Jesus vs. Muhammad

As you probably know, the entire Muslim world has been in an uproar over the Danish political cartoons portraying the prophet Muhammad. It’s apparently illegal in Islam to depict Muhammad, in fear that the image will be worshipped as an idol.
But what really makes them angry is that the cartoons portray him in a somewhat negative light.
The cartoons can be seen here on Michelle Malkin’s blog. On her website there is a photo of a man holding up a sign, "Behead those who insult Islam"

The intolerance and hypocrisy here is amazing. The same Muslims who insult and degrade other religions, like Christianity, in terrible, hostile ways, so extreme as to kill people to show disdain of non-Islamic religions, are now angry over a few bloodless cartoons. It’s just drawings on paper, and they want the artist beheaded.

The author below notes this amazing contrast between the two main figures of two different belief systems, Christianity and Islam. Jesus shows love towards those who insult and persecute him; Muhammad shows hate and death towards those who insult and persecute him. It’s a profound difference. The following article was NOT written by me, but by a man named John Piper. It’s reproduced here by permission (see below)

Here it is:

Being Mocked: The Essence of Christ's Work, Not
Muhammad's
February 8, 2006
What we saw this past week in the Islamic
demonstrations over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid
depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means
to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being
insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to
be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: "All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads" (Psalm 22:7). "He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not" (Isaiah 53:3).

When it actually happened it was worse than expected. "They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' And they spit on him" (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work he came to do. "Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7).

This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most
Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim
writes, "Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion." 1 Another adds, "We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross." 2 An essential Muslim
impulse is to avoid the "ignominy" of the cross.

That's the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently
for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account" (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised
his followers the same: "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household" (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese
portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset
with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the
Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code
portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and
angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his
suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his
work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

When Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar across the Muslim world was intense and sometimes violent. Flags were burned, embassies were torched, and at least one Christian church was stoned. The
cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before
them. What does this mean?

It means that a religion with no insulted Savior
will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again
to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his
followers must be willing to "share his sufferings, becoming like him in his
death"
(Philippians 3:10).

Footnotes
1 Badru D. Kateregga and
David W. Shenk, Islam and
Christianity: A Muslim and a Christian in Dialogue
(Nairobi: Usima Press, 1980),
p. 141.
2 Quoted from The Muslim
World in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor,
Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus
Road (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.
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The Christian and Capital Punishment

This is a formal persuasive essay I wrote for school during the Tookie Williams fiasco. The death penalty is an important issue where Christians must be informed. Enjoy!




The Christian and Capital Punishment

Today, capital punishment is a controversial topic. People in the world are increasingly condemning this practice, and many Christians are beginning to denounce it as well. These Christians argue that the Bible says, “thou shalt not kill,” and Jesus said, “he that takes up the sword shall die by the sword,” therefore making it immoral for a government to kill its people, and it does not even prevent crime. But in reality, capital punishment is justice, and it really works. Also, the Bible strongly supports the institution of a death penalty, and nowhere does the Bible condemn civil government for taking the life of a criminal. The arguments Christians should consider for capital punishment are that the Old Testament commands it, the New Testament reaffirms it, and it works to prevent crime and execute justice.

Capital punishment was commanded for certain crimes in the Old Testament. While the Ten Commandments reads, “Thou shalt not kill” in some Bible translations, this does not apply to government using its authority to uphold justice with a death penalty, because in the same book capital punishment is instituted to punish criminals. In the laws God gave to Moses, the death penalty was the price of justice for murder, adultery, rape, and other offenses. “Thou shalt not kill” is better translated as “thou shalt not murder.” Some may argue that this is strictly in the Mosaic Law and meant only for Israel at that time. However, even before Mosaic Law God instituted capital punishment by civil government as one of His first commands to Noah after the Flood. He said, “Whoever shed man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Gen. 9:6). This command in Genesis was given for all people, not merely the nation of Israel as the Mosaic law. Some Christians counter that the New Testament repealed capital punishment as part of the old covenant and is no longer valid today.

However, the New Testament also affirms capital punishment as the duty of civil government. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans, “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God…. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil…. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil” (Romans 13:1,3,4). When the Bible speaks this way, “the sword” refers to death. The meaning of Christ’s saying, “He that takes up the sword shall die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52) is clarified here. The person that murders will also be killed by the sword of civil government, and this government is exercising a God-given right to justice, a tool that God uses to punish evil-doers. Capital punishment cannot merely be an outdated part of the old covenant, because laws that are no longer valid for Christians were always identified in the New Testament, and capital punishment is never repealed or spoken against in the New Testament, but reaffirmed as true for today.

Lastly, Christians should support capital punishment because it works. It has been suggested in various studies and statistics that capital punishment is a deterrent to murders, and the lack of the death penalty causes more murders. For instance, in the late 1960s and 1970s, when capital punishment was either outlawed or in question in the United States, the number of murders per year rose considerably, from 13,000 in 1967 to 19,555 in 1978*. Some argue that capital punishment is not a deterrent to murderers because most murderers are uneducated and irrational, not thinking of consequences. On the contrary, fear of consequences is the strongest of deterrents to the irrational and uneducated mind. The irrational person will not listen to reason and will refrain from an act only as a result of consequences. That is exactly why the consequences must be death, rather than life in prison which many criminals do not mind with relaxation, cable television and the possibility of escape. Further, a Christian can know capital punishment has a deterrent effect because the infallible word of God shows this with Israel, when God said, “all Israel shall hear and fear, and not again do such wickedness as this among you,” (Deuteronomy 13:11) as a result a death penalty. Even if the death penalty was not a deterrent, it is necessary to eliminate hardened murderers because they are detrimental to society and could kill again. Other inmates, prison guards, and any person within their reach if they escape prison are in danger as long as the hardened murderer lives.

Capital punishment should be supported by Christians because the Old Testament and New Testament establish it, and also because it works well. The Old Testament gave clear commands that people who shed innocent blood will have their own blood shed by the civil government. The New Testament never rebuked governments giving the death penalty, and in fact reaffirmed the commands of the Old Testament that the government has a God-given right to use capital punishment. Capital punishment works to carry out justice and to prevent crime by deterrence. Regardless of the arguments of the liberal anti-death penalty lobby, they are the words of fallible man, but the word of God is infallible and completely trustworthy and must be obeyed. Christians should not be influenced by humanism and liberal ideas, but stand firm in Scripture, realizing that capital punishment is the hand of God in punishing evildoers and a way to protect people.


*Glenn Dunehew, http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0131_Capital_Punishment

The meaning of Christmas

Here is a letter I sent to the North County Times in December. There was as you know a "war on Christmas", and Christians were working to put the "Christ" back in "Christmas" and tried to get people to say the words, "Merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays" at stores.

But the words themselves are meaningless without the message behind the words, the Gospel, the good news message of Jesus Christ. So, here's my letter:

The true meaning of Christmas is often forgotten in the Christmas rush. Christmas is the celebration of the day Jesus was born. We do not know the exact season or date Jesus came into this world, but we do know that in Bethlehem, the King of kings was born in a miserable stable and laid in an animal feeding trough. He could have come in all the wealth and influence of Rome, yet He came into the family of a poor carpenter in Judea.

Jesus, the Son of God, came with a message of love and good news for the world. The human race is fallen in sin, and we justly deserve the penalty of hell, but “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)Jesus said, “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life.” (John 5:24) Whoever believes Christ’s death and resurrection and trusts in Him alone for forgiveness has assurance of heaven with God; this is the marvelous meaning of Christmas.

I have returned!

Hello all! No, I'm not dead, hospitalized, or held hostage by crazed Marxist guerrillas. But I have been away from this blog for the past 3 months.

I am sorry that I have been away for so long. I've been very busy, and I was on a short-term missions trip to Argentina in December.

But I'm back now to discuss the Biblical worldview and its relationship to news, culture and religion!