Posted on 12/18/2001 4:10:48 PM PST by Pokey78
SOME years ago, an agnostic friend of mine married a Jewish woman who practised her faith seriously. He took instruction in Judaism and seemed quite likely to convert - but eventually did not. His chief reason was that he remained agnostic. But there was another obstacle that surprised even himself: "I found that I just did not want to give up Jesus."
In European culture, there is no getting away from Jesus even if you are agnostic. True, Nietzsche tried to reject him with detestation and contempt, calling him an "idiot", a purveyor of a sick, decadent view of the world. Nietzsche thought that the only figure in the New Testament who commands respect is Pontius Pilate. Yet the very ferocity of Nietzsche's onslaught on Jesus showed how strong in his heart was the image he wanted to destroy.
Now, what if my friend had married a Muslim? The interesting thing is that he could have kept Jesus - not the Jesus who was the Son of God, admittedly, and who was crucified, but certainly the Jesus who was Messiah and miracle worker, who conversed regularly with God, who was born of a virgin and who ascended into heaven.
Jesus is referred to quite often in the Koran, six times under the title "Messiah". Yet I had long supposed that the importance of Jesus as prophet in Muslim tradition was not much more than a matter of lip-service, something to which Muslims gave (to use Cardinal Newman's distinction) "notional" rather than "real" assent.
This impression was strengthened when I went to Ur of the Chaldees in southern Iraq and visited the so-called house of Abraham. It is only a few piles of sun-baked mud bricks, but you would have expected hundreds of Muslim Arabs to be visiting the birth-place of their Patriarch. I saw none - whereas the shrines of Muslim martyrs in Najaf and Kerbala were thronged. I assumed, therefore, that Jesus must be a marginal figure in the Muslim world.
How wrong this assumption was I have learnt by reading a fascinating and instructive book, The Muslim Jesus, by the Cambridge academic Tarif Khalidi. Professor Khalidi has brought together, from a vast range of sources, most of the stories, sayings and traditions of Jesus that are to be found in Muslim piety from the earliest times.
The Muslim Jesus is an ascetic, a man of voluntary poverty, humility and long-suffering. He literally turns the other cheek, allowing his face to be slapped twice in order to protect two of his disciples. He teaches the return of good for evil: "Jesus used to say, 'Charity does not mean doing good to him who does good to you . . . Charity means that you should do good to him who does you harm.' " He loves the poor and embraces poverty: "The day Jesus was raised to heaven, he left behind nothing but a woollen garment, a slingshot and two sandals." He preaches against attachment to worldly things: "Jesus said, `He who seeks worldly things is like the man who drinks sea water: the more he drinks, the more thirsty he becomes, until it kills him.' "
Many of the sayings of the Muslim Jesus are clearly derived from Biblical sources - "Place your treasures in heaven, for the heart of man is where his treasure is"; "Look at the birds coming and going! They neither reap nor plough, and God provides for them." Sometimes there is a sort of gloss on words of Jesus from the Gospel: "Oh disciples, do not cast pearls before swine, for the swine can do nothing with them . . . wisdom is more precious than pearls and whoever rejects wisdom is worse than a swine."
He is certainly a wonder-worker. He often raises the dead, and gives his disciples power to do the same. More than once he comes across a skull and restores it to life, on one occasion granting salvation to a person who had been damned. The skulls, like everyone else in these stories, address Jesus as "Spirit of God". Once he is even addressed as "Word of God".
I once had a conversation with members of Hizbollah in Beirut. One of them said this: "The greatness of Islam is that we combine Judaism and Christianity. Jesus freed enslaved hearts, he was able to release human feeling, to reveal a kingdom of peace. Jesus's realm was the realm of soul. Jesus is soul; Moses is mind, the mind of the legislator. In Islam, we interweave both."
This is certainly the Jesus of these stories - the Jesus of the mystical Sufi tradition. The great Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali actually called Jesus "Prophet of the heart".
The Muslim Jesus is not divine, but a humble servant of God. He was not crucified - Islam insists that the story of the killing of Jesus is false. He is, as it were, Jesus as he might have been without St Paul or St Augustine or the Council of Nicaea. He is not the cold figure of English Unitarianism, and he is less grand than the exalted human of the Arians. As you read these stories, what comes across most powerfully is that the Muslim Jesus is intensely loved. There is an element of St Francis of Assisi.
It is good to be reminded, especially now, of the intimate connections there have been between Islam and Christianity, and how close in spirit Muslim and Christian piety can come to each other. Curiously enough, the Muslim Jesus, shorn of all claims of divinity, could be more easily held on to by my agnostic friend than the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
One other thing: since Muslims deny the Crucifixion, their emphasis has been on the wonders surrounding the birth of "Jesus Son of Mary", born as his mother sat under a palm tree, and miraculously speaking from within the womb. There really is no reason why schools that put on Nativity plays, or anyone who wants to insist on the Christian meaning of Christmas, should fear that they may offend Muslim sensibilities, for Jesus really is shared by both faiths.
They can make up any story that they wish in order to beguile you, and it don't count in their religion.
He is with the plumber who gives the woman in Idaho the price to fix her leak based on the 45 minutes it will actually take him, the bus driver in New Jersey who waits for the rider to cross a busy street, even the lawyer who goes to court truly believing their client is innocent and wants to prove it.
This debate is immaterial to the issue of whether Islam is anti-Christian/Judism.
The fact that this article tries to paint Islam as a Jesus sympathetic relegion is propostoruous.
Jesus didn't suggest that if you were to die in his quest for phophetism you would get 72 virgins or young boys to serve you in Heaven. Nor did he suggest that you should kill "infidels" (non-Jesus believers) "Wherever you find them". Or solicit and condone the killing of non-mohamad believering women and children then say, "two goats won't butt there heads about her," to a self confessed killer.
Like it or not this is a relegious war, based on the beliefs of the FUNDLEMENTALIST, NON-TOLERANT Muslims.THEY HAVE DECLARED WAR ON ALL NON-ISLAMIC PEOPLE ON EARTH.
IMO th Quaran is like the bible in reverse, soulful at the beginning, punitive and regulatory at the end. Martydom and the like is a fantasy reward based on sex, fruit an water. Maybe a 1000 years ago it made sense in the desert community when Mohammed went shopping for support as a prophet.
The extemist view of the Islamic terrist is the same as the Nazi's.
Until the Islamic relegion answers these difficult question regarding their prophets call for killing infidels and innocent people, this will nerver end.
Unlike the Christian relegion, Mohamadism begins and ends with Mohamad. Christ lives in the heart and soul of everone forever, whethter as the Son of God, Messenger, or "Good Man".
I am afraid that I can't let the good doctor off so easily as you did. You are quite a good sport.
Doc, you claim that there was another possibility besides LIAR, LUNATIC, or LORD and that was that Jesus was simply MISTAKEN about His own divinity.
If so, I can certainly see how He got confused about it! After all, He gave sight to the blind, cleansed lepers, walked on water, calmed storms with a word, raised the dead, and rose from the dead Himself.
This was not like todays TV preachers. Not even his enemies tried to deny His miracles, they just said He did it by the power of the Devil instead of God the Father.
Was He MISTAKEN about being raised from the dead? Was he just extremely lucky that He laid hands on sick people just when they were about to get better all by themselves?
The MISTAKEN option is not a viable one. What else have you got to throw in the way of accepting the inconvienent Truth? That is- Jesus is just who HE claimed to be and died for your sins.
You may not wish to accept His claims on your life, but He spoke the Truth, it is in His word for you to read today, and only by accepting His love will you be saved, only by rejecting it will one be "doomed".
This assertion is meaningless. There is more divergency then there will ever be commonality. Moroever, Islam was based on Christian and Jewish notions and yet fundamentally is different. The Jihad is central to Islam for example.It was for 13 centuries or so and still is in many Islamic groups as can plainly be seen. The Jihad has nothing in common with Christian principles nor with principles developed in Judaism down through the centuries.
Moreover, the assertion "Muslims love Jesus as much as Christians" is wholly a patronizing notion. In point of fact, Islam nearly wiped out Eastern Christianity. If Islam loved Christ so much it wouldn't have destroyed whole Christian communities. It wouldn't have dhimmiized and oppressed Christians for centuries. It wouldn't have kidnapped Christian children, and made them Islamic killers as were the Janissaries. It wouldn't have enslaved Christians in Asia Minor, Spain, the Balkans, etc. Islam has never been good for Christianity and it's insulting to suggest any kind of convergence or agreement except in the most oblique ways.
The exhortation to "try the spirits" by the Apostle Paul is a call to believers to try them, since they have the ability to through the Holy Spirit.
The spiritually dead cannot discern. Nothing dead can discern, only exist as a corpse. A corpse, even if it is walking and talking.
LOL I thought Bill Clinton was a lunatic, but I don't think he was a good man.
Or so it was claimed by others.
Lots of people claim lots of things, especially decades after the fact.
This was not like todays TV preachers. Not even his enemies tried to deny His miracles, they just said He did it by the power of the Devil instead of God the Father.
You should read more history.
This is certainly true of orthodox (not just Orthodox) Christianity. But an old, and formerly very powerful Chrisian heresey -- Arianism, agrees with Islam on this. Started by the Byzantine Bishop Arius, it was very popular in the Eastern Roman Empire during the 4th century, then was successfully fought by mainline Christians, led by the Pope of Rome, among others.
The great Church Council at Nicea, presided over by the Emperor Constantine had as a main purpose the making of a decision on the divinity of Christ. It produced the Nicene Creed, which virtually all Christians accept today ('True God and True Man'). The heresy was destroyed in the Empire. Unfortunately many of the German tribes, including the East and West Goths, and the Franks were converted by Arian missionaries in the meantime. When they took control of the provinces of the Western Empire, they actively persecuted Christians who accepted the Creed.
Eventually they all converted to mainline Christianity, but much damage had been done to the fabric of society, and Spain was so weakened, since Arianism was not eliminated until the 6th century, that its defeat by the Moors was made much easier.
In a sense, then, Islam could be considered to be a heresy of Christian Arianism.
Because to the extent that Muslims can be considered to be heretics of Arian Christianity (see above), this conflict can be looked at as a civil war between the People of the Book. As our Confederate friends can assure us, a civil war is much more bitter than a war between strangers.
It's amazing to me that those who claim no interest in Christ as Lord spend so much of their time talking about their lack of interest in Him.
Don't feel singled out.
:o)
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