What's happened to American academics?

One would like to think that advanced educational attainment is not a dominant factor in causing people to lose all common sense, but after this week I am beginning to wonder.

I found myself having a cordial but firm disagreement with a young lady who possesses a Masters and Bachelors in History and who teaches history in a local community college. She was admonishing a young college student who is in my church regarding Islam. She made the claim that “Muslims are not violent. ISIS is not Muslim if you study their history. ISIS is to Islam in the same manner the KKK is to Christianity. Can't label billions for the actions of a few.”

Certainly I agree with her that you can’t label the billions for the actions of a few. But I am astounded that a woman who teaches history would have such an unhistorical knowledge of the background of Islam. A native of Mecca, Muhammad’s new religion was not accepted—at first—by the other tribes around him. They were polytheists and he was selling monotheism. He fled from Mecca to Medina, where he had greater success in building a following. Mecca itself later converted under the threat of the sword in the early seventh century. The rapid expansion of Islam in the entire Mediterranean region occurred primarily by military conquest, or the threat thereof. Islamic violence is not breaking news, it is a deep-rooted part of their history and finds vigorous theological support in the Quran. ISIS is perhaps the most faithful representation of Islamic roots that we have seen in the modern day.

She is correct that most Muslims today do not pursue violent jihad. Some have reinterpreted the Quran to view jihad as a personal spiritual battle in their pursuit of personal Islamic purity. But it will be unhelpful from both a national policy and personal relational standpoint to revise the history of Islam. Relationships built upon falsehoods are inherently unstable and unsustainable.

The second moment of dismay with academics this week also had to do with Islam. According to an article by Jessica Chasmar appearing in the Washington Times(12/16/2015), a “Christian” tenured Wheaton College faculty member said this:

“I love my Muslim neighbor because s/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity. I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”

I agree with her that we need to love our neighbor, including and especially our Muslim neighbors at a time like this. And I can grant her the stated reason of “human dignity,” though I would frame it a different way: we should love our neighbor because Christ commands us to and because all humans bear the image of God.

But her other reasons are simply incoherent. By definition a Christian is one who places their faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for their sins. Muslims don’t believe that Jesus died on the cross, period. Which sort of puts a kibosh on the resurrection, too, you know? In other words, they deny the central doctrine of the Christian faith. Soooo, in what way exactly can she stand in “religious solidarity” with them?

Secondly, they are indeed people of the book. But it’s the wrong book. This is not trivial sectarianism. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING we know about God and redemptive history comes from the Bible. You don’t lose part of it in the Quran—you lose all of it. Soooo, how can this “Christian” professor make such a claim, tell me again?

Third, I am to understand that we worship the same God? Really? In fact, there is no resemblance, neither superficial nor at greater depth. The true God, the Christian God, exists as one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That truth is abominable to the Muslim. Both Christians and Muslims claim that their God is merciful, so that might be a similarity—until you dig deeper, anyway. Then you find that the true God of the Bible is merciful because it is His nature to be merciful and He always acts in perfect accord with who He is. Allah is not so. Allah is pure will. Islam does not think in terms of the attributes of its deity, only in terms of his will. Allah is only merciful if he decides to be so, and he may decide not to be. There is simply no correlation to be made between the true God of the Bible and the god of Islam—unless one is entirely ignorant of one or the other—or of both.

I applaud this professor’s desire to love her neighbor and to avoid disenfranchising her Muslim friends, and I stand with her in that regard. But if you stop and think about her words for just a moment you’ll realize she has dishonored both Christian and Islamic belief by trying to forge a non-existent via media between two irreconcilable belief systems. I certainly can’t stand with her there.

America once had a great educational system. But the words of these two educators make me wonder, what’s happened to American academics? They are not getting even the most basic facts right.

Fruit from my morning reading

Several interesting points from reading the Institutes this morning.

First, on the difference between the god of Islam and the True God.

Calvin makes the point that God is by necessity good, meaning that God cannot choose not to be good. To get the following quote, you must understand the way a philosopher or theologian uses the word, "necessary." Something that is necessary is something that must be due to the nature of things; it cannot not be. Here's Calvin: "The goodness of God is so connected with his Godhead, that it is not more necessary to be God than to be good; . . . " As I thought on this, I realized that it forms one of the most basic distinctions between the theology of Christianity, and that of Islam.

In a word, God does good things because God, in His essence, is good. God cannot fail to be good--it is His nature to be good, and God cannot contradict Himself.

However the god of Islam is arbitrary in his actions, sometimes doing good, sometimes evil. The god of Islam is only good when he decides to be so; his actions are not tied to his essence. This is one reason why Islam can justify any atrocity: Allah is not good, Allah is just what Allah determines to be at the moment.

The second interesting point comes from Calvin's discussion of free will and the bondage produced by sin. He quotes Augustine: "Man through liberty became a sinner [speaking of the Fall] but corruption, ensuing as the penalty, has converted liberty into necessity." Calvin then says, several sentences later, "Man, since he was corrupted by the fall, sins not forced or unwilling, but voluntarily, by a most forward bias of the mind; not by violent compulsion, or external force, but by the movement of his own passion; and yet such is the depravity of his nature, that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil." [Calvin, Institutes, Book II:3:5]

This is why we need a Savior, and this is why He must take the initiative in salvation. We won't. We can't.

The Islamification of Europe

[This post is not part of the Source of Authority series. I will post the next in that series tonight]

On today's National Review Online website, Clifford May writes an article entitled "The European Caliphate." He is citing Bat Ye’or's new non-fiction book, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate. In her book, she predicts that Europe will not remain multi-cultural for long, but will become 'Eurabia'. [Full disclosure: I have not read her book, only Clifford May's article about it. I just became aware of her book this morning.]

This is of particular interest to me, because it is precisely what I predicted when I began writing my novel, Outlander Chronicles: Phoenix, several years ago. One of the major back-stories of the tale is the Islamification of Europe. In fact, according to the Outlander timeline I created before writing the novel, the European Union becomes the IEU, the Islamic European Union in 2028.

According to the timeline, it is, for the most part, a peaceful takeover. After being beset by riots in all major cities, on June 27, 2022, Britain enacts Sharia law that has been tailored to British needs by a council of Muslim clerics meeting in Westminster Abbey [irony, anyone?].

France and Germany follow suit in 2025. In early 2028, non-Muslims are purged from the ranks of the military forces of the three nations. In July of 2028, all EU countries that have continued to resist Sharia are invaded by the combined forces of Britain, France, and Germany. At this point, the Islamic takeover of the EU is complete.

Let's hope that this, and the rest of my timeline, remains fiction.

A Tragedy for the Gospel of Jesus Christ

I am angered, outraged, tonight having learned that Terry Jones, leader of something ironically called the Dove World Outreach Center burned a Koran, streaming video of the act live over the Internet. You can read about this false prophet's reprehensible act here.

Predictably, outrage has spread across the Muslim world, resulting in deaths of innocent people, including UN workers in Afghanistan.

Several things ought to be said.

First, genuine believers in Christ everywhere should condemn this man's actions without hesitation or mental reservation. Jones' actions, like the Inquisition, bear no resemblance to Christ or the Gospel. That point needs to be made immediately and without equivocation.

Does Christianity have its share of pathetic, dangerous, and unbalanced people who attempt to use the Bible for their own agenda? Certainly. Jones is evidently one of these. But every movement, every creed, every philosophical position has its wingnuts inhabiting the far frontier.

Do I believe (and teach) Islam is a false religion? Certainly I do, just like they believe Christianity is false, just like atheists believe all religions are false. But I will respect their right to peaceably practice their religion, peaceably proselyte, and peaceably preach. If I don't want to hear what they are saying, I can walk down the other side of the street for crying out loud. We don't need to burn anybody's books!

Second, we don't need any additional laws, hate-speech legislation, or restrictions on religion. The government should not be called upon to do anything, unless Jones has already broken existing laws (in which case he should be prosecuted). Writing laws to protect us from this sort of lunacy will wind up trampling on religious freedom; and trampling on religious freedom eventually winds up restricting freedom to think, speak, share opinions for all of us.

So, don't write your congressman asking for action. Instead, write a blog, or a letter to the editor, or stick a sign in your front yard, condemning this reprehensible deed. All genuine believers everywhere should let the world know: this dastardly act has nothing to do with genuine Christianity, and we do not approve of it or condone it. It has everything to do with Jones' own warped, wicked mind.