[Before I go on to the body of this post, a much greater concern demands attention: Please say a prayer for the survivors of the mudslide on Leyte island in the Philippines. There's no telling what grief they're going through or how many miracles may yet be wrought as answers to our prayers.]
One of the things of "liberal" Christian theology is that it sometimes views the Scriptures as metaphors chronicling people's religious experience throughout time. Today, then, these metaphors allow us to understand and express our own subjective experiences and thoughts about God. In his newest book, popular Emergent pastor Rob Bell writes this about Adam and Eve:
Is the greatest truth about Adam and Eve and the fruit that it happened, or that it happens? This story . . . is true for us because it is our story. We have all taken the fruit. We have all crossed boundaries. . . . This is why the Bible loses its power for so many communities. They fall into the trap of thinking that the Bible is just about things that happened a long time ago.*
Now I agree that the Bible isn't simply about things that happened long ago, because a lot of it is still happening, chiefly, Old Testament prophecies about the Day of the Lord are coming true right now, for the Messiah has come and is coming soon. But Bell is flat-out wrong when he writes that biblical records are true because they match our experiences.
This year, I'm learning not to expect anything as far as my "walk with the Lord" goes. I've found little but daily shovelfuls of sin and dirt in my life, and I've "felt" or "experienced" the Spirit less than ever before. But God is faithfully bringing me up out of the mire of a lot of bad theology that says that what we experience or feel really matters in Christian faith. It's not that our religious feelings or experiences are to be ignored; in fact, many of them are directly produced by the Holy Spirit in our lives for the glory of God. We must understand all of our feelings and experiences in light of Scripture and the God who is with us. But when we let our faith and hope fix attention upon ourselves like that, I can only find room for despair most of the time.
I've never liked Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. I don't know why; something just grates me about it. But reading it through again, I'm seeing how much these downright human (i.e., sinful) Corinthians are given encouragement from things external and objective to themselves. The whole first chapter is about their hope from a salvation that had and yet has nothing to do with their experience of Christ or their earthly progress in holiness. Paul sees that it's all based entirely on prior, present, and future things of God, many of which (with regrets to Rob Bell) "happened a long time ago": God's choice, his calling, and the work of Jesus Christ.
In 1:2 he says the sinners at Corinth "have been sanctified in Christ Jesus" (past perfect tense!) and are "called as holy" (kletois hagiois). Then he tells them that the Lord Jesus "will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:8). Why? Because God called them into fellowship with his Son (1:9). Then he goes on and mentions in their salvation nothing about their merit or experience or feeling or sinlessness, but God's choice (1:27, 28) and calling (1:24, 26). Then he says that being in Christ is God's doing and that Christ "became to us [conveying both past action and externality] wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1:30).
The beautiful and biblical fact is that the Bible is actually about a lot of things "that happened a long time ago," things upon which we can build a sure and solid hope. When the Word of God becomes mere metaphor for my own experience, I have no hope. And I can't worship, because all I really have to worship is myself. (I mean, if it's only metaphor and poetry and image, how can any of that even confirm that God actually exists?) Perhaps we should turn to the words of a wise German pastor from seventy years ago:
It is not in our life that God's help and presence must still be proved, but rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day. Our salvation is "external to ourselves." If find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ. . . .
What we call our life, our troubles, our guilt is by no means all of reality; there in the Scriptures is our life, our need, our guilt, and our salvation. Because it pleased God to act for us there, it is only there that we shall be saved.**
_____________________________
*Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 58-9.
**Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 54.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Decisions (some random thoughts)
Wow, it's nearly March already! And although it's likely I won't be leaving here until late July, the clock is ticking -- the clock counting down how much time I've got to figure out what I'm going to do next, that is. As I see it I've got four too many options: (1) spend another year here in Istanbul; (2a) intern at Michigan State for a year; (2b) intern in Freiburg, Germany; (3a) teach chemistry and physics at International Gateway Academy here in Istanbul; (3b) try to find a teaching job back in Michigan, preferably in the greater Lansing or Grand Rapids areas.
Sometimes I almost envy my Turkish friends nearing graduation. Their one-sided educations and poor local economy pretty much pare down their job options: miraculously get a job in your field (which was determined by a standardized test), or do some useless, menial job working for one of your distant family members. Whatever happened to the days when I would simply inherit my father's trade of building barrels or shoeing horses?
(1) Giving Turkish people a viable opportunity to learn about Jesus Christ is important--and fun. And really, I can't escape the biblical passages about "frontier missions". I do enjoy a lot of the students I meet here, and I really will miss my friend Hamdi. But there's always a dissonance between what I'm doing and what I feel like I should be doing with myself. I can't pinpoint it, but being a worker in Turkey just doesn't seem 'right' for me, whatever that's supposed to mean.
(2) Part of my wishes, should I continue in some sort of full-time, vocational ministry is that I be able to share Christ through God's Word with believers, preferably younger ones (as if I'm actually mature myself). I really enjoyed doing that my senior year in Wilson Hall at MSU and last year with international students. Being at MSU would allow this and a fuller picture of ministry experiences, but for some reason Freiburg popped into my head as well. I really like Germany, and I'm confident I could re-learn German pretty quickly.
(3) Every now and then I find my thoughts back in the miry realm of education. I really did enjoy teaching last year, as incredibly time-consuming and challenging as it was. If I do teach, I'd greatly prefer the realm of high school biology (and maybe a little chem, too). The thought about teaching in Turkey is rather daunting, because I'd be teaching a new subject (physics) with no one else to fall back on.
I think that right now I'm leaning toward teaching next year, but that may prove to be extremely difficult if I don't get back into the States until late July or early August. I sometimes find myself erroneously thinking that it's workers in the "10/40 window" who take the gospel the most seriously, and that I can't justify teaching or some vocational ministry in the States while there are still 70 million Turks who haven't heard the truth about Jesus and grace. But Paul writes, "Whatever you do . . . you are serving the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23, 24). Yeah, I cut some stuff out between those phrases, but this is how the grammar flows.
But sometimes a small voice in my head tells me to spend time learning to live as someone serious about the gospel in the ordinary, mundane realm of living and teaching in Michigan.* It's easier for me to take sharing the gospel more seriously while living "on the edge" here in Turkey, but do I know what it means to be a witness of the kingship (basileia) of God when my sole occupation isn't to share the gospel? And if the Holy Spirit is to redeem all of the world one day, what does it look like to have redeemed public education? Or is that out of the scope of his present work? No! Wow, I feel like I should go unearth the tomes written by Calvin and Luther (and Gene Vieth, perhaps -- anybody?) on glorifying God with all of our callings in life: father and friend, pastor and pupil, janitor and butcher.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
___________________________________
*Of worthy but rather unrelated note, Pastor Kevin at URC, preaching about Onesimus the slave's return to Colosse ("Tychicus, Onesimus, and Undying Love", Ephesians 6:21-24), said that to show a real change in life you have to show it where it counts most: in the relationships and environment of home.
Sometimes I almost envy my Turkish friends nearing graduation. Their one-sided educations and poor local economy pretty much pare down their job options: miraculously get a job in your field (which was determined by a standardized test), or do some useless, menial job working for one of your distant family members. Whatever happened to the days when I would simply inherit my father's trade of building barrels or shoeing horses?
(1) Giving Turkish people a viable opportunity to learn about Jesus Christ is important--and fun. And really, I can't escape the biblical passages about "frontier missions". I do enjoy a lot of the students I meet here, and I really will miss my friend Hamdi. But there's always a dissonance between what I'm doing and what I feel like I should be doing with myself. I can't pinpoint it, but being a worker in Turkey just doesn't seem 'right' for me, whatever that's supposed to mean.
(2) Part of my wishes, should I continue in some sort of full-time, vocational ministry is that I be able to share Christ through God's Word with believers, preferably younger ones (as if I'm actually mature myself). I really enjoyed doing that my senior year in Wilson Hall at MSU and last year with international students. Being at MSU would allow this and a fuller picture of ministry experiences, but for some reason Freiburg popped into my head as well. I really like Germany, and I'm confident I could re-learn German pretty quickly.
(3) Every now and then I find my thoughts back in the miry realm of education. I really did enjoy teaching last year, as incredibly time-consuming and challenging as it was. If I do teach, I'd greatly prefer the realm of high school biology (and maybe a little chem, too). The thought about teaching in Turkey is rather daunting, because I'd be teaching a new subject (physics) with no one else to fall back on.
I think that right now I'm leaning toward teaching next year, but that may prove to be extremely difficult if I don't get back into the States until late July or early August. I sometimes find myself erroneously thinking that it's workers in the "10/40 window" who take the gospel the most seriously, and that I can't justify teaching or some vocational ministry in the States while there are still 70 million Turks who haven't heard the truth about Jesus and grace. But Paul writes, "Whatever you do . . . you are serving the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23, 24). Yeah, I cut some stuff out between those phrases, but this is how the grammar flows.
But sometimes a small voice in my head tells me to spend time learning to live as someone serious about the gospel in the ordinary, mundane realm of living and teaching in Michigan.* It's easier for me to take sharing the gospel more seriously while living "on the edge" here in Turkey, but do I know what it means to be a witness of the kingship (basileia) of God when my sole occupation isn't to share the gospel? And if the Holy Spirit is to redeem all of the world one day, what does it look like to have redeemed public education? Or is that out of the scope of his present work? No! Wow, I feel like I should go unearth the tomes written by Calvin and Luther (and Gene Vieth, perhaps -- anybody?) on glorifying God with all of our callings in life: father and friend, pastor and pupil, janitor and butcher.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
___________________________________
*Of worthy but rather unrelated note, Pastor Kevin at URC, preaching about Onesimus the slave's return to Colosse ("Tychicus, Onesimus, and Undying Love", Ephesians 6:21-24), said that to show a real change in life you have to show it where it counts most: in the relationships and environment of home.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Sevgililer Gününüz kutlu olsun!
Or for those of you reading this who don't speak Turkish -- probably all of you -- Happy Valentine's Day! At our team prayer time yesterday morning, we sang this hymn called "Thy Mercy, my God". I like it so much because it is so true.
Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart, and the boast of my tongue;
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affections and bound my soul fast.
Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here;
Sin would reduce me to utter despair;
But, though Thy free goodness, my spirits revive,
And He that first made me still keeps me alive.
Thy mercy is more than match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its hardness depart;
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I've found.
Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own,
And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son;
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine.
The first two lines of the third stanza, "Thy mercy is more than match for my heart / Which wonders to feel its hardness depart," are so true to me. I know that my heart is sinful, sick, and weak in faith, craving the fleeting shadows of this world more than the Savior who purchased me by his blood and whose splendor knows no limits. But then, while reading the epilogue to John Piper's The Pleasures of God, I happened upon the following statement about the blessings of heaven that overcome our dull visions of God: "The great hope of all the holiest people is not only that they might see the glory of God, but that they might somehow be given a new strength to savor it with infinite satisfaction--not the partial delights of this world, but, if possible, with the very infinite delight of God himself." *
In John 17:26, Jesus prays what I have so often skipped over, but it's the answer to all of this: "I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (italics mine). There is no greater love for God the Son and delight in him than that of his Father's own love and delight. And there is no one who more joyfully and strongly sees and treasures the Father than the Son. For they are both One, with love and joy flowing between them in the person of the Spirit. And, according to Jesus' prayer, this will be the very love with which we will one day have for God! We will know and love God as surely as Jesus does ("so that ... I [may be] in them") and love Jesus as surely dear as his Father above ("so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them"). But before that comes the remainder of our lives, lived in an embrace of the cross. For the Father's love for us, his chosen sinners, and the Son's love for his holy Father's glory meet therein.
"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10)
_____________
* John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God, 2nd ed. (Sisters, Ore: Multnomah, 2000), 311.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Church without the Cross?
I have no intentions of wasting words rehashing what's already been said by Be Strong in the Grace. But since I think it's so aptly put, I wanted you to read it yourselves in her latest post.
Church is not about coffee, comfort, catchy music, or feeling better about yourself. It's about God-come-down-to-us and God-bringing-us-up in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And that means the cross, the fulcrum upon which history pivots. So what are churches doing without crosses these days? Do we celebrate the rock band on stage more Christ? Isn't that what it looks like when the front of the church is a stage without a cross?
But there is always mercy.
Church is not about coffee, comfort, catchy music, or feeling better about yourself. It's about God-come-down-to-us and God-bringing-us-up in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And that means the cross, the fulcrum upon which history pivots. So what are churches doing without crosses these days? Do we celebrate the rock band on stage more Christ? Isn't that what it looks like when the front of the church is a stage without a cross?
But there is always mercy.
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Thy kingdom come!
I've recently been reading through sections of George Eldon Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament, largely because Ladd is known as one of the foremost theologians on the kingdom of God and inaugurated eschatology, that is, the kingdom has arrived (Luke 11:20) but will not be consummated until the Second Advent of Christ. This meshes with a lot of what I've been thinking through as I've been studying Zechariah (warning: only do this if you want a time-consuming challenge). Much of the book, especially chapters 9-14, deal with God's coming to dwell in the midst of his covenant people, his restored and gathered remnant: " 'Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,' declares the LORD. 'Many nations will join themselves to the LORD in that day and will become My people. Then I will dwell in your midst . . . . Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for He is aroused from His holy habitation" (2:10-11, 13, emphasis mine).
It's that pesky phrase "in that day" that rings throughout Zechariah and the prophets, especially Isaiah, Joel, and Malachi. But when you take a close look at things that happen "in that day" or "the day of the LORD" or "the day of His coming", you notice that nothing fits any one point in time or some nice, neat order of events. Things happen, mostly centering on the coming of the messianic king (e.g., Zech. 9:9-10) and the the lasting restoration of God's chosen remnant and the judgment of their enemies. But Zechariah 9 is just confusing.
Verses 1-8 tell of God coming and kicking ass and taking names in a southward march from the intended northern boundary of the Promised Land (Num. 34) and on southward to the southern boundary in the Philistine cities. But Jerusalem is spared (v. 8). In a very real sense, this happened when Alexander fought his way southward, destroying Damascus and even the island stronghold of Tyre, but sparing Jerusalem on account of a dream he had (c. 330 B.C.). Then in vv. 9-10 our meek King Jesus comes "just and saved" and bringing peace to the world. But then in vv. 11-12 we have a call for exiles to return to Jerusalem and their God on account of God's triumphant coming in vv. 13-17. But wait a sec, didn't Jesus already come in vv. 9-10? And v. 13 (and possibly vv. 14-17 as well) seems to deal with the Maccabean revolt in 165 B.C., when the Jews revolted against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and reclaimed Jerusalem from oppressive control by the Greeks.
The point is this: all this stuff the Bible has to say about "the day of the LORD" cannot be confined to a single day or moment in time. It spans from Jesus' first coming to his second, and beyond that into the new heavens and new earth (Is. 65:17-25). But Zech. 9 even seems to testify that events preceding Jesus' coming fall into the Day somehow. How? Well, it seems to me that God's day is really the entirety of the breaking in of the heavenly reign of the Lord upon this earth. It is God tearing open the heavens and coming down (Is. 64:1). It is the heavenly Jerusalem coming down to dwell upon earth (Rev. 21:1-4). It is the nations flocking to Jerusalem--the church, that is, "the place where God's presence dwells, the intersection of heaven and earth."* It is the raising up of God's righteous Branch as a banner to whom the nations will flock as he draws them to himself and smashes all opposition (Is. 11:10; John 12:31-32). But it is not to be separated from the things in which God's hand acts to pave the way for his Messiah, as seen by Zech. 9. And it is the right now indwelling of God within his people, that is, eternal life (John 14:16-23). "The presence of the divine life becomes the inexhaustible source of creaturely life, which thereby becomes the life that is eternal."**
"The eschaton is neither the future of time nor timeless eternity. It is God's coming and his arrival."*** That is to say, God has come in the Incarnation of Christ Jesus and is continually coming into his creation as he is incarnate in us as his living testaments to his gracious and just reign and conduits of his blessing to the nations. "God . . . was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles" (Gal. 1:15-16; cf. 4:19). Lord, may your Spirit fill us with your heart and your pleasure, to the end that your kingdom may come!
________________________
* Mark J. Boda, The NIV Application Commentary: Haggai, Zechariah (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 402.
** Juergen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996), 319.
*** Ibid., 22.
It's that pesky phrase "in that day" that rings throughout Zechariah and the prophets, especially Isaiah, Joel, and Malachi. But when you take a close look at things that happen "in that day" or "the day of the LORD" or "the day of His coming", you notice that nothing fits any one point in time or some nice, neat order of events. Things happen, mostly centering on the coming of the messianic king (e.g., Zech. 9:9-10) and the the lasting restoration of God's chosen remnant and the judgment of their enemies. But Zechariah 9 is just confusing.
Verses 1-8 tell of God coming and kicking ass and taking names in a southward march from the intended northern boundary of the Promised Land (Num. 34) and on southward to the southern boundary in the Philistine cities. But Jerusalem is spared (v. 8). In a very real sense, this happened when Alexander fought his way southward, destroying Damascus and even the island stronghold of Tyre, but sparing Jerusalem on account of a dream he had (c. 330 B.C.). Then in vv. 9-10 our meek King Jesus comes "just and saved" and bringing peace to the world. But then in vv. 11-12 we have a call for exiles to return to Jerusalem and their God on account of God's triumphant coming in vv. 13-17. But wait a sec, didn't Jesus already come in vv. 9-10? And v. 13 (and possibly vv. 14-17 as well) seems to deal with the Maccabean revolt in 165 B.C., when the Jews revolted against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and reclaimed Jerusalem from oppressive control by the Greeks.
The point is this: all this stuff the Bible has to say about "the day of the LORD" cannot be confined to a single day or moment in time. It spans from Jesus' first coming to his second, and beyond that into the new heavens and new earth (Is. 65:17-25). But Zech. 9 even seems to testify that events preceding Jesus' coming fall into the Day somehow. How? Well, it seems to me that God's day is really the entirety of the breaking in of the heavenly reign of the Lord upon this earth. It is God tearing open the heavens and coming down (Is. 64:1). It is the heavenly Jerusalem coming down to dwell upon earth (Rev. 21:1-4). It is the nations flocking to Jerusalem--the church, that is, "the place where God's presence dwells, the intersection of heaven and earth."* It is the raising up of God's righteous Branch as a banner to whom the nations will flock as he draws them to himself and smashes all opposition (Is. 11:10; John 12:31-32). But it is not to be separated from the things in which God's hand acts to pave the way for his Messiah, as seen by Zech. 9. And it is the right now indwelling of God within his people, that is, eternal life (John 14:16-23). "The presence of the divine life becomes the inexhaustible source of creaturely life, which thereby becomes the life that is eternal."**
"The eschaton is neither the future of time nor timeless eternity. It is God's coming and his arrival."*** That is to say, God has come in the Incarnation of Christ Jesus and is continually coming into his creation as he is incarnate in us as his living testaments to his gracious and just reign and conduits of his blessing to the nations. "God . . . was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles" (Gal. 1:15-16; cf. 4:19). Lord, may your Spirit fill us with your heart and your pleasure, to the end that your kingdom may come!
________________________
* Mark J. Boda, The NIV Application Commentary: Haggai, Zechariah (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 402.
** Juergen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996), 319.
*** Ibid., 22.
Monday, February 6, 2006
All who take up the sword shall perish by the sword
Unless you live under a rock, you've heard by now that (a) the Steelers have won Super Bowl XL in Dee-troit, and (b) some idiot cartoonist in Denmark made an inappropriate drawing of the prophet Muhammed, against which Muslims worldwide are protesting because icons of Muhammed are forbidden so as to prevent idol worship. (However, I attended a meeting of the Young Anatolian Society at which students chanted, "The name of Muhammed is beautiful; the person of Muhammed is beautiful.")
An imam stands by at the torching of the Danish embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.
Now for Muslims to be upset shouldn't come as a surprise; drawing one's chief holy man with a bomb on his head instead of a turban is quite inconsiderate. But for people who persistently claim that Islam (submission--supposedly to Allah) is a religion of peace and humility before God, their response comes as the real shocker. Now, there are a lot of Islamic organizations concerned for others' welfare, but some mandates from the Qur'an reveal the other side of Islam:
Fight in God's cause against those who fight you, but do not overstep the limits: God does not love those who overstep the limits. Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is more serious than killing [i.e., it's worse to be persecuted than to kill those who persecute you]. . . . Fight them until there is no more persecution, and [your] worship is devoted to God. (Al-Baqara, 2:190-191, 193)
Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not. . . . But to those who have believed, migrated, and striven for God's cause, it is they who can look forward to God's mercy: God is most forgiving and merciful. (Al-Baqara, 2:216, 218)
Many prophets have fought, with large bands of godly men alongside them who, in the face of their sufferings for God's cause, did not lose heart or weaken or surrender--God loves those who are steadfast. (Al 'Imram, 3:147)
Rioters burned the Danish consulate in Damascus, Syria.
The testimony of the Qur'an--allegedly from the same God who sent Jesus of Nazareth--is that while fighting of itself isn't good, when used to fight against and eradicate 'persecutors' for the sake of Allah and receiving his mercy, then it's not only virtuous, but demanded. This is hardly the biblical testimony--especially that of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount*:
You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven . . . . For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (Matthew 5:43-46)
Protestors here in Istanbul burning an effigy of the Danish prime minister.
Even when he was taken into custody and beaten and mocked, Jesus knew there was no place for retribution, malice, bitterness, or bloodshed (Matthew 26:51-54; Luke 22:38, 49-51; 1 Peter 2:23; cf. Romans 12:14-21; 1 Peter 2:18-25; 3:8-18; 4:12-19). And for those who know and trust in his cross, we know that only love and forgiveness have place in this life, through which God may lead some of our aggressors to his mercy. Others will be duly recompensed in hell. There is no injustice with God. "'But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:20-21).
So praise God that we who know Christ have a safe refuge in him, and that he has loved us even when we were his enemies, hostile to him (Luke 23:34; Romans 5:8; 8:7; Colossians 1:21). And pray that God would turn this situation for good, so that Muslims worldwide would grow disenchanted with Islam on account of this violence.
"My kingship is not of this world. If my kingship were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, my kingship is not of this realm" (John 18:36).
_____________________________
*For this reason, and in response to my previous post, I currently disagree with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's justification of an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. Though civil disobedience has its place, unified prayer and fasting are surely the answer as opposed to murder.
An imam stands by at the torching of the Danish embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.Fight in God's cause against those who fight you, but do not overstep the limits: God does not love those who overstep the limits. Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is more serious than killing [i.e., it's worse to be persecuted than to kill those who persecute you]. . . . Fight them until there is no more persecution, and [your] worship is devoted to God. (Al-Baqara, 2:190-191, 193)
Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not. . . . But to those who have believed, migrated, and striven for God's cause, it is they who can look forward to God's mercy: God is most forgiving and merciful. (Al-Baqara, 2:216, 218)
Many prophets have fought, with large bands of godly men alongside them who, in the face of their sufferings for God's cause, did not lose heart or weaken or surrender--God loves those who are steadfast. (Al 'Imram, 3:147)
Rioters burned the Danish consulate in Damascus, Syria.You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven . . . . For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (Matthew 5:43-46)
Protestors here in Istanbul burning an effigy of the Danish prime minister.Even when he was taken into custody and beaten and mocked, Jesus knew there was no place for retribution, malice, bitterness, or bloodshed (Matthew 26:51-54; Luke 22:38, 49-51; 1 Peter 2:23; cf. Romans 12:14-21; 1 Peter 2:18-25; 3:8-18; 4:12-19). And for those who know and trust in his cross, we know that only love and forgiveness have place in this life, through which God may lead some of our aggressors to his mercy. Others will be duly recompensed in hell. There is no injustice with God. "'But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:20-21).
So praise God that we who know Christ have a safe refuge in him, and that he has loved us even when we were his enemies, hostile to him (Luke 23:34; Romans 5:8; 8:7; Colossians 1:21). And pray that God would turn this situation for good, so that Muslims worldwide would grow disenchanted with Islam on account of this violence.
"My kingship is not of this world. If my kingship were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, my kingship is not of this realm" (John 18:36).
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*For this reason, and in response to my previous post, I currently disagree with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's justification of an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. Though civil disobedience has its place, unified prayer and fasting are surely the answer as opposed to murder.
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