We Christians have a bad habit of not paying attention. It has hurt us in the past, and it’s about to do it again.
Our big social concern in the 1990s was abortion. Another steamroller social issue was bearing down on us then, though: the homosexual attack on marriage, family, and sexual morality. If we had been paying attention we could have seen it coming. They gave us fair warning, after all: a 1987 article laying out their strategy for “The Overhauling of Straight America,” including these steps:
Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible
Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers
Give “protectors” a just cause
Make gays look good
Make the victimizers look bad
Solicit funds
Getting on the air with advertisements, celebrity endorsements, and more
The authors followed up this short article with an influential book, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90′s. (One of the authors wrote under a different name when the book was published.) Springboarding off the article, the book lays out a brilliant strategic plan for social change. It wasn’t very honest. It was highly manipulative (read the linked article). But it worked. It worked partly because we weren’t paying attention. They handed us their strategy on a silver platter, and we could have countered it with truth against their rhetorical manipulations. But we didn’t even see it.
We’re making the same mistake again today. The big social issue for Christians in the 90s was abortion. That hasn’t gone away, but it was virtually eclipsed in the 2000s by homosexual rights activism. That’s not going away soon either, but it’s about to be overtaken in the 2010s, I believe, by Islam in America.
Islam in America means we’ll be facing more issues like the symbolism and/or reality of a proposed mosque near Ground Zero, or Rifqa Bary’s fate. It raises questions about alleged honor killings in Muslim families, or freedom to share the Christian message at an Arabfest in Dearborn. For all we know it could involve more Islamist violence.
How many of us reading this feel prepared to face those issues from a clear knowledge of Islam’s beliefs and the Islamic world’s intentions?
Not nearly enough of us. And it matters.
Let me illustrate. A pastor friend of mine told me he thinks the Ground Zero mosque issue is easy: it’s a simple matter of freedom of religion. If the government can start dictating where Muslims can build their places of worship, then it won’t be long before it will restrict Christian churches in the same way. If we want our freedoms, we have to allow them the same.
This is but one of many perspectives on the Ground Zero mosque. We could swap opinions on that mosque all day long and miss the far more important question: do we even know what we’re talking about? My pastor friend’s position illustrates the problem nicely. He views Islam as a religion that deserves the same rights and privileges as any other. That’s questionable, to say the least. The following quotes come from Islamic websites.
In general, one can see that Islam is a religion which not only governs the private religious life of an individual, but also mandates and regulates all aspects of public life. (Islam and Democracy)
Religion and politics are one and the same in Islam. They are intertwined. We already know that Islam is a complete system of life and politics is very much a part of our collective life. (Political System of Islam)
Since the Islamic conception of life is a co-ordination between the body and the soul, it was natural that a very close relationship should have been established between religion and politics, between the mosque and the citadel…. As we have just seen, the caliph inherited from the Prophet the exercise of the double power, spiritual-temporal, and he presided over the celebration of the service of worship in the mosque, and he was the head of the State in temporal affairs. (The Political System of Islam)
The West makes a natural mistake in their understanding of Islamic tradition, assuming that religion means the same for Muslims as it has meant for most other religious adherents ever since the industrial revolution, and for some societies, even before that; that is: a section of life reserved for certain matters, and separate from other sections of life. This is not the Islamic world view. It never has been in the past, and modern attempts of making it so are seen as an aberration….
Islam is a “total way of life.” …
Throughout history, being a Muslim has meant not only belonging to a religious community of fellow believers but also living under the Islamic Law. For Islamic Law is believed to be an extension of God’s absolute sovereignty….
As we have mentioned, in Islam God is acknowledged the sole sovereign of human affairs, so there has never been a distinction between religious and state authority. (The Basics of the Political System in Islam)
It’s not a simple matter of freedom of religion, is it? Islam, according to what we read here, is not simply a religion. It implies a political system of its own, one that historically has been very much at odds with freedom of religion.
There is an important lesson to be learned here about Islam, but first I’m more interested in the lessons we Christians need to learn about ourselves. We failed to do our homework on homosexual activism, and look where it got us. Islam is even less familiar, more foreign to our way of thinking, and the issues it will present to us are going to be more complex. Are we ready for them?
How shall we, for example, understand the relation of religion and politics in Islam? How accurately do the quotes above describe Islam? Do most Muslims think of Islam this way, or only a minority? If it is both religion and political system, how does the First Amendment apply to it? Shall we grant religious freedom to a system that historically has created Islamic states almost everywhere it went—states whose nature has been to deny religious freedom?
If you think the Ground Zero mosque comes down to a simple matter of symbolism, or of religious freedom, then you don’t understand the issues deeply enough. I don’t know them well enough myself. Karen Armstrong has made a very persuasive case in her book The Battle for God that much of the trouble the world is in today can be traced to not understanding Islam.
I asked a friend of mine in Josh McDowell Ministry for a good introductory guide, and he recommended Answering Islam: The Crescent In Light of the Cross by Geisler and Saleeb. Having read it now, I’m eager to pass along the same recommendation to you.
I was surprised at how little I knew of the Muslims’ faith, especially their view of Allah, the Qur’an, and Muhammad. Did you know Muhammad is not considered to be the founder of Islam—yet it is far more acceptable in Islam to blaspheme Allah than Muhammad? This sheds light on the riots following the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, doesn’t it? Is it confusing nevertheless? It certainly is—which should motivate us to study and to understand better than we do now.
Consider again: do you remember the uproar when copies of the Qur’an were reportedly mistreated at Guantanamo? Consider this from Professor Yusuf K. Ibish:
I have not yet come across a western man who understands what the Qur’an is. It is not a book in the ordinary sense, nor is it comparable to the Bible, either the Old or New Testaments…. If you want to compare it to anything in Christianity, you must compare it with Christ Himself.
None of us in the West understand, he says. If Islam is going to be as potent a force in our part of the world as I think it is, then we ought to begin understanding. (We need to respond spiritually, too; another topic for a later discussion.)
I’ve just acquired Kenneth Cragg’s The Call of the Minaret, a classic on the topic, so I’m told, and I’m beginning to look into it. I’ll be studying more and blogging more on this in weeks to come. But you’re not going to get what you need from me. I’m but a beginner—a beginner who is convinced we all need to study up on the next huge social/cultural/religious issue facing the Western world.
I don’t want us looking back twenty years from now and saying, “We had our chance, but we blew it off completely. They told us who they were and what we were doing, but we paid no more attention to it than we did to the homosexual activists before them. And now look where we are.”
Last time I blogged on discipleship of the mind, I raised some serious warnings about relying on the Internet too much. Here we are, though: me writing, and you reading. It’s pretty strong evidence we both think there’s at least something to be gained here. And there is, just as long as we don’t let it be our whole reading diet.
Christian-Oriented Libraries on the Internet Some people in my generation can remember having to drive to the library to find an answer to a question. Sounds almost quaint now, doesn’t it? In this blog post I want to steer you toward some of the better libraries for Christian thinking. This list won’t be complete, you can guarantee that. I’m almost certain I’m having a momentary memory lapse, and I’m not even including all of my own favorites. Please use the comments to add to the list, and accept my advance apologies for missing some of the best.
Thinkers engage contrary views. Here are three of the better places to do that. I endorse the process of studying these views, not the views themselves (or in many cases, the attitudes), mostly because in the end they don’t stand up to good evidence and analysis.
A “Judgmentalism Inspector” just popped up on my computer. It scared me half to death. It may be blank now, but it’s watching. It’s inspecting my judgmentalism. It’s going to judge my judgmentalism.
Okay, you’re probably wondering where it really came from. I’m writing a passage on judgmentalism in my book (which is about two-thirds done now, by the way.) The software, Scrivener, includes an “Inspector” window where I can write summary information on each passage. In full-screen mode it shows up as a floating window, which is what you see in the image here. I don’t use it much—you can see I didn’t enter a synopsis. That’s one reason it surprised me when somehow it showed up there.
This just occurred to me: suppose someone says, “You’re being awfully judgmental!” Is that any different than being a Judgmentalism Inspector?
Don Lemon of CNN Weekend Primetime asked Dr. Sujatha Reddy, OB/GYN
Would you recommend this new emergency contraception to your patients?
She replied,
You know, I would. I think it’s great that women have one more option if there is, you know, an unintended event that occurs, you have have one more option.
The new “emergency contraception,” just approved by the FDA, is EllaOne, a “morning-after” pill that is actually an abortifacient.
Other than cases of rape (including those involving date rape drugs), no woman is pregnant on account of an unintended event. If Reddy were recommending EllaOne just for those instances, I would still have significant problems with it, but I’ll let others write on that. She isn’t just recommending it for those cases, though; and what I want to draw your attention to here is the way she stated it. Reddy was apparently searching for some euphemism for unwanted pregnancy. She came up with a telling one: “unintended events.”
Undeniably the vast majority of pregnancies result from intended events. The man and the woman intend to remove their clothes and they intend to do the sort of thing that can make babies. To call it an unintended event is to dehumanize the participants, to count their actions on the same level as those of irrational beasts. Sure, there are “animal” passions involved—I’m very well aware of that, thank you. But that’s not all there is to it. Rational thinking may be stressed under the pressure of the moment, but it is not erased.
To treat it as unintended is both to brute-alize it and to trivialize it horribly. It could be so much more than that; it was intended to be.
I was in a news stand at the old John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California many years ago. A man dressed in what I call “California Creative” style (think Hollywood director) came up to me and directed my attention to a rack of magazines whose covers were mostly hidden: Playboy, Playmate, etc. He said I really ought to buy one. (Strange, but true.) I told him I wasn’t interested. He said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
I wish I had answered him better than I did, because I missed a real opportunity. What I said was, “No thanks, I’m happily married.” What I should have said was, “No, you don’t know what you’re missing! You don’t know what it’s like to be with a woman who loves you fully and forever, total commitment, with no regrets from past relationships, no hiding, no pretending. You don’t know what it’s like to give yourself to someone fully that way. You don’t know how empty your idea of sex really is!”
I had a different kind of encounter on this topic about six or seven years ago. I was teaching a group of teenagers in our church about moral purity. A girl about fourteen years old said, “Well, I don’t get what’s the big deal about just a kiss.” I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?!” I shot back. “Not a big deal? I’ve been married sixteen years now, and every kiss I’ve shared with my wife has been a big deal! I like that it’s a big deal! Why on earth would you want it not to be a big deal?”
It’s supposed to be a big deal, not an “unintended event.” Our culture has lost track of that. Intimacy between a man and woman has meaning just in proportion to the meaning invested in it; and there is only one investment with the capacity to carry that full meaning: the lifelong commitment we call marriage. Anything less is, well, less.
But that’s what we’ve come to expect. Since the 1960s sex has been openly exalted, yet its exaltation has become its emptying. What was intended as a glorious expression of deep commitment, joy, life, and oneness, has been reduced to “an unintended event” with “options.”
Those who purvey this drained-out version of sex commit a detestable and horrific crime against humanness, against life, joy, intimacy, and even genuine pleasure—a crime that has victimized an entire generation.
I grieve for those who don’t know what they’re missing.
The book is titled Choosing Your Faith In a World of Spiritual Options. Thankfully Mark Mittelberg, who wrote it, knew where to begin, for the first question that’s bound to come up is, Why choose any faith? It’s a good question, but I won’t take credit for it; I borrowed it straight from the title of his first chapter. Why write about choosing a faith? Is it any more relevant than a book about, say, Choosing Your Sword in a World of Knighthood? Well, yes, of course it is. Mittelberg cites evidence that religion’s influence remains strong in North America (if he had ventured into the rest of the world he could have shown the same, even more so).
Faith is a fact of life apart from religious belief. Mittelberg says of atheist extraordinaire Richard Dawkins (p. 11),
Whether the chances are large or small, the important thought to catch here is that Dawkins doesn’t know there is no God—and he even concedes the possibility that some kind of God might actually exist. Rather, he takes it on faith that there actually is no God….
That’s just the way life is. We all live by some form of faith. Which leads us to the central question: Is ours a well-founded faith? A wise faith? A faith that makes sense and is supported by the facts? One that works in real life and is worth hanging on to?
More personally, is yours a faith you’ve really thought about, carefully evaluated, and intentionally chosen—or did you just slide into it at some point along the way?
That question is directed at all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike. The next six chapters expose common ways people choose their faith: pragmatism and relativism, tradition, authoritarian sources, intuition, the mystical approach, and “logic, evidence, and science,” with an emphasis on “I’ve gotta see it to believe it.” Chances are you’re going to find yourself described in one of those chapters or some mix thereof. Chances are especially good if you’ve never given your faith much thought. Faith, after all, is a synonym for belief; and how many of us really pay attention to why we believe what we believe?
So it behooves each of us to reflect on where we’ve come from in choosing our faith. Mittelberg prefers a version of the logic, evidence and science path, renamed the Evidential path in chapter eight:
It’s the one path that tests—and ultimately supports or undermines—all the others. Its two key elements, logic and sensory experience, are God-given tools we must use to gain the vast majority of our information, to test truth claims, and ultimately to decide what to believe.
The other faith paths do not necessarily lead to the wrong destination, but within them there is little or no means of testing, nothing to correct us if, for example, we rely on tradition for tradition’s sake. (“Your parents could be wrong,” he says. I suppose that even applies to my kids’ parents.) Going on,
The Evidential approach tells us logically and empirically that there is one set of truths—based on actual, what is reality—that we need to discover and let inform our choice of faiths. We can use these tools to test traditional teachings, religious authorities, intuitive instincts and hunches, and mystical encounters, so we can know which ones are worth believing and holding on to.
On another thread I’ve been debating whether it’s conceptually possible for God to reveal himself to us just through direct impressions (the sensus divinitatus) such that we could reliably know that the encounter we’re having is with God. Clearly if there’s a God, it’s unreasonable to assume that he could not do that. I’ve had many experiences I would describe that way. For purposes of that discussion, it’s logically sufficient to establish that if there is a God, then God could do that. But that’s a very limited point, for a very limited purpose. (I wouldn’t have brought it up here except I knew it would be brought up for me if I didn’t.)
The fact is that even though I know God can convince me of his reality any way he wants to, nevertheless when I have an experience that seems like God, I want some way to check whether I’m getting it right or if I’m mistaken. We’re not left only to our impressions, as it turns out, nor are we stuck in a morass of doubt where we have nothing to turn to besides tradition, authority, feelings, or the science of the laboratory. All of these have checks and balances coming from a most useful source: objective reality. Mittelberg explores logical, scientific, and historical criteria for choosing one’s beliefs, along with ways to assess the biblical and historical evidences for Jesus Christ.
Like his friend (and author of the foreword to this book) Lee Strobel, Mittelberg writes on a very accessible level. I recommend this book highly for the seeker in your life (including yourself, if you are that seeker). For church study groups, it could provide good discussion material for assessing various worldviews. (Mary Jo Sharp recently recommended this book for the same purpose.) I especially appreciate that Mittelberg emphasizes how to think about spiritual questions rather than telling us what to think. Of course he lands on his own solid conclusion: that faith in Jesus Christ is an excellent choice, the only one that makes good sense. But he gets there through a thoughtful path that should help readers think thoughtfully about their own paths.
Sixty members of the U.S. Congress joining together for prayer every week before their voting sessions, jointly led by a Republican and a Democrat. Sixty members of Congress taking strong action for religious liberty in the United States. Could such a thing be?
Indeed, it does exist. It is the Congressional Prayer Caucus (CPC). Whether you’re an American or a citizen of another country who cares about America’s role in the world, I think you’ll want to know about it, to be encouraged by it. I see it as one of the bright hopeful lights on our horizon.
It’s not about politics, and it’s not just for politicians. The non-profit, non-partisan Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) is calling on you and me to be informed and to get involved in multiple ways: in building a prayer wall around our nation and its leaders, getting connected with our state level leaders, and building prayer efforts in our churches. The Foundation’s mission is expressed in its commitment to:
Protecting the public expression of prayer and faith in God
Communicating the constitutional truths that establish America’s freedom
Sustaining and equipping leaders who believe in prayer and uphold Judeo-Christian principles
… and in its dedication to:
Establishing a network of ceaseless prayer, and initiating a Wall of Prayer around America.
Working with legislators to create an architecture within federal and state governments to protect religious and individual freedom for future generations.
Sustaining, supporting, and equipping existing and emerging leaders to live and lead with a Biblical worldview.
Sparking an intellectual awakening regarding prayer and God’s role in America’s foundation and our future.
Lea Carawan, President of the Foundation, says that
CPC and CPCF are mounting a strategy to restore and renew our great nation, and are uniquely position to stand above political parties, religious affiliations, and entrenched agendas; and unite all God-fearing Americans under one banner — In God We Still Trust.
Join in supporting this bright light for our country!
a celebration of womanhood and a toast to our independence…. In our minds, it is essential to find happiness and fulfilment on your own before committing to another.
This absolutely begs for commentary, some of it in the category of easy pickings. The most obvious, which I will not spend much time on, is that it’s another example of the slippery slope from the homosexuals’ drive to re-define marriage. Gill wrote:
We are not opposed to the institution of marriage or trying to make a mockery of it. But let’s face it. Traditions are changing — for the better…. We are fortunate for the opportunity, which many of our mothers never had, to live life to the fullest and not feel compelled to define ourselves by a man. But let’s not get too serious. For the most part, this is also a good excuse to throw a fabulous party.
Note the trivialization of a once-sacred ceremony. But I have a different question to pursue. If one of these women decides later to marry a man, will she have to divorce herself first? In a very practical sense, the answer is yes.
Thankfully this is (for now, at least) not a legal issue. Symbolically, though, this is a powerful solemnization of self-centeredness. This is exactly what marriage was never meant to be.
Marriage is most successful when it is more about the other than about the self. Real marriage is about mutual self-sacrifice, about finding the joy in giving that is far deeper than what comes from seeking one’s own. The Bible tells men to lay down their lives for their wives as Christ did for the church (Ephesians 5:25-28). Elsewhere (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) it says,
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Marriage is an antidote to self. (Raising children is a multiplied dose of the same.) As such it is increasingly counter-cultural, which is one of the reasons it needs defending so vigorously. You can research the tenor of our culture in a moment at a supermarket checkout stand. Scan the magazine covers there and observe how often the word “you” is used. “You can have better sex!” “How you can make more in investments.” “Doctors’ mistakes put you at risk!” This is not a sign of editors’ caring for you. It’s the result of research that shows they sell more magazines by getting us to focus on ourselves.
Nothing could be more foreign to Christ’s call to love one another, to give ourselves up for one another, to find our life by not seeking it. Ms. Gill believes “it is essential to find happiness and fulfillment on your own before committing to another.” Jesus Christ says the one who seeks his own life will lose it.
So it’s unlikely these women could live happily in a real marriage, without divorcing themselves from what they are entering now. And without a change of heart, even on their own, they are not destined to live Happily Ever After.
"Thinking Christian is one of the better places I know of on the web to learn and practice solid Biblical thinking, and to understand what it means that Christianity is really true." — Josh McDowell
