Reality Check 101

In post-September 11^th era, the last thing America needs is a panic against peace-loving Muslim citizens. Nevertheless, after the dust of 9-11 settled, there should have been a reality check and there never was.

Part of the problem is liberalized and culturalized Christianity. It seems counter intuitive that Christianity would soften the way for some kind of spiritual parity between it and Islam. But liberal Christianity’s evolutionary view of truth and inspiration have emasculated the biblical text and abandoned sound theology.

Theological liberalism has helped Christianity become just another religion peddling another version of a god in different clothes through scriptures with the same core message pointing toward the same general eternity entered through a different door. In far too many cases, God’s precepts, actions and commands are criticized in Christ’s name. From there, it is only a small step to associating what Christians have done in disobedience to God’s will with what Muslims have done in obedience to the Koran.

Muslims and Christians do not worship the same deity. The Bible recognizes Jesus as God Himself and as wholly man. For a Muslim faithful to the plain sense of his scriptures, such a suggestion is blasphemy, in spite of the fact that Islam claims Jesus as a miracle-working prophet. For Bible-believing Christians, denial of the trinity is a denial of the faith.

The two faiths teach completely opposing views of salvation and paradise. The God of the Bible loved so deeply that He suffered judgment’s wrath against humankind’s evil. He established a love relationship with, and reserved Paradise for, any who would accept sacrificial rescue and love him in return. Even in the Old Testament, when He disciplined, it was for the purpose of protecting and purifying that love relationship with his people.

Allah, in the Koran and the Hadiths, cares only for submission and the judgment of the balance scales. His favor is applied on the basis of obedience alone, his mercy is arbitrary and predetermined and only martyrdom guarantees paradise. He awards almost all Muslims the right to punish infidels, especially in the name of jihad.

The Bible and the Islamic scriptures are not simply two sub-classes of generic “holy books”. War, conquest and divine judgments in the Old Testament are about faithfulness, moral purity and eventually covenantal integrity rather than subduing competing religions. They are applied to humanity and Israel under one-time historical circumstances.

The Koran commands, and the Hadiths support, conquest in all times for the sake of subduing “unbelievers” and spreading Islam. Infidels are worthy of death. Because militant Islam sees little distinction between America’s increasingly immoral culture and Christianity, Americans in general qualify as objects of jihad.

The Bible commands grace, mercy and love toward enemies and condemns revenge as an affront to God. Sinful human beings may ignore those commands but that does not invalidate them. In the Koran, enemies have but two choices, limited freedom under Muslim lordship or retribution.

Both Islam’s history and statements in the Koran provide radical Islam ample excuse for using militarism and mob violence overseas to pressure social and political capitulation here. If America does not recognize the power of this fact, she will find herself nurturing enclaves of Islamic law pushing for separate legal status, much like Great Britain and Europe are now experiencing.

This is not about demonizing a people but about understanding a religious system. Just as in Christianity, there are many shades of Islam but it is to our national peril that we ignore the growth of socially and politically aggressive Islam in our midst. It is to our spiritual peril that we accept liberal myths about Islam and Christianity sharing the same God, having compatible scriptures or recognizing the same Christ.