claim that all religions can lead people to God.
Qureshi was raised in a devout Muslim home and was himself an avid believer. But when he went to Old Dominion University, on his way to medical school, he met David, a mate on the school debate team, who was a deeply committed follower of Jesus.
In the context of their friendship, Qureshi became committed to proving the superiority of Islam and the errors of David's Christianity.
To do so, he dug into not just the Qu'ran and Muslim teaching, but also the Bible and Christian teaching. Qureshi chronicles a series of jarring insights that led him, with heart, head, and will to accept that Jesus is the crucified and risen "way,...truth,..and life" (John 14:6) and that Islam isn't a witness of God. As he writes in the book's introduction: "As I studied Islam more carefully, what I learned shook my world: there is no good reason to believe that either Muhammad or the Quran teaches the truth about God."
It hasn't been an easy road for Qureshi since coming to faith in Christ. But he has remained steadfast in following Christ, even now as he fights stomach cancer.
This book is not a rabid polemic against Islam. Qureshi sensitively and lovingly explains Islamic belief with a love for his own family members and for Muslims alike. In the bargain, he helps Christians and others to more clearly and sensitively understand Islam.
I can't recommend Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus highly enough.
My wife and I (and our kids when they were young) have always made a habit of reading books in the car on jaunts of any distance. I'm the reader, since, as I've explained here before, I'm the only family member who can read while traveling without barfing.
But, a few weeks ago, I found the audio version of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, a book which was made into an unfortunate and less than faithful to the text movie by producer Angelina Jolie. So, instead of my reading, we listened to the late, great Edward Herman read Hillenbrand's riveting telling of the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic gold medalist and World War II hero and POW.
Much of the book is taken up with Zamperini's wartime experiences, which included a harrowing time on a raft in the Pacific after the bomber on which he was a crew member was shot down and his even more harrowing experiences in Japanese POW camps. He endured almost unimaginable privations, daily beatings, and starvation. His survival is certainly in miracle territory.
After the war, Zamperini met and fell in love with Cynthia Applewhite and they married. But the war hadn't ended for Louis. Like many veterans, he suffered from PTSD, horrible flashbacks, and increasing intervals of sullen hatefulness. He sank into alcoholism.
Eventually, Cynthia filed for divorce and Zamperini's life seemed to spiral ever more out of control. He'd never had much exposure to or interest in religion. In fact, it turned him off completely. And though he'd had what can be described as encounters with God during some of his worst experiences of the war, he never seemed to give God a thought.
Neither really had Cynthia. But not long after she filed for divorce, she attended Billy Graham's famed Los Angeles mission. The year was 1949. Cynthia received Christ by faith for the first time and His presence in her life made an immediate change in her outlook. She announced, to Zamperini's surprise and delight, that she wasn't divorcing him.
But soon his delight was mixed with anger as Cynthia pressed Louis to attend one of Graham's crusade events and meet Christ for himself. He resisted, but finally relented. He attended one night, but left as soon as Graham completed his sermon. Implausibly, he told Cynthia he would attend one more gathering if she would promise to never pester him about it again. It was that night, through Graham's preaching, the God's grace given in Christ, met Zamperini's deepest needs: forgiveness, the ability to let go of his past, freedom from his addiction, a purpose for living, life with God.
He never drank again. He never experienced another horrific dream of the beatings he endured during the war. His desire for vengeance, a desire that had grown so deep that he had been saving money in order to go to Japan in order to kill his primary tormentor.
Eventually, Zamperini became the director of a camp that transformed the lives of troubled kids like he had been and an evangelist who preached around the world about the power Jesus gives to His believers to forgive those who have hurt us so that we can live the life God has in mind for us. He even forgave and called to faith those who had menaced and beaten him when he was a POW.
He died in 2014 at the age of 97. In January, 1998, before the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay, passing the camp where he had been interned.
Whether you read it or listen to it, Hillenbrand's riveting narrative of this remarkable man's life is moving and inspiring. Like Qureshi, Zamperini found life in Jesus Christ. So can anyone.
The final book I'll mention is pure and delightful brain candy: Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, a 1937 book that features her famous fictional detective (who she came to detest), Hercule Poirot. I love Christie's books and picked this one up for ten cents at a library book sale in Georgetown, Texas earlier this year. It's a great read.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Friday, October 07, 2016
Please keep praying for Nabeel Qureshi
Here is an update from Nabeel Qureshi, who is dealing with cancer. He shared this video on October 4, three days ago.
Please continue to pray for this extraordinary young man.
And for a great treat, read his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.
He also has a new book out, No God But One: Allah or Jesus? comparing Christian faith with Islam.
Qureshi was raised in a pious Muslim home. While he was a student at Old Dominion University, a Christian befriended him, shared Christ with him, and they began to compare their respective faiths. Qureshi later graduated from medical school and in that period, he became a follower of Jesus Christ.
Please pray for healing for him. He is suffering from stomach cancer and has been told that from a medical viewpoint, he has a 4% chance of survival.
God has already done amazing things through this young man. But I'm praying in Jesus' name that, for the sake of Christ's kingdom here on earth, as well as for his wife and little daughter, Nabeel Qureshi will be spared. We are praying for him regularly at Living Water Lutheran Church.
Thanks for your prayers for him.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Please continue to pray for this extraordinary young man.
And for a great treat, read his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.
He also has a new book out, No God But One: Allah or Jesus? comparing Christian faith with Islam.
Qureshi was raised in a pious Muslim home. While he was a student at Old Dominion University, a Christian befriended him, shared Christ with him, and they began to compare their respective faiths. Qureshi later graduated from medical school and in that period, he became a follower of Jesus Christ.
Please pray for healing for him. He is suffering from stomach cancer and has been told that from a medical viewpoint, he has a 4% chance of survival.
God has already done amazing things through this young man. But I'm praying in Jesus' name that, for the sake of Christ's kingdom here on earth, as well as for his wife and little daughter, Nabeel Qureshi will be spared. We are praying for him regularly at Living Water Lutheran Church.
Thanks for your prayers for him.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Food for though from Rushdie
Novelist Sir Salman Rushdie, you'll remember, was the subject of a fatwa, essentially a death sentence, by the Ayatollah Khomeini, supreme leader of Iran, for a novel many Muslims deemed critical of Islam.
(Thanks to Depraved Wretch, over on Facebook, for sharing this.)
(Thanks to Depraved Wretch, over on Facebook, for sharing this.)
Monday, January 04, 2016
Saturday, October 04, 2014
'4 Reasons Christians Must Reject Islamophobia'
It's for the sake of love of God and neighbor and the mission of the Church. Read the whole thing.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Peace with God
[This was the sermon prepared for today's 10:15 worship service with the people and friends of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Today was Friend Day at Saint Matthew.]
I once heard a man named Bill Hybels say that every human being, without exception, is looking for the same thing. Hybels called the thing we’re all looking for, “it.”
The ways human beings look for “it” vary.
Some think they can find “it” by living a life in which they stock up pleasure, committing themselves to, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.” But “it” can’t be found by that route.
Some people look for “it” by working hard for money or power or knowledge.
Others are sure that the way to “it” is by being a good person, giving to charities, or living a lifestyle of love.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with happiness, knowledge, hard work, giving, success, money, or even love. These are all good things in themselves.
But if we look to them as the means by which we find “it,” we will be disappointed.
And if we aren’t disappointed, then we are settling for much less than we were made for as human beings.
None of us should do that!
So, what is this “it”?
A man named Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, was the preeminent scholar of his day, at a time when scholars were treated like rock stars. Augustine partook of every sinful pleasure the world had to offer.
But it wasn’t enough.
In the summer of 386, deeply unhappy, Augustine threw himself down under a fig tree in desperation. There he sensed a voice, like that of a child, repeating to him over and over, “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
The voice was so real to Augustine that, at first, he thought it was that of a real nearby child playing some game. Then he understood that the voice had some other source.
At that time, Augustine was staying with some monks on a retreat where he hoped he could get things together. He wasn’t interested in being a Christian, mind you. His mother was a Christian and he had no interest in becoming a religious kook!
But, weeping under the fig tree, Augustine kept hearing that voice: “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
He later said that he could only interpret the repeated phrase to mean that he had to run into the house where he was staying, pick up a Bible from a shelf there, and read the first words he laid eyes on. He followed his instructions.
The first passage he read was in the book of Romans, chapter 13, verses 13 to 14: “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ...”
It was then that Augustine, to that point no believer in God, surrendered his life and will to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
He later said in a prayer, “Almighty God, You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
Not by any effort of His own, but solely by the effort of the God Who reached out to him and Who still reaches out to you and me today, Augustine received “it": peace with God.
You may say, “We might as well close up shop right now, preacher. I’m not at war with God. I may not pay much attention to God, but I’m not at war with God.”
Look! We are born at war with God!
We’re born wanting our own ways.
In the Old Testament, King David, a man the Bible later describes as “a man after God’s own heart,” had to admit, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
Sin is in the human gene pool. We inherit it from our parents and grandparents.
Sin is the condition of enmity toward God and of willfulness to do our own thing that caused me, when I wasn’t yet three years old, to ignore my mother when she told me not to pick up my baby sister and with Mom no more than five steps away, to pick her up and promptly drop her on her head, my very first childhood memory. Nobody had to teach me how to sin; I came equipped with that knowledge!
The condition of sin is a wall between God and us, between God and others.
It’s what makes it impossible for us, by our own reason or strength or effort, to love God or to love others as we love ourselves, even though the law of God written on our hearts tells us that living like that is what it means to be human!
Even people who have never heard of God have a sense that they were made to experience "it," what we know to be the peace of God, whether they can articulate that or not.
And some people are so desperate for peace with God that they fall for humanly-created religions like Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology.
U2 gave expression to our common desire for “it,” when they sang, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
I want to be honest with you. I don’t always live in the peace of God. I let “it” slip out of my hands.
Usually without realizing it, I go on the warpath against God.
Feelings of bitterness toward those who have hurt me get my attention. Instead of asking God to bless others, I find myself praying that God would “fix them” and make them over in an image more convenient and convivial to me.
The desire to do what I want to do instead of what God wants me to do takes first place in my life.
My sinful self, along with the sin of the world and the sinful things that Satan tempts us all to do, conspire to take over my life and rob me of peace with God.
So I come to God many times a day, to ask God to tear down the wall of sin, to help me live in peace with Him, with others, and with myself, to remember that there is no peace when we’re looking out for ourselves.
But how does peace with God come to us?
I want to share with you what’s called “the Roman road,” the way peace comes to us as described in the New Testament book of Romans, the book of the Bible from which Augustine read on that summer day when he found his rest in God. I’ll also mention a few other passages in other parts of the Bible.
How do we have peace with God? First: To have peace with God, we must realize that God loves us and He wants to have everlasting peace with Him, along with a life made new by Him, a life He wants to give to us for all eternity.
When we have bad things come into our lives, as they do in all lives, we’re tempted to think that God has it in for us. A month or so ago, when I learned I had Celiac Disease, two years after I had a heart attack that took out 40% of my heart and one year after I'd learned that my heart was so weak I needed a pacemaker and defibrillator and also had to have a small melanoma cancer removed from my leg, I confess to you that I asked God why He was piling things on.
I'm ashamed of those feelings, frankly, because the Bible teaches us that, in this fallen world, bad things happen to everyone, no exceptions.
But we can have peace with God even in hard times. Romans 5:1 says: “...having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What does this mean? Just this: The rightful fate for everyone who has sin is death. Another passage of Romans puts it this way: “the wages of sin is death.”
Think of it like this: We are all guilty of sin. If we were tried for our sin, the evidence would be overwhelming. To be justified though, is to have the verdict of “not guilty” declared over our lives.
Anyone who is declared “not guilty” of sin is at peace with God.
It was this “not guilty” verdict that changed Augustine’s life.
God wants us all to experience that.
God loves us and wants us to enjoy peace with Him. That’s why God in the flesh, Jesus, said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God wants to give us:
You and I aren’t machines. God didn’t program us to do whatever He wanted. God gives us the power to make choices in our lives. We can choose to return His love to Him or not.
The problem, of course, is that the condition of sin has us bound so tightly that even if we resolve to return God’s love or to be at peace with God, we can’t make the decision stick.
We’re like kids peering into a shop filled with candy that’s off-limits to us because our hands and feet are manacled, in this case by our sin.
We can’t get to peace with God by our own efforts, no matter how hard we try. As Romans 7:19 says, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” That's why we Lutherans say in the Order for Confession and Forgiveness: "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves." Even when we want to choose peace with God and obedience to His commands, we are incapable of making that choice.
Third: To have peace with God, we need to know that God intervenes on our behalf. Romans 5:8 says: “...God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The Old Testament sacrificial law held that an unblemished lamb could represent people on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. There, the lamb was sacrificed and the repentant believers were spattered with the blood of the lamb. The lamb took the sinners‘ rightful wages, death, and the repentant were forgiven, for that moment.
But as our second lesson for today, from Hebrews, reminds us, Jesus, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, bears the sins of all the world, once and for all.
Fourth: We must receive, by faith, Christ, the One Who has died and risen for us. Romans 10:9 says: “...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” What an incredible promise!
Because of God's charitable love for us, what the Bible calls "grace," all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ are saved from the condition of sin and its consequence--death and futility.
When you entrust your life to Jesus Christ, you will have forgiveness, life, purpose, and peace with God.
Now, I don’t want to simplify things. Having peace and eternity with God are free gifts God grants to all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ. But they are gifts we find it easy to let go of.
Faith itself, the Bible teaches, isn’t something we can talk ourselves into, but only receive just as we receive any other gift.
And as long as we live in this world, our genetic predisposition to sin will haunt us.
Jesus was and is God in the flesh, perfect and sinless, conceived not by a sinful man and a sinful woman, but by the Holy Spirit. But if Jesus was tempted and tested, we can expect to be tempted and tested too!
Jesus says though, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Jesus also promises that “the one who endures to the end” in surrender to Him “will be saved.” They will have a peace that only the God Who became one of us, died for us, and then rose from death for all eternity can guarantee.
The God we know in Jesus Christ can be your very best friend. He can give you a peace that passes all understanding.
If you would like to claim that peace for the first time or claim it again this morning, I want to invite you to pray with me right now:
That's okay: As Martin Luther said, the problem with some "born-again Christians" is that they're not born again enough. We need to keep coming back to Christ so that our old sinful self can be crucified and the new child of God can keep rising from the ashes of our sin!
But if you prayed that prayer with sincerity, know this: The war is over!
You have the "it" you’ve wanted your whole life: Peace with God!
Amen
[The four points of "the Roman Road," found in many places, and the version of "the sinner's prayer" as presented here, are based on a helpful book that has helped me share my faith many times over the past decade: Steps to Peace with God, published by the publications arm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, World Wide Publications. I don't know if it's still in print. A link to it at Amazon.com can be found above.]
[These passages of Scripture are mentioned in the sermon (most are hyperlinked above): Acts 13:22, Psalm 51:5, Romans 2:14-15, Matthew 22:36-40, Romans 5:1, Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 1:1-14, Romans 3:23, Romans 7:19, Hebrews 9:24-28, John 1:29, Romans 10:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Matthew 1:18, Hebrews 4:15, and Mark 1:12-13]
I once heard a man named Bill Hybels say that every human being, without exception, is looking for the same thing. Hybels called the thing we’re all looking for, “it.”
The ways human beings look for “it” vary.
Some think they can find “it” by living a life in which they stock up pleasure, committing themselves to, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.” But “it” can’t be found by that route.
Some people look for “it” by working hard for money or power or knowledge.
Others are sure that the way to “it” is by being a good person, giving to charities, or living a lifestyle of love.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with happiness, knowledge, hard work, giving, success, money, or even love. These are all good things in themselves.
But if we look to them as the means by which we find “it,” we will be disappointed.
And if we aren’t disappointed, then we are settling for much less than we were made for as human beings.
None of us should do that!
So, what is this “it”?
A man named Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, was the preeminent scholar of his day, at a time when scholars were treated like rock stars. Augustine partook of every sinful pleasure the world had to offer.
But it wasn’t enough.
In the summer of 386, deeply unhappy, Augustine threw himself down under a fig tree in desperation. There he sensed a voice, like that of a child, repeating to him over and over, “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
The voice was so real to Augustine that, at first, he thought it was that of a real nearby child playing some game. Then he understood that the voice had some other source.
At that time, Augustine was staying with some monks on a retreat where he hoped he could get things together. He wasn’t interested in being a Christian, mind you. His mother was a Christian and he had no interest in becoming a religious kook!
But, weeping under the fig tree, Augustine kept hearing that voice: “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
He later said that he could only interpret the repeated phrase to mean that he had to run into the house where he was staying, pick up a Bible from a shelf there, and read the first words he laid eyes on. He followed his instructions.
The first passage he read was in the book of Romans, chapter 13, verses 13 to 14: “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ...”
It was then that Augustine, to that point no believer in God, surrendered his life and will to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
He later said in a prayer, “Almighty God, You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
Not by any effort of His own, but solely by the effort of the God Who reached out to him and Who still reaches out to you and me today, Augustine received “it": peace with God.
You may say, “We might as well close up shop right now, preacher. I’m not at war with God. I may not pay much attention to God, but I’m not at war with God.”
Look! We are born at war with God!
We’re born wanting our own ways.
In the Old Testament, King David, a man the Bible later describes as “a man after God’s own heart,” had to admit, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
Sin is in the human gene pool. We inherit it from our parents and grandparents.
Sin is the condition of enmity toward God and of willfulness to do our own thing that caused me, when I wasn’t yet three years old, to ignore my mother when she told me not to pick up my baby sister and with Mom no more than five steps away, to pick her up and promptly drop her on her head, my very first childhood memory. Nobody had to teach me how to sin; I came equipped with that knowledge!
The condition of sin is a wall between God and us, between God and others.
It’s what makes it impossible for us, by our own reason or strength or effort, to love God or to love others as we love ourselves, even though the law of God written on our hearts tells us that living like that is what it means to be human!
Even people who have never heard of God have a sense that they were made to experience "it," what we know to be the peace of God, whether they can articulate that or not.
And some people are so desperate for peace with God that they fall for humanly-created religions like Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology.
U2 gave expression to our common desire for “it,” when they sang, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
I want to be honest with you. I don’t always live in the peace of God. I let “it” slip out of my hands.
Usually without realizing it, I go on the warpath against God.
Feelings of bitterness toward those who have hurt me get my attention. Instead of asking God to bless others, I find myself praying that God would “fix them” and make them over in an image more convenient and convivial to me.
The desire to do what I want to do instead of what God wants me to do takes first place in my life.
My sinful self, along with the sin of the world and the sinful things that Satan tempts us all to do, conspire to take over my life and rob me of peace with God.
So I come to God many times a day, to ask God to tear down the wall of sin, to help me live in peace with Him, with others, and with myself, to remember that there is no peace when we’re looking out for ourselves.
But how does peace with God come to us?
I want to share with you what’s called “the Roman road,” the way peace comes to us as described in the New Testament book of Romans, the book of the Bible from which Augustine read on that summer day when he found his rest in God. I’ll also mention a few other passages in other parts of the Bible.
How do we have peace with God? First: To have peace with God, we must realize that God loves us and He wants to have everlasting peace with Him, along with a life made new by Him, a life He wants to give to us for all eternity.
When we have bad things come into our lives, as they do in all lives, we’re tempted to think that God has it in for us. A month or so ago, when I learned I had Celiac Disease, two years after I had a heart attack that took out 40% of my heart and one year after I'd learned that my heart was so weak I needed a pacemaker and defibrillator and also had to have a small melanoma cancer removed from my leg, I confess to you that I asked God why He was piling things on.
I'm ashamed of those feelings, frankly, because the Bible teaches us that, in this fallen world, bad things happen to everyone, no exceptions.
But we can have peace with God even in hard times. Romans 5:1 says: “...having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What does this mean? Just this: The rightful fate for everyone who has sin is death. Another passage of Romans puts it this way: “the wages of sin is death.”
Think of it like this: We are all guilty of sin. If we were tried for our sin, the evidence would be overwhelming. To be justified though, is to have the verdict of “not guilty” declared over our lives.
Anyone who is declared “not guilty” of sin is at peace with God.
It was this “not guilty” verdict that changed Augustine’s life.
God wants us all to experience that.
God loves us and wants us to enjoy peace with Him. That’s why God in the flesh, Jesus, said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God wants to give us:
- Peace with God now in this imperfect world
- Peace with God forever in a perfect eternity.
You and I aren’t machines. God didn’t program us to do whatever He wanted. God gives us the power to make choices in our lives. We can choose to return His love to Him or not.
The problem, of course, is that the condition of sin has us bound so tightly that even if we resolve to return God’s love or to be at peace with God, we can’t make the decision stick.
We’re like kids peering into a shop filled with candy that’s off-limits to us because our hands and feet are manacled, in this case by our sin.
We can’t get to peace with God by our own efforts, no matter how hard we try. As Romans 7:19 says, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” That's why we Lutherans say in the Order for Confession and Forgiveness: "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves." Even when we want to choose peace with God and obedience to His commands, we are incapable of making that choice.
Third: To have peace with God, we need to know that God intervenes on our behalf. Romans 5:8 says: “...God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The Old Testament sacrificial law held that an unblemished lamb could represent people on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. There, the lamb was sacrificed and the repentant believers were spattered with the blood of the lamb. The lamb took the sinners‘ rightful wages, death, and the repentant were forgiven, for that moment.
But as our second lesson for today, from Hebrews, reminds us, Jesus, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, bears the sins of all the world, once and for all.
Fourth: We must receive, by faith, Christ, the One Who has died and risen for us. Romans 10:9 says: “...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” What an incredible promise!
Because of God's charitable love for us, what the Bible calls "grace," all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ are saved from the condition of sin and its consequence--death and futility.
When you entrust your life to Jesus Christ, you will have forgiveness, life, purpose, and peace with God.
Now, I don’t want to simplify things. Having peace and eternity with God are free gifts God grants to all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ. But they are gifts we find it easy to let go of.
Faith itself, the Bible teaches, isn’t something we can talk ourselves into, but only receive just as we receive any other gift.
And as long as we live in this world, our genetic predisposition to sin will haunt us.
Jesus was and is God in the flesh, perfect and sinless, conceived not by a sinful man and a sinful woman, but by the Holy Spirit. But if Jesus was tempted and tested, we can expect to be tempted and tested too!
Jesus says though, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Jesus also promises that “the one who endures to the end” in surrender to Him “will be saved.” They will have a peace that only the God Who became one of us, died for us, and then rose from death for all eternity can guarantee.
The God we know in Jesus Christ can be your very best friend. He can give you a peace that passes all understanding.
If you would like to claim that peace for the first time or claim it again this morning, I want to invite you to pray with me right now:
Lord Jesus, I am a sinner in need of the forgiveness only You can give. I believe that You died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead to open up eternity to all who will turn from their sins and let You be their God and King. I ask You to come into my life. Rule over me today and forever. Send Your Holy Spirit to me daily so that I can trust and follow You and live in Your peace. In Your Name I pray. AmenIf you're like me, you may find yourself needing to pray that prayer about twenty-five times a day.
That's okay: As Martin Luther said, the problem with some "born-again Christians" is that they're not born again enough. We need to keep coming back to Christ so that our old sinful self can be crucified and the new child of God can keep rising from the ashes of our sin!
But if you prayed that prayer with sincerity, know this: The war is over!
You have the "it" you’ve wanted your whole life: Peace with God!
Amen
[The four points of "the Roman Road," found in many places, and the version of "the sinner's prayer" as presented here, are based on a helpful book that has helped me share my faith many times over the past decade: Steps to Peace with God, published by the publications arm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, World Wide Publications. I don't know if it's still in print. A link to it at Amazon.com can be found above.]
[These passages of Scripture are mentioned in the sermon (most are hyperlinked above): Acts 13:22, Psalm 51:5, Romans 2:14-15, Matthew 22:36-40, Romans 5:1, Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 1:1-14, Romans 3:23, Romans 7:19, Hebrews 9:24-28, John 1:29, Romans 10:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Matthew 1:18, Hebrews 4:15, and Mark 1:12-13]
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Burn Korans? Not If You Want to Do Christ's Will
It's hard to fathom the motives of the Gainseville, Florida pastor and his 50-member flock who plan on holding what they call an "International Burn the Koran Day," this coming Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
I can't help suspecting that a big motivator on the part of the pastor, Terry Jones, is to gain attention for himself and his struggling church.
He has certainly gotten that. Newspapers, TV news shows, and Internet web sites are filled with stories about the planned event. There have been protest demonstrations in the Islamic world, where pictures of Jones have been set afire. A U.S. State Department spokesperson and the White House press secretary have condemned the planned Koran-burning. General David Petraeus has taken time from his combat duties in Afghanistan to warn that the Jones event would endanger U.S. combat forces and every American by inciting Jihadists and confirming the Muslim world's worst misapprehensions about Americans. (And about Christians too, I would add.)
It's difficult to see what good that Jones and his flock think all this attention will produce. It certainly won't advance the cause to which every follower of Jesus Christ should be committed.
That cause, which we Christians believe the risen Jesus gave to us just before He ascended to heaven, is called, the Great Commission. Forms of it appear in all four of the New Testament gospels and in Luke's history of the early Church, the Book of Acts. The most famous version is in the Gospel of Matthew. There, Jesus commissions Christians to:
But none of this should lead a Christian to burn Islam's book, even if we don't believe that the Koran came from God.
In fact, it should lead us away from such off-putting actions. If we want all people to come to faith in Christ, we should be looking for ways to build bridges, not burn them down.
Mr. Jones and his congregation might want to turn to the apostle Paul for an example of how to approach Muslims, a small fraction of whom act as the seedbed from which Jihadists grow terrorists.
Paul was the greatest of the early Church's preachers, a devout Jew who once persecuted believers in Christ, then became a great champion of Christian faith, and who spent most of his adult life traveling the Mediterranean basin, starting churches, winning converts, and encouraging believers. Ultimately, he was martyred for his faith in Christ.
Sometime around 50-52AD, Paul spent time in Athens awaiting the arrival of friends. The Book of Acts in the Bible's New Testament says that Paul was "distressed to see the city was full of idols." For a Jewish Christian like Paul, steeped in the Old Testament's teaching (and what would also be the New Testament's teaching) that there is just one God, the many statues depicting false gods was undoubtedly disgusting. The temptation to throw a fit and pour condemnations on the Athenians would have been huge for a man like Paul, passionate, sharp-tongued, and devout. He might have felt that he had good warrant to do just that.
But Paul had a higher call, a great commission! A rhetorical assault on the Athenians and their worship of many Gods would have been the first-century equivalent of burning a Koran, momentarily satisfying to the one with the torch, maybe, but ultimately useless to the cause of Christ.
Instead, we're told that Paul went to the synagogues there to tell his fellow Jews about Jesus and also to the Athenian marketplaces where learned people discussed life issues. He debated, but he didn't attack.
Then, one day, Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, curious about, if disdainful of, Paul's message about Christ took him to a place called the Areopagus, a low Athenian hill. With the city's multiple idols visible to everyone, Paul didn't attack.
“Athenians," he began, "I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you." Paul, starting with where the Athenians were, told them about the one God of the universe he believed was first revealed to God's people, Israel, and was ultimately revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus. He even quoted one of their poets as he talked with them.
After Paul finished speaking, some simply wrote him off. Others said that they wanted to hear more. Still others became followers of Christ. Paul wouldn't have seen these results if he had decided to scold and excoriate the Athenians for their evil beliefs. Instead, Christians believe that God's Holy Spirit used Paul's approach to make disciples of some.
Abraham Lincoln is widely reported to have been asked once by partisans why, instead of attempting reconciliation with his enemies, he didn't try destroying them instead. Lincoln replied, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
In an imperfect world in which violent people pose threats to others, there is a place for military, police, jails, prisons, and aggressive government action.
But the Bible I read and the Savior I follow gives Christians no encouragement and no warrant to burn Korans. Doing so will not only endanger the lives of many Americans who want no part of what Terry Jones and his Gainesville congregation are planning to do, it will also hurt the cause we Christians are commissioned to pursue: Making new friends and followers of Jesus.
I can't help suspecting that a big motivator on the part of the pastor, Terry Jones, is to gain attention for himself and his struggling church.
He has certainly gotten that. Newspapers, TV news shows, and Internet web sites are filled with stories about the planned event. There have been protest demonstrations in the Islamic world, where pictures of Jones have been set afire. A U.S. State Department spokesperson and the White House press secretary have condemned the planned Koran-burning. General David Petraeus has taken time from his combat duties in Afghanistan to warn that the Jones event would endanger U.S. combat forces and every American by inciting Jihadists and confirming the Muslim world's worst misapprehensions about Americans. (And about Christians too, I would add.)
It's difficult to see what good that Jones and his flock think all this attention will produce. It certainly won't advance the cause to which every follower of Jesus Christ should be committed.
That cause, which we Christians believe the risen Jesus gave to us just before He ascended to heaven, is called, the Great Commission. Forms of it appear in all four of the New Testament gospels and in Luke's history of the early Church, the Book of Acts. The most famous version is in the Gospel of Matthew. There, Jesus commissions Christians to:
"19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”As an evangelical Christian, I take this commission seriously. Jesus claims that He is God in the flesh and that repentance for sin and belief in Him is the only means by which human beings can grasp the grace of God and be reconciled with God. I pray every day that God will use me, inadequacies, faults, sins, and all, to share with everyone I contact, the good news of new and everlasting life from God that, as I believe the Bible teaches, only comes through Christ. I want all people to know the joy and the peace that comes from Christ, even in the midst of life's challenges.
But none of this should lead a Christian to burn Islam's book, even if we don't believe that the Koran came from God.
In fact, it should lead us away from such off-putting actions. If we want all people to come to faith in Christ, we should be looking for ways to build bridges, not burn them down.
Mr. Jones and his congregation might want to turn to the apostle Paul for an example of how to approach Muslims, a small fraction of whom act as the seedbed from which Jihadists grow terrorists.
Paul was the greatest of the early Church's preachers, a devout Jew who once persecuted believers in Christ, then became a great champion of Christian faith, and who spent most of his adult life traveling the Mediterranean basin, starting churches, winning converts, and encouraging believers. Ultimately, he was martyred for his faith in Christ.
Sometime around 50-52AD, Paul spent time in Athens awaiting the arrival of friends. The Book of Acts in the Bible's New Testament says that Paul was "distressed to see the city was full of idols." For a Jewish Christian like Paul, steeped in the Old Testament's teaching (and what would also be the New Testament's teaching) that there is just one God, the many statues depicting false gods was undoubtedly disgusting. The temptation to throw a fit and pour condemnations on the Athenians would have been huge for a man like Paul, passionate, sharp-tongued, and devout. He might have felt that he had good warrant to do just that.
But Paul had a higher call, a great commission! A rhetorical assault on the Athenians and their worship of many Gods would have been the first-century equivalent of burning a Koran, momentarily satisfying to the one with the torch, maybe, but ultimately useless to the cause of Christ.
Instead, we're told that Paul went to the synagogues there to tell his fellow Jews about Jesus and also to the Athenian marketplaces where learned people discussed life issues. He debated, but he didn't attack.
Then, one day, Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, curious about, if disdainful of, Paul's message about Christ took him to a place called the Areopagus, a low Athenian hill. With the city's multiple idols visible to everyone, Paul didn't attack.
“Athenians," he began, "I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you." Paul, starting with where the Athenians were, told them about the one God of the universe he believed was first revealed to God's people, Israel, and was ultimately revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus. He even quoted one of their poets as he talked with them.
After Paul finished speaking, some simply wrote him off. Others said that they wanted to hear more. Still others became followers of Christ. Paul wouldn't have seen these results if he had decided to scold and excoriate the Athenians for their evil beliefs. Instead, Christians believe that God's Holy Spirit used Paul's approach to make disciples of some.
Abraham Lincoln is widely reported to have been asked once by partisans why, instead of attempting reconciliation with his enemies, he didn't try destroying them instead. Lincoln replied, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
In an imperfect world in which violent people pose threats to others, there is a place for military, police, jails, prisons, and aggressive government action.
But the Bible I read and the Savior I follow gives Christians no encouragement and no warrant to burn Korans. Doing so will not only endanger the lives of many Americans who want no part of what Terry Jones and his Gainesville congregation are planning to do, it will also hurt the cause we Christians are commissioned to pursue: Making new friends and followers of Jesus.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Swiss Voters Ban Minarets: Not the Way to Go for Christians
Minarets, the tall spires which often top mosques, have been banned by Swiss voters.
Supporters of the ban say that minarets represent extremism. Opponents say that the ban is a violation of Muslims' freedom of religion.
As a Christian, I believe Jesus when He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
I believe the apostle Peter when he says of Jesus, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
So, it distresses me every time I see a mosque or shrine of any other religion. I desperately yearn (and pray) that all people will come to know God through Jesus Christ, repent of sin, and believe in Him as God and Savior.
But banning minrets is no different from banning churches, synagogues, or temples. Unless all people are free to practice the religion of their choice, no choice they make will have any meaning. Banning public displays of religious belief drives it underground and can breed the resentment that leads to the kind of radicalism that the proponents of this ban claim to want to thwart.
At one level, as a Christian, distressed though I may be at the sight of minarets here in my country, I can also be somewhat heartened by them. They display an impulse or desire for God that, I believe, can lead to Jesus Christ and everlasting life.
For this sentiment, I take inspiration from the first-century preacher and evangelist, Paul. When he entered the city of Athens toward the middle of the first century, he saw a town that was, not Christian, but deeply religious. The New Testament book of Acts says that Paul "was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols." Idols, of course, are false gods. They're lifeless and incapable of giving the life that only the God revealed in Jesus Christ can give.
But, later when Paul spoke with the Athenians about Christ, he began by saying, "I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, does not live in shrines made with human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things..." Paul went on to explain to the Athenians who had an impulse to reach out to and be known by the transcendent, that in Jesus Christ the God of the universe had reached out to humanity, gone to a cross for our sins, and risen from the dead to give new and everlasting life with God to those who dare to trust in Jesus. (See Acts 17:16-34.)
Minarets distress me. As do the words of those who, as was once true of me, profess to be atheists. But denying people freedom of religion or freedom of speech is not the way to ensure the peaceful assimilation of peoples into societies.
Nor, from a Christian perspective, is it the way to turn people toward peace with God and peace with others through Christ, the desire of every Christian as well-expressed once by Paul when he stood before a king on the charge of being a Christian. When Paul used his appearance before the king as an occasion to share his faith in Christ, the king asked, "Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?" I love Paul's answer, which I've referenced many times on this blog: "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am [a believer in Jesus Christ]-except for these chains." (Acts 26:28-29)
Christians should have no part in repressing people in any way. We want all people to be free to discover Jesus Christ through our faithful, peaceful, loving, and non-coercive witness for Him.
Banning minarets in Switzerland, or anywhere else, can never come to a good end.
Supporters of the ban say that minarets represent extremism. Opponents say that the ban is a violation of Muslims' freedom of religion.
As a Christian, I believe Jesus when He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
I believe the apostle Peter when he says of Jesus, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
So, it distresses me every time I see a mosque or shrine of any other religion. I desperately yearn (and pray) that all people will come to know God through Jesus Christ, repent of sin, and believe in Him as God and Savior.
But banning minrets is no different from banning churches, synagogues, or temples. Unless all people are free to practice the religion of their choice, no choice they make will have any meaning. Banning public displays of religious belief drives it underground and can breed the resentment that leads to the kind of radicalism that the proponents of this ban claim to want to thwart.
At one level, as a Christian, distressed though I may be at the sight of minarets here in my country, I can also be somewhat heartened by them. They display an impulse or desire for God that, I believe, can lead to Jesus Christ and everlasting life.
For this sentiment, I take inspiration from the first-century preacher and evangelist, Paul. When he entered the city of Athens toward the middle of the first century, he saw a town that was, not Christian, but deeply religious. The New Testament book of Acts says that Paul "was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols." Idols, of course, are false gods. They're lifeless and incapable of giving the life that only the God revealed in Jesus Christ can give.
But, later when Paul spoke with the Athenians about Christ, he began by saying, "I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, does not live in shrines made with human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things..." Paul went on to explain to the Athenians who had an impulse to reach out to and be known by the transcendent, that in Jesus Christ the God of the universe had reached out to humanity, gone to a cross for our sins, and risen from the dead to give new and everlasting life with God to those who dare to trust in Jesus. (See Acts 17:16-34.)
Minarets distress me. As do the words of those who, as was once true of me, profess to be atheists. But denying people freedom of religion or freedom of speech is not the way to ensure the peaceful assimilation of peoples into societies.
Nor, from a Christian perspective, is it the way to turn people toward peace with God and peace with others through Christ, the desire of every Christian as well-expressed once by Paul when he stood before a king on the charge of being a Christian. When Paul used his appearance before the king as an occasion to share his faith in Christ, the king asked, "Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?" I love Paul's answer, which I've referenced many times on this blog: "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am [a believer in Jesus Christ]-except for these chains." (Acts 26:28-29)
Christians should have no part in repressing people in any way. We want all people to be free to discover Jesus Christ through our faithful, peaceful, loving, and non-coercive witness for Him.
Banning minarets in Switzerland, or anywhere else, can never come to a good end.
Monday, November 24, 2008
"All Monotheisms Are Not Alike"
Stan Guthrie provides a helpful comparison of Christianity and Islam here.
For more on the Apostles' Creed, see here. (This is Martin Luther's explanations of the Creed from The Small Catechism.)
For more on the Apostles' Creed, see here. (This is Martin Luther's explanations of the Creed from The Small Catechism.)
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
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