Ben Adam and Islam
There are now about one billion Muslims in the world - one billion children of God who cannot, by any means that Christians have been able to devise, be penetrated with the Christian message.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam share a common Semitic heritage in the one God of Abraham, Moses, Joshua ben Adam and Mohammed. Christians have been less successful in converting Muslims than they have been in converting Jews. There are about as many conversions away from Christianity, but in any case the inroads in either direction are insignificant. Both sides have tried killing each other or convincing each other, but fifteen centuries has been enough time to prove that nothing has been accomplished either way. Even in this information age, Christians are not about to witness any breakthrough with Islam, or vice versa.
Thankfully, there is now some dialogue resulting in progress in mutual understanding and respect, but each side competes for converts from disintegrating pagan cultures (such as in Africa). The allegiance of these people is largely determined by whether Islam or Christianity gets to them first. Once they are locked into either religious tradition further conversion is well nigh impossible.
It has been all to easy for Christians to sit in an isolated Christian culture subscribing to the old orthodoxy of no salvation except by conversion to Christianity. We send out missionaries to convert the heathen, but now right next door to us in our global village we are confronted with another religious community who have been just as successful in converting the heathen as Christians have been.
Confronted with the reality that a billion people are certain to live and die outside the Christian tradition, a lot of Christians have been moved to re-appraise their view of how God relates to people in another religious tradition. Christians who have inherited a Lutheran or Calvinist position on the Supper rarely accept their close neighbours’ point of view on their little difference. But we are grappling here with a problem of communicating with people who, religiously speaking, live in another universe. There are cases of Christian missionaries working in a Muslim culture for several generations without making a single convert.
Saint Paul likened religious tradition to a dividing wall of hostility which his Christ had come to abolish. (Ephesians 1:15) But the Christ of Incarnation, Trinity and blood Atonement has become an insurmountable Berlin Wall to both Jews and Muslims. It required more centuries to build this Christian tradition than it took to build the Great Wall of China. It was a long way from the diverse and fragmentary New Testament documents to the Councils of Nicea (325 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD) which established the tradition of Incarnation and Trinity, to say nothing of how many more centuries to Anselm and Calvin to establish the penal theory of Atonement. Those who are naive enough to think this very complex theological edifice is all simply and clearly spelt out in the New Testament need to give more credit to the magical power of the religious spectacles (and prejudices) that they have inherited!
Given their strict and uncompromising monotheism (meaning God is one), Muslims have not been able to come to terms with the Christian Incarnation and Trinity (meaning God is Three). Neither have they been able to come to terms with divine forgiveness through blood atonement. If the Gentile Christians couldn’t convert even their fellow Jewish Christians to Incarnation and Trinity, what hope is there to surmount this barrier with Jews and Muslims? As for divine forgiveness, Jews and Muslims say their God forgives simply on response to repentance.
For this they not only have ample support in Jewish Scripture (Psalm 57:16-18; 86:5; 103:3-14; Isaiah 55:7; Hosea 14:1-4; Micah 7:18 etc.) but from Joshua ben Adam as well. He called on people to reject the principle of pay-back justice (atonement) and to exhibit the spirit of never-ending forgiveness, after the example of God.
The prophet Micah said that the only thing God requires of humanity is to deal justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly. A good place to begin with humility is in this matter of religious exclusiveness. The long held attitude that people must believe what the Church believes or be damned (stated all through the Decrees of the Council of Trent, for instance) is arrogant, insensitive and inhuman. As the old Testament parable of Jonah brilliantly shows, one cannot start out insisting people are doomed without ending up wishing they are doomed!
Islam arose soon after the Trinitarian and Christological controversies had been settled in the great Church Councils. As we have already pointed out, these were highly complex dogmas based on hair splitting definitions of Greek and Latin words as well as arguments drawn from Greek philosophy. For example, no one really understands the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity unless he appreciated the subtle difference between the Latin persona and the Germanic person.
Religions don’t develop in a vacuum or drop out of the sky like a rock. Islam arose as a simple desert faith which had an appeal unmatched by the abstractions of Western Christianity. Some features of Islam, remarkably like the remnants of Jewish Christianity, suggest some Jewish and Christian influences at work in Mohammed’s background.
As the Christian West was heading toward its Dark Ages, Islam revitalized culture and learning. Whilst Christian Europe stagnated in one of the most dreadful periods of human history, the Arabs were the first to create hospitals as well as universities which kept learning alive. The Renaissance, indebted to this Arab influence, gave birth to the Enlightenment and the age of Science. Islam has felt the impact of these developments and like Christianity will have to deal with the issues of scientific literary criticism, religious freedom and the inhuman face of Fundamentalism.
Whilst the Jesus of Christian faith is an insurmountable barrier to Muslims, the same thing can’t be said of Joshua Ben Adam. Islam already accepts him as a prophet and a Messiah. Dare we say that when it comes to what is often considered the cardinal things of the Christian tradition (Incarnation, Trinity and Atonement), Joshua stands closer to the Muslim tradition? But if we were to put to Joshua the question as to which tradition was right, he would surely answer us like he answered the Samaritan women who asked him to settle a religious dispute in his day. (See John 4) He would give us one of his classic wisdom sayings which transcends religious disputes. He would show us that religion should have nothing to do with determining the way we relate to one another because religion has absolutely nothing to do with determining the way God relates to us.
When Joshua Ben Adam encountered Samaritans, Romans or Syro-Phoniceans he was oblivious to the fact that they were outside his own religious community. He acted as one who believed that there were no barriers to God’s unconditional love.
God is neither a Jew, Christian or Muslim. It is not religion which bears God’s image but humanity. Wherever the spirit of authentic humanness is manifested, there is the evidence of God’s living presence. The human spirit too obviously transcends all religious barriers.
Ben Adam and Atheism
For long ages it was a capital crime to be an atheist in a Christian society. It is still punishable by death in some Islamic societies. Hopefully all of humanity will one day learn that killing people in God’s name is a manifestation of neither a divine or human spirit.
The earth would be a lot poorer without the honest, forthright thinking, philosophy and scientific research of atheists. They have been courageous enough to look at the empirical evidence on things like the origins of life and the age of the earth. They have called the oppressive Sky-God into question. Thomas Jefferson once said that "it would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all than to believe the atrocious writings of the theologians". George Washington, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all said similar things. Of course the world would be a much poorer place if it was left in the hands of the devoutly religious.
How can we blame intelligent humans for not believing in the Celestial Dictator - the God of the Fall, original sin, pay-back justice through bloody sacrifice and that sadistic nonsense of Hell?
Australia recently witnessed the passing of one of its really great humanitarian sons - the late Dr. Fred Hollows. His friend, national television presenter Ray Martin, said in a eulogy at his death that Fred Hollows worked too much, swore too much and drank too much. But none could doubt his love for people and his dedication to so many in desperate need of medical attention in remote areas of the world, including places in Australia. The whole nation, including the Christian community, was moved at his passing and rose to salute his reckless, self-giving to the visually impaired in far off places. His spirit of self-giving for people lives on in humanitarian work now done in his memory.
Fred Hollows did not believe in God, at least not the kind that was ever presented to him. Yet his dedication to his fellow humans wasn’t natural. In the face of this larrikin rebel we glimpsed the face of God, the ubiquitous, transcendent spirit of him who inspires all that is truly human. Surely we can say that he is in solidarity with all who are human, and that he is the friend of all who are a Samaritan neighbour. We can’t say it better than this:
"He who loves lives in God and God lives in him." (1 John 4:16)
"In as much as you have done it unto the least of those my brothers, you have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:40)
Part 8
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