ISLAM VERSUS CHRISTIANITY
Before I try to outline what Christianity and Islam have in common and where they differ, I first have to talk about `religion`. If you have followed me at all, you know where I come from. I am an adherent of what is commonly called The Christian Religion, even though I have some difficulty with the way Christianity is expressed. I must say that this past week Pope Francis did go a long way in expressing the essence of the Christian Religion, which includes concern for animals and seeing all of creation as holy. However he completely fails to give women the 50 percent place they deserve in all functions, including being priests and eventually becoming a pope – which means papa or father – thus giving the world a mamma.
What is religion?
If I am to talk about religion, then a description is needed. I was brought up in a family which saw life as religion and was exposed to sermons in a staunch Calvinistic setting. For my first 45 years of life this meant going to church twice on Sunday. One sermon was always on the Heidelberg Catechism (dated from the 17th century), a series based on 52 Sundays and 129 questions and answers. The very first question of Lord’s Day 1 is: What is your only comfort in life and in death” The answer: That I am not my own but belong – body and soul, in life and death – to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
I still see the Reformed tradition as having the greatest potential for developing an all-encompassing creational life-style in preparation for the re-appearing of the Lord.
Karen Armstrong has written a lot on Religion. She is a former nun (Roman Catholic) who has become a well-regarded author. Here is a quote from one of her articles.
“But perhaps we should ask, instead, how it came about that we in the west developed our view of religion as a purely private pursuit, essentially separate from all other human activities, and especially distinct from politics…. Secularism has become so natural to us that we assume it emerged organically, as a necessary condition of any society’s progress into modernity. Yet it was in fact a distinct creation, which arose as a result of a peculiar concatenation of historical circumstances; we may be mistaken to assume that it would evolve in the same fashion in every culture in every part of the world.
“We now take the secular state so much for granted that it is hard for us to appreciate its novelty, since before the modern period, there were no “secular” institutions and no “secular” states in our sense of the word. Their creation required the development of an entirely different understanding of religion, one that was unique to the modern west. No other culture has had anything remotely like it, and before the 18th century, it would have been incomprehensible even to European Catholics. The words in other languages that we translate as “religion” invariably refer to something vaguer, larger and more inclusive. The Arabic word din signifies an entire way of life, and the Sanskrit dharma covers law, politics, and social institutions as well as piety. The Hebrew Bible has no abstract concept of “religion”; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to define faith in a single word or formula, because the Talmud was expressly designed to bring the whole of human life into the ambit of the sacred (I underlined that). The Oxford Classical Dictionary firmly states: “No word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the English ‘religion’ or ‘religious’.” In fact, the only tradition that satisfies the modern western criterion of religion as a purely private pursuit is Protestant Christianity, which, like our western view of “religion”, was also a creation of the early modern period.
“The prophets of Israel had harsh words for those who assiduously observed the temple rituals but neglected the plight of the poor and oppressed. Jesus’s famous maxim to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” was not a plea for the separation of religion and politics. Nearly all the uprisings against Rome in first-century Palestine were inspired by the conviction that the Land of Israel and its produce belonged to God, so that there was, therefore, precious little to “give back” to Caesar. When Jesus overturned the money-changers’ tables in the temple, he was not demanding a more spiritualised religion. For 500 years, the temple had been an instrument of imperial control and the tribute for Rome was stored there. Hence for Jesus it was a “den of thieves”. The bedrock message of the Qur’an is that it is wrong to build a private fortune but good to share your wealth in order to create a just, egalitarian and decent society. Gandhi would have agreed that these were matters of sacred import: “Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”
So far my quote of Ms. Armstrong.
So what is religion?
Religion, as I have underlined in the Armstrong article, really means that the whole of human life lies into the ambit of the sacred. There is no sacred and secular. So when I quote the Heidelberg Catechism and the answer to question 1 “That I am not my own but belong – body and soul, in life and death – to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, then I have to see that in the context of the totality of my life. Belonging to Jesus Christ means abiding by his teaching. There is no more compact statement concerning this than in John 3: 16, those so well-known words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son who by his death bought all of creation back from the great usurper, the current Prince of this world, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” (My free translation).
That the Evil one and not God rules the world at this moment became again eminently plain this past week when VW – Volkswagen – was caught cheating on exhausts, poisoning the air for greater market share. Jesus came to set the world right. That is the basic message of Christianity which will only happen when he returns. If I want to belong to Jesus Christ body and soul, then my total life has to be devoted to love the world, not as it is today, but as it ought to be. Pope Francis, visiting the highest polluting nation in the world on a per capita basis, personifies that message more than most other church leaders today.
The USA is the most Christian of nations, yet those vying for the post to represent the Republican Party in the next presidential election say that the Pope is wrong when he mentions the economy. He should stick to ‘religion’, a clear indication that religion has no place in business or politics.
Harold Bloom, distinguished professor at Yale and America’s foremost literary critic, in his The American Religion writes that “We (Americans) think we are a Christian nation, but we are not. We are American Gnostics, believers in a pre-Christian tradition of individual divinity. The American self stands outside creation.” No wonder what presents itself as Christian has nothing to do with Christ. In that sense America is a pagan country.
By and large Christianity is no longer a religion but it has become a cult, grossly distorting the Bible and seeing nature as something to be exploited. The Pope cannot change the hearts and minds of the people. Luther said, quoting Romans 5: “It is by grace that we are saved.” Good works alone cannot save us.
So what about Islam?
Islam was born around the year 500-600 A.D. This religion sprouted in a totally different climate, mostly desert, and among different people, the Arabs, supposedly the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham by his concubine, Hagar. There where the merciless sun burns, there, in the endless deserts of Arabia, new religious ideas were developed which became the nucleus of this world religion. Islam adopted several elements from other religions, ranging from Judaism to Paganism, from Christianity to Eastern philosophy. For Islam the existence of the one and only god forms the cornerstone of its entire belief system. Allah alone is the all-powerful Authority. Who can challenge Allah? Who can question why Allah has created the world the way it is? We cannot but fear and worship him as the One and Only God.
And what about redemption in Islam? When we surrender ourselves wholeheartedly to Allah, then we can be assured that our road to eternal bliss is assured. This surrender involves the keeping of the five all important religious duties: confession of faith, prayer, the giving of alms, fasting and the pilgrim trek to Mecca where just last week more than 700 people were crushed to death among the 2 million attending this religious routine. Mohammed himself is no more than the bringer of the message, the prophet who has proclaimed the truth. He is not the only prophet, not the first one, but he is the last and the most important one, the prophet par eminence.
It is typical that this religious approach to deliverance is by means of knowledge. Only the truth, the system of thought, sets free. Because once humans possess the truth and make it their own, they can fit it into their lives, suit it their way and even choose another path, a better one. Islam teaches that the prophet alone preaches the truth and offers the possibility of salvation. Muslims must apply this truth in their daily lives. By following the outlines they must deliver themselves and find the way toward salvation. In other words, they are justified in saying that they can redeem themselves if they only apply that truth, follow the way to truth and then they are on the way to salvation.
Where do Christians and Muslims differ?
In short Muslims can redeem themselves by following the rules. Christianity experiences the misery, the bankruptcy of life at a far deeper level, reason why it sees redemption completely different from any other religion. Is it sufficient for us when we know the truth, when the road to salvation has been prescribed for us? No, because Christianity doesn’t work that way. I may be able to know exactly where to go but inside me there is a force that always pushes me to do evil. “The good I know I do not do” says the Bible. The evil we do is not a mere matter of understanding, not an instance of ignorance, or some sort of deviation. There is much more that need to change in us, because the bankruptcy of our lives comes in three forms. We lack the knowledge, the insight into the truth. We also lack the peace, the true justice, the harmonious attitude to God. Finally we also lack the holiness, the will to do good. To be truly free we must surrender the entire structure of our existence: our redemption must be threefold, just as our misery is threefold.
That is the Reformed vision, now mainly absent in the world. With Islam all of life is religion. In contemporary Christianity, with some exceptions, there is a definite split between nature and grace, so typical of the Lutheran and Roman Catholic systems. Bonhoeffer has seen that heresy and has by and large corrected it. Pope Francis also is on the way to remedy that situation, even though he still sees women as unfit for official ecclesiastical office bearers and still has no vision of the Kingdom to come and sees the church as the kingdom. I imagine, given time, he will allow male priests to marry.
I am sorry to conclude that, if religion can be defined as a total way of life, then Islam is a religion, and I must respect that, even though I disagree with it. At the same time much of what goes under the label of Christianity is not a religion but a cult, a distortion of the truth because it lacks total comprehension. Why? It uses the Bible as a talisman, sees the written word only as holy, while often abusing God’s primary word, creation.
I also must say that in today’s society it has become impossible to live the total Christian life. We only can humbly confess this and pray for forgiveness while trying the best we can. To my shame I must confess that I drive a diesel car.
Next week: Is Capitalism a religion?