elcome again to
Phlash-Light.1.
Welcome to Phlashlight 2.0, 2007 edition.
If you are new here, we welcome you with
this word about format. We try to stay within a fast-paced format of 20-20-20: 20 minutes of
worship, 20 minutes of the word, and 20 minutes of witness.
Tonight worship is led by Michael
Edwards, Greg Jenkins, Dan Lyon, Brett Horner, and Mark Dally. Later these
five will divide into Michael Edwards, solo artist, and the latter four will
reassemble as The Tapes for a couple of their own songs as part
of our Witness performance segment, which is not to be mistaken for a witness
protection program; then we will close with some prayer for the county-wide
evangelism effort known as World Impact Tour. In between is a segment called "My
8 Pages," which intended as a medicinal shock therapy, to provoke you unto
love and good works. We'll see.
2.
Mercy Me: What Christians Need to Know About
Islam
What can I tell you about my topic in
20 minutes? Plenty.
Partly this is because what you need to
know about Islam is entirely dependent and directly related to what you already
presently know and nurture about your own faith. In fact, the greatest advantage that a Christian has in
living his faith before the Muslim world is that he or she understands and
embraces four essential doctrines that either reform, invert, or indict the
corresponding Islamic versions. Here they are:
·
The nature of mercy
·
The necessity of incarnation
·
The centrality of the cross
·
The reward for sacrificial living
It's these four doctrines that hold out hope for building bridges
to Muslim friends and coworkers, because they identify aspects of Islam that
cause oppression and fear. In fact, it is these four doctrines that typically
set apart orthodox Christianity from cults and heresies.
We'll take them one at a time and in this order.
THE NATURE OF MERCY
The Christian faith, portrayed in the
gospel and rightly understood, narrates the greatest news that could ever fall
on the ears of a meandering, prideful sinner, or the most wonderful whisper to
a woebegotten and disenfranchised slave, or the most welcome message in a
bottle to an abused and abandoned exile: your sins will not be remembered, not this time,
not last time, not next time, not ever. What's more, your citizenship will be
restored and elevated, and you will be treated not as a wayward besotted
vagabond but as a Son or Daughter of the King. You will be lifted up out of the
excrement of your misery, cleansed and dressed as a righteous, legal heir of
the Throne.
And all based not on your goodness, your
ability to overcome your losses or pay a debt, or perform amazing feats of
strength, power, or might, but because He himself who is Mercy became One like
you, took your place, so you could take His. Mercy is withholding punishment
that is just while grace is granting gifts to the undeserved. Both are crucial
in understanding mercy.
Mercy is a key concept
in Christian doctrine, and in Islam as well. When a devout muslim mentions the name of Allah he are bound
by the Koran to follow its utterance with the formulaic phrase, "the
Compassionate, the Merciful." In what sense is Allah "compassionate and
merciful," even in the Koran?
Like many doctrines shared and sampled
among believers, mercy is easily misunderstood, misconstrued as something else,
and is prone to be mixed up with law, duty, and worthiness. Essentially Allah is perceived to be
compassionate and merciful because he has revealed to his people his law, and this law
has been revealed in a sacred language that is unique and can only be
understood and obeyed when one listens and responds in that language, that is, Arabic. Mercy is
dependent not on the tender mercies of a benevolent deity who suffers with
us—the real meaning of compassion—but in the Wholly Other Distant
God who sends humankind his dictates and demands their compliance. Allah is
free to be merciful to me when I earn it. But that's the problem, isn't it?
But Mercy's essential quality is that it
can't be presumed or assumed, can't be earned, can't be bought, can't be
bartered for. It is true that God is kind to reveal his will for us and that
that this can emerge in form of "law," for in it we hear defined both Who He is
and Who We Are Called to be. We should delight in his word—but his word
is given as a gift to guide, not a means of grace. Law cannot save. So, it is
merciful when anyone who deserves punishment is let off the hook by someone to
whom the violator owes allegiance.
But any one who has tried to "receive"
mercy based on lawkeeping knows it is a vicious circle—more law equals more
failure to keep the law, and thus the need for Allah to be more merciful, which
can wear out the treasurehouse of a Deity whose only gift is the law itself.
Such a system has for anyone who sees it for what it is, a deadly, hopeless
end. I need a mercy bank, but the gospel
offers something much better—a mercy seat, and that is the
cross.
The gospel teaches that God alone can be
merciful and just at the same time. But how can he do that without violating
either his justice or his law? This is where Islam and Christianity, and as
well Christianity and Judaism, have the great divide—a great parting of
the ways. The gospel teaches the Jew and Muslim alike that unless the Lawgiver
is also a Lawkeeper who then shares his perfect obedience with his
creation, we are of all men most miserable! Mercy Me!
THE NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION
And so we come to the truly Grand
Miracle. The ancient world looked
for a Messiah and then killed one; the Muslims who followed five centuries
later then invented one while ignoring the true One. I speak of the incarnation. God came down, or, if you like
the other metaphor, took Humanity up into Himself. This is scandalous to the
Jew, and nonsense to the Muslim. Why, we know the story so well, we forget how
scandalous it is that God became flesh to save us from our sins. It is a
scandal, but also true.
The God of the Bible, the God of the
Gospel, the God of Jesus Christ, is not aloof, distant, full of himself. But
shares, willingly, His divine nature, makes us in His image, longs to dwell
among us, created an Eden to give us practice in heavenly living before we
spoiled it by seeking knowledge rather than joy. This God, when we rebelled,
saw not an opportunity to get even, but to get reconciled, and chose us in Him
before even the world existed. For this God, the incarnation, and therefore the
church, is not a incredulous afterthought, not a terrible lunging, furious
halftime attempt by a defensive coordinator to make some adjustments after a
disastrous first half in which we have fallen desperately behind, but rather an
eternal decree that God would live and dwell among His people in righteousness,
peace, and joy, come hell or high water.
Islam understands God
differently—and therefore misunderstands Jesus completely. The life he led,
even as a prophet, would be meaningless, insignificant, ridiculous unless he is
also God incarnate. And of course that is the whole point. In order to see
Jesus as he is, one must come to grips with one's lost estate, our pitiful,
rancid rotting corpse of a life we lead before we are quickened by Him. Indeed
his life, unless he is who he claimed to be, is a sad and vicious tale, since,
if he didn't come in the flesh, die for our sins, and rise in the resurrection,
we, too, have no assurance of our own, not only do we have no true hope of
heaven, but have no inkling that there is a God who even cares what our fate
is. Mercy me, indeed!
THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS
Ah
did I mention fate? This certainly the essence, and sometimes the quintessence of Islam: Fate. Forces, demons,
powers beyond us who determine our destiny. But remember, Christians don't
believe in destiny, they believe in God, a God who is intimately involved in our
lives, since he has made our heart his home. The centrality of the cross in the
gospel is nothing but a strange myth to the devout Muslim. Who needs the cross; if it is
scandalous for him to come in the flesh, it is doubly so that he would be
executed like a criminal. Yes, that's the point. He took our criminal past,
took the rap, and we went off scot free. This is a scandal—but we are the
scandal, not Him. Reject the incarnate God, and of course, you have no means of
understanding the cross. Who needs
a cross if the lawgiver has stayed in heaven to let us work things out on our
own by the dutiful and regular obedience that He has called us to; that's his
mercy, read, obey, and trust that you have obeyed enough.
Even granting the incarnation of Jesus,
you may still have to rub your eyes at the empty tomb and exclaim "He did all this,
for me?" Mercy me! But, in the
end, these are radically
different questions, and are posed in the elation of hope not in the elegy of
despair.
Think about it; and think about the
relationship between the Muslim and Allah. That Jesus died for me, having lived
a sinless life, means, well, that my life was worth something after all, something
beyond measure if he would die for me, and that if I know what's good for me, I
will let Him live it for me.
THE REWARD FOR SACRIFICAL LIVING
We already know that in the history of
the church there have been many martyrs, some willing, some inevitable, who
have laid down their lives because of their faith, and for their faith.
Christians sacrifice their lives, lay down their lives daily, not in order to
bring harm to others, but to serve them, and to testify to the value of the
gospel and the hope of eternal life. The hope of eternal life. What is that
hope and what is its quality?
Heaven/paradise as depicted in the Koran
is very, very sensual, very very tactile, literal, visceral, and very very
masculine. The reward for living
as a faithful muslim is more of this world, writ a little larger, more of
things, more of what would have pleased us here if we had had more or, indeed,
any. The suicide bomber dies, believing not only that he has served Allah more
gloriously than those who don't kill others along the way, but sees his escape
from this world as more noble than staying put and serving alongside others in
bringing hope, peace, and joy. The Allah he believes in put more value on
ending than preserving life.
Is this the Christian promise of eternal
life? More of the same, only louder, faster, longer? True, Revelation depicts
the new heavens and earth as paving streets with gold. . . but does anyone
really long for heaven because God went to Jared's or Tiffany's for jewelry and
allowed you to raid their showcases?
The reward for the sacrificial life is Life, true life, real
life, for the first time, life without fallenness, without grief—grief
for loss or sin--without the encumbrances of politics, despair, loneliness,
livelihoods, sickness, death. Eternal life is not more life like it is lived
on earth, but Life as it was meant to me. I don't like the verse in Amazing
Grace that starts, "When we've been there ten thousand years," because
it imposes upon heaven a time frame, when it is the nature of heaven to be
timeless; not endless time, that we can count by reference to earthly
chronology. I won't know ten thousand or even one year; my body will be
immortal, and the only Sun to mark the day is He who saved us. Heaven is the
place where we finally get to live Life in, with, through God—with all of
the Beloved of all the ages—including our Beloveds who have gone on
before us.
When I look at the cross, and I see the
sacrificial savior who refused to come down from it, though offered riches,
political power, and the applause of the intelligentsia. Why would I think
heaven would be filled with that? Mercy me!
CLOSING
Our plea, literally, the plea of every
human heart who understands its predicament is "mercy me," mercy as a verb
,mercy as a cry to God, to administer mercy, which is exactly and wholly what
God is poised to for everyone who comes in faith, who recognizes Jesus, the
Eternal Word and Holy Lord, as his glorious substitute.
We are, all of us, like one of the two
thieves who hung on either side of Him at Golgotha: we either say, as
Christians must, (1) "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom," or,
scoff, like the others, Muslim or unbeliever alike, (2) "Save yourself, and
us." He chose not to save himself;
we must choose to live this life dispensing mercy, of which He has an
inexhaustible supply. That is the message Muslims, indeed, everyone, must hear.
So remember these four doctrines, which separate the Gospel from
all other religious thought, and bring us hope.
·
The nature of mercy
·
The necessity of incarnation
·
The centrality of the cross
·
The reward for sacrificial living
Jeremiah 9:23-24: 23"This is what the LORD
says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of
his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, 24but let him who
boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD,
who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I
delight," declares the LORD."
Selected Resources for Understanding Islam
BOOKS
- Anderson, Norman. Islam
in the Modern World (Apollo, 1999).
- Chapman, Colin. Cross
and Crescent
(Intervarsity, 2006).
- Newbigin, Leslie. Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in a
"Secular" Britain (SPCK,
1998).
- Piper, John. Let the
Nations Be Glad
(Baker,2003).
- Sanneh, Lamin. Translating
the Message (Orbis,
1989).
CHRISTIAN
WWW SOURCES
MUSLIM
WWW SOURCES
- http://muslim-canada.org/islam_christianity.html
- http://www.mostmerciful.com/
That's my 8 pages.
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