Category Archives: Contemporary Issues

What Do Muslims Believe About God?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, World Religions, , , , , , , , , , ,

The word Allah is the Arabic word for God, the word used both by Arabic-speaking Christians before the birth of Mohammed, and by Arabic-speaking Christians today. To a devout Muslim, Allah is in many ways similar to the Christian God. Allah is holy, just, infinite, and all-knowing. Jews, too, worship a holy, infinitely powerful God, and share Christian respect for the Old Testament.

The Qur’an portrays God as a just and merciful judge, but doesn’t teach that human sin and distress cause Him suffering 1 . It emphasizes the incomprehensibility of God more than His holiness2 and love 3 .

Christians believe that biblical revelation is progressive 4 , fulfilled in Christ. Although the Old Testament describes God’s supreme love ( Exodus 34:6 ; Psalm 86:5; 103:13 ; Isaiah 49:14-18 ; Jeremiah 31:10-20 ; Ezekiel 34:22-31 ; Micah 7:18-20 ; Hosea 2:14-16 ) at times its portrayal of God is troubling. With the coming of Jesus and the gospel, Christians have the peace that comes with understanding the means by which God offers mercy and forgiveness to His children. In Jesus, God took human form (John 1:14.). Through Jesus we know the infinite, holy God as “Abba,” our “heavenly Father.”

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. (Colossians 1:15-20 NKJV)

For Christians, God’s most loving self-revelation is in His Lamb (Genesis 22:8 ; John 1:36 ; 1 Peter 1:19-20 ) through whom God’s love for the human race was expressed in human form ( Acts 17:3 ; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 ; Hebrews 2:8-10 ).

God’s suffering and grief at human sin and His love for the lost and rebellious begins in the Old Testament ( Jeremiah 3:1 ; Hosea 3:1 ; Ezekiel 34:12 ) resulting in His relationship with a sinful race ( Hebrews 4:15 ; John 10:11 ). It was expressed vividly in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son ( Luke 15:11-31 ) and the Gospel descriptions of Peter denying his Lord.

The Christian God loves even the lost and the rebellious, and sacrifices Himself for hopeless sinners. ( Romans 5:8 ). The Christian God is the initiator of the relationship between Himself and our sinful race ( Isaiah 53:6 ; John 10:11 ; 1 Peter 2:24 ).

  1. According to Islam our sins cannot offend our Creator. God stands too far above us to be directly concerned by our disobedience. When we commit sin we wrong ourselves; God remains unaffected. The following references are from the Qur’an: “Whoever transgresses God’s bounds does evil to himself” (65.1; cf. 2:57; 7:160; 18:35; 35:32; 37:113). Our guilt lies only in our disobedience to our Lord’s commandments. From the biblical point of view, however, sin is not just a transgression of God’s law but an offence against God himself (Psalm 51:4; Luke 15:18, 21. Sin affects God personally and does not leave him indifferent. (The Prophet and the Messiah, Chawkat Moucarry, IVP, pp. 99-100) Back To Article
  2. In the Christian view, God sees sin with such seriousness that He alone is able to provide its remedy. The God worshiped by Christians is embodied in the Lamb of God—the Messiah. Jesus reveals the intensity of God’s concern for the human race. This is a continuation of the theme of God’s suffering and grief at human sin and unbelief that is found in the Old Testament (Judges 10:16; Isaiah 40:11; 53; Jeremiah 3:1; Hosea 3:1). Back To Article
  3. Muslims do not see God as their father or, equivalently, themselves as the children of God. Men are servants of a just master; they cannot, in orthodox Islam, typically attain any greater degree of intimacy with their creator. (Shabbir Akhtar, A Faith For All Seasons, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 1990, p. 180) Back To Article
  4. Christians view biblical revelation as progressive. That is, as we proceed from God’s earliest word to us in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) and continue through the historical books, the books of poetry, and the prophetic books, we see that God reveals more and more of His nature and His will to man. The patriarchs, statesmen, poets, and prophets of the Old Testament did not have a clear understanding of the redemption that was to be offered on their behalf through the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not even have a clear understanding of the nature of life after death. However, as God progressively revealed more and more of His nature to the men of Old Testament times, He did make it clear that His greatest revelation was to come in His Messiah. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, revealed God’s nature to us perfectly in the form of a human being. In Jesus Christ (the Greek term Christ actually has the same meaning as the Hebrew term Messiah—”anointed one”) we have become aware of God’s love and grace in a manner not possible during past ages. Back To Article
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Why Is It Hard for Muslims to Believe in Christ as Savior?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, World Religions, , , , , , , , , , ,

Islam was founded during an epoch when the weakened remnant of the Roman Empire had been “Christianized.” However the official Christian church was largely under the control of a corrupt and decadent empire and became associated with its evil deeds.

Further, the church had become the sponsor of idolatry. Many “sacred” objects, such as bones of saints and relics of the cross, were considered to have magical powers. Although the objects themselves were usually of questionable authenticity, church leaders exploited them to manipulate the superstitious masses.

When Mohammed observed the church and the “Christian” rulers of his day, he saw that they violated the very principles they claimed to uphold. Considering the flagrant corruption and idolatry of the Christian world, it isn’t surprising that he and other early leaders of Islam assumed that every aspect of Christianity, including its Scriptures and key doctrines, was corrupt.

As Muslim armies swept through “Christian” lands they found that they were often welcomed as liberators. The astonishing speed of their conquests, along with their conviction that they were restoring the pure monotheism of the Bible, gave them even more confidence that their mission was God-ordained and blessed.

In more recent times the nominally Christian nations of the West have established political and military dominance over the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia. Again, association with the often violent and exploitive policies of “Christian” colonial powers sullied the image of Christ. Further, in recent years the decadent values of Western secularism have disrupted the lives of Muslim people who had lived in relative harmony with their beliefs for hundreds of years.1

Today, just as few Christians are familiar with the Koran, many Muslims are unacquainted with the Bible. If they live in a Muslim society, all they are likely to hear about the Bible and Christian doctrine are misleading distortions based largely on cultural memories of conflict with the Western world.2

1. Conservative Christians are painfully aware of many of the negative effects of secularism in the modern world, including the breakdown of family life, the glorification of immorality, and the legalization of abortion. It is important to consider the negative effects of the massive influence of Western culture in the past century.

“Historically, over many decades, Christianity and Judaism made their own accommodations with modernity. The process produced further divisions and differences among them: liberal, fundamentalist, and evangelical Protestantism; orthodox, conservative, reform, and reconstructionist Judaism; orthodox or traditionalist and liberal Catholicism. Catholicism was for some time a distant third to Protestantism and Judaism in dealing with modernity. Until the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, pontiffs had condemned much of modernity — including modern biblical criticism, democracy, pluralism, and women’s rights. Despite change, all of the children of Abraham continue to struggle with modernity. The global resurgence of religion is driven by a desire of many well-educated believers of different faiths to rethink and reevaluate the relationship of religion to modernity. Many question the excesses of modernity, trying to reassert a faith and values that limit the unbridled use of science and technology, the sexual freedoms that weaken family life, the emphasis on individual rights rather than on responsibilities, or the accumulation and maldistribution of wealth.” pp. 123-124, Unholy War, Terror in the Name of Islam by John L. Esposito (Oxford University Press) Back To Article

2. Further, it is an unfortunate fact that in most nations with Muslim majorities, conversion to faith in Christ results in extreme social ostracism, or even in imprisonment or execution. “At birth, a person is marked either Moslem or non-Moslem depending on one’s descent. One’s religion is therefore marked on his or her birth certificate, identity card, and/or passport. Furthermore, a non-Moslem can easily become a Moslem, but not the reverse. This is why there are unknown visible churches of Moslem converts to Christianity. Converts do exist, but they are in small numbers, meeting secretly.” (Billy Kim, President of the Baptist World Alliance) Back To Article

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What Does New Age Religion Teach?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, World Religions, , , , ,

The New Age movement is a broad, social, spiritual, and intellectual movement based on the religious philosophy of the Far East. The people of the Far East have long been pantheistic in their understanding of reality. In other words, they believe that God is in all things, and that (in a sense) all things are divine, a part of God. This viewpoint allows people to define God in whatever manner they wish, an approach to religion that is very popular in our self-centered, individualistic culture.

One especially dangerous aspect of the New Age movement is the way it lends new meanings to traditional Christian terminology. Just as Hinduism has been able to assimilate all of the religious traditions in India, the pantheistic New Age movement is capable of deceiving many unwary Westerners.

New Age religion often utilizes altered states of consciousness to provide the existential basis for a satanic new faith. The widespread “recreational” use of psychoactive drugs has undoubtedly done much to stimulate interest in New Age mysticism during recent decades. For people who have been living as nominal Christians in a wasteland of materialism and scientific rationalism, the obviously spiritual, experiential side of New Age theology is powerfully seductive.

Two of the best books on the topic are A Crash Course On The New Age by Elliot Miller and The New Age Cult by Walter Martin.

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Is Anyone Today Living Under a Curse Because of Ham’s Sin?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Contemporary Issues, , , , ,

Racists have used the account of Noah’s drunkenness and his son Ham’s disrespectful behavior to claim that the descendants of Ham are inferior to those of Japheth and Shem, and are destined to be their servants. This view is based on the facts that “Cush” (one of the sons of Ham) is a word that means “black,” and that Noah said that Canaan would be “a servant of servants” to the descendants of Shem and Japheth.

When we look at this passage, however, we can easily see that the idea that people of African descent are living under a curse and destined to be the slaves of other peoples is baseless.

The passage says that Ham observed Noah’s “nakedness” while his father lay drunken and uncovered in his tent ( Genesis 9:21-22 ). The Hebrew expression for saw the nakedness of his father literally means “looked with satisfaction upon the nakedness of his father.” 1 We don’t know exactly what occurred, although it is clear that Ham didn’t behave with an appropriate degree of respect.

Regardless of the exact nature of Ham’s sin, Noah’s declaration, “Cursed be Canaan” doesn’t refer to all of Canaan’s sons. The three older brothers of Canaan — Cush, Mizraim, and Put ( Genesis 10:6 ) — are not mentioned. Further, Noah’s words “cursed be Canaan” may have been more a statement of fact than an actual curse — although Noah did predict that Canaan would be the servant of Shem and Japheth. 2 Perhaps Ham and his youngest son already displayed an inclination for moral depravity that foreshadowed the behavior of Canaan’s descendants.

In other words, it is unlikely that that a Holy God would arbitrarily curse Canaan and his descendants perpetually because of his father’s sin. 3 It is more likely that his character already contained the flaw that would be expressed in the degeneracy of the Canaanites ( Genesis 19:5 ; Leviticus 18,20 ; Deuteronomy 7:1-5; 12:31 ).

In summary, there is no basis for associating the ancient Canaanites with the descendants of the other sons of Ham. Even less should they be associated with present-day Palestinians or any other modern group. (See the ATQ article, Who Are the Palestinians?)

  1. Interestingly, Leviticus 18:8 and Leviticus 20:11 refer to “uncovering a man’s nakedness” in sexual terms. If a son has sexual relations with a stepmother he has “uncovered his father’s nakedness.” Back To Article
  2. The expression servant of servants is a Hebrew superlative, which has the idea of “lowest of slaves.” The New Bible Commentary has this explanation:

    This curse may have its fulfillment in the later subjection of the Canaanites by Israel ( Genesis 9:26 ), or it may be religious in its significance. The phrase stands for the most abject slavery, and compared with the spiritual blessings of Shem, with which Canaan’s curse is here contrasted, what could be more abject than the idolatrous superstition by which the Canaanite peoples were enslaved? Back To Article

  3. Exodus 20:5 restricts punishment of those who hate God to only the third and fourth generation, and elsewhere Scripture declares ( Deuteronomy 24:16 , Ezekiel 18:20 ) that God doesn’t hold children accountable for their fathers’ sins. If children commit the same sins as their fathers, they will be punished in the same way. This doesn’t involve some kind of “curse,” but the natural consequences of evil behavior.
    The expression “of them that hate me” indicates that children tend to follow the pattern of their parents. The actions of the parents influence the children toward evil, and the fear of these later consequences may have a healthy check on the conduct of the parents. (By way of contrast, evil conduct affects only three or four generations while the consequences of godliness will extend much further — see Exodus 20:6 .) Back To Article
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