Posted on 12/28/2006 8:37:27 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Pope Benedict's Christmas message was one of great importance, no matter one's spiritual bent. "Does a 'Saviour,' " he questioned, "still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium?" This, he queried in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message to 10,000 faithful in St Peter's Square," Reuters reported.
Sounds to me like a man on a mission, a worried man on a worrisome mission. Would you be asking these questions if business were good, if your flocks were growing? He went on: People should not allow technology to trump theology. "Mankind, which has reached other planets and unraveled many of nature's secrets, should not presume it can live without God." Implicit in the positing of this presumption is the subliminal fear technology will lead to just that end.
Truth be told, Christianity is wilting if not dying in the continent that propelled it to global prominence, Europe. Europeans pay lip service but eschew church services. Christianity's growth markets are on other continents.
A Policy Review magazine article in 2003 recounted the following, "Of the roughly 2 billion Christians worldwide, Europe still claims a plurality, with 560 million believers -- although that number includes many who are counted as Christian only on the baptismal roles of their emptying churches."
If present trends continue, by 2025 there will be 633 million Christians in Africa, 640 million in South America, and 460 million in (South) Asia. Europe's numbers will have remained constant, leaving it at third place among the continents and falling. By 2050, to extrapolate further, only a fifth of the world's Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. As author Philip Jenkins puts it, quoting a Kenyan scholar, "the centers of the church's universality are no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila."
What does this mean? Christianity is growing all right, but not in world financial centers, not in nations housing the world's foremost educational institutions, not in the world's technology hubs. It is growing most rapidly among the poor and the uneducated.
Does Pope Benedict's tone imply that God -- the Christian God in any event -- is dead? God's death has been debated since time immemorial. The answer is, of course not. At home among our own highly educated, financially savvy and technologically gifted populace, the most powerful and cohesive voting bloc remains that of evangelical Christians. Democrats took back both houses of Congress only by narrowing the so-called God gap and stealing Catholics and Evangelicals back from the Republican column.
At the same time, God as we know him/her/it is in mid-morph. Western culture is personalizing God and turning him into her, person into spirit and customizing God to fit all shapes, sizes, hair colors and beliefs. Gone are the days when one could walk into an African Methodist Episcopal church and witness a portrait of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus hovering above a room full of black believers. Gone is America's uniform vision of God as a bearded white man seated on a cumulonimbus.
Historical evidence places Jesus as a first-century Middle Eastern Jew. This means Jesus probably looked a lot more like Yasser Arafat than a Nordic prince with long blond locks. European transmogrification of this religion born in Israel imposed Eurocentric visions onto its icons. Thus, Jesus' features were magically overtaken by those of his more powerful followers: the Europeans.
Perhaps Pope Benedict's fears of a god-bereft populace are better explained by today's custom-fit God. The Pope wants God to remain as traditional Christianity sees him -- the God of the Crusaders, a God whose followers are on a short leash and allowed little by way of interpretation, questioning or free-thinking. A transgression of the 10 Commandments is a sin and that's all there is to it.
Educated believers are demanding more variety, having more doubts and reworking religion to fit their own mores, lifestyles and cultures. Religion without penance -- no hair shirts, no self-flagellation? No wonder the Pope is worried.
Check it out for yourself.
Was that Creator's name "YHWH or Jehovah" [the God of Israel] or "Allah" [the God of Mohammed]?
adorare can mean either worship or adore not both at once.
You realize most Christians who speak Arabic say Allah and not God right?
Ah I forgot they don't count as REAL Christians for you...
Well, that's the thing.
In their minds they are worshipping a deity who simultaneously (1) created the world and (2) gives virgins to murderers.
In reality, God certainly has attribute (1) and certainly does not have attribute (2).
We both know that there is no God other than God and we both know that Muslims intend to worship God under his true attribute of (1) while they also insist on assigning to Him the false attribute of (2).
The way to look at the situation with the maximum amount of Christian charity is to see Muslims as people trying to worship God correctly but who have been demonically deceived into worshipping him incorrectly.
According to my Orthodox Priest, they don't really worship the same God.
I'm not going to reject his view out of hand, but I would say that they claim to worship the God of Abraham.
From the level of evangelization, I believe the best way to win Muslim souls for Christ is to fasten on the common belief that God is the God of Abraham and to explain how the Gospel is the true and final account of God's self-revelation to mankind and how the Koran cannot be.
Take it up with Webster's Dictionary ----
Is "Allah" their word for "God" or the name of their "God"???
The Creator's name as revealed to Moses is usually transliterated these days as YHWH.
The name means "I am that am" or "I am who am."
"Jehovah" is an inaccurate transliteration.
The translation that is usually used in English to translate YHWH is "LORD" - which is not a literal translation at all.
Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians referred to YHWH as "Allah" for centuries before Mohammed robbed his first caravan.
"Allah" is the Arabic word for "the god" or "the deity" from the Arabic word "ilah" which is related to the Hebrew word "El" - which is used as a name for the God of Abraham in the Hebrew Scriptures along with YHWH and Elohim and Shaddai.
Mohammed did not invent the word "Allah" - he stole it from Arabic-speaking Jews and Arab Christians.
Websters is a rag btw. Get my Oxford's an we'll talk...
Allah is pretty much the Arabic word for God. Not all folks who say Allah are reffering to a guy in Arab garb with a sword, killing infidels, and handing our virgins to lucky martyrs.
So are you saying that "Allah" of the Koran is "YHWH or the Lord" of the Tanach?
(He also stole the Crecent from Christians.)
The word "Allah" is a title, not a name. It has the same function in Arabic that the word "God" has in English. English speaking Christians know that "God" is not actually God's name.
Muslims believe that there are 99 names of God, but that all these names, including "Allah" are really titles and that there is a 100th hidden name which is God's true name.
This concept is another Muslim notion that is taken from Judaism - the Jews never pronounce the name YHWH and consider it ineffable, using titles like "Adonai", "Elohim", "HaShem", "El Shaddai" etc. when praying or discussing God.
No matter what dictionary you use it will never change the 2000 year old meaning of its Latin root: "adorare" which means "worship". The American College Dictionary says the same thing.
Are the ROCORs trying to tell us what our English words mean now? They have enough trouble with their own language.
The Koran is not the first text to use the word "Allah" - Christians and Jews called God "Allah" before Islam existed.
The question here is not whether the Tanach and the Koran are referring to the same God - the God of Abraham which both texts acknowledge as the true God - the question is whether the Tanach or the Koran is an accurate record of God's dealings with mankind.
The Tanach is completely accurate. The Koran is completely inaccurate - except for the passages where it confirms what the Tanach says.
Disdaining European medievals for their lack of cosmopolitan dark-hued models makes about as much sense as contemning them for not celebrating Native American culture. Does this writer complain about the scarcity of Africans and Europeans in old Chinese art?
there are two separate english words derived from adorare worship and adore. if the latins who wrote it meant the other theydve used it. note btw many men adore their wife few pray to her.
further its not possible muslims worship God as they deny the trinity.
Jews deny the Trinity as well, but I do not doubt for an instant that Jews worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The writer is an imbecile.
The Pope's worry, is that of a father who is not long for this world and who sees his children walking inexorably towards a precipice.
It is not the worry of a CEO who's concerned about the market for his product and ultimately, his own job security.
IOW, his worry is for others, not for himself.
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