83 Sermon Illustrations on Atrocity

For nearly thirty years, the phrase killing fields was synonymous with Cambodia. Between 1975 and 1979, the communist Khmer Rouge killed at least one million Cambodians in their attempt to reinvent their society.

The killing ended only with the Vietnamese invasion which drove the Khmer Rouge out of power and into the jungle. Now, some of them have re-emerged, bearing not guns, but Bibles, a reminder of how the Gospel can succeed where man cannot.

The attempt to eliminate religion was at the heart of the killing fields. For Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, religion was superstition and an impediment to his plans for a better Cambodia.

If Pol Pot were alive today, he would be shocked to read the headline in a recent edition of London's GUARDIAN newspaper: “Khmer Rouge Embraces Jesus.” According to the story, “at least two thousand” former Khmer Rouge soldiers “now worship Jesus.”

The town of Pailin in southwestern Cambodia is the center of this movement. As one pastor told the Guardian, 70 percent of the converts there are former Khmer Rouge. Many of them have testimonies similar to Thao Tanh. He said that “when I was a soldier I did bad things ... We were following orders and thought it was the right thing to do ... I read the Bible, and I know it will free me from the weight of the sins I have committed.”

The effects of the conversions transcend the merely personal. They have played an important role in bringing the Khmer Rouge “in from the cold” to help promote national unity.

The people of Pailin understand what many here in the West don't: Religion, especially Christianity, is an important part of a good and just society.

An example of how Westerners are ignorant of this was a recent interview of comedian and talk-show host Bill Maher. Speaking on the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Maher described what he called a “real dividing line between people of intelligence” and “people who are religious.” While he graciously acknowledged that some religious people, like poet T. S. Eliot, are intelligent, he called religion “a neurological disorder.”

In Maher's estimation, the “cure” for “this crazy, illogical thing” Christians call faith is to “really get therapy or take a pill.”

The problem with nonsense like this is that, as columnist James Lileks noted, Maher's words “resonate” with many of our elites. They might not put it as indelicately, but they also think that religion is something to be overcome on the way to their idea of a good society.

The Cambodians know better. They have experienced a real-world attempt to overcome religion which left millions dead in its wake. Now they are seeing how Christianity is helping to heal the wounds left by that attempt.

What's true in Cambodia is true elsewhere now and can be true elsewhere in the future. Remember that on November 14, the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Pray for both the persecuted and the persecutors, that God's amazing grace will continue to touch and transform them both.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Learn more about what you and your church or Bible study group can do on the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church: http://msg1svc.net/servlet/Gateway?p=pfm&u=7101&et=H&s=40730

• Jason Burke, “Khmer Rouge Embraces Jesus,” Guardian (London), 24 October 2004. See HolwickID #28532

• Mirand Leitsinger, “Conversion in Cambodia,” Holland Sentinel, 6 March 2004. See HolwickID #28533

• Lorenzo Fazzini, “Between salvation and gratitude, Christ in Cambodia,” Asia News, 20 October 2004.

• “Khmer Rouge: Christian baptism after massacres,” Asia News, 12 January 2004.

• “Bill Maher interview,” CBC Online, 22 October 2004. See HolwickID #28534

• Read James Lileks's comments on the Canadian Broadcasting Company interview with Bill Maher (scroll toward the middle of the post).

• Amy Argetsinger, “Homesick and Stalled at LAX,” Washington Post, 20 October 2004, A03.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040917, “Thinking about Vietnam: Hanoi and the Church.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040713, “Faithful unto Death: The Plight of Burmese Christians.”

• Learn more about what you can do to help persecuted Christians at Stand Today's website.

• Priya Abraham, “With Friends Like These,” World, 9 October 2004 (reprinted on BreakPoint Online).

• Kristin Wright, “Women and Children First,” BreakPoint Online, 7 November 2003.

• Nina Shea, In the Lion's Den (Broadman and Holman, 1997).

• Paul Marshall, Their Blood Cries Out (Word Books, 1997).

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The Boston Globe published two pieces pushing the prevailing assumption that the Bible and the Qur’an are equally likely to inspire those who believe in them to commit acts of violence — or to act benevolently: “The other good book“ on March 6, 2009, and “Dark passages: Does the harsh language in the Koran explain Islamic violence? Don’t answer till you’ve taken a look inside the Bible,” by Philip Jenkins on March 8.

Since almost everyone takes this for granted nowadays, it is odd that the Globe would think it necessary to shore it up with not one, but two pieces making this case. On the other hand, it is such a patently absurd and false proposition that, despite its popularity, it does need constant propping up.

Jenkins’s thesis, of course, is that since there are violent passages in the Bible as well as in the Qur’an, and yet Jews and Christians are not committing acts of violence and justifying them with reference to their holy texts, therefore Muslims who commit acts of violence and justify them with reference to their holy texts must actually be motivated by something else.

It’s a common view that many others have previously enunciated. When confronted with material from the Qur’an that calls upon Muslims to wage war against unbelievers, Islamic apologists and their non-Muslim allies frequently claim that such passages from have been “cherry-picked” from a holy book that teaches peace, and that they only seem to incite to violence when ripped out of context. Usually accompanying such claims is the assertion that the Bible is just as violent, if not more so, than the Qur’an. The Lutheran theologian Martin E. Marty has written disdainfully of “people who selectively quote the Qur’an to show how it commits Muslims to killing ‘us’ infidels.” He then goes on to enumerate numerous violent passages in the Bible, quipping: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’s God or Book, nor witness at all until thou comest clean on what thy book portrays, a holy warrior God.”

As Ralph Peters put it, “As a believing Christian, I must acknowledge that there’s nothing in the Koran as merciless as God’s behavior in the Book of Joshua.”

While not going as far as Peters’ assertion that the Bible is actually more violent than the Qur’an, Dinesh D’Souza suggests that the Qur’an and the Bible are at least equivalent in their capacity to incite violence: “the Koran, like the Old Testament, has a number of passages recommending peace and others celebrating the massacre of the enemies of God.” The problem is that some people focus on the wrong ones. He says: “I realize that you can fish out this passage or that passage and make it sound like the Muslims want to convert or kill everybody. But that would be like taking passages out of the Old Testament to make Moses sound like Hitler.” D’Souza even claims that Moses would have pursued an aggressive policy of religious imperialism, a la Islamic jihad, if he had had the chance: “Moses wasn’t exactly a believer in religious freedom. When he came down from the mountain and discovered the Israelites worshipping the golden calf he basically ordered a massacre. Don’t you think that if Moses could he would have imposed the laws of Yahweh on the whole world? Of course he would.”

But is all this really true? Are these two prominent conservative thinkers, who after all are only echoing a widespread opinion, right that the Bible and the Qur’an are at least roughly equivalent in their capacity to inspire violence?

This is an important question, for it goes to the heart of whether or not the actual teachings of either religion has anything to do with the violence committed in its name. After all, that is not a question that can be determined wholly by examining the historical record of each religion — for in every religious tradition the teachings of the religion are one thing and the way they are and have been lived out is quite another. No body of people has ever lived in complete fidelity to any set of principles, religious or otherwise, and there never will be such a group of people. Moreover, a central tenet of Christianity is that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). This is, as many have noted, one Christian dogma for which there is abundant empirical evidence: the dividing line between good and evil doesn’t run between one group and another, or one race and another, or one nation and another. Nor does it run between the adherents of one religion and those of another. It is said that the British writer and superlative wit G.K. Chesterton once responded to an invitation from the Times of London to write a piece about what is wrong with the world by writing: “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.” Chesterton wasn’t just being flip; he was expressing the fundamental Christian belief that the dividing line between good and evil actually runs through every human heart. With this as a core assumption, neither Christians nor anyone else should never be surprised by evil, even when it is perpetrated by Christians in the name of Christianity. That is the way human beings are.

Islam’s view of this is vastly different in some ways and identical in others. While acknowledging that any human being is capable of evil, the Qur’an says that Muslims are the “best of peoples” (3:110) while the unbelievers are the “vilest of creatures” (98:6). It is easy, if one takes such a worldview seriously, to see evil in others but have a harder time locating it in oneself. And that is indeed a recurring tendency in the Islamic world today — an unwillingness to engage in self-reflection and self-criticism, and to locate the source of all ills on a malignant outside force: “Zionists,” “the Great Satan,” and the like. Still, most Muslims, like most Christians, would acknowledge that the gap between theory and practice has sometimes been quite large, although that is an argument also made by jihadists, including those who in recent decades have spearheaded a revival of jihadist sentiment around the world by publishing material such as the tract “Jihad: the Forgotten Obligation.” In any case, the teachings of each religion — as those teachings have been understood by the mainstream sects of each faith — will make it clear whether those who claim to be acting in the name of Christianity and Islam have a creditable claim to do so in fact, or if they are actually transgressing against the teachings of the religion they are claiming to defend.

Joshua: God mandates ethnic cleansing?

So is Peters right that “there’s nothing in the Koran as merciless as God’s behavior in the Book of Joshua”? It certainly seems so. Besieging Jericho, Joshua announces that the city is “devoted to the LORD for destruction” (Joshua 6:17). When it falls, Joshua and his men “utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword” (6:21). And Joshua warned: “Cursed before the LORD be the man that rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho” (6:26).

Later God tells Joshua: “You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king,” except that this time they shouldn’t kill all the animals: “its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves” (8:2). Joshua complied: “When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them and all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the LORD which he commanded Joshua” (8:24-27). Joshua similarly kills all the inhabitants of a number of other cities: Makkedah (10:28); Libnah (10:29-30); Lachish (10:31-2); Eglon (10:34-5); Hebron (10:36-7); and Debir (10:38-9); as well as Madon, Shimron, Achshaph, and Hazor (11:10-11).

Nowhere in all this is there a hint of any disapproval on the part of the writer or anyone in the book. Instead, we are told that in carrying out these massacres Joshua was just being obedient to God: “So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded” (10:40).

Not just Joshua

Nor is the Book of Joshua the only apparently morally problematic portion of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Chris Hedges says in his book American Fascists that many Christians “often fail to acknowledge that there are hateful passages in the Bible that give sacred authority to the rage, self-aggrandizement and intolerance of the Christian Right.” The behavior of Joshua himself is rooted in earlier behavior, and other commands of the Lord. The Book of Numbers recounts that after the Israelites defeated the Midianites, they presented the captives and spoils of war to Moses. But the prophet “was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them, “˜Have you let all the women live?– He reminded them that these women had earlier caused the Israelites to “act treacherously against the LORD.” Consequently, Moses told his men: “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves” (31:14-18).

Later this command was extended to other enemies of the Israelites: “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2). God also tells the Israelites: “When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:10-17).

Besides passages apparently celebrating warfare and ethnic cleansing as sanctioned by almighty God, the books of Moses also contain other passages jarring to modern sensibilities. God commands, for example, that Sabbath-breakers be put to death: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Say to the people of Israel, You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; every one who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people’” (Exodus 31:12-14). So are idolaters. God tells Moses: “If there is found among you ... a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, in transgressing his covenant, and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it; then you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done in Israel, then you shall bring forth to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones” (Deuteronomy 17:2-5).

There is more. The Book of Exodus contains some brief guidelines for occasions in which “a man sells his daughter as a slave” (Exodus 21:7). And there is more, here and there, that has raised eyebrows not only in modern times but throughout history.

“Kill them all,” says the Lord?

But is the Bible really enjoining violence, both against nonbelievers and believers who commit sins deemed worthy of capital punishment? This question cannot be answered by an evaluation of the text alone, for that text does [not?] now and has never in history stood apart from the way believers have understood it and acted upon it. From that perspective, the arguments of Peters and D”Souza, and the many others who have said essentially the same thing, founder primarily upon one central fact: there are no armed Jewish or Christian groups anywhere in the world today who are committing acts of violence and justifying them by referring to these texts. Indeed, throughout history, these texts have never been taken as divine commands that either must be or may be put into practice by believers in a new age. All these passages, after all, are descriptive, not prescriptive. They nowhere command believers to imitate this behavior, or to believe under any circumstances that God wishes them to act as his instruments of judgment in any situation today.

Biblical scholars have posited several ways in which passages such as those in the Book of Joshua that appear to depict God transgressing against his own goodness can be understood by people of faith who believe that this material is divinely inspired. Some Biblical scholars have suggested that the Bible depicts a process of moral evolution — a gradual advance out of barbarism to the precepts of the Gospel. Others have adopted a posture of cultural relativism, arguing that what was acceptable for, or even incumbent upon, the Israelites in their particular time and place only applied to that time and place, not to all believers for all time. There are weaknesses in those and other such interpretations, but they reflect the fact that throughout history, rather than celebrating such biblical passages, Jews and Christians have regarded them as a problem to be solved. While interpretations of these passages differ widely among Jews and Christians, from the beginnings of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity one understanding has remained dominant among virtually all believers: these passages are not commands for all generations to follow, and if they have any applicability at all, it is only in a spiritualized, parabolic sense.

This is clear from popular Scriptural commentaries and other popular treatments of this material. The Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible says that “the physical destruction of the enemy in obedience to the deity” was “practiced much less than a reading of Joshua might suggest” — and in any case, “it must be seen in light of the imperfect stage of moral development reached at that time.” Likewise the Navarre Bible, a Roman Catholic commentary series prepared by the theology faculty of the University of Navarre in Spain, calls the instructions to destroy whole cities “a policy which to us seems quite incomprehensible, savage and inhuman.” It says that “it needs to be seen in its historical context and to be set in the framework of the gradual development of revelation.” The commentary goes on to cite Jesus” words — “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44) — and a spiritualized interpretation of Joshua’s battles by the sixteenth-century mystic St. John of the Cross.

The evangelical Christians Andy and Berit Kjos reflect the near-universal tendency to spiritualize such passages in a series of study questions on the Book of Joshua. In connection with Joshua 6:17 they ask: “What might you ‘utterly destroy’ in your own life in order to fully live the holy and victorious life in union with Christ?” This is similar to a footnote on Joshua 6:26 in the 1609 Douay-Rheims Roman Catholic English translation of the Bible: “Jericho, in the mystical sense, signifies iniquity: the sounding of the trumpets by the priests, the preaching of the word of God; by which the walls of Jericho are thrown down, when sinners are converted; and a dreadful curse will light on them who build them up again.”

Not only are such texts spiritualized; the literal sense is often directly rejected. The Rev. David Holwick of First Baptist Church in Ledgewood, New Jersey quotes the billionaire Andrew Carnegie: “I picked up the Bible just the other day and was reading the story of the times of Samuel. All sorts of ghastly incidents are related, and some passages are simply revolting to a mind accustomed to feel toward humanity as Christ felt. And the thing is that God is pictured as directing and helping it all. It is God who leads in the slaughter and He even inspires His children to the most unmerciful acts. Do not teach these parts to boys and girls as heroic deeds, to be admired and copied.” Holwick maintains that the God of the Old Testament is the same as that of the New, but agrees with Carnegie that such tales have no exemplary value for modern believers. “Too many atrocities have been done in God’s name,” he said, adding: “God doesn’t need human armies or politicians to win.”

In short, the consensus view among Jews and Christians for many centuries is that unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, these Biblical passages simply do not apply to you. The Scriptures records God’s commands to the Israelites to make war against particular people only. However this may be understood, and however jarring it may be to modern sensibilities, it does not amount to any kind of marching orders for believers. That’s one principal reason why Jews and Christians haven’t formed terror groups around the world that quote these Scriptures to justify killing civilian non-combatants.

Violence in the New Testament?

Christopher Hitchens, in his entertaining atheist apologetic god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, surveys what he terms the “nightmare” of the Old Testament and then entitles his next chapter “The ‘New’ Testament Exceeds the Evil of the ‘Old’ One.” When it comes to backing up this assertion, however, all Hitchens offers is thin gruel: “Abraham,” he points out, “is ready to make a human sacrifice of his own firstborn.” Then he notes “a rumor” that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” concluding: “Gradually, these two myths begin to converge.”

How? In large-scale calls for human sacrifice? Even Hitchens at his most biting and indifferent to distinction and nuance doesn’t claim that. In his Old Testament chapter, he asks about the Ten Commandments: “Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide? Or is it too exactingly ‘in context’ to notice that some of these very offenses are about to be positively recommended?” One might expect after that kind of buildup that the New Testament, since it exceeds the evil of the Old, must contain positive references not only to genocide and slavery, but also kicking puppies and pulling the wings off flies. Yet most of Hitchens’ New Testament chapter is taken up with disquisitions on the historicity, or lack thereof, of various portions of the narrative — including one which Hitchens seem rather to like, the story of Jesus showing mercy to the woman who is about to be stoned for adultery (John 7:53-8:11).

This is no accident. Those who comb the New Testament searching for incitement to violence come away disappointed. Nevertheless, in the spirit of the fisherman who stops off at the market to buy a fresh fish so as to mask his failure at the lake, some Islamic apologists and non-Muslim purveyors of moral equivalence claim to find even in the New Testament passages that exhort believers to commit acts of violence. They most often point to two passages:

• “I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence” (Luke 19:26-27). Of course, the fallacy here is that these are the words of a king in a parable, not Jesus” instructions to His followers, but such subtleties are often ignored in the modern communications age.

• “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:34-35). If this passage is really calling for any literal violence, it would seem to be intra-familial jihad. To invoke it as the equivalent of the Qur’an’s jihad passages, which number over a hundred, is absurd: even the Crusaders at their most venal and grasping didn’t invoke passages like these.

Also, given the completely peaceful message of Jesus, it is clear that he meant “a sword” in an allegorical and metaphorical way. To interpret this text literally is to misunderstand Jesus, who, unlike Muhammad, did not take part in battles. It fails to recognize the poetry of the Bible, which is everywhere. But historically, even when they have committed violence in the name of God and the Church, Christians have not invoked such passages to justify what they were doing. These passages have never been taken as marching orders.

Nor have the passages of the Revelation to St. John that paint a bloody end times scenario of death and judgment; four angels “kill a third of mankind” (9:15); three plagues kill another third; and “the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot either see or hear or walk; nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their immorality or their thefts” (9:18, 20-21). Jesus himself is depicted as a leader of armies: “He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty” (19:13-15).

Yet here again, nowhere does any of this amount to a call to action. While God is depicted as exacting judgment and punishing the wicked, nowhere does he order Christians to enforce his commands on his behalf. Likewise the popular Left Behind series, which dramatizes the events recounted in Revelation from an evangelical Christian perspective, doesn’t either depict Christians killing their non-Christian neighbors or order them to do so. But that isn’t enough for Chris Hedges, who insists that “Church leaders must denounce the biblical passages that champion apocalyptic violence and hateful political creeds.” Yet since he does not and cannot produce any evidence of Christians either preaching or perpetrating violence and justifying this with reference to the hateful apocalyptic texts he invokes, the necessity for Christian leaders to “denounce” these passages of Scripture is perhaps less urgent than the necessity for Muslim leaders to confront the jihadist use of Islamic Scripture, and to formulate positive ways these texts can be reinterpreted so that they no longer have as much power to incite to violence as they do today.

But the Bible has made people commit violent acts — hasn’t it?

Any believer in the Christian doctrine of sin will agree that no human endeavor can be free of base actions and base motives. And certainly Christians have committed violent acts in the name of Christianity. But have they done so in obedience to Christian Scripture and the teachings of the various Christian sects, or in defiance of those Scriptures and teachings? During the Crusades, it became customary for those who joined the effort to be referred to as “taking up their cross,” echoing Jesus” statement: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

But on its face, of course, this says nothing about war or violence of any kind, and has been understood throughout history as referring primarily to the Christian’s struggle to conform his life to the demands of the Gospel. And so it is with all Biblical passages that the Crusaders and Crusader theologians invoked: they often performed a reverse of the spiritualization we saw in connection with the Book of Joshua, taking what are clearly spiritual passages as if they were referring to physical warfare. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), extends St. Paul’s New Testament exhortation to “take the whole armor of God ... having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness” (Ephesians 6:13-14), which clearly refers to spiritual warfare, in physical terms, and militarizes Paul’s longing to be with Christ, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain ... My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:21, 23). He also refers to Paul’s insistence that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39) and “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8):

He indeed is a fearless knight, and one secure from any quarter, since his soul is dressed in an armor of faith just as his body is dressed in an armor of steel. Since he is well protected by both kinds of arms, he fears neither the demon nor man. Nor is he afraid of death, since he longs to die. Why should he fear whether he lives or dies, since for him life is Christ and death is a reward? Faithfully and freely does he go forth on Christ’s behalf, but he would rather be dissolved and be with Christ: such is the obviously better thing. So go forth in safety, knights, and drive out the enemies of the cross of Christ with fearless intention, certain that neither death nor life can separate you from God’s love, which Jesus Christ embodies; in every moment of danger, fulfill through your own actions the principle: “Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

St. Bernard goes on in language reminiscent of that used in his day and today to exhort jihad warriors to fight on all the more valiantly, for their rewards will be great on earth if they are victorious and in heaven if they aren’t:

How glorious the victors returned from battle! How blessed those martyrs who died in battle! Rejoice, brave fighter, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but rather exult and glory, if you die and are joined to the Lord. Life can be fruitful and victory can be glorious; but sacred death is properly to be preferred to either, for if “˜they are blessed who die in the Lord,” are they not much more so who die on the Lord’s behalf?

Perhaps those who believe that any holy text can be used to justify anything will find support for their views in St. Bernard’s usage of St. Paul here. However, while Bernard is able to marshal Scriptural passages for the idea that God rewards martyrs, and that God is the Lord of both the living and the dead, he does not and cannot adduce any Scripture in support of his central assumption: that warfare in the name of Christ is justified. The fact that he must instead resort to the physicalization of passages about spiritual warfare only makes more obvious the fact that can have no recourse to any Christian martial tradition, or doctrine of warfare against and conquest of unbelievers.

In Islam, however, the situation is quite different. [see HolwickID #65188 for the conclusion of the article]

Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming.

Can’t you see their spear points gleaming?

– Welsh traditional.

The second anniversary of 9/11 is upon us. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq has gone well, though much more remains to win the peace.

We have resumed our usual activities. This is good – it shows the terrorists they haven’t won. But we may also have resumed our usual patterns of thought. This is not so good – it may make it more likely that the terrorists could win.

After all, we’re in a war. Or are we?

One reason for our confusion is that we get conflicting advice on what to do with our anger.

Many “experts” tell us that anger is a negative emotion – one to be avoided at all cost. Assorted gurus teach that it is best to “put anger aside” and “get on with our lives.” Clergy, especially those from liberal denominations, often give similar advice. Even friends may say, “Just get over it.”

But is this good advice? Is it good psychologically? Is it good morally? Even if we can “just get over it,” should we?

Often people quote Jesus’ admonition that if someone strikes you on one cheek, you should turn the other. This teaching contains two key points.

The first is the word “you.” This means that you are taught to forgive injuries done to YOU, not to someone else. There is no statement that you ought to forgive wrongs done to others, or that you have any right to do so.

And there is certainly no suggestion that if someone is struck on the cheek, you should invite the assailant to hit him again. The teaching is meant to reduce violence, not increase it.

The second point is that being struck on the cheek refers to the minor injuries or insults we encounter in daily life. We shouldn’t harbor grudges over petty slights. But what about more serious violations? Does my being struck on the cheek equate to you being murdered? How incredibly self-centered and illogical!

We are directed to calm our anger over minor injuries done to us. Nowhere are we told to forgive those who do not ask forgiveness. Nowhere are we directed, or permitted, to forgive those who inflict horrible suffering on others. To forgive such people isn't kindness – it’s cruelty to all those who will be hurt by the evil that wasn't stopped in time.

The only aspect of 9/11 that I have a right to forgive is the emotional distress I felt watching it on TV – an utterly insignificant part of that event.

If you are beaten up, I have no right to forgive the mugger. But at least I have some understanding of what it means to be beaten up. What can I grasp about 9/11?

• I have no conception of what it felt like to be faced with the choice of burning to death in a 2000-degree inferno, or jumping out of a 110-story building.

• I have no notion of what went through the jumpers’ minds during the 10 SECONDS it took to hit the pavement at 120 miles per hour. That must have been a long 10 seconds.

• I have no idea of the incredible pain the relatives and friends of the victims felt, as they waited for the bodies (or parts of bodies) to be found. Two years later, the relatives of over 1200 are still waiting.

For me to usurp the right to forgive the terrorists would be arrogant and egotistical. Only the victims have the right to forgive. And they aren’t here.

It’s a good rule to beware of principles that tell us to do what we already wanted to do because of selfishness, cowardice, or just plain laziness.

Ethical principles tell me to give to charity rather than buy a new digital camera. They tell me to visit a sick friend rather than go to the movies. They tell me to run into traffic to save a wandering child. That is, they tell me to do difficult things for others, not easy things for myself.

We should be suspicious of a principle that tells us to do nothing when others are in peril. It is unlikely to be an ethical principle, and more likely to be merely a rationalization for our own cowardice and apathy.

On the contrary, the Bible forbids us to stand by idly while our neighbor’s blood is shed.

Doing nothing after over 3,000 of our fellow citizens were horribly murdered – that’s ethical? No, it’s cowardly.

Having more sympathy for enemy soldiers who were killed in a war that they started than for our own people – that’s ethical? No, it’s an excuse for cowardice.

Emphasizing our defects rather than our enemies’ atrocities – that’s ethical? No, it’s a rationalization for inaction, and for hatred of America.

Clearly, the relatives and friends of the victims of 9/11 should do whatever helps to allay their pain. If forgiving the terrorists serves to mitigate the suffering, by all means let them do so.

But what about the rest of us, who didn’t lose anyone we knew on 9/11? Should we “get on with our lives” and “let go of our anger”? Should we “just get over it”?

We have confused the proper response of relatives and friends with what everyone else should do. We have confused what is PSYCHOLOGICALLY best for the relatives with what is MORALLY best for all the rest of us.

Psychology tells us what we should do to relieve emotional pain. It tells us nothing about what we should do to fulfill our obligations to others. This used to be taught by parents, who now work two jobs and have little time to teach anything. It used to be taught by teachers, who now can barely teach English and mathematics. It used to be taught by clergy, many of whom now preach how to FEEL good, not how to DO good.

Psychology is the study of how people behave. It tells us nothing about how people SHOULD behave. We have confused psychology (or rather pop psychology) with ethics. We have confused feeling good with doing good.

True, doing good often makes us feel good. But sometimes doing good is difficult, or even painful and dangerous.

• Sometimes doing good requires us to recognize evil, despite the ugliness.

• Sometimes doing good requires us to combat evil, despite the danger.

• Sometimes doing good is the opposite of feeling good. This is a lesson you will rarely hear from New Age gurus or liberal clergy.

Rather than babbling about “getting rid of anger,” competent psychologists help us find out whom or what we are really angry at. Then we can attempt to remedy the situation, rather than bottling up our anger – only to have it burst out unexpectedly.

If we are inhibited from expressing anger at those who deserve it, we may express it at those who don’t. Perhaps this is one reason for domestic violence, workplace violence and “road rage.” Perhaps if we expressed more anger at criminals, we would express less anger at spouses, children, coworkers and motorists.

But instead, we have been taught to “have sympathy for all humanity.” Of course sympathy can be beautiful, but if misdirected it can turn ugly. Sympathy for criminals can lead to more criminals going free, and therefore more crime. Sympathy for terrorists can cause us to “see their point of view,” which enables their terrorism and hampers efforts to combat it. If we waste our sympathy on criminals, we have none left for victims.

We have been taught, “It is our duty to forgive.” It is our duty to forgive those who injured US and who ask forgiveness. It is not our duty, or our right, to forgive those who injured OTHERS and who do not repent. This type of forgiveness is so cheap as to be utterly worthless. It makes us feel good, when in fact we have done nothing good.

And we have been taught that anger is always destructive. Of course anger can be destructive, but if properly directed it can also be constructive.

• Anger at child molesters can lead to stronger laws, and fewer children kidnapped from their bedrooms or dragged screaming from their front yards.

• Anger at criminals can lead to more criminals living behind prison bars, and fewer law-abiding citizens living behind window bars.

• Anger at terrorists can lead to eradicating their support system, so that there will not be another 9/11.

Saints may be able to rid themselves of all anger and lead tranquil lives. But most of us are very far from being saints. For us, the realistic goal is not to eliminate our anger, but to control it and direct it properly. For us, 9/11 was not only a sin and a crime – it was also a horribly costly lesson.

Let’s not waste it. Let’s use it to relearn what we used to know – the difference between petty anger and righteous indignation.

Yes, two years later I’m still angry about 9/11, and I will be until the terrorist network has been rooted out. Only then can I allow myself to “just get over it.”

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This article is partly based on ones published in the July-August 1998 New Oxford Review and posted on newsmax.com.

*

Two stories have dominated the news in the past week: the Foley scandal and the shooting of Amish schoolchildren in Pennsylvania. One of these stories is depressing. The other is a vivid example of what it means to be the Light of the world.

On October 2, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse and took ten girls hostage. An hour later, Roberts killed five of his hostages and then killed himself.

From the start, these school killings stood out from other such attacks: The killer, first of all, was an adult, not a student; and then there was the irony of the Amish, a pacifist community that resists what it regards as the contagions of modernity, falling victim to a very modern kind of violence.

Most remarkable is what happened in the schoolhouse itself. Thirteen-year-old Marian Fisher, one of the Amish girls held captive, displayed Christ-like love: She offered to lay her life down for her friends, reportedly telling her would-be killer, “Shoot me and leave the other ones loose!”

And even in the painful aftermath of the shootings, the Amish continued their witness to the love of Christ, reaching out to Roberts’s family, attending Roberts’s funeral, comforting his wife and children, and providing for them through a fund established for Roberts’s victims and their families. One victim’s family even invited the Roberts to their daughter’s funeral. In the most dramatic way, they forgave Roberts.

As I watched the news, it was clear that the media had trouble understanding the kindness and forgiveness extended to Roberts and his family. It wasn’t the first time that Christian grace and charity confused people.

Early Christians, unlike their pagan neighbors, cared for the sick during the periodic epidemics that afflicted the late Roman Empire. The sight of Christians staying while everyone else fled confounded their critics and confused their neighbors.

Many but not all: In its first centuries, Christianity grew at 40 percent per decade. By the time of Constantine, at least 10 percent of the empire was Christian — a remarkable statistic when you recall that to be a Christian at that time was to live with a target painted on your back.

What fueled this explosive growth was the way the early Christians loved one another, were concerned for the weak and marginalized, and were willing to die, if necessary, for their faith. These living epistles were the ultimate witness to the truth of the Gospel and its transformative power.

What was true of Rome is still true today. People can dispute our words, but they have no answer to a demonstration of forgiveness, reconciliation, and charity. Before the shootings, the Amish seemed quaint. Now, they’re extraordinary.

Ironically, they inspire us yet another way. In classrooms across America, students are force-fed Darwinism. They are taught that we are the products of random processes and natural selection — that is, the survival of the fittest. But in the Amish classroom, that thesis is demolished by self-sacrificing love, the one thing Darwin could never explain.

So the Amish have given us a powerful demonstration of the truth of the biblical worldview and, indeed, of the Light of the world.

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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

“Can a country known for radical brutality become a country known for an even more radical forgiveness?” That’s the question BreakPoint’s own Catherine Claire Larson asks in her new book, As We Forgive.

Larson, whose book was inspired by the award-winning documentary film of the same name, paints a gripping picture of the Tutsi survivors of genocide, who in 1994 endured 100 days of unimaginable violence at the hands of their Hutu neighbors. In just three months, nearly a million people were shot, macheted, raped, and tortured. The survivors lost everything — homes, families, hope.

But that was only their first trial. Seven years after the storm, the Rwandan government started releasing from prison more than 70,000 perpetrators of genocide.

Larson vividly describes the dreadful decision the survivors had to make. The people who had destroyed their lives were returning. Would they choose fear and hate? Or forgiveness and reconciliation?

As Larson writes so beautifully, many are choosing forgiveness. Take the story of Rosaria. Her sister and her two children were pummeled to death by a group of Hutu men from their village. Among them was a man named Saveri.

While in prison Saveri heard the Gospel. He repented of his cruelty, and through a reconciliation program begun by Prison Fellowship Rwanda, asked Rosaria for forgiveness. After a series of painful meetings, she forgave him — freeing him from despair, and herself from the coils of hatred.

Later, Saveri, along with other repentant killers, built homes for Rosaria and other survivors. “Hands that had once swung machetes in violence,” Larson writes, “now smooth clay bricks in peace.”

Or take the stories of Devota and Monique, both of whom lost all of their children in the genocide. With the help of Christian volunteers, they came to understand that Christ not only bears their sin, but their pain. And once they gave their pain to Christ, they actually sought out their perpetrators — and forgave them.

One of the most poignant stories Larson tells is of the children of the Nyange School. These children, Hutus and Tutsis, had become close friends in the wake of the genocide. When Hutu militia invaded their classroom, their love for Christ and each other was put to the ultimate test. The Hutu militiamen ordered all the Tutsis to one side, all the Hutus to the other. The students refused to move. Many of them were shot because of their love and faithfulness to one another.

If that love, that forgiveness, can be so strong in such darkness, then it is possible for all of us. Possible for the husband who continues to put his heart on the line when his wife has grown cold to him. Possible for the church deacon who won’t ignore the growing rift in the congregation, but who seeks to be a mediator. Possible for the daughter who refuses to let her mother’s stinging criticisms keep her from loving her.

Ultimately, what Larson shows us in As We Forgive is that of all human actions, forgiveness is perhaps the most powerful mirror of Christ’s love.

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Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

As rescue workers still look for remains in the rubble of the condominium that collapsed in Surfside, Florida [in June 2021], the official death toll has topped 95 people, with more missing and presumed dead. While this tragedy will change the lives of those involved forever, it will, as all tragedies do, fade from the news headlines to be replaced by others. This is the awful paradox of life after Eden. For some people, this felt like the very end of the world. For others, this was hard but unremarkable news to hear. How can both be true?

Many Christians look at our world of mass shootings, natural disasters, political unrest, terrorism, and moral degradation and conclude that it is worse than it has even been. Others say we’re better off than ever, noting advances in medicine and technology, life expectancy, and our unprecedented abilities to prevent and respond to disasters. Global poverty and infant mortality have fallen dramatically in the last two centuries and continue to plummet.

Even so, as J.R.R. Tolkein wrote in The Lord of the Rings, evil “always after a defeat and respite, takes another shape and grows again.” His friend shared a similar philosophy in That Hideous Strength, the final novel of his Space Trilogy. “Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse,” wrote C.S. Lewis. “The whole thing is ... coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.” Because time moves only forward, and because Jesus hasn’t returned to finally make all things new, we will continue to confront new and different shapes of evil. Trying to decipher which shapes are worse or better than others is as futile as trying to predict which are coming next.

What we do know, because Scripture is crystal clear about this point, is that God the Father sits in what N.T. Wright might call the “control room” of heaven. His hand holds back more evil from befalling his creation. A colleague of mine used to note that the four scariest words in the Bible are “God gave them over.” The worst evil we can imagine visits humans at our own request. Any moments or eras of apparent respite is either because we’ve not recognized a new shape evil has assumed, or because God has chosen to graciously withhold what human sinfulness has invited.

In moments of great suffering or tragedy, Christians will often say something like, “Don’t worry. Christ is still on the throne.” This is true and often comforting, but it can be a kind of Romans 8:28 “bomb,” aloofly and tritely lobbed over our protective walls with too little empathy; a sort of religious version of saying “well, it could be worse” to someone in pain.

In an old episode of the TV medical drama, House, the cantankerous and religion-hating Dr. House confronts a nun suffering from a mysterious illness. “You can tell me you put your faith in God to get you through the day,” he says to her, “but when it comes time to cross the road, I know you look both ways.”

It was meant as an accusation, but believing in a good God who rules the universe doesn’t require that anyone deny cars hit people. Christ is on the throne and I might suffer tragedy. Both are true. It’s the rest of the story that answers Dr. House (and us). As Pastor Tim Keller writes:

Often we see how bad things ‘work together for good.’ The problem is that we can only glimpse this sometimes, in a limited number of cases. But why could it not be that God allowed evil because it will bring us all to a far greater glory and joy than we would have had otherwise?

People are living longer, medicine is advancing, and, sometimes, buildings collapse with people in them. Things in this world are really bad. Other things are really good. Ruling over it all, still on His throne, Christ is renewing our hearts and minds to make His glory our greatest pleasure and somehow mysteriously making us better through our suffering here.

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Copyright (c) 2021 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

An atheist named Ken Schei runs a website called "Atheists for Jesus." His goal? To promote the "love and kindness" taught by Jesus while rejecting a Church responsible for, as he claims, "Some of the most brutal ... atrocities known to man."

It's a harsh charge, and yet, sooner or later, we must confront this apparent paradox: A religion that teaches love and compassion is the same religion that gave us the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Salem witch trials. So, are these tragedies historical anomalies -- or are they, as Ken Schei charges, part of the DNA of our faith?

Former journalist Lee Strobel pursued this question the way he used to go after any story: He went to an expert -- on Church history, in this case -- with a notebook full of questions.

In his new book, The Case for Faith, Strobel relates his conversation with my good friend and theologian John Woodbridge. Yes, Woodbridge acknowledged, great evil has been perpetrated in the name of Christ. But with regard to atrocities, he said, we have to differentiate between authentic Christians and cultural Christians -- those who belong to churches, but may not follow Christ closely, or at all.

Come on, Strobel retorted. It's a little too convenient to blame these things on people who claimed they were Christians, but really weren't.

Not really, Woodbridge replied. Jesus himself made this distinction. He said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven. . . . I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you'" [Matthew 7:21-23].

Throughout the centuries, you see, much has been done in Jesus' name that does not reflect his teachings. And as Woodbridge noted, even as these abuses took place, authentic Christians spoke out against them. For instance, the Puritan leader Increase Mather condemned the Salem witch trials. In Germany in the 1930s, true Christians, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the confessing church, spoke out against both Hitler and the churches that gave in to his demands.

Of course, Christians aren't perfect, and we have to accept blame when we fail. But we're sometimes blamed for things we have nothing to do with. For example, in the sixteenth century, Spain sent explorers to the Americas to seek gold, and missionaries to save souls. Unfortunately, Woodbridge said, the missionaries have been blamed for all the terrible things the explorers did -- abuses the missionaries had no part in.

Woodbridge is right in his conclusion. Abuses in the name of Jesus are the exception, not the norm. And when people throw atrocities like the Inquisition in our faces, we must remind them that, while the Inquisition was bad, far worse things have been perpetrated in name of secular ambition: Hitler murdered 6 million Jews. Stalin slaughtered 50 million Russians. Both of them hated the Christian God.

Christians have never perfectly followed the commands of Christ, that's true. But our attempts to follow him have inspired the best in Western civilization for two millennia. Imperfect Christians have built schools and hospitals. We've rescued children left to die, and visited prisoners. We've made the world, not perfect, but far better than it would have been without our influence.

We do these things, not because we admire Ken Schei's namby-pamby, powerless Jesus, but because we worship the risen, living Christ.

For further reference:

Strobel, Lee. The Case for Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000.

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Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted With Permission. "breakpoint With Chuck Colson" Is A Radio Ministry Of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Christians around the world are often the targets of violence. But here in the U.S., is that even possible? It is.

On Anastasia Boylan’s fourth day in the Writing 115 class at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, an armed man wearing body armor shot the professor and demanded that any of the cowering students who were Christians stand up.

Boylan was among those who did so, and the gunman shot her. She fell, wounded, and then pretended to be dead. Then she heard the shooter say to another student, “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second.” Anastasia is in the hospital now, recovering.

This report comes from one of her parents. Others have reported that according to Mercer’s online writings, he “hated religion.” Nine people, plus the shooter, died that morning.

In a time when followers of Christ in other parts of the world are beheaded or crucified for their faith, or driven out of their homelands as refugees, some Christians in the West have been far too quick to use the word “persecuted” to describe the decreasing tolerance for Christianity and Christian conviction in the public square. And yet the shooting in Roseburg reminds us that, as Paul told Timothy, anyone who wishes to follow Christ in this world will face hardship.

Now some critics have dismissed the idea that a mass shooting targeting Christians could even happen in America, and some have questioned the report that the Oregon shooter targeted Christians as the eyewitnesses have reported.

Ed Stetzer, my friend and co-host for “BreakPoint This Week,” offered very helpful guidance in a column published last week in USA Today.

In it, Ed, who is also the Vice President of Research at Lifeway Christian Research, acknowledges that not every report of Christians being targeted turns out to be true. Nonetheless, Christians and churches have been targeted in incidents in Fort Worth, Colorado Springs, and in Charleston in recent years. In fact, Lifeway maintains a research database for church shootings, as does the FBI. The point is, these things do happen, and Ed offers then what we ought to do.

First, Christians need to be ready to stand, to “give an answer for the hope that we have.” Indeed, if the unthinkable happens, are we prepared to give an account of our faith as Anastasia Boylan did?

And second, we need to be quick to forgive, as our brothers and sisters in Charleston incredibly demonstrated earlier this year. Their response made a jaded nation sit up and take notice. “When evil came knocking, forgiveness answered,” as Ed wrote. “The entire nation was touched by the words of victims’ family members toward Dylann Roof just days after that awful tragedy, offering forgiveness and the gospel they knew.”

Third, we have to trust God in the face of inscrutable tragedy. “Evil is real and terrible,” Ed writes, “and God does not give us all the answers — but He does give us Himself. And in times like this, God is all we have, and He is enough.”

As Camden McAfee said in the wake of Roseburg, “... what sets Christians apart from the rest of the world is our unshakable hope in a sovereign God who means all things for good — especially life’s most painful things.”

Finally, we must call for justice amid tragedy. Ed had some gentle, yet firm, words for society at large. “I understand the United States’ cultural tension in which Christian-held values do not always align with current popular opinion,” he writes. “But the truth is, the irreligious in our culture must de-escalate hateful rhetoric toward Christians, no matter how vehement the disagreements between us.”

Ed calls on all sides to tone it down so that we can move toward a more just society. “I am not saying we don’t criticize,” he writes, “but we must not demonize. When we demonize others — Christians, Muslims, gays, African-Americans or whomever — we give mentally unstable or hate-filled people additional justification to kill.”

Resources:

Calculated killing of Christians in Roseburg?

Ed Stetzer, USA Today, October 5, 2015

Girl Played Dead, Overheard Oregon Shooter’s CHILLING Last Words to Each Christian He Found

Conservative Tribune, October 2, 2015

Oregon, We Are Not Numb — Or Hopeless

Camden McAfee, Desiringgod.org, October 2, 2015

Death in a classroom: Oregon shooter targeted his English class

Michael Muskal, Richard Winton and Marisa Gerber, LA Times, October 2, 2015

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

On June 12, 2016, Angel Colon was among 53 wounded and 49 murdered in the Pulse nightclub by lone gunman Omar Mateen. Having pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Mateen walked into the club around 2 a.m. and began firing an AR-15 assault rifle.

In a Facebook interview conducted by Jeffrey Mccall, founder of For Such a Time Ministry, Colon said he prayed for forgiveness as Mateen was standing behind him preparing to shoot. “[Mateen] didn’t shoot me quick, he gave me a few minutes, and at the moment I started to do a prayer, and I started asking God for forgiveness, I started asking God please forgive me for everything I did, please. I’m sorry.” Suddenly, Colon changed his prayer. “God, You promised me that I have a calling. You promised me that I have a purpose. You’re getting me out of here alive.”

Colon had accepted Christ as a youth before straying into homosexuality. Struggling to walk again in an Orlando hospital, he struggled through Satan’s attempts to keep him in sin. “It was still a battle at that moment, because now the enemy is putting everything in your head,” he said. “The enemy was way harder (after) I decided to change my life. It’s a big process.

“People always ask that question, ‘Well, are you straight now, because you go to church, because you’re so close to God?’ [What] I tell them is I’m not gay, I’m not straight, I’m a son of God. And the only lifestyle I promote is faith, nothing else.”

Angel Colon now ministers to those who have left homosexuality.

In 2009, Southern Baptists passed a resolution that proclaimed “that those who practice any unbiblical sexual behavior can be forgiven and changed, as the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘... some of you were like this, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).”

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Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ general assignment writer/editor.

Original article entitled, “2 Pulse massacre survivors in ex-LGBT Freedom March”.

At Christmastime, we’re reminded that our God is the God of great reversals. As we set out humble nativity scenes, we may forget how unthinkable it is that the King of Kings lowered himself not just to be born in human flesh, but in a lowly stable amidst the braying of animals and the smell of manure.

Our God seems to love reversals such as this. Jesus tells us that the first shall be last, the least will be the greatest in the kingdom. He elevates repentant sinners and tax-collectors above Pharisees and wealthy leaders. And through His apostle Paul, He reminds us that He chose the foolish things of this world, the weak, and the despised, to show the glories of his wisdom.

A recent story coming from Pakistan seems to fit this pattern exactly. In late October, at Islamabad’s International Islamic University, an Islamic suicide bomber tried to attack the women’s side of campus. But there worked a lowly janitor, Pervaiz Masih, who like so many of the 2 percent Christian minority in this 95 percent Muslim country are relegated to the most menial jobs in society — garbage collectors, sewage workers, and servants.

The suicide bomber was making his way to a cafeteria of some 300 to 400 women students, when Masih came between him and his goal. Masih is a common name among the Christian minority — it means Messiah. And on October 20th, Masih certainly followed in the footsteps of Jesus, the true Messiah. He refused to let the bomber pass. In the process the bomb detonated, killing Masih, the bomber, and three girls nearby. Meanwhile, the 300 to 400 Muslim girls inside the cafeteria were unharmed.

In the midst of the rubble from the explosion lay two martyrs. A so-called Muslim “martyr” had maliciously murdered others. Meanwhile, a Christian martyr had laid down his life for his brethren. A Christian died to save Muslims from a fellow Muslim.

CNN reported Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik, a rector of the university, as saying that Pervez Masih “rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.”

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that not “despite being a Christian” but because of being a Christian, Masih laid down his life.

As news cameras showed the garbage-strewn cemetery where Masih is buried, I couldn’t help but think of God’s great reversals. A King born in a manger. A hero buried beneath garbage. And I couldn’t help thinking how one day this upside-down world would be turned on it its head at the second Advent, when Christ comes in glory.

In the meantime, pray for persecuted Christians in Pakistan who suffer under unjust blasphemy laws, and who as recently as this past July were murdered, beaten, and had their homes set on fire simply for bearing the name of Jesus.

Pray that Masih’s heroic actions will help many Pakistanis to see Christians in a different light. And pray that Islamic extremists would have their eyes opened to what it means to be a true martyr, that is, to give one’s life to save others, not to give one’s life to kill others.

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Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The International Criminal Court at The Hague represents one way of holding those who commit atrocities responsible for their crimes. The raw eggs, twigs and livestock that the Acholi people of northern Uganda use in their traditional reconciliation ceremonies represent another.

The two very different systems - one based on Western notions of justice, the other on a deep African tradition of forgiveness - are clashing in their response to one of this continent's most bizarre and brutal guerrilla wars, a conflict that has raged for 18 years in the rugged terrain along Uganda's border with Sudan.

The fighting features rebels who call themselves the Lord's Resistance Army and who speak earnestly of the import of the Ten Commandments, but who routinely hack up civilians who get in their way. To add to their numbers, the rebels abduct children in the night, brainwash them in the bush, indoctrinate them by forcing them to kill, and then turn them - 20,000 over the last two decades - into the next wave of ferocious fighters seeking to topple the government. Girls as young as 12 are assigned as rebel commanders' wives. Anyone who does not toe the line is brutally killed.

The international court, invited to investigate the war by President Yoweri Museveni, has announced it is close to issuing arrest warrants for rebel leaders including, no doubt, Joseph Kony, the self-styled spiritualist calling the shots. But some war victims are urging the international court to back off. They say the local people will suffer if the rebel command feels cornered. They recommend giving forgiveness more of a chance, using an age-old ceremony involving raw eggs.

“When we talk of arrest warrants it sounds so simple,” said David Onen Acana II, the chief of the Acholi, the dominant tribe in the war-riven north, who traveled to The Hague recently to make his objections known. “But an arrest warrant doesn't mean the war will end.”

Lars Erik Skaansar, the top United Nations official in Gulu, has sought peace in as varied places as the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and the Middle East over the last 12 years. “I have never seen such a capacity to forgive,” he said.

Mr. Kony tells his followers that he is in direct contact with God, and that God says it is right to kill in the cause of toppling Mr. Museveni's evil government, which is accused of hostility toward the country's north. (The government's sins, however, remain unstated.)

In 1988, when the government tried to train villagers in self-defense, Mr. Kony was quoted as saying: “If you pick up an arrow against us and we ended up cutting off the hand you used, who is to blame? You report us with your mouth, and we cut off your lips. Who is to blame? It is you! The Bible says that if your hand, eye or mouth is at fault, it should be cut off.” The rebels began cutting off the lips, hands, noses and breasts of civilians, intending that their victims survive as constant warnings to others.

The other day, an assembly of Acholi chiefs put the notion of forgiveness into action. As they looked on, 28 young men and women who had recently defected from the rebels lined up according to rank on a hilltop overlooking this war-scared regional capital, with a one-legged lieutenant colonel in the lead and some adolescent privates bringing up the rear. They had killed and maimed together. They had raped and pillaged. One after the other, they stuck their bare right feet in a freshly cracked egg, with the lieutenant colonel, who lost his right leg to a bomb, inserting his right crutch in the egg instead. The egg symbolizes innocent life, according to local custom, and by dabbing themselves in it the killers are restoring themselves to the way they used to be.

Next, the former fighters brushed against the branch of a pobo tree, which symbolically cleansed them. By stepping over a pole, they were welcomed back into the community by Mr. Acana and the other chiefs.

“I ask for your forgiveness,” said Charles Otim, 34, the rebel lieutenant colonel, who had been abducted by the rebels himself, at the age of 16, early in the war. “We have wronged you.”

The age-old rite is what local residents have used when members of one tribe kill members of another. After being welcomed back into the fold, the offender must sit down together with tribal leaders and make amends. After confessing to his misdeeds, the wayward tribesman is required to pay the victim's kin compensation in the form of cows, goats and sheep.

It is a system not unlike those in use in other parts of Africa. Somalis still pay compensation to quell the inter-clan battles in that country, although the traditional rite cannot possibly keep up with all the killings. In northern Kenya, where a recent bout of clan violence resulted in several dozen deaths, tribal mediation became bogged down over complains that the loss of a man's life was compensated for with more cows than for a woman's life.

South Africa managed to put apartheid in its past by insisting on truthful admissions from those who brutalized the country's blacks but then by promoting reconciliation among the races.

A traumatized Rwanda has used both international and local justice to respond to the mass killings of 1994, which left an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, was set up by the United Nations to prosecute the orchestrators of the violence. The many foot soldiers in the slaughter are facing traditional “gacaca” trials, where the community hears their cases and often forgives those who confess.

The Darfur region of Sudan is the subject of a separate investigation by the international court although there it is the government, which has been implicated in the violence, that is pushing for reconciliation methods to be used.

Uganda's government, which backs the international court, has already adopted the traditional notion of forgiveness as one of its peace strategies. An amnesty program in place since 2000 has prompted thousands of rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army and other groups to lay down their arms and re-enter society. A popular radio program broadcast in the north sends the message out that returning rebels will not be executed, to counter what Mr. Kony tells his followers.

“Whoever comes out of the bush is forgiven,” explained Lt. Tabard Kiconco, an army spokesman based in Gulu.

Amnesty is one strategy being used to quell the violence. Also, more conventional peace talks are taking place. In December 2004, they resulted in a rare meeting of the rebel and government leadership. If the war does end soon, these negotiations led by Betty Bigombe, a World Bank consultant and former government minister whom Mr. Kony apparently trusts, will play a critical role.

In addition, Uganda's military has been using force to try to end the rebel insurgency, and most agree that successes in the heavily forested battlefield have made the rebels more willing to strike a deal. At the same time, Mr. Museveni, a former guerrilla fighter who frequently dons a camouflage army uniform when inspecting his troops in the north, has said repeatedly that his administration has already finished off the Lord's Resistance Army. The rebels show the president's pronouncements to be false by hacking off some more lips or snatching some more children from their beds, as they have done repeatedly in recent weeks.

“Reports of the insurgency's death are greatly exaggerated,” the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research group, said in a report last week that called for renewed diplomatic pressure by the United States and others for a negotiated solution. It said issuing arrest warrants against the rebel command “could drive the rebels definitively out of the peace process.”

To be sure, certainly, many Ugandans want Mr. Kony and his cohorts behind bars.

Still, remarkably, a number of those who have been hacked by the rebels, who have seen their children carried off by them or who have endured years suffering in their midst say traditional justice must be the linchpin in ending the war. Their main rationale: the line between victim and killer is too blurred.

Many African conflicts pit one tribe or community against another. But in northern Uganda, the Acholi are cursed with being on both sides of the fight. Young Acholi are kidnapped; the people they are forced to kill are just as likely to be other Acholi as of other northern tribes.

The nephew of Mr. Acana, the paramount chief, was abducted by the rebels and turned into a killer some years back. The boy is now back home, washed in the egg and on his way to being forgiven.

Understandably, forgiveness and rage are mixed in many people's heads. Former rebels who have surrendered have been largely welcomed back to the communities they had preyed upon, with each new arrival celebrated as a sign that the war is fizzling out. But former fighters complain that they are sometimes shunned and subjected to taunts, as well.

Conacy Laker, 25, finds it hard to look anyone in the eye after losing her nose, ears and upper lip to rebels more than a decade ago. Her physical wounds have healed, but her suffering goes on.

“I have nothing to say to the person who cut me,” she said sternly, staring at the dirt. “But the person needs to be punished like I was punished.”

A moment later, though, forgiveness seemed at the fore. “What I'm after is peace,” she said. “If the people who did this to me and so many others are sorry for what they did, then we can take them back.”

It is very early on Tuesday morning, after a night of tossing and turning, my mind replaying the scenes and interviews I had witnessed the previous day on various news outlets covering the senseless tragedy at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

I probably had fallen into and out of light sleep but my heart had become so troubled that I woke up weeping, crying to the Lord. My burden this night was not so much struggling with the question of why things like this occur, though like many Christians, I do think on this question in times like these.

This night my burden is simply over the loss of at least 58 human lives, the suffering that nearly 500 others are enduring personally and the thousands of family and friends of those affected.

With a certain measure of guilt, I seriously question whether I have ever had such an overwhelming sense of the importance of human life to God. I am struggling to understand why I have not felt this level of grief in the multitude of terrorist attacks we have seen in our country and the world in the past two decades.

Further, every night that I turn on the local news I see a senseless act that has led to the death of one or more individuals.

Why hasn’t the sum of these acts ever brought me to this level of sorrow over the loss of human life? Probably the biggest source of my measure of guilt from this new sense of the importance of human life comes in considering the estimated 40–50 million lives taken through the heinous act of abortion.

I have witnessed countless others give testimony to the grief they themselves have over the murder of children and certainly felt grief and sorrow. For me, though, this night was unlike any other.

As Christians, and especially as Southern Baptists, we regularly affirm the value of human life. We set aside one Sunday each year to do so and, in 2015, we passed a resolution on the issue in our annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

As evident in the wake of recent hurricanes in Texas and Florida, we have churches that consistently aid in disaster relief. We serve in variety of ways to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and serve our communities in ministry projects. An entity in our convention, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, aids churches in promoting the sanctity of human life to governmental officials in policy and legislation. We have professors in our seminaries who often produce sound biblical arguments on the importance of human life.

Still, in light of recent events, we must strengthen our resolve.

The church today cannot overemphasize the value of human life. Though we face a variety of issues in our culture today, it is this one that demands our constant attention. Further, this commonly-held belief relates to many other issues we are facing regarding sexuality, race, bioethics, immigration, human suffering, political agendas, the threat of nuclear war and even questions about the long-term effects of certain forms of athletic competition.

I do not claim to have all of the answers to how we might do more as Christians and as churches, but I am convinced that our mission, our teaching and our ministries must manifest both a clear articulation and a visible representation of our commitment that human beings, who alone are created in the image of and show forth the attributes of the triune God, have immeasurable worth to that same God and to His church.

Foundational to this is the unwavering commitment that the same God who created humans in His image has sent His only Son -- who Himself is the image of the invisible God, the exact representation of His nature -- to be sin for us.

It is in the Gospel that we truly understand the inexplicable value of human life to God. Christ came so that man might have life and that abundantly. He came to gain victory over death. Therefore, as followers of Christ who possess assurance of these truths, we must grow to value life in everything we say, think and do as we carry the message to a world that feels the sting of death -- both physical and spiritual.

We take this Gospel to every human being, knowing that whosoever will can receive the gift of everlasting life. Ultimately, this investment in the lives of others grows in direct relation to the value we place on human life itself.

All hearts were directed to Texas in 2018 after 26 people were shot and killed when a 26-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire as a church service was underway at a Baptist church in a small town near San Antonio, Texas. As The New York Times reported:

“A gunman clad in all black, with a ballistic vest strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands, opened fire on parishioners at a Sunday service at a small Baptist church in rural Texas, killing at least 26 people and turning this tiny town east of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s newest mass horror.”

At this point the investigation is in the earliest stages, but we already know this is an absolutely horrifying story. It is a tragedy that is only going to unfold in greater tragedy. This attack taking place as a small Baptist church in rural Texas was just beginning its worship service, it is a sign of something far deeper that has gone wrong in our society. The fact that many of the victims already have been identified as children, including the 14-year-old daughter of the church’s pastor, underlines, once again, that so much of the evil in the world is simply beyond our understanding — even our theological understanding. As is so often the case in our experience when headlines like this come at us, the facts themselves seem perplexing and overwhelming. Murder is hard enough for us to understand, mass murder just makes it all the more difficult to understand. But how can we possibly understand the intentional killing of a pregnant woman, little children, a 14-year-old, and of Christians gathered together in worship?

From a Christian worldview, we have to understand that the facts are important. It is not wrong to want to know what the dots are and then to try to connect them. God made us rational and moral creatures and this moral sense reaches out for some rational explanation of the horrifying evil of our world. But our first response should not be to try to understand the crime, but rather, to identify with the community in grief and experiencing heartbreak.

The Christian worldview dignifies the heartbroken. Heartbrokenness is a part of human existence; it will come to every single human being at some time. Jesus himself affirmed this in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

This particular attack in Texas highlights the fact that Christians are not immune from this kind of heartbreak. We cannot understand exactly what that congregation in that community is experiencing, but we do understand heartbreak, and we know that heartbreak is at the very center of their experience at this moment.

The Christian worldview affirms the dignity of human life. According to Scripture, every single human life is of eternal value and inestimable worth. Murder is not, then, merely a crime, it is an assault on the dignity of the human being — an attack upon the image of God.

In one very important dimension, this demonstrates why the Christian worldview is so utterly different than every other worldview. Atheism, for instance, must affirm that, at its base, human life is merely a series of accidents. There is no Creator, so there is no human being made in the Creator’s image. Of course atheists would clearly classify this murderous attack in Sutherland Springs, Texas, as evil, but they have no real ability to understand or to embrace the notion of evil with any coherence. Evil is essentially a theological category. Without theism evil becomes simply the strongest word we have to describe something we wish hadn’t happened.

Christians also have to acknowledge that our affirmation of an infinitely great and an infinitely good God requires us to answer some questions that atheists don’t have to answer. The most urgent of these questions: How could an all-powerful and all-loving God, allow such evil to take place? There are those who have suggested perhaps it’s an indication that God really isn’t in control of the universe. For instance, Rabbi Harold Kushner famously argued in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People that God is simply doing the best he can with the circumstances — and some circumstances are just too big for God to handle. This assertion, however, is a subversion of the biblical teaching concerning God. It is a repudiation of the God of the Bible. The Bible is clear: God is in control of the entire universe, there isn’t one atom or a molecule outside of his control. If there is, then we are doomed.

Other arguments have been made, suggesting that perhaps we are to understand evil, including moral evil, as having an instrumental value; perhaps God allows this because there is some kind of experience he wants us to have in order to learn some lesson we otherwise would not learn. Yet, even as the Bible indicates that pain, suffering, and mourning are teachers, we have to be very careful about telling others what God is supposedly teaching them in the midst of heartbreak.

Others have suggested that pain, suffering, and evil do not exist; they are abstractions or illusions. That’s the official teaching of the religion known as Christian Science, but in direct contradiction to Christian Science, biblical Christianity points to the fact that suffering and pain are real, that sorrow and heartbreak are real, and that, most importantly in terms of the biblical affirmation, death is all too real. It is an absolute insult, morally speaking, and it is a tremendous error, theologically speaking, to imagine addressing this community in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and telling them that death and evil are illusions and that their pain-and-suffering are not real.

Christians have learned that sometimes we have to wait for an answer, and sometimes that wait goes beyond any answer we can get in this life. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the 19th century in London stated this beautifully: “When we cannot trace God’s hand, we are simply to trust his heart.”

As we’re thinking about the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs we are reminded of the testimony of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:9, “persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

This throws us back on the deepest resources of biblical Christianity. This pushes us back to understanding the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture, the attributes of his power and the attributes of his morality, his greatness and his goodness, his justice, his righteousness, and his mercy. We are also reminded of the fact that the only answer Christians have is the answer of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the only promise of making sense out of nonsense. The gospel is the only assurance of the victory of good over evil. The gospel of Christ is the only promise of meaning and significance and satisfaction, not only in this life, but in the life to come.

Finally, in the face of this horrific tragedy we must remember the words of the prophet Isaiah as he looked upon the sacrifice of the Messiah: “surely he has borne our grief’s and carried our sorrows ... But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa 53:4-5).

For Christians facing the honest immensity of this challenge of evil, this is really all we have to say. And here’s our confidence. It is enough.

[for part 1, Violence in the Bible, see HolwickID #65187]

Violence in the Qur’an?

Any Muslim counterparts to Bernard of Clairvaux, in exhorting Muslims to wage jihad warfare, need not content themselves with interpreting in connection with actual warfare passages that refer to spiritual warfare. For in contrast to the Bible, the Qur’an exhorts believers to fight unbelievers without specifying anywhere in the text that only certain unbelievers are to be fought, or only for a certain period of time, or some other distinction. Taking the texts at face value, the command to make war against unbelievers is open-ended and universal.

Osama bin Laden, who is only the most renowned and notorious exponent of a terror network that extends from Indonesia to Nigeria and into Western Europe and the Americas, quotes the Qur’an copiously in his communiques. In his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” he quotes seven Qur’an verses: 3:145; 47:4-6; 2:154; 9:14; 47:19; 8:72; and the notorious “Verse of the Sword,” 9:5. In 2003, on the first day of the Muslim holy day Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, he began a sermon: “Praise be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to his servant and messenger [the Prophet Muhammad], in order to establish truth and abolish falsehood.”

One pro-Osama website, the now-defunct waaqiah.com, put it this way in 2002: “The truth is that a Muslim who reads the Qur’an with devotion is determined to reach the battlefield in order to attain the reality of Jihad. It is solely for this reason that the Kufaar [unbelievers] conspire to keep the Muslims far away from understanding the Qur’an, knowing that Muslims who understand the Qur’an will not distance themselves from Jihad.”

Of course, the devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose, but Osama’s use of these and other passages in his messages is consistent with traditional Islamic understandings of the Qur’an. When they read their Bibles, as we have seen, modern-day Jews and Christians simply don’t understand the passages cited or others as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is the result of the influence of interpretative traditions that have for centuries moved away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam there is no comparable interpretative tradition. The jihad passages in the Qur’an are anything but a dead letter. In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere, a key recruiting ground for jihad terrorist groups is the Islamic school: the students learn that they must wage jihad warfare, and then these groups give them the opportunity. They are made to understand that passages such as “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” (Qur’an 9:5) and “Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them” (Qur’an 47:4) are words they need to take to heart and carry out in order to be pleasing to Allah.

The scholar Ibn Warraq, an ex-Muslim, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim, and editor of several collections of scholarly essays on the Qur’an and Muhammad, calls the Qur’an the most “gnomic, elusive, and allusive of holy scriptures” — not least because people seem to be able to read it and come to diametrically opposite conclusions about what it says.

Some of these conclusions may have had motivations other than the purely theological. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Detroit Free Press told readers that “the Quran teaches nonviolence.” This was repeated in essence by George W. Bush when he said that “Islam is peace,” and this quickly hardened into a strict orthodoxy that could not be questioned in the mainstream. Only a few dared to sound any sour notes. Christian Broadcasting Network spokesman and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson drew vehement and indignant criticism when he declared: “I’m very familiar with what goes on in the Islamic world, where our reporters are all over that area, and it’s clear from the teachings of the Koran and also from the history of Islam that it’s anything but peaceful.” Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham also drew fire — as well as bloody riots in India and a call for their deaths from a Muslim official in Iran — for similar remarks.

Tolerance in the Qur’an

The evidence of the Qur’anic text itself goes both ways. Within the Muslim holy book one finds verses devoted to peace and tolerance — and also abundant verses devoted to violent intolerance.

Live-and-let-live tolerance appears in a chapter of the Qur’an that was revealed to Muhammad early in his prophetic career (the Qur’an is not arranged in chronological or narrative order, but generally from the longest chapter — sura — to the shortest): “Say: O disbelievers! I worship not that which ye worship; Nor worship ye that which I worship. And I shall not worship that which ye worship. Nor will ye worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion” (109:1-6).

Other verses add to this seeming indifference the contention that Allah will ultimately judge the unbelievers and cast them into hell. Thus Allah tells Muhammad not to waste his time arguing with those who reject his message, but to leave them in peace until that terrible day: “So leave them alone until they encounter that Day of theirs, wherein they shall (perforce) swoon (with terror)” (52:45-47; the sections in parentheses are added by the Muslim translator so as to express more precisely the sense of the original).

This counsel is repeated in several places in the Qur’an: “And have patience with what they say, and leave them with noble (dignity). And leave Me (alone to deal with) those in possession of the good things of life, who (yet) deny the Truth; and bear with them for a little while” (73:10-11).

Above all, no Muslim should forcibly convert an unbeliever: “Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things” (2:256). Following this celebrated verse comes another threat of hell: “Allah is the Protector of those who have faith: from the depths of darkness He will lead them forth into light. Of those who reject faith the patrons are the evil ones: from light they will lead them forth into the depths of darkness. They will be companions of the fire, to dwell therein (for ever)” (2:257).

Since Jews and Christians will face this dreadful judgment, Allah admonishes his prophet not to argue with them. Instead, he is to emphasize that he believes in the same God they do: “And dispute ye not with the People of the Book [that is, primarily Jews and Christians], except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say, ‘We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam)’” (29:46).

Fighting in self-defense

While those verses counsel a form of tolerance, albeit accompanied by threats of hellfire, that tolerance was not to be exercised in all cases. As Muhammad’s prophetic career went on, and particularly after his flight to Medina and establishment there of the first Islamic political and military entity, he began to receive Qur’anic revelations allowing Muslims to fight under certain circumstances. The necessity of self-defense is emphasized in the Qur’an’s eighth chapter, which is entitled Al-Anfal (“The Spoils of War”): “Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): ‘I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.’ This is because they contended against Allah and His Messenger: If any contend against Allah and His Messenger, Allah is strict in punishment. Thus (will it be said): ‘Taste ye then of the (punishment): for those who resist Allah, is the penalty of the Fire.’ O ye who believe! When ye meet the Unbelievers in hostile array, never turn your backs to them. If any do turn his back to them on such a day — unless it be in a stratagem of war, or to retreat to a troop (of his own) — he draws on himself the wrath of Allah, and his abode is Hell, an evil refuge (indeed)!” (8:12-16).

Another verse commands the Muslim community to defend not only itself but also houses of worship — not just mosques, but all kinds: “Sanction is given unto those who fight because they have been wronged; and Allah is indeed able to give them victory; Those who have been driven from their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah ““ for had it not been for Allah’s repelling some men by means of others, cloisters and churches and oratories and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft mentioned, would assuredly have been pulled down. Verily Allah helpeth one who helpeth Him. Lo! Allah is Strong, Almighty” (22:39-40).

The Qur’an returns elsewhere to this theme of self-defense. “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors [Another prominent Muslim translation renders this as “begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors.] And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression” (2:190-193). The command to fight against “those who fight you” until “there prevail justice and faith in Allah” (this is how a popular translation of the Qur’an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali renders the verse; the Arabic is closer to the rendering of another Muslim translator, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, who has it that Muslims should fight until “religion is for Allah,” as Pickthall has it) indicates when Muslims should stop fighting against unbelievers: not when a peace treaty has been concluded, or when negotiations have settled disputed issues, but when Allah’s religion prevails. Throughout history, Muslim jurists and theologians have understood this to refer to Islamic law being instituted over a society.

Significant also for the understanding of jihad as self-defense is the following verse, which Ali’s translation of the Qur’an renders in part: “If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, transgress ye likewise against him” (2:194). Pickthall translates this more explicitly: “And one who attacketh you, attack him in like manner as he attacked you.” This is a foundation for the revenge culture that dominates so much of the Islamic world.

Fight is defensive, but not optional: “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not” (2:216).

Nor should this defensive struggle be limited in scope. Allah even tells Muhammad to take no prisoners: “It is not fitting for a prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land.” This verse comes in the context of warning the Muslims not to fight simply for booty: “Ye look for the temporal goods of this world; but Allah looketh to the Hereafter: And Allah is Exalted in might, Wise” (8:67). At the battle of Uhud against the pagan Quraysh tribe of Mecca, Muhammad’s own tribe which had rejected his prophetic claim, the Muslims failed to destroy their enemies utterly because of their lust for the spoils of war: “Allah did indeed fulfil His promise to you when ye with His permission were about to annihilate your enemy, until ye flinched and fell to disputing about the order, and disobeyed it after He brought you in sight (of the booty) which ye covet. Among you are some that hanker after this world and some that desire the Hereafter. Then did He divert you from your foes in order to test you but He forgave you: For Allah is full of grace to those who believe” (3:152).

However, the prohibition against taking prisoners doesn’t seem to be absolute, since Allah also gives the Muslims permission to take the wives of those they have slain in battle as concubines: “O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses [i.e., slaves] out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee” (33:50).

Warfare in this context still must be limited. One verse that has been frequently quoted since 9/11 forbids Muslims to take innocent life: “Whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind” (5:32).

Allah calls his people to be fearless in the face of death in view of the rewards he offers afterward: “And if ye are slain, or die, in the way of Allah, forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all they could amass. And if ye die, or are slain, Lo! It is unto Allah that ye are brought together” (3:157-158). This reward is guaranteed to those who sacrifice for Allah: “He who forsakes his home in the cause of Allah, finds in the earth many a refuge, wide and spacious: should he die as a refugee from home for Allah and His Messenger, His reward becomes due and sure with Allah: and Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful” (4:100).

Indeed, those who wage jihad rank highest among the believers: “Do ye make the giving of drink to pilgrims, or the maintenance of the Sacred Mosque, equal to (the pious service of) those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and strive with might and main in the cause of Allah [jihad fi sabil Allah]? They are not comparable in the sight of Allah: and Allah guides not those who do wrong. Those who believe, and suffer exile and strive with might and main, in Allah’s cause [jihad fi sabil Allah], with their goods and their persons, have the highest rank in the sight of Allah: they are the people who will achieve (salvation)” (9:19-20). Jihad fi sabil Allah refers in Islamic theology to taking up arms for the Muslim cause.

Offensive warfare mandated by the Qur’an?

Alongside the verses enjoining warfare in self-defense, the Qur’an includes a cluster of verses containing general and open-ended commands to fight: “O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him” (9:123).

“O Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (9:73). The Arabic word translated here as “strive hard” is jahidi, a verbal form of the noun jihad.

The command applies first to fighting those who worship other gods besides Allah: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” (9:5).

However, Muslims must fight Jews and Christians as well, although the Qur’an recognizes that as “People of the Book” they have received genuine revelations from Allah: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya [the special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).

But aren’t you just cherry-picking violent passages?

Chris Hedges recounts that Gary Frazier of Discovery Ministries, a Christian fundamentalist group in Texas, told an “End Times conference” that “the second sign of the End Times” would be “the rise of radical Islam.” According to Hedges, Frazier told a rapt crowd that some Muslims “want to export their religion and achieve their goal of “˜world domination.– The cultural contempt is palpable in Hedges” account: he apparently believes that only people like Gary Frazier are really concerned about any threat from Islamic jihadists, and the disdain he has for Frazier carries over to Frazier’s concern about Islam.

Similarly, when I list Qur’anic passages that counsel violence, I am often accused of “cherry-picking” the worst of such passages in order to try to portray Islam in the worst possible light, and ignoring similar material in the Bible. In both cases, however, the question of whether or not one is “cherry-picking” can only adequately be solved by recourse to the mainstream interpretative traditions that have guided believers” understanding of their respective holy books. And as we have seen, mainstream Bible commentators on both sides of the Reformation divide do not consider the Bible’s most violent passages to contain anything like marching orders for believers to make war against unbelievers.

In regard to the Qur’an, on the other hand, the situation is very different. It is not Gary Frazier — or Robert Spencer — who is “cherry-picking” violent passages from the Qur’an. Muslims themselves are doing so, or rather, have recourse to a venerable and mainstream mode of Qur’anic interpretation that exalts the violent verses at the expense of the peaceful ones — and this is one reason why the jihadist movement is growing all over the Islamic world today.

With material enjoining both, can ultimately it be said rightly that the Qur’an preaches either tolerance or war? Very early in the history of Islam, Muslims noticed and began to grapple with how Muhammad’s messages changed in character over the course of his prophetic career, which began in the year 610 A.D. and ended with his death 632. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, a pious Muslim named Muhammad Ibn Ishaq Ibn Yasar (Ibn Ishaq, 704-773), explains that originally Muhammad “had not been given permission to fight or allowed to shed blood”¦. He had simply been ordered to call men to God and to endure insult and forgive the ignorant. The Quraysh had persecuted his followers, seducing some from their religion, and exiling others from their country. They had to choose whether to give up their religion, be maltreated at home, or to flee the country, some to Abyssinia, others to Medina.”

But as tensions increased between Muhammad and the Quraysh, the pagan Arab tribe of which Muhammad was a member but which had rejected his prophethood, the time for forgiveness ended:

When Quraysh became insolent towards God and rejected His gracious purpose, accused His prophet of lying, and ill treated and exiled those who served Him and proclaimed His unity, believed in His prophet, and held fast to His religion, He gave permission to His apostle to fight and to protect himself against those who wronged them and treated them badly.

Ibn Ishaq then explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare:

Assuredly God will help those who help Him. God is Almighty. Those who if we make them strong in the land will establish prayer, pay the poor-tax, enjoin kindness, and forbid iniquity. To God belongs the end of matters.” The meaning is: “I have allowed them to fight only because they have been unjustly treated while their sole offence against men has been that they worship God. When they are in the ascendant they will establish prayer, pay the poor-tax, enjoin kindness, and forbid iniquity, i.e. the Prophet and his companions all of them.”

“When they are in the ascendant,” in other words, they will establish an Islamic state, in which Muslims will pray regularly, pay the poor-tax (zakat), and institute Islamic laws (“forbid iniquity”). But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight:

Then God sent down to him: “Fight them so that there be no more seduction,” i.e., until no believer is seduced from his religion. “And the religion is God’s”, i.e., Until God alone is worshipped.

The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Later Islamic law, based on this development in the doctrine of jihad warfare during Muhammad’s career, would offer non-Muslims three options: conversion to Islam, subjugation as inferiors under Islamic law, or warfare. According to a Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first “˜the fighting” was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start “˜the fighting” against you (Muslims) ... (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah ... as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) ... and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh Abdullah is referring to verses quoted above such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)

This understanding of the Qur’an isn’t limited to the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia, to which Sheikh Abdullah belongs, and which many Western analysts imagine to have originated Islamic doctrines of warfare against unbelievers. Jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb, who was not a Wahhabi, subscribes to the same view of the Qur’an. In his jihad manifesto Milestones, quotes at length from the great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350), who, says Qutb, “has summed up the nature of Islamic Jihaad.” Ibn Qayyim outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”

Qutb summarizes the stages: “Thus, according to the explanation by Imam Ibn Qayyim, the Muslims were first restrained from fighting; then they were permitted to fight; then they were commanded to fight against the aggressors; and finally they were commanded to fight against all the polytheists.” He further quotes Ibn Qayyim as emphasizing the need to wage war against and subjugate non-Muslims, particularly the Jewish and Christian “People of the Book”: “After the command for Jihaad came, the non-believers were divided into three categories: one, those with whom there was peace; two, the people with whom the Muslims were at war; and three, the Dhimmies ... .It was also explained that war should be declared against those from among the “˜People of the Book” who declare open enmity, until they agree to pay Jizyah or accept Islam. Concerning the polytheists and the hypocrites, it was commanded in this chapter that Jihaad be declared against them and that they be treated harshly.” Qutb says that if someone rejects Islam, “then it is the duty of Islam to fight him until either he is killed or until he declares his submission.”

Related to this idea of three stages of development in the Qur’anic concept of jihad is the Islamic doctrine of abrogation (naskh). This is the idea that Allah can change or cancel what he tells Muslims: “None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?” (Qur’an 2:106). According to this idea, the violent verses of sura 9, including the Verse of the Sword (9:5), abrogate the peaceful verses, because they were revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career: in fact, most Muslim authorities agree that the ninth sura was the very last section of the Qur’an to be revealed.

In line with this, some classical Islamic theologians asserted that the Verse of the Sword abrogates no less than 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of the Qur’an. Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a commentary on the Qur’an by the respected imams Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mahalli (1389-1459) and Jalal al-Din Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr al-Suyuti (1445-1505), asserts that the Qur’an’s ninth sura “was sent down when security was removed by the sword.” Another mainstream and respected Qur’an commentator, Isma’il bin Amr bin Kathir al Dimashqi (1301-1372), known popularly as Ibn Kathir, declares that sura 9:5 “abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet and any idolater, every treaty, and every term”¦.No idolater had any more treaty or promise of safety ever since Surah Bara”ah [the ninth sura] was revealed.” Ibn Juzayy (d. 1340), yet another Qur’an commentator whose works are still read in the Islamic world, agrees: the Verse of the Sword’s purpose is “abrogating every peace treaty in the Qur’an.”

Ibn Kathir makes this clear in his commentary on another “tolerance verse”: “And he [Muhammad] saith: O my Lord! Lo! these are a folk who believe not. Then bear with them, O Muhammad, and say: Peace. But they will come to know” (sura 43:88-89). Ibn Kathir explains: “Say Salam (peace!) means, ‘do not respond to them in the same evil manner in which they address you; but try to soften their hearts and forgive them in word and deed.’” However, that is not the end of the passage. Ibn Kathir then takes up the last part: “But they will come to know. This is a warning from Allah for them. His punishment, which cannot be warded off, struck them, and His religion and His word was supreme. Subsequently Jihad and striving were prescribed until the people entered the religion of Allah in crowds, and Islam spread throughout the east and the west.”

That work is not yet complete.

All this means that warfare against unbelievers until they either become Muslim or “pay the jizya” — the special tax on non-Muslims in Islamic law — “with willing submission” (Qur’an 9:29) is the Qur’an’s last word on jihad. Mainstream Islamic tradition has interpreted this as Allah’s enduring marching orders to the human race: the Islamic umma (community) must exist in a state of perpetual war, punctuated only by temporary truces, with the non-Muslim world.

All four principal Sunni schools agree on the importance of jihad. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist, declared:

Jihad is a precept of Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may dispense others from it. We Malikis maintain that it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them.”

Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a Hanbali jurist who is a favorite of Osama bin Laden and other modern-day jihadists:

Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought. As for those who cannot offer resistance or cannot fight, such as women, children, monks, old people, the blind, handicapped and their likes, they shall not be killed unless they actually fight with words (e.g., by propaganda) and acts (e.g., by spying or otherwise assisting in the warfare).”

The Hanafi school sounds the same notes:

It is not lawful to make war upon any people who have never before been called to the faith, without previously requiring them to embrace it, because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith, and also because the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war”¦ If the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax, it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.

And so does the Shafi”i scholar Abu”l Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058), who echoes Muhammad’s instructions to invite the unbelievers to accept Islam or fight them if they refuse:

The mushrikun [infidels] of Dar al-Harb (the arena of battle) are of two types: First, those whom the call of Islam has reached, but they have refused it and have taken up arms. The amir of the army has the option of fighting them”¦in accordance with what he judges to be in the best interest of the Muslims and most harmful to the mushrikun”¦ Second, those whom the invitation to Islam has not reached, although such persons are few nowadays since Allah has made manifest the call of his Messenger”¦it is forbidden to”¦begin an attack before explaining the invitation to Islam to them, informing them of the miracles of the Prophet and making plain the proofs so as to encourage acceptance on their part; if they still refuse to accept after this, war is waged against them and they are treated as those whom the call has reached”¦

These are all extremely old authorities — such that one might reasonably assume that whatever they say couldn’t possibly still be the consensus of the Islamic mainstream. The laws of the United States have evolved considerably since the adoption of the Constitution, which itself has been amended. So why shouldn’t this be true of Islamic law as well? Many observers assume that it must be, and that Al-Qaeda’s departure from mainstream Islam must be located in its preference for the writings of ancient jurists rather than modern ones. But in this, unfortunately, they fail to reckon with the implications of the closing of the gates of ijtihad.

Ijtihad is the process of arriving at a decision on a point of Islamic law through study of the Qur’an and Sunnah. From the beginning of Islam, the authoritative study of such sources was reserved to a select number of scholars who fulfilled certain qualifications, including a comprehensive knowledge of the Qur’an and Sunnah, as well as knowledge of the principle of analogical reasoning (qiyas) by which legal decisions are made; knowledge of the consensus (ijma) on any given question of Muhammad, his closest companions, and the scholars of the past; and more, including living a blameless life. The founders of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence are among the small number of scholars — mujtahedin — thus qualified to perform ijithad. But they all lived very long ago; for many centuries, independent study of the Qur’an and Sunnah has been discouraged among Muslims, who are instead expected to adhere to the rulings of one of those established schools. Since the death of Ahmed ibn Hanbal, from whom the Hanbali school takes its name, in 855 A.D., no one has been recognized by the Sunni Muslim community as a mujtahid of the first class — that is, someone who is qualified to originate legislation of his own, based on the Qur’an and Sunnah but not upon the findings of earlier mujtahedin. Islamic scholar Cyril Glasse notes that –˜the door of ijtihad is closed” as of some nine hundred years, and since then the tendency of jurisprudence (fiqh) has been to produce only commentaries upon commentaries and marginalia.”

Shi”ite Muslims have never accepted that ijtihad is a thing of the past. Thus it is with a slight tone of disapproval that the Shi”ite scholar Murtada Mutahhari notes of the Sunnis:

The right of ijtihad did not last for long among the Sunnis. Perhaps the cause of this was the difficulty which occurred in practice: for if such a right were to continue [for any great length of time], especially if ta’awwul and the precedence of something over the texts were to be permitted, and everyone were permitted to change or interpret according to his own opinion, nothing would remain of the way of Islam (din al islam). Perhaps it is for this reason that the right of independent ijtihad was gradually withdrawn, and the view of the Sunni ‘ulama became that they instructed people to practice taqlid of only the four mujtahids, the four famous Imams – Abu Hanifa [d.150/767], al Shafi’i; [d.204/820], Malik B. Anas [d.179/795] and Ahmad B. Hanbal [d.241/855] – and forbade people to follow anyone apart from these four persons. This measure was first taken in Egypt in the seventh hijri century, and then taken up in the rest of the lands of Islam.

The Imam Hassan Qazwini, director of the Islamic Center of America, considers this closing off of new interpretations of Islamic law to be a serious error. According to David Smock, director of the Religion and Peacemaking Initiative of the United States Institute of Peace:

One of the gravest mistakes Muslims have committed, according to Qazwini, is closing the doors of ijtihad. They have limited legal interpretation to only four prominent scholars: Malik Ibn Anas, Abu Hanifa al-No’man, Muhammad Ibn Idris al-Shafi’i, and Ahmad Ibn Hambal”“the heads of the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi’i, and Hambali [sic] schools of thought. The motivation for this was political. During the Abbasid Dynasty (750–1258 CE), the Abbasids decided to outlaw all other sects in order to strictly control religion and worship, as well as political matters.

Closing the doors of ijtihad has had extremely detrimental ramifications for the Muslim world. According to Qazwini, this decision has resulted in chronic intellectual stagnation, as thousands of potential mujtahids and scholars have been prohibited from offering workable solutions to newly emerging problems. Muslim thinkers have become captive to rules that were made long ago, leaving little scope for liberal or innovative thought.

Other Muslims, however, disagree. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University, in his consideration of Islam and modernity, Ideals and Realities of Islam, says: “Certain modernists over the past century have tried to change the Shari’ah, to reopen the gate of ijtihad, with the aim of incorporating modern practices into the Law and limiting the function of Shari’ah to personal life. All of these activities emanate from a particular attitude of spiritual weakness vis-a -vis the world and surrender to the world. Those who are conquered by such a mentality want to make the Shari’ah ‘conform to the times,’ which means to the whims and fancies of men and the ever changing human nature which has made ‘the times.’ They do not realize that it is the Shari’ah according to which society should be modeled not vice versa.”

In any case, whether it is a manifestation of “chronic intellectual stagnation” or fidelity to the Sharia, along with the stasis in other areas there has been a lack of development in the doctrines of jihad. Even Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong admits that “Muslim jurists ... taught that, because there was only one God, the whole world should be united in one polity and it was the duty of all Muslims to engage in a continued struggle to make the world accept the divine principles and create a just society.” Non-Muslims “should be made to surrender to God’s rule. Until this had been achieved, Islam must engage in a perpetual warlike effort.” But, she says, “this martial theology was laid aside in practice and became a dead letter once it was clear that the Islamic empire had reached the limits of its expansion about a hundred years after Muhammad’s death.”

The problem is that however much of a dead letter it became in practice during times of weakness in the Islamic world, this doctrine of Islamic supremacism was never reformed or rejected. No one seems to have told the warriors of jihad who besieged Europe through the seventeenth century that the Islamic empire had already reached the limits of its expansion centuries before. No one seems to have told the modern-day warriors of Islam from Bosnia to the Philippines that jihad is a dead letter, and that Islam isn’t doing any more expanding. The Saudi Sheikh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajid (1962-), whose lectures and Islamic rulings (fatawa) circulate widely throughout the Islamic world, demonstrates this in a discussion of whether Muslims should force others to accept Islam. In considering Qur’an 2:256 (“There is no compulsion in religion,”) the Sheikh quotes Qur’an 9:29, as well as 8:39 (“And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism, i.e., worshipping others besides Allaah), and the religion (worship) will all be for Allaah Alone [in the whole of the world]”), and the Verse of the Sword. Of the latter, Sheikh Muhammad says simply: “This verse is known as Ayat al-Sayf (the verse of the sword). These and similar verses abrogate the verses which say that there is no compulsion to become Muslim.”

Underscoring the fact that none of this is merely of historical interest is another Shafi”i manual of Islamic law that in 1991 was certified by the highest authority in Sunni Islam, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.” This manual, “˜Umdat al-Salik (available in English as Reliance of the Traveller), spends a considerable amount of time explaining jihad as “war against non-Muslims.” It spells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific terms: “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians ... until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by a Jordanian jurist that corresponds to Muhammad’s instructions to call the unbelievers to Islam before fighting them: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya) ... while remaining in their ancestral religions.”

Also, if there is no caliph, Muslims must still wage jihad. And there is something else also. In Islamic law, jihad warfare may be defensive or offensive. Jihad is ordinarily fard kifaya — an obligation on the Muslim community as a whole, from which some are freed if others take it up. Jihad becomes fard ayn, or obligatory on every individual Muslim to aid in any way he can, if a Muslim land is attacked. That is what jihadists argue today — that the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan makes jihad fard ayn, or obligatory on every individual Muslim. But this is just jihad for the defense of Muslim lands, although the defensive aspect of jihad activity is often interpreted quite elastically. It is the province of the caliph, who for Sunni Muslims was the successor of Muhammad as the political, military, and religious leader of the Muslim community, to authorize the waging of offensive jihad to spread the rule of Islamic law into non-Muslim lands — but the caliphate was abolished by the secular Turkish government in 1924.

This is a primary reason why jihadists want to restore the caliphate. In 1996 the Taliban’s Mullah Omar went to the shrine of the Respectable Cloak of Muhammad in Kandahar and stood on the roof of the shrine wrapped in the cloak. His followers proclaimed him Emir al Momineen, or leader of the believers — a title of the caliph. So far, however, only a jihadist group in Algeria has joined the Taliban in accepting Mullah Omar as caliph.

In any case, the desire to restore the caliphate ultimately highlights the expansionist, imperialist, totalitarian, globalist aims of the jihad movement, even as today it presents itself as a defensive action against Western evils. That expansionism is based on Qur’anic passages such as 9:29 and the life and teachings of Muhammad. The Pakistani Brigadier S. K. Malik’s 1979 book The Qur’anic Concept of War (a book that made its way to the American mujahedin Jeffrey Leon Battle and October Martinique Lewis, and which carried a glowing endorsement from Pakistan’s then-future President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who said that it explained “the ONLY pattern of war” that a Muslim country could legitimately wage) delineates the same stages in the Qur’anic teaching about jihad: “The Muslim migration to Medina brought in its wake events and decisions of far-reaching significance and consequence for them. While in Mecca, they had neither been proclaimed an Ummah [community] nor were they granted the permission to take up arms against their oppressors. In Medina, a divine revelation proclaimed them an “˜Ummah” and granted them the permission to take up arms against their oppressors. The permission was soon afterwards converted into a divine command making war a religious obligation for the faithful.”

Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti, a theology professor at Damascus University, echoes the classic Islamic legal tenet that Muslims can legitimately wage war against those who resist the proclamation of Islam in his book Jihad in Islam: How to Understand and Practice It. Al-Buti considers at great length the question of whether this armed struggle can be undertaken “to avert belligerency” or “to put an end to infidelity.” In other words, is jihad purely defensive, or can it be offensive? (Al-Buti, however, carefully defines “to avert belligerency” to allow for a pre-emptive strike against a perceived imminent attack.)

Al-Buti bases his discussion of this question on the Qur’an and Islamic traditions. After a thorough discussion of these hadiths and other elements of Muslim tradition, al-Buti concludes that Muslim forces shouldn’t attack unbelievers. They should fight when attacked, or when an attack seems imminent, but that’s all. In this conclusion he notes that he is siding with three of the four major Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali: all agree, by his account, that military jihad should only be undertaken to ward off an attack or potential attack. Of course, such restrictions can be and have been interpreted with great elasticity, but the fourth Sunni school school of jurisprudence (madhhab) goes even farther: the Shafi”is, as well as the minor Zahiri school, favor offensive jihad. The Shafi”is and Zahiris, according to al-Buti, “proclaimed that the fundamental cause of Jihad is to terminate Paganism.”

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari”ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, in a 1994 book on Islamic law quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd. Ibn Rushd reports on a consensus (ijma) among Muslim scholars on jihad warfare — and in traditional Islamic legal terms a consensus among scholars, once reached, cannot be modified. “Why wage war?” asks Ibn Rushd, and then he answers his own question: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book”¦is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

But if this is so, why hasn’t the worldwide Islamic community been waging jihad on a large scale up until relatively recently? Nyazee says it is only because they have not been able to do so: “the Muslim community may be considered to be passing through a period of truce. In its present state of weakness, there is nothing much it can do about it.”

In this view, then, the jihad must continue as long as there are unbelievers, and only falls into abeyance when Muslims do not have the military strength to press forward with it. Making war on unbelievers is one of the responsibilities of the Muslim umma. That the three stages of jihad, culminating in offensive warfare to establish the hegemony of Islamic law — which stage is normative for all time — can be found not only in the writings of contemporary Islamic jihadists, but also in ancient Muslim scholars, underscores the traditional character of contemporary Islamic jihad activity. Modern mujahedin are, in their own view, not “hijacking” Islam; they are restoring its proper interpretation — and they are successfully convincing peaceful Muslims around the world that they are correct in this.

For this to end, peaceful Muslims around the world would have to confront the fact that bin Laden and other jihad terrorists are regularly justifying their violence by reference to passages of the Qur’an and the words and deeds of Muhammad. If they don’t acknowledge this and formulate new and non-literalist ways of understanding this material, it will continue to be used to incite violence. In other words, the use that jihadists make of elements of the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teaching makes it incumbent upon peaceful Muslims to perform a searching reevaluation of how they understand those elements, so as to neutralize their capacity to set Muslims against non-Muslims.

People will do evil in all kinds of circumstances, and use all manner of justification for it; but the violent passages in the Bible are not equivalent to those in the Qur’an in content, in mainstream interpretation, or in the effect they have had on believers through the ages. The fact that in Islam violence against unbelievers has divine sanction in a way that it does not in Christianity makes religious violence more prevalent and harder to eradicate in Islam than it has ever been in Christianity. To equate it to a jumble of passages from the Bible to which no one would otherwise be paying any attention at all, at least as direct marching orders for twenty-first century warriors, is specious and dangerously misleading.

Mercy vs. judgment

In Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian, Russell takes issue with Jesus as a model of moral behavior on several grounds — notably because he preaches about hell. Russell says, “I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment” — yet it is a simple matter of observation that many people who are indeed profoundly humane, from Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, have so believed. And contrary to the claims of anti-”Christianist” writers concerned about the apocalyptic violence of the Left Behind series — their belief doesn’t seem to have damaged their capacity for concern for others.

Russell also feels pangs of grief for the fig tree cursed by Jesus: “This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree.” Other critics of Jesus have taken issue with Jesus” apparent rudeness to the Syrophoenician woman who asks him to heal her daughter (Matthew 15:21-28), and to his harsh words for the Pharisees, to whom he says, “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). In light, however, of the teachings of the Qur’an, Muhammad, and Islamic theologians on jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism, such objections seem almost quaint. For those who are neither Christians nor Muslims, of course, neither Jesus nor Muhammad are moral paradigms; however, to anyone who is aware of the Gospel texts and the traditions about Muhammad that Muslims consider reliable, there can be no question as to which one teaches peace and which one teaches war and conquest. Or can one reasonably equate Jesus” command to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44) with the Qur’an’s directive to the followers of Muhammad to be “ruthless to the unbelievers” (48:29)?

And not just war and conquest. The mercy which is so much a part of Christianity has virtually no home in Islam, contrary to its repeated invocations of Allah as ar-Rahim, “the merciful.” An emblematic contrast is in the treatment within each religion of the Mosaic law’s command to stone adulterers. In a celebrated incident in the Gospels, Jesus tells a group that has assembled to stone to death an adulterous woman: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then, after the crowd dispersed in shame, he said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more” (John 7:53-8:11).

On the other hand, an adulterous couple was once brought to Muhammad, who used the occasion to challenge the Jewish leaders about their fidelity to the letter of their own law. “What do you find in the Torah,” he asked them, “about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?” They answered, “We announce their crime and lash them,” whereupon a former rabbi and convert to Islam, cried: “You are telling a lie. Torah contains the order of Rajm.” One of the Jews then began to read from the Torah, but he skipped the verse mandating stoning for adultery, covering it with his hand. The former rabbi commanded, “Lift your hand!” The verse duly read, Muhammad exclaimed, “Woe to you Jews! What has induced you to abandon the judgment of God which you hold in your hands?” Muhammad ordered the couple to be stoned to death; another Muslim remembered, “I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones.”

Of course, rabbinic Judaism ever since the destruction of the Temple had evolved non-literal ways to understand such commands, while in Islam their literal interpretation is still very much alive.

Hard to believe

Yet many people, whether they give any credence to the claims that are being made about Christian theocracy, have a hard time believing that the teachings of jihad violence and Islamic supremacism could be widely accepted among Muslims worldwide. One main reason why they have this difficulty is because the Muslims they have met personally are gentle souls who profess to abhor religious violence, and assure them that their religion is peaceful — and surely you’re not saying they’re lying, are you?

They may not be. In Islam, as in all religious traditions, there is a spectrum of belief, knowledge, and fervor. Many who call themselves Muslims know or care little about what the mainstream authorities of the religion actually teach. And because of certain elements of the nature of Islam, some who are quite devout may have only a glancing familiarity, at best, with the material outlined here about jihad warfare. One is that although many continue to use the words “Muslim” and “Arab” as if they were synonymous, most Muslims worldwide today are not Arabs, and do not speak Arabic — especially the Qur’an’s difficult, seventh-century Arabic. Yet all the sects and schools of Islam mandate that prayers must be said and the Qur’an recited in Arabic — making this for many merely an exercise in formalism, involving the repetition of syllables they do not understand.

The Islamic ideology of jihad warfare has been deemphasized in modern times for a complex of historical reasons — notably in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and West Africa. That has created a situation in which many Muslims have heard little or nothing about it, at least until jihadist recruiters began appearing with texts entitled “Jihad: the Forgotten Obligation” and the like. In his delightful memoir The Caliph’s House: A Year In Casablanca, Tahir Shah recounts the arrival of jihadist recruiters in a Casablanca slum. They parked a “well-built trailer” across the street from the mosque, and set about trying to win the local people to their virulent vision of Islam.

Jihadists today view the vast body of cultural Muslims as a huge recruiting field, and have often recruited them by calling them back to the full practice of their religion. Dinesh D”Souza illustrates the loyalty that ordinary Muslims feel to Islamic authorities in an anecdote from his boyhood in India. A Muslim family that rented property from D”Souza’s grandfather decided to renege on their pledge to leave at the end of their lease because property values had risen, and the property was covered by rent control laws. But then a local imam confronted the family: “You gave your word and you are still here? You call yourself a Muslim? You are a disgrace to Islam! I advise you to start packing.” The family obeyed.

However, if the local Muslim leader is inclined toward jihad violence, such loyalty can have chilling implications, as illustrated by an incident (recounted by David Pryce-Jones in his book The Closed Circle) from the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century, as recounted by the wife of a Muslim family that had lived peacefully next to a Christian family for years:

Then one night, my husband came home and told me that the padisha had sent word that we were to kill all the Christians in our village, and that we would have to kill our neighbours. I was very angry, and told him that I did not care who gave such orders, they were wrong. These neighbours had always been kind to us, and if he dared to kill them Allah would pay us out. I tried all I could to stop him, but he killed them — killed them with his own hand.

Unfortunately, all too many in such situations do not believe that Allah will “pay them out,” but rather that he will reward them for their fidelity to the teachings of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition on jihad.

Philip Jenkins and the Boston Globe should take note.

The tattoo across his chest said:

“If there is a God he loves violence. It is his gift to mankind. It is truly magnificent and for this I am thankful.”

These chilling words were revealed from his autopsy report. On August 31, 2012, 23-year-old Terence Tyler had walked into a Pathmark supermarket in New Jersey, where he had a job on the overnight shift, and in cold blood gunned down two employees who had never worked with him before. He then turned his gun on himself.

The tattoo wasn’t the only clue that the young man had a predilection for violence. Back in 2009 he had sent a Twitter message that read, “Is it normal to want to kill ALL of your coworkers? Maybe but I’m actually in a position where I can.”

Christians around the world are often the targets of violence. But here in the U.S., is that even possible? It is.

On Anastasia Boylan’s fourth day in the Writing 115 class at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, an armed man wearing body armor shot the professor and demanded that any of the cowering students who were Christians stand up.

Boylan was among those who did so, and the gunman shot her. She fell, wounded, and then pretended to be dead. Then she heard the shooter say to another student, “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second.” Anastasia is in the hospital now, recovering.

This report comes from one of her parents. Others have reported that according to Mercer’s online writings, he “hated religion.” Nine people, plus the shooter, died that morning.

In a time when followers of Christ in other parts of the world are beheaded or crucified for their faith, or driven out of their homelands as refugees, some Christians in the West have been far too quick to use the word “persecuted” to describe the decreasing tolerance for Christianity and Christian conviction in the public square. And yet the shooting in Roseburg reminds us that, as Paul told Timothy, anyone who wishes to follow Christ in this world will face hardship.

Now some critics have dismissed the idea that a mass shooting targeting Christians could even happen in America, and some have questioned the report that the Oregon shooter targeted Christians as the eyewitnesses have reported.

Ed Stetzer, my friend and co-host for “BreakPoint This Week,” offered very helpful guidance in a column published last week in USA Today.

In it, Ed, who is also the Vice President of Research at Lifeway Christian Research, acknowledges that not every report of Christians being targeted turns out to be true. Nonetheless, Christians and churches have been targeted in incidents in Fort Worth, Colorado Springs, and in Charleston in recent years. In fact, Lifeway maintains a research database for church shootings, as does the FBI. The point is, these things do happen, and Ed offers then what we ought to do.

First, Christians need to be ready to stand, to “give an answer for the hope that we have.” Indeed, if the unthinkable happens, are we prepared to give an account of our faith as Anastasia Boylan did?

And second, we need to be quick to forgive, as our brothers and sisters in Charleston incredibly demonstrated earlier this year. Their response made a jaded nation sit up and take notice. “When evil came knocking, forgiveness answered,” as Ed wrote. “The entire nation was touched by the words of victims’ family members toward Dylann Roof just days after that awful tragedy, offering forgiveness and the gospel they knew.”

Third, we have to trust God in the face of inscrutable tragedy. “Evil is real and terrible,” Ed writes, “and God does not give us all the answers — but He does give us Himself. And in times like this, God is all we have, and He is enough.”

As Camden McAfee said in the wake of Roseburg, “... what sets Christians apart from the rest of the world is our unshakable hope in a sovereign God who means all things for good — especially life’s most painful things.”

Finally, we must call for justice amid tragedy. Ed had some gentle, yet firm, words for society at large. “I understand the United States’ cultural tension in which Christian-held values do not always align with current popular opinion,” he writes. “But the truth is, the irreligious in our culture must de-escalate hateful rhetoric toward Christians, no matter how vehement the disagreements between us.”

Ed calls on all sides to tone it down so that we can move toward a more just society. “I am not saying we don’t criticize,” he writes, “but we must not demonize. When we demonize others — Christians, Muslims, gays, African-Americans or whomever — we give mentally unstable or hate-filled people additional justification to kill.”

Resources:

Calculated killing of Christians in Roseburg?

Ed Stetzer, USA Today, October 5, 2015

Girl Played Dead, Overheard Oregon Shooter’s CHILLING Last Words to Each Christian He Found

Conservative Tribune, October 2, 2015

Oregon, We Are Not Numb — Or Hopeless

Camden McAfee, Desiringgod.org, October 2, 2015

Death in a classroom: Oregon shooter targeted his English class

Michael Muskal, Richard Winton and Marisa Gerber, LA Times, October 2, 2015

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The tattoo across his chest said:

“If there is a God he loves violence. It is his gift to mankind. It is truly magnificent and for this I am thankful.”

These chilling words were revealed from his autopsy report. On August 31, 2012, 23-year-old Terence Tyler had walked into a Pathmark supermarket in New Jersey, where he had a job on the overnight shift, and in cold blood gunned down two employees who had never worked with him before. He then turned his gun on himself.

The tattoo wasn’t the only clue that the young man had a predilection for violence. Back in 2009 he had sent a Twitter message that read, “Is it normal to want to kill ALL of your coworkers? Maybe but I’m actually in a position where I can.”