Posted on 11/20/2003 4:54:20 AM PST by truthandlife
I was watching the Tony Blair and President Bush press conference and an American reporter asked a question on the lines of do you believe Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
President Bush said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God!!!!
Your first sentence is right on. The second is off. Even God of the Bible says that if you don't worship Him as you are meant to, then you worship false Gods and you follow false messiahs (He says they will tell you they come in His name...like Mohammad). Becuase if you look at Mohammad and Jesus, there is no realistic comparison. One was a blood thirsty child molestor and the other refrained from sex his whole life and only became justifiably physically violent one time...as far as we know.
The -God Man- are your words not the Fathers. The Father upheld his righteous servant.
Isa 42:1 the Father says through the prophet Isaiah
Behold my servant whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles.
What you are saying makes it easy for us to have an excuse not to be like Jesus. Jesus was not supernatural, he was flesh,blood, bone, a man. The difference between him and us is he is obedient to the Father and we are not, but as we change and become perfected we will walk just like Jesus did on the earth but we will do greater things because he has gone to the Father.
Sure.
it's the duty of every Christian, Catholic or otherwise to try and "spread the good news". ... Official doctrine is that the Jews will eventually come home to Jesus. Therby fullfilling the new covenant.
So... you're saying that Christians and Muslims don't worship the same God because Muslims don't accept Jesus, but Jews do worship the same God because they will accept Jesus? Gee, I wonder how many Jews accept your rationale?
How come I've never heard the phrase "Judeo-Christian-Muslim" values?
According to the dictionary, the term "Judeo-Christian" was coined in 1899. The term didn't exist until then. I'm guessing the term was coined due to the influx of Jewish immigrants to the US beginning around 1880 (they probably didn't like hearing the US refered to as a "Christian country", so "Judeo-Christian" was probably an early PC term).
Ergo, the reason you don't hear "Judeo-Christian-Muslim" is becaues there was no large influx of Muslim immigrants to the US. However, like it or you, I've long predicted that you will hear the term "Judeo-Christian-Muslim" down the road. I've long used it myself.
You refuse to answer any of my questions or challenges of your "opinion". ... You couldn't respond to my last post so you went back to my first. Very Lame.
As near as I can tell, I've answered your every question.
You're not Catholic and have no answers.
Sorry, Jack, but like it or not, I am a (lapsed) Catholic. Baptised at St. Stephen's in Manhattan. Confirmed at age 11 (I think they've upped the age since then; BTW, my "Saint's name" is Peter). 12 years in Catholic schools.
Get this, they made us read one of the Gospels in my senior year of high school, because the teacher lamented that it was possible to get through 12 years of Catholic schooling without reading a single book of the Bible. He figured we should at least read one of the Gospels before graduating. I picked Mark, because it was the shortest. Don't remember it. I do remember that we used the Good News Bible.
Discovered Ayn Rand and turned atheist in my junior year of high school, but gave that up. I'm now religiously squishy, but recogonize Muslims as an equal brother in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (I term I've long used).
Like it or not, I am the face of modern Catholicism. I'm also a libertarian for peace.
I remember being on line in church during the Confirmation ceremony, holding an index card with PETER written on it, so the priest would know what name to confirm me. All us kids carried those index cards with our chosen names.
That's a very sophmoric understanding of the current monotheistic religions. If you believed any one of them to be true, then you would have to admit that there was at one time one pair of humans and one Creator God - anything that stems from that (ie Baál worship) would have to be considered stemming from Adam, not just Abraham.
Your careless and disrespectful approach towards the three (or more if you consider the Roman Catholic religion different from Protestant, and Jehovah's Witness and Mormonism) completely ignores purpose, philosophy, and the cultural ramifications of each faith.
The Jews and Christians [should] agree on the concepts of sin and atonenment. Yet the Jews are still looking for their Messiah and reject the true savior. That is an extremely different point since it ignores grace and maintaines fealty to the Law. Hence there are remarkable differences in the culture and outlook of the future between the faiths.
The Muslim faith is a demonic faith. They reject all of God's prophets and replace them all with some psycho pederast. (At least Michael Jackson didn't marry the children he was fooling around with). As a result, they are following the doctrines of Demons. So what if they channel all of their worship energy to some fiction named Allah. They have you and many other intellectually lazy people fooled. Just because they aren't polytheistic then in the child-like rationalizing of the culturally ignorant crowd they must be serving the exact same god as Jews and Christians.
but Muslims can be very good people
And what exactly does that comment have to do with anything up to this point? Atheists can be "very good people". In fact, serial murderers can be considered "very good people". Why? Because if a person does not have an objective standard for "good" then anything can be considered "good" or "bad" based on the whimsy of the commentator.
I know some that are actually better people than some individuals who call themselves Christians.
I think that this is proof positive that thoughtless pigeon-holing of people substitutes for careful consideration. I could call myself "Bill Gates", but the discerning bank teller would not cash a check that I sign under that name and bank account. Ask yourself this question, are you so undiscerning or so eager to be nice that you will believe anything anyone tells you? Do you buy swamp land because someone told you it was beach-front property and you could get it for a song?
Christianity is so much different from every other religion that it is easy for those who are products of current government education to believe the total lies of the anti-God State and feel that Christianity is all about being "nice", and anyone can be a Christian just by being nice.
[Insert Calvinist lecture on Soteriology]
A person can "choose" to adhere to whatever religion or lack of religion they want with the exception of Christianity. True Biblical Christianity is not something people volunteer for, it is what they are drafted into. Just this fact alone should place miles of difference between Jews on one side and Muslims on the other.
[Insert lecture on salvation by grace not works]
For religions that depend on good works in order to merit rewards, it would seem axiomatic that they strive harder to please men then Christians who are saved by grace, and their works are not designed for pleasing men.
Christianity is no guarantee of Heaven, if one only uses Christianity as a get out of Hell pass.
I don't know if you are trying to be blasphemous or really don't know much about what you are critisizing. Christianity is based on the promise of atonement. Hell is for those who are not saved by grace, which requires a Christian faith. If a person wants to worship one third of God (as the Jews), a fictional god (like Muslims) a bevy og gods (like Hindus) or no god (like Atheists) then Hell is certain. To use the pejorative and insulting phrase "get out of Hell pass" shows the same attitude towards Christians as one would have while spray painting a swastika on a Jewish temple.
Good analogy that applies well to the Islamic terrorists, but not to all Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists,Zoroastrians, etc., in my opinion.
How do Jews fit into your analysis?
The grace comes from having a relationship with the correct person... Without the relationship with the real Person there is no grace...
I agree whole-heartedly. I believe though, that the real Person is above all the limitations of language, culture, climate, and history, and that He does not offer His grace only to Christians of a particular persuasion. To stretch (maybe overstretch) the analogy, I think a sincere Muslim or Buddhist may honor his father by calling him Dad or Sir instead of Pops. This is very different from calling him Charlie Manson, which I do think is a great analogy for the Islamic terrorists.
BINGO!
But rather than use our words, why not use the words of Jesus himself?
"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." (John 3:17-18)
...or how about the Apostle John?
Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist--he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2:22-23)
There are other passages, of course, but these will serve to illustrate the point. As the old song says, "You can't have one without the other!"
Not so! The remote unknowableness of allah to the muslims -- the concept of God's holding himself at arm's length from his people -- is central to islam and utterly unlike Christianity which makes all men brothers in (and through) the divine Christ, and which makes us not slaves in eternity but co-heirs to the Kingdom. We are called to share so intimately in the life of God that we call him Abba; as Athanasius, echoed by Aquinas write, "God became man so that man might become God." Muslims have nothing like this. They worship a wizard-of-oz deity that no one ever actually sees or approaches. The muslims do not profess to know God in anything approaching the Christian or Jewish sense.
The islamics CLEARLY do not consider Jesus = Allah to be truth.
Neither do the Jews, as many on this thread have pointed out before me.
I had just posted this on another thread:
When Bush says that the Saudis are our friends, is he being diplomatic or stupid? After certain Saudis were allowed to leave the US after 9/11, was he being diplomatic or stupid? When Bush says that Islam is the religion of peace, is he being diplomatic or stupid? I can never tell when Bush is being diplomatic or stupid.
Now I have to add one more question:
When Bush says that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, is he being diplomatic or stupid?
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