My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: "O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!"

07 February 2006

Here's the sermon from Proverbs 22 last Sunday evening:

pdf
mp3

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This could be an interesting movie: The Second Chance. It's about two pastors from "different sides of the tracks"... perhaps it only popped out to me because it bears on my daily work. From the trailer, it's hard to tell if it will be an accurate rendering of the gospel in real life and an accurate critique of American evangelicalism or if it will bear more on the social justice part of the gospel, which seems to be much more popular these days.

Here's the homepage.

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Two weeks ago, Garrison Keillor brought Prairie Home Companion to Purdue University. It happened to occur during our annual congregational meeting, so I wasn't tempted to go. But the wife and I were listening last night and it was a lot of fun.

Perhaps the best part was hearing the Purdue Fight Song sung on national radio by the Glee Club. All the stars seemed to be aligning...(it's in segment 2).

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What do you think about the many Muslim riots over the Mohammed cartoons?

Here's the latest (NATO troops firing on protestors in Kabul) - you can also read past related stories from this page. You can see the cartoons here.

Some questions for discussion:

  • Since we're always being told that Islam is a "noble" religion, a religion of peace...will the widespread violence of these protests be enough to convince the world otherwise? Is it time to see what's just below the mellow surface of Islam?
  • Apparently, many Muslims are rioting because it is against their law to have any pictures of Mohammed, to prevent idolatry. Is there a lesson here for Christians? Not to imply that we ought to be violently protesting anything, but are we passionate enough about God's laws to, say, call the NFL to move their games off the Lord's Day?
  • Do these riots scare anyone else other than me? Thousands of people, all over the world, shouting and burning and shooting with abandon - how long can it be before this comes to Indiana?
  • Conversely, does the recklessness and the vitriole of these protests encourage you in a roundabout way? Think about it this way: Christians all over the world don't shoot and burn stuff when Jesus is made fun of through cartoons or other media. Why should we? The weapons of our warfare are spiritual and Jesus can take care of His own name, thank you very much. But if your weapons aren't spiritual, if you're in another camp where all you've got in the quiver are the same old bullets and riots, then the very intensity of your protest gives testimony to the shortness of your cause. Jesus doesn't need us to burn stuff when people make fun of Him. Mohammed, on the other hand, has no way to defend himself, no true spiritual power, so he must resort to inflaming his disciples on his behalf.
  • Any other lessons I'm missing?

5 comments:

Micah said...

That movie is directed by non other than Steve Taylor of CCM fame! And it has Michael W. Smith! Sweet.

Jared said...

Jon, thanks for your comments. They helped me shake some cobwebs loose in my head. As far as posting the link to the pictures, I really don't feel the need to acquiesce to the laws of another religion. Gideon tore down idols; Paul put the Diana-worshipers out of business. I really don't feel much responsibility to Muslim sensibilities on an international level; personally, I wouldn't have those cartoons up in my office or home, especially if I knew Muslims might be coming over.

As for your next thought, I appreciate it, but I think I mostly disagree. There may be some economic pressures, some feeling of having no other way to get one's voice heard...but for you to assert that the riots were based in economic frustration has no more basis than for me to assert that it comes from a religion of violence.

Or to put it another way: if this is a powder keg situation, why is it a powder keg? Is it a powder keg because Muslims are being oppressed and kept down throughout the world, especially in the civilized countries receiving much of the violence? Or is it something else, the spiritual wasteland of an empty religion? Do you really think Muslims don't have outlets for their grievances in England or Denmark?? Everybody and their mother is listening to what Islam & Muslims are saying these days.

"Those who do use violence in the name of Christ, like the current Muslim rioters, do so because they believe that American society provides them with no outlets." Here again, I have to disagree. Those who do violence in the name of Christ do so because they have no real faith in Christ, no faith in the promises of Scripture, not because we have no outlets. I would actually assert that the church has fewer valid outlets in America than Islam does (though I recognize that's debatable). But our Holy Book has directions for our warfare: prayer & preaching.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there really is a fundamental difference between these two religions, and right now it's more evident than at other times. Is Islam anything but "purely evil"? For those who believe & confess that Christ alone is Lord and that Mohammed is definitely not his prophet to be afraid - is this wrong or illogical?

Thanks again for the comments. I hope my disagreement has been cordial :)

Jared said...

Jon - I just posted a good article by Piper about this subject. It gets to the whole "insulting" bit, in that Christians should be most adept at being insulted whilst other religions cannot tolerate an insult because there's nothing else other than honor to protect.

Also, I have a hard time with the "love of Christ" being equated with cow-towing to Muslim sensibitilies.

Gideon's was a personal mandate, but it is also our collective call to "tear down strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4), of which Gideon is a prime example.

I think I disagree with your equating my statement to 1920's indiana (although I don't understand your comment entirely). And your accusation of a "discourse of violence" in American evangelicalism is likewise confusing.

While I am all for getting the log out of our eye, I simply reject the idea that you can put Christianity and Islam on the same plane as it relates to their historical tendencies toward violence. Have there been times when Christians have resorted to unbiblical violence? Indeed. Has Christianity spread the globe by violence? Not historically. Have there been times when Muslims have resorted to un-koran-ish peace? Indeed. Has Islam spread the globe by violence? Yep. I realize this is a grand generalization, but that doesn't make it less true.

Every Muslim is in the same camp (the camp of Islam); I realize not every Muslim subscribes to the same amount or type of jihad. To say that, in regards to violence, there is a splinter in Islam's eye and a log in Christianity's eye is almost flabbergasting...and a great tactic for keeping the church from confidently proclaiming the truth of Christ above all other religions.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

-Jared

Anonymous said...

I can't stand it any longer...I will add a couple comments.

I liked Piper's post...I'm going to try to track down Grant's tapes of the worldview conf., he mentioned. I'm sure they will be worth every penny that they cost. James' comments were right on as well. I think we (the West) are in for a long battle w/Islam. One of the problems is that they know for what they are fighting. We (I'm talking our civil govt, not the church) fight for "freedom", "free markets", "democracy", etc. Wouldn't it be great if the USA was a Christian nation and wasn't afraid to say so?

The next few decades might be bloody. The war could become very intense. But Christ the King sits in Heaven and "laughs" at Islam (Psalm 2) and sometime before He returns Islam will be crushed. "For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet." (I Cor. 15) In the meantime, our civil governments should keep the powder dry, our churches should continue to send missionaries and Bibles to the Middle East and the rest of us should pray alot.

As for the violenc issue. Violence is not wrong in and of itself. What is wrong is unlawful violence (riots, revolutions, etc.) and trying to spread one's religion at the edge of the sword. For most of her history (and there are exceptions, I suppose) the Church has not evangelized with the sword. Islam has used the sword to gain converts from its very infancy.


Jeff K

Anonymous said...

Jon:

I won't be able to answer all your questions with this post as I don't have the time now.

Re. your paragraph that starts with "Secondly, if..."
Even an unashamedly Christian nation should only fight for defensive purposes, not to evangelize...that is up to the church, not civil govt. So the fighting would be in response to our citizens being killed or our building being blown up (Rom. 13). So if they leave us alone, we'll just send missionaries and Bibles.

Not all the crusades were equal. Some of the later ones might have went over the line, but I think (and I'm not an expert) the earlier ones were defensive and some were in response to the horrible things that Muslims did to Christians that lived in the Middle East and Africa.

As for white Europeans that settled the American continent, not everything they did was lawful or Biblical. Some killed natives for the wrong reasons (greed for example), but I'm not aware of many natives of America being killed for refusing to convert to Christ.

Also, don't forget, the natives were pagens and some were extremely cruel. Cortez (for example) may have been hated by the Aztecs, but the other tribes in the area thought he was a liberator...they were tired of their young virgin daughters being kidnapped by the Aztecs and sacrificed by the thousands to the Aztec's pagan gods.

A good book is "Colubus and Cortez, Conquerors for Christ" by John Eidsmoe.

Thats all for now.

Jeff K