Review: Is the Father of Jesus the God of MuhammAd?

By: Howard Cole

Timothy George, the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School and an executive editor of Christianity Today, has written a helpful book: “Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?”

Ever since the September 11th terrorist attack on Americans, American Christians have experienced a heightened awareness of the presence and practices of the religion of Islam. George estimates that there are seven million Muslims and 13,000 mosques in North America. He then notes that some 200 million Muslims live in Indonesia and that there are more Muslims living in China alone than there are Southern Baptists in the whole world! Balanced and Biblical, he describes throughout the book the distinctions between Christianity and Islam.

In our postmodern age (everyone makes up their own meaning and dismisses the idea that there is one true story of the world), discussing differences in religion may seem off limits. George does not think that comparative religious discussions should be off limits. Instead he challenges the Christian to avoid the bilateral extremes of angry condemnation and the minimization of Christian truth claims. Trust can be engendered if the scandal of the cross is presented with respect and forbearance for the Muslim. All men are made in the image of God and must be treated as persons with dignity. 1 Peter 3:15 is marshaled by George as he challenges his readers to “always be prepared to give an answer with gentleness and respect.” George does not want the reader to relativize all differences and calls the reader to push the Muslim for conversion to the living Trinitarian God.

What are the essential beliefs of a Muslim? To understand Islam, George directs the attention of the reader to the central “Five Pillars” of Islam. We will consider each one in order.

• The first pillar is the “shahada” or simple one-sentence confession of faith. The sentence is “I bear witness and testify that there is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” This affirmation is so fundamental to Islam that it is sewn into the national flag of Saudi Arabia. This affirmation is also the portal of entry into the religion of Islam. It is to be said in faith in the presence of at least two witnesses in its Arabic original. It is so important to the Muslim that it is whispered into the ear of a newborn Muslim baby, repeated in the daily prayers and is said over a Muslim about to be buried. This simple phrase upholds the oneness of their god and denounces any form of idolatry.
• The second pillar of Islam is the “salat.” This is the prayer that they repeat five times a day. Before kneeling there is a ritual purification of the hands, face and feet and then the Muslim kneels facing Mecca acknowledging the majesty of their god. There is no Sabbath for the Muslim but every Friday the men go to the local mosque for congregational prayer. Once the ritual washing is over and the Muslim has knelt and bowed, a prayer of seven verses derived from the opening chapter of the Quran is recited.
• The third pillar is the “zakat” or poor tax. The Muslim is obliged to gives 2.5% of their annual income in alms for the poor and destitute, for those engaged in giving out alms, for the needy traveler, the freeing of slaves and debtors and the advancement of God’s cause. George points out that the alms are not for the relief of any poor person from another religion but are specifically to relieve the needs of those whose hearts are sympathetic to the Muslim faith.
• The fourth pillar is known as the “sawm” or annual fast. This one month fast takes place in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. The purpose of the fast is to nurture discipline and self-control as the participant refrains from eating, drinking and sexual contact from the first light of the morning till the setting of the sun at night. It is believed that the Angel Gabriel revealed the Quran to Muhammad during this month.
• The fifth and final pillar of belief and practice for the Muslim is “hajj” or pilgrimage to Mecca. Every Muslim is expected to make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in his or her life unless prevented by health or financial reasons. It was in Mecca that Muhammad was born and it was also there that he cleansed the cube-shaped shrine called the “kabah” from idols. The “kabah” is believed to be the very spot where Abraham offered Ishmael, not Isaac before Allah provided a substitute sacrifice.

Do Christianity and Islam share any similarities? According to George, both religions believe in:

• The literal, verbal inspiration of Scripture
• Jesus as the virgin-born Messiah and healer of the sick
• The bodily resurrection of Jesus and ascension into heaven
• The reality of Satan, angels and demons
• An afterlife of heaven or hell.
• They both eschew evolution, drunkenness and abortion. They both prize women and patriotism.

With so many commonalities one might see no need to bring up differences. But the differences are very significant.

George focuses on three massive beliefs held by the Christian that the Muslim rejects. These three are

• The Trinity
• The Incarnation and
• Redemption by divine grace by the cross of Jesus Christ.

The Christian runs quickly to Scripture’s revelation of the Trinitarian God. 2 Corinthians 13:14 declares “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” New converts to Christianity are to be baptized into the singular name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Muslim desires to confess the supreme oneness of God and they interpret the doctrine of the Trinity as a doctrine that forces the Christian to worship three separate Gods. George asserts that “the doctrine of the Trinity is the necessary theological framework for understanding the story of Jesus as the story of God.” God is one in essence but tri-personal.

George encourages Christians to help the Muslim see that they have erected a straw man (an argument that the Christian does not actually build and hold that is then easily knocked down) of sorts whereby the Christian supposedly worships three Gods when in fact He worships one God that mysteriously exists in three persons. The second person of the Trinity did in fact take on human flesh without ceasing to be God. The incarnation must be stressed to the Muslim for this is the story of Scripture.

George spends specific time expressing the works righteousness found in the Islamic religion. In Christianity sin necessitates a bloody sacrificial atonement so that man can be forgiven by the God-man Jesus Christ and brought into a reconciled relationship with God the Father. The Muslim does not define sin as active rebellion but instead as forgetfulness. The remedy for forgetfulness is self-effort by the Muslim to remember and this explains the emphasis on ritual prayers and the existence of 124,000 prophets!

George climaxes his critique of Islam with a beautiful look into the center of the Trinity. George points out the fact that within the being of God there is a mysterious living love. At the center of the universe is a relationship of surrender and affirmation, of giving and receiving between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the one being of God. George notes that in Islam Allah does not disclose his innermost being to others but that the God of Christianity in fact does. Allah and the God of Christianity both have sovereignty and absolute power but only the God of Christianity is a relationship of mutual self-giving by which the Father gives everything to the Son, and the Son gives back to the Father as the love of each is sealed by the Holy Spirit.

I was personally affected by the overall presentation of George throughout the book. He has an infectious love for Muslims and focused me on the key elements of agreement and distinct differences between Islam and Christianity. As Islam spreads in America, and in fact in the entire world, I pray that this new knowledge that I have attained can be used to challenge the deceptions of Islam with the love and patience of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Want to learn more? Go get the book and read it with a friend! You’ll grow in your love for God and your Muslim neighbors.

Even the Dirty Laundry

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career.” – C.S. Lewis

I work in an industry with some of the most overworked, underpaid and underappreciated employees in the world. In fact, I don’t receive a paycheck at all, and my best efforts are often met with complaints and criticism, rather than praise. Some people actually question whether or not I work at all, or whether or not my “so-called work” has value.

I am a stay at home mom.

Most of the work that I do is undone shortly after I complete it. I unload the dishwasher only to start filling it again. I fold a load of laundry… wait, I won’t lie. Let me rephrase. I wash laundry and heap it in a basket, only to put more laundry in the washer. I clean up only to have things spilled again. You all know this routine. You’ve either been in the same trenches as a parent or you’ve witnessed someone doing it. And when everything is undone so quickly it makes you wonder – why do I even bother? Why do I even try? Does any of this matter to anyone when no one realizes what I’m doing or seems to care about or value my effort?

I will be honest. It’s hard even to “work unto the Lord” and to remember that ultimately, I work for Him, and not for my family. That all of this is for His sake, not theirs. It’s hard to think that Jesus really cares about whether or not my kids have clean underwear. (Pro tip: They always will if they have about 30 pairs, no matter how bad you are at laundry.)

But He really does care. That’s the crazy thing. Just as He cares whether or not they have a roof over their head, or food to fill their bellies, or water to drink, He cares about their dirty underwear. He cares about every hair on their head; He numbers each one and knows when one falls. Such is the depth of the knowledge and love of our Savior. And He has blessed me with being an essential, irreplaceable outlet of His love to my family. That is my role - to be an extension of Him. To show my kids that Jesus does, in fact, care about every little part of their lives, and He is there to provide for them.

I show my kids how Jesus works. He never tires of washing us in His blood and mercy and grace so that we can try again, even if we try again just to stumble and fail. He picks us up – again and again. He cleans up our messes, holds us close and tells us He forgives us – again and again. He takes our dirtiest efforts and makes them clean and holy. This repetitive, mundane work that I do, is a mirror of the repetitive work that Christ does. When I remember that, how can I wonder if what I do is actually worth my best effort?

I am in a unique position to model Christ’s forbearing, gentle character for my children. And that has tremendous, sacred, eternal value. By the gift of this work, may my kids learn that their Savior will never turn them away, even after they have made the same mistake 90 times. May they learn that He will provide for them their daily needs – even the smallest ones. May they learn that He is always near.

May I learn it too.

3 Theories Of Everything

By: Howard Cole

3 Theories of Everything by Ellis Potter. Destiny Media. 111 pages. 2012

Children love to ask really hard questions. “How small is small?” “How far is far?” “Why did God make bees that sting?” Do you still ask big questions or have you grown up and given up looking for answers?

One day Jesus called to a child and put the child in the middle of his friends. He said in Matthew 18:3-4 ³ …"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Ellis Potter, the author of 3 Theories of Everything, is like a little kid asking big questions. He wrote this profound, short book to ask what he calls “absolute” questions. These are questions that make you think down to the bottom and out to the edges. He acknowledges that many adults have lost their confidence in how everything fits together so they settle for a smaller reality that fits into a narrow cultural context.

His goal for the book is for the reader to understand three absolute realities: Monism, Dualism and Trinitarianism. He makes a strong case for Trinitarianism as the absolutely best theory of everything.

An absolute is category so big that everything else fits into it. Absolutes are theories of everything. They each offer a story that explains how reality was once perfect, how it got broken, and then reveals the solution for how to fix the wreck of reality so that it is perfect again.

Many of your friends may not want to think about absolutes. Maybe you don’t want to either. They are uncomfortable for our selfish egos. If there is absolute truth, then we are responsible to something or someone outside of ourselves. Absolutes challenge the myth that we invent ourselves, our identities and our meaning. Even the person that says dogmatically “There are absolutely no absolutes” has used an absolute to deny absolutes! That’s absolutely ridiculous.

And yet, we are to love our neighbors and love means we must first understand how they see reality.

Here’s a taste of Potter’s three theories of everything. Maybe the taste will tempt you (in a good way!) to read the whole book and start asking questions again. You might even better understand your neighbor and love them with the love of Christ.

Monism: The belief in one One. Don’t mix this up with monotheism which is the belief in one God. Monism believes that there is a total unity that is the ground of everything. In other words “All is one.”

• The world does seem to have a strong sense of unity: One sun, one moon, and one cycle of four seasons
• Diversity and differences seem unstable
• Original reality was unity, we suffer when we live into the illusion of diversity so the solution to suffering is to realize perfect unity again.

Potter agrees that this theory of everything is attractive and even has a thread of truth in it. But he points out that with this absolute theory, relationships are an illusion. If relationships are an illusion then love is impossible because love needs of lover, a beloved and love.

Dualism: Absolute reality consists of opposites in harmony.

• The world seems to display opposites in harmony: Light-dark, up-down, pleasure-pain, hard-soft, male-female
• Suffering comes when we allow an imbalance in this harmony
• But do we always want there to be kindness and cruelty or love and hate? Have evil and good always existed or did good exist without evil at some point in history?

Trinitarianism:

• When we look at the world we see both unity and diversity
• The Christian Scriptures reveal a God who is perfectly unified as one God and yet God is perfectly diversified in the three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
• God alone is God and God is not alone
• Relationships matter, especially relationships within a hierarchy of love (parents and children, husbands and wives, elders and the members of the church)
• A hierarchy refers to relationships of love and authority (authority is the power and responsibility to define reality)

Potter concludes that Trinitarianism is the best theory of reality. The original perfection is a unity of three persons who are other-entered in a relational reality of love. We suffer because we have turned things around and have become self-centered dead people. Salvation is God coming into creation and giving Himself in order that people can receive the power to be re-created as other-centered living people.

The book concludes with 45 intriguing questions and answers about the three theories of everything.

What do you think? Can I ask you one last question? How about considering to read this excellent book so that you can grow up by becoming young again? I’d be absolutely overjoyed it you did!

Pastor Howard

The Giver Makes the Gift

Or, Do Not Touch the Mugs

By: Sarah Cates

I am not a terribly sentimental person. I cleaned out all of my kids' baby clothes without blinking an eye. My wedding dress is still hanging in my closet at my parents' house (much to their dismay) waiting for me to clean it and then sell it or donate it. For the most part, things simply don't hold much emotional sway over me.

Except my mugs. Beware the mugs.

If you know me at all, you know that I love coffee. What you may not know is that I also have a mug collection to rival the collection of teacups in Buckingham Palace. And there are a few mugs in that collection that are strictly in a "no touchy" category. Four to be exact. Even Chris isn’t allowed to use them without getting serious death stares. Two I bought myself – one on a perfect fall weekend almost 10 years ago when I got my tattoo; another that I bought on a cold, wintry day at a Christmas market in Bath, England. The other two were gifts from my best friend Holly and look somewhat ordinary. One is a Starbucks mug from London that has the city skyline wrapped around it, the second is a handmade looking white one with blue stars that says “Star Baker”. The significance of these isn’t that I bought them somewhere special or that they remind me of a trip or a special day. Instead, they remind me of a special person. Someone who knows me well enough to pick out a perfect mug, one that has the right shape and feel and relates to a place or a thing that I love. These gifts remind me that I am known to Holly, that she thought of me when I wasn’t present, that I’m valuable enough to her for her to spend her money on me just because she loves me.

Is this not a tiny fragment of the picture of God’s love for us? He, too, knows us – better than we know ourselves. He, too, is constantly thinking of us. He, too, spent of Himself to give us good and perfect gifts just because He loves us. And yet… I can grumble at His gifts. This house that I have to work to clean and tidy, only to have it be a mess 90% of the time? On a good day, I accept it. On an ordinary day, I think it is just a bother. My three precious kids – even when the way that they are wired seems to be fundamentally designed to annoy the snot out of me? HA. How often I forget to treasure them. And yet… these are gifts, chosen with knowledge of my needs, wants, desires. Chosen with great love, with great care, given to me at great expense – for all gifts are only accessible because of the death of Jesus who raised me to the status of daughter.

So perhaps the issue isn’t the gifts. After all, they are of the same kind as those mugs I love so much. Chosen the same way, gifted the same way. Perhaps the issue is my perception of the giver. Do I remind myself daily of His character, of His love, of His unfailing faithfulness and dedication to drawing me nearer to Him? Do I take my eyes off of my circumstances and lay them on Him – on Christ my Savior, Christ my Redeemer, God my Father, God my Pursuer?

Paul speaks of learning to be content in all circumstances. Maybe it wasn’t the circumstances he grew to love. It was his God. The more I love God, the more I truly see Him in all things, how can I help but let my contentment with who He is radiate into all the things He chooses to give me? Even the ones I would never have chosen myself.

“To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured out by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His apportionment…” – Elisabeth Elliot