Can we distinguish between Islam and Christianity

Recently, Franklin Graham, son and religious successor to the legendary Billy Graham, caused a furor when he said: "We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

The politically correct and the multiculturalists became unhinged. They criticized him and everything he stands for, from every direction. Of course, relatively few people are qualified to make such comparisons, and I am not one of them. You need not be a divinity scholar, however, to see th at the actions, beliefs and proclamations of Muslims are in no way similar to the beliefs of Judeo-Christians, and particularly those of the United States.

Our nation was founded by WASPs, white, Anglo Saxon Protestants. They were initially from England, and were followed by Irish, Scots, French and others from western Europe. Their ideas were in conflict with the official religions of their country of birth, so they fled to North America where they believed they would be free to exercise their Judeo-Christian beliefs.

From the very beginning, political as well as religious leaders, spoke and wrote about the God they believed in. The United States was founded by these men, and there is abundant documentary evidence to support this

The Pilgrims were Protestants, who rejected the institutional Church of England. They believed that the worship of God must originate in the inner man, and that forms of worship prescribed by man interfered with a true relationship with God. The Separatists used the term "church" to refer to the people, the Body of Christ, not to a building or institution. As their Pastor John Robinson said, "(When two or three are) gathered in the name of Christ by a covenant made to walk in all the way of God known unto them as a church ."

"That all the People may with united Hearts on that Day express a just Sense of His unmerited Favors: --Particularly in that it hath pleased Him,by His over ruling Providence to support us in a just and necessary War for the Defense of our Rights and Liberties; ...by defeating the Councils and evil Designs of our Enemies, and giving us Victory over their Troops --and by the Continuance of that Union among these States, which by his Blessing, will be their future Strength & Glory." --Samuel Adams on behalf of the Continental Congress, November 3, 1778, calling for a day of Thanksgiving during our Revolutionary War

"The Pilgrims came to America not to accumulate riches but to worship God, and the greatest wealth they left unborn generations was their heroic example of sacrifice that their souls might be free." --Harry Moyle Tippett

The first national Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued by the revolutionary Continental Congress on November 1, 1777, expressed gratitude for the colonials' October victory over British General Burgoyne at Saratoga. It was authored by Samuel Adams, the man the other Founders turned to for reasoned statements of liberties as God's blessings, its one sentence of 360 words read in part: "Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received...together with penitent confession of their sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance...it is therefore recommended...to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor... acknowledging with gratitude their obligations to Him for benefits received....To prosper the means of religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth 'inrighteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost'."

When independence from England was achieved, and a Constitution written and ratified, freedom of religion was included. It was clearly stated in the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

At the time the Constitution was written, I doubt that there were any people in the United States who called themselves Muslims. In fact, very few if any even knew there were such people. There were still very few until WW II, when American military men were stationed, and fought all over the globe.

After that war the influx of Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians, and a host of other people with other religions started to immigrate to the United States, in ever increasing numbers. The Constitution guaranteed their religious freedom, and slowly but surely, they started to impose.

Muslims come to the schools in the United States by tens of thousands a year. I would imagine that the number of Americans who go to an Arab country to study could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Simultaneously, they say and do things which clearly show that they, as Muslims, have an inherent hatred of America and Americans. What benefit do we derive from this exchange?

The Muslims who come to the United States as immigrants, and those who become citizens, have no intention of integrating into the existing society They demand special considerations and special privileges - and usually get what they want. Americans have been taught that to do otherwise might be considered racist, and there is nothing worse than that.

No person can live in the United States and not be constantly reminded that we were founded as a Christian nation, and we remain one. You need money to live, and the dollar bill is a constant reminder. Benjamin Franklin believed that no man could create a nation alone, but a group of men, with the help of God, could do anything. "IN GOD WE TRUST" is on our currency. The Latin above the pyramid on the dollar, ANNUIT COEPTIS, means, "God has favored our undertaking." The Latin below the pyramid, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, means, "a new order has begun."

I have not read the Koran, and I doubt that I will, but there are enough quotes easily available to provide an overview. I think that Franklin Graham said it very well: "The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

Excellent post, RealGem. Can we distinguish between Islam and Christianity

An often asked question, or at least an implication to the most popular answer, is, "Why should anyone care?" To many, issues of faith are issues of the imagination. Faith is about acting on what you believe, but what you believe may or may not have any basis in fact and it doesn't matter to anyone but you. Of course, it bothers people if you try to get on a school board and ratify text books, but that is a different subject.

This worldview understands faith as a personal issue that helps you deal with the difficult or painful events in your life. If you need money, that isn't a faith issue - just look for a job. But if you lose your job right before your baby was due and now you don't know how to pay the bills - turn to faith to help deal with the difficulty. Even more astounding, faith is a self-help system. This concept sees faith as a way to make your view on the world positive, and everyone knows a positive worldview makes for happier, healthier, and (in some cases) wealthier individuals.

So, this worldview puts faith in the realm of the imagination, or it is sometimes called fantisy.

But what if faith is something else? What if it is true that G-d is real? Does this have implications on how we live our lives?

That would depend on the nature and character of this real G-d. If G-d is real, but simply another implacable force in the universe like gravity, then it might be beneficial to understand G-d, but only to the point that we avoid falling to our deaths. Going further than that is only for people interested in trivia, or specialists.

But if G-d is interested in us, then faith is a very different thing altogether. If G-d cares about us then it stands to reason that He cares about us caring about Him. In that case, understanding Him as He is, not as we imagine Him to be, is critical.

Just as in a marriage, where you need to know your spouse in reality, not the idealized person you were dating, you need to know G-d as He is, not the image you have created in your mind. But this is impossible since, if there is a G-d capable of creating all that we know out of nothing, then He would be beyond our comprehension. Everything we know about Him would be but a model of a part of the real. As correct as it is, it would always be wrong.

Given that truth, many revert back to the presumption that, since G-d is unknowable, it doesn't matter what kind of model of Him you have. This puts everything back into the realm of the fantasy faith and leaves us with a reality that is indistinguishable from the G-d of imagination. Islam is how one mind views G-d, Christianity is how another mind views G-d, Judaism another, Buddhism another, etc. The views can be as diverse as we like, yet still envisioning the same G-d because this school of thought focuses on how the models can be wrong, not on how they can be right.

But remember, we came to the idea of a G-d who is important to know based on the idea that G-d is interested in us. In that case, He would also be interested in the model. And, since He is above our comprehension, He would have to give us the model and take an active part in making sure we don't corrupt it. Just like your spouse wants to communicate regularly with you, correcting you when you gain a mis-impression of him or her.

If G-d exists, and if G-d cares, then G-d will tell us about Himself. In the old Hindu story about the blind men and the elephant, G-d would be the elephant who speaks their language, and after hearing their argument interjects to say, "I'm none of those things. I am an elephant and this is how you can know me better." G-d would have to reveal Himself, which means that only the revealed faiths could have a hope of representing a valid and valuable model of G-d. That is, only the faiths that claim to come from a direct revelation of G-d would be significantly different from fairy-tale faiths.

As far as I know, there are few revealed faiths. I am aware of Judaism, Christianity (which is Judaism with some extensions), Mormonism (which is Christianity with a twist), and Islam (which is Judaism with a twist). There may be others that I do not know about, but these four offer an interesting answer to the original question, why should anyone care?

Islam and Mormonism are the latter two revelations in the list. Both have two things in common. The first is that they were revealed by an angel (messenger of G-d) to an individual. The second is that this revelation happened in private without witnesses. While I don't deny G-d the ability to reveal Himself through angels to individuals in a private setting, if we are to accept both Islam and Mormonism as reflecting G-d as He is, then we must expect those two revelations to be identical. That is, assuming still that G-d cares about us, we would expect Him to make the model as clear as possible and avoid confusing us.

Note here I'm talking about intrinsic issues, not extrinsic ones. Presume a loving father who enjoys his relationship with his children. If one child loves baseball and the other loves dance, the father might tell one child he loves baseball and the other he loves dance. This would not be a contradiction because it is possible to love both. However, he would be tailoring what he tells his children to suit their needs and his love for them. But if that father told one child he loves baseball and hates dance, then told the other child he hates baseball and loves dance, I would say that father doesn't care about his children. He is setting them up for enmity between themselves as they argue about who their father really is and who he loves more. So, if Islam and Mormonism are both true, they need to tell us the same thing, or at least non-conflicting things, about G-d. But Islam and Mormonism define G-d very differently, and in the intrinsic aspects of His character. Therefore, they can not both be true.

Judaism and Christianity, on the other hand, show G-d revealing Himself over a long period of time in three different ways. He reveals Himself in history, in private revelations to individuals, and in the wisdom of His followers who have meditated upon the results of the first two. Since Christianity is an extension of Judaism and accepts all of the Jewish revelation as its own, it is not surprising that the Jewish and Christian G-d exhibit the same core intrinsic character. Christianity adds some characteristics that Judaism rejects, but the core character of G-d is the same in both religions. It is possible for Judaism and Christianity to both be true, although that would require understanding Judaism as somewhat incomplete.

The final look at the four asks whether either Islam or Mormonism can be true at the same time as Judeo-Christianity is true. This is where the point of this article comes in and where the point of my post leaves us.

I assert that it is possible to distinguish between religions. I assert that G-d is real and that G-d cares about us. I assert that G-d so deeply desires a relationship with us that He has crossed eternity and infinity to make His incomprensible nature sufficiently comprehensible to us that we can enter into that relationship. I assert that only in entering into that relationship can life be given its true meaning - a life with G-d. But I caution that such a life can only have a real meaning if the G-d you know is truly G-d. Believing in the true G-d is the way to truely abundant life. Believing in the wrong one grants a shell of life. It's kind of like the difference between a solid and hollow piece of chocolate, or even between a solid piece of chocolate and chocolate-covered dung.

Answering questions like the one posed in this article is not only possible, it is critical. Knowing the real G-d is the most important task you will ever undertake.

Shalom.

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