Harsh language followed by unjust action, the burning of churches, has surrounded the debate regarding whether Malay Christians are able to use the word Allah as a translation for the word God. Some Muslims feel that Allah refers to a different God than the Christian God.
That is interesting because I have decreased some of the prejudice against Muslims among Christians by explaining that Allah is the Arabic word for God, and that with the same roots of Adam, and Abraham, that indeed they are the same God words. Now I see that Muslims unravel that mutual understanding because they confuse a linguistic situation of how to share calling on the name of the one God with specifics of Islamic or Christian doctrine.
One God.
The One God called Allah, The One God called God.
Remember, though, that Christians translate the word God into native languages throughout the world. God is the English language word for God.
Christians don't know they are Christians because they worship the divinity spelled G-O-D.
The tradition language of the Catholic Church, Latin, for example, provides the name of the divinity as Deo.
(example: Deo gratias means Thanks be to God in English. )
Followers of The One God called Allah use the word Allah because the Qur'an was given to them in the Arabic language. Thus Muslims have an official liturgical language, Arabic, just as does the Catholic Church, which is Latin.
Thus to be totally accurate in this argument (if you were having the argument with a Vatican official), you are comparing the use of Arabic Allah with Latin Deo.
Because, despite the translations of the Qur'an into many languages, the translators adhered to the word Allah (Arabic) in each translation (for example my English language Qur'an uses the word Allah), and because the only religious imagery of God that is allowed is the inscription in calligraphy of the word Allah, a linguistic word has become holy to Muslims. That is understandable.
However, being understandable does not mean that Muslims can ignore that a different model was not followed with Christianity. Christians did not make the Latin word Deo the word that must be used in every Bible translation. Further, Christians do not make religious imagery of God using his name Deo. So when a Bible is translated into English, the English language word God is used, not Deo, and likewise in every other language.
Because Christians allow religious imagery, which the Qur'an does not for Muslims, Christians have many sources of religious imagery and thus never sanctified the writing of the name Deo. This is a fundamental difference between the practice of Islam and the practice of Christianity, but it does not mean they are different Gods.
I hope that the religion of peace, Islam, will resolve this problem without disrespect, harming people, threatening, violence and, of course, burning down churches. Where are your scholars, who must surely know as much as I do and have just clearly explained here?
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Friday, January 8, 2010
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Message to all Muslims
While this message will be of interest to everyone, it has been put upon my heart, what is left of it after enduring such sadness and evil of the world, to convey a message to all Muslims. First of all greetings from me personally, recalling my affection for you all, and how much I enjoyed my short sojourn in the Muslim country of Turkey.
The Holy Spirit placed upon my heart this morning, soon after I woke up, that I must explain, with the intention of clarifying, some things with the purpose of urging all Muslims to unity. Nothing I say is contrary to the scriptures of the Bible and the Qur'an and instead, rather, wipes away some of the fog of politics, corruption of faith and impurity that can only be ascribed to the actions of humans, not of the perfect God nor of his scriptures, which remain everlasting and unchanged.
Brothers and sisters, you must not continue to have hardened hearts toward each other based on your respective sects of Islam. In particular I of course indicate the ill will in many places between Shia and Sunni believers. Here is the image that the Holy Spirit gave to me to tell you. In olden days the Spanish had in their currency a coin that had a certain value, but it came with lines drawn upon it so that the coin could be divided by the owner into eighths. Islam is like that coin. The value of any part of it still derives purely from the material of the coin that all the potential pieces share. Thus people may be Shia, but it is a piece from the original coin. And people may be Sunni, but it is a piece from the original coin. Do not allow humans to hold in their hands one piece of the coin and disrespect, demean or war against those who hold in their hands their piece of the same coin. You must let go of previous human based injustices from both sides, and stop ascribing divine reasons for your differences, no matter how profound (or small) those differences are. How can you let go of ascribing divine reasons for your differences? By remembering that the pieces that you hold in your hand still come from the same coin, a spiritually united Islam, that is enfranchised by the same God and the same scriptures.
Why is this so urgent for me to tell you? The Holy Spirit has put it upon my heart that one way you will look past your differences is to realize that each of you holds part of the key that must work together to please God. I'm going to make a large generalization now, and bear with me, because I am putting into words a divine image, and that is difficult to do (and of course excuse typos or mispellings or punctuation lapses, they are not "Freudian slips" or "spiritual messages," ha, but simply my lack of good equipment and a shortage of time). It is essential that Islam puts its house into order, by achieving spiritual unity, because all the parts of Islam will play a vital role in the time, and let me say this right now, it is still far in the future, when the genuine Antichrist arises, and the end of the world draws near, to combat the Antichrist and his works.
Despite what mislead Christians think, the Antichrist, the real one, is still far off. What we are in the midst of, however, is the "first wave" of false prophets that Jesus warned about. The second error that many Christians have is that the Antichrist is "anti-Christian." That is totally wrong, for while the real Antichrist is indeed anti-Christian, he is foremost anti-God. This means he is anti-believers. The Antichrist is called such because he is the anti-salvation. He is the one who will totally oppose God's will and that means that all believers of God are his enemy and the object of his domination and extermination. That's why I must laugh when people speculate about modern people who "might be" the so called "Antichrist." You would know him, oh my goodness, you would know him... you would not have to "wonder."
Thus many Christians are "asleep at the wheel," to use a term that refers to falling asleep while driving a car. They do not recognize that any false prophets of any "faith" are active in laying the unintentional, not intentional groundwork for the actual false prophets of the actual Antichrist. It's like today we have mini-John the Baptists, laying down the crooked ways for the eventual real Antichrist, to use the example of how the real John the Baptist prepared a straight way for the Messiah Jesus Christ. Most of the false prophets of today are from the ancient pagan religions, of the so called "New Age" manufactured "religions," and those Christians who willfully misunderstand the scriptures in order to write themselves a role in divine matters. Today's false prophets do not realize they are preparing the way for the genuine Antichrist, and Satan can only marvel at their stupidity. Today's false prophets strengthen love of the world and their own works and loosen love of God and obedience to him alone. They have achieved their greatest inroads in the formerly Christian nations, but Muslims, be alert, because they work on the young people through the increasing "sophistication" of the world.
So the great myth that many Christians, those on the fringe, and those who are lukewarm in their faith is that 1) the Antichrist is within reach of these times, possible arisen or rising soon, which he is not and 2) that the Antichrist is the enemy of only Christians, while in fact he is the enemy of all the faithful believers in the one true God. Hence the Antichrist is the enemy of the Muslims too and, of course, the Jews.
So the image that was put upon me that is difficult to describe in writing is that the Sunni part of Islam is keeping in preservation the purity of the holy places and the dictates of the faith, from which Islam must continue to draw its strength like water from a well. However, the Shia Imams must be acknowledged and respected because they are like the hands that draw from the well the water of purity of belief in God. This is not to say that each side does not do all of that which I listed above; it is the urging that you not discard or minimize what either side has in their faith repertoire that I am saying. Why is this? Because the Holy Spirit has put it upon my heart to explain to you that the Twelfth Imam will return, as a young boy, when it is genuinely time to oppose the Antichrist. All that you can do now and in future generations to keep your faith pure in its attentiveness to the one true God, which we, the people of Abraham, all share, will assist in confounding the work of the false prophets who at first unintentionally, and eventually intentionally, prepare the way for the Antichrist.
The Twelfth Imam will arise, as a young boy purified in his faith, and oppose, along with the Christians and the Jews and all true believers, the real Antichrist when he arises.
This is what the Holy Spirit put upon my heart to tell you most urgently today.
The Holy Spirit placed upon my heart this morning, soon after I woke up, that I must explain, with the intention of clarifying, some things with the purpose of urging all Muslims to unity. Nothing I say is contrary to the scriptures of the Bible and the Qur'an and instead, rather, wipes away some of the fog of politics, corruption of faith and impurity that can only be ascribed to the actions of humans, not of the perfect God nor of his scriptures, which remain everlasting and unchanged.
Brothers and sisters, you must not continue to have hardened hearts toward each other based on your respective sects of Islam. In particular I of course indicate the ill will in many places between Shia and Sunni believers. Here is the image that the Holy Spirit gave to me to tell you. In olden days the Spanish had in their currency a coin that had a certain value, but it came with lines drawn upon it so that the coin could be divided by the owner into eighths. Islam is like that coin. The value of any part of it still derives purely from the material of the coin that all the potential pieces share. Thus people may be Shia, but it is a piece from the original coin. And people may be Sunni, but it is a piece from the original coin. Do not allow humans to hold in their hands one piece of the coin and disrespect, demean or war against those who hold in their hands their piece of the same coin. You must let go of previous human based injustices from both sides, and stop ascribing divine reasons for your differences, no matter how profound (or small) those differences are. How can you let go of ascribing divine reasons for your differences? By remembering that the pieces that you hold in your hand still come from the same coin, a spiritually united Islam, that is enfranchised by the same God and the same scriptures.
Why is this so urgent for me to tell you? The Holy Spirit has put it upon my heart that one way you will look past your differences is to realize that each of you holds part of the key that must work together to please God. I'm going to make a large generalization now, and bear with me, because I am putting into words a divine image, and that is difficult to do (and of course excuse typos or mispellings or punctuation lapses, they are not "Freudian slips" or "spiritual messages," ha, but simply my lack of good equipment and a shortage of time). It is essential that Islam puts its house into order, by achieving spiritual unity, because all the parts of Islam will play a vital role in the time, and let me say this right now, it is still far in the future, when the genuine Antichrist arises, and the end of the world draws near, to combat the Antichrist and his works.
Despite what mislead Christians think, the Antichrist, the real one, is still far off. What we are in the midst of, however, is the "first wave" of false prophets that Jesus warned about. The second error that many Christians have is that the Antichrist is "anti-Christian." That is totally wrong, for while the real Antichrist is indeed anti-Christian, he is foremost anti-God. This means he is anti-believers. The Antichrist is called such because he is the anti-salvation. He is the one who will totally oppose God's will and that means that all believers of God are his enemy and the object of his domination and extermination. That's why I must laugh when people speculate about modern people who "might be" the so called "Antichrist." You would know him, oh my goodness, you would know him... you would not have to "wonder."
Thus many Christians are "asleep at the wheel," to use a term that refers to falling asleep while driving a car. They do not recognize that any false prophets of any "faith" are active in laying the unintentional, not intentional groundwork for the actual false prophets of the actual Antichrist. It's like today we have mini-John the Baptists, laying down the crooked ways for the eventual real Antichrist, to use the example of how the real John the Baptist prepared a straight way for the Messiah Jesus Christ. Most of the false prophets of today are from the ancient pagan religions, of the so called "New Age" manufactured "religions," and those Christians who willfully misunderstand the scriptures in order to write themselves a role in divine matters. Today's false prophets do not realize they are preparing the way for the genuine Antichrist, and Satan can only marvel at their stupidity. Today's false prophets strengthen love of the world and their own works and loosen love of God and obedience to him alone. They have achieved their greatest inroads in the formerly Christian nations, but Muslims, be alert, because they work on the young people through the increasing "sophistication" of the world.
So the great myth that many Christians, those on the fringe, and those who are lukewarm in their faith is that 1) the Antichrist is within reach of these times, possible arisen or rising soon, which he is not and 2) that the Antichrist is the enemy of only Christians, while in fact he is the enemy of all the faithful believers in the one true God. Hence the Antichrist is the enemy of the Muslims too and, of course, the Jews.
So the image that was put upon me that is difficult to describe in writing is that the Sunni part of Islam is keeping in preservation the purity of the holy places and the dictates of the faith, from which Islam must continue to draw its strength like water from a well. However, the Shia Imams must be acknowledged and respected because they are like the hands that draw from the well the water of purity of belief in God. This is not to say that each side does not do all of that which I listed above; it is the urging that you not discard or minimize what either side has in their faith repertoire that I am saying. Why is this? Because the Holy Spirit has put it upon my heart to explain to you that the Twelfth Imam will return, as a young boy, when it is genuinely time to oppose the Antichrist. All that you can do now and in future generations to keep your faith pure in its attentiveness to the one true God, which we, the people of Abraham, all share, will assist in confounding the work of the false prophets who at first unintentionally, and eventually intentionally, prepare the way for the Antichrist.
The Twelfth Imam will arise, as a young boy purified in his faith, and oppose, along with the Christians and the Jews and all true believers, the real Antichrist when he arises.
This is what the Holy Spirit put upon my heart to tell you most urgently today.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Western women would make Eve blush
So western commentators are "outraged" at how "women are treated by Islamic fundamentalists," and indeed, some of the abuses are abhorrent. However, at least they have an excuse of either ignorance of what the Qur'an really teaches, or cultural excess that has continued without moderation.
I suggest, though, that westerners shut their mouths and clean up their own situation. From what I see, many western women, enabled by men, do things that would make Eve blush and that Eve, mother of humanity, would never have considered doing (nor would have responded to if the devil had tempted her in those ways).
o Abortions, especially as it is more casual and with less thought than updating one's wardrobe or getting a new hair style.
o Women teachers who sexually prey on both boy and girl students.
o Women who abuse and murder their own children.
o Women who are neglectful in daycare centers.
o Women who enable their children to use drugs and/or alcohol.
o Women who allow or even encourage their children to have plastic surgery and other beauty "enhancement" treatments.
o Women who know about every diet on the planet but give their infants and toddler children soda pop and tons of fruit juice instead of milk, and then wonder why they are "fat," or have hyperactivity issues.
o Women who bring "lovers" and "boyfriends" into their home who then sexually abuse, beat and even kill their boy or girl children.
o Women who dress their little children like whores.
o Women, whether celebrities or in the community, by life style or as paid promoters, who role model sexualized behavior and demeanor so as to degrade the morality of the young who observe them in public.
o Women who raise their children ignorant of God, and worse, use them in occult or bizarre pagan beliefs, ruining those children's peace of mind for life.
o Women, teenagers and girl children who use the Internet and cell phone cameras to sexualize themselves or violate the privacy of others, and who thus promote a child pornography and visual rape mentality.
So before you get all worried about what the Taliban or fundamentalist Islamists are doing with their women and children, how about a little focus on one or all of those problems? Notice that in fundamentalist Islamic communities, no matter what else you think of them, they are not "struggling" with even ONE of the above issues. And you wonder why they don't want "western women 'values'" in their society? Even the most well meaning and virtuous western woman who tries to intervene in Muslim fundamentalist matters brings with her the taint of all that is happening above in the society at large. It is embarrassing and disgraceful at how low western society has fallen in these extreme matters (and I'm not talking about the age old issues of 'fooling around;' what I list above is the terrible destruction of the feminine as guardian of the young and overall bulwark against depravity and total loss of social anchorage).
Do we want to send the female Sunday school teacher who is accused of raping and murdering an eight year old neighbor to the east to role model "liberated female morality" to the Muslims? I didn't think so.
As Jesus stated, before removing the mote (a very small particle) out of the neighbor's eye, be sure to remove the beam (a huge piece of lumber) from your own eye.
I suggest, though, that westerners shut their mouths and clean up their own situation. From what I see, many western women, enabled by men, do things that would make Eve blush and that Eve, mother of humanity, would never have considered doing (nor would have responded to if the devil had tempted her in those ways).
o Abortions, especially as it is more casual and with less thought than updating one's wardrobe or getting a new hair style.
o Women teachers who sexually prey on both boy and girl students.
o Women who abuse and murder their own children.
o Women who are neglectful in daycare centers.
o Women who enable their children to use drugs and/or alcohol.
o Women who allow or even encourage their children to have plastic surgery and other beauty "enhancement" treatments.
o Women who know about every diet on the planet but give their infants and toddler children soda pop and tons of fruit juice instead of milk, and then wonder why they are "fat," or have hyperactivity issues.
o Women who bring "lovers" and "boyfriends" into their home who then sexually abuse, beat and even kill their boy or girl children.
o Women who dress their little children like whores.
o Women, whether celebrities or in the community, by life style or as paid promoters, who role model sexualized behavior and demeanor so as to degrade the morality of the young who observe them in public.
o Women who raise their children ignorant of God, and worse, use them in occult or bizarre pagan beliefs, ruining those children's peace of mind for life.
o Women, teenagers and girl children who use the Internet and cell phone cameras to sexualize themselves or violate the privacy of others, and who thus promote a child pornography and visual rape mentality.
So before you get all worried about what the Taliban or fundamentalist Islamists are doing with their women and children, how about a little focus on one or all of those problems? Notice that in fundamentalist Islamic communities, no matter what else you think of them, they are not "struggling" with even ONE of the above issues. And you wonder why they don't want "western women 'values'" in their society? Even the most well meaning and virtuous western woman who tries to intervene in Muslim fundamentalist matters brings with her the taint of all that is happening above in the society at large. It is embarrassing and disgraceful at how low western society has fallen in these extreme matters (and I'm not talking about the age old issues of 'fooling around;' what I list above is the terrible destruction of the feminine as guardian of the young and overall bulwark against depravity and total loss of social anchorage).
Do we want to send the female Sunday school teacher who is accused of raping and murdering an eight year old neighbor to the east to role model "liberated female morality" to the Muslims? I didn't think so.
As Jesus stated, before removing the mote (a very small particle) out of the neighbor's eye, be sure to remove the beam (a huge piece of lumber) from your own eye.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Dead sculptor Robert Graham
Boy is he regretting the profane statue he made of the Blessed Virgin Mary for that abomination of a cathedral in Los Angeles.
He portrayed her with hair cropped like a prostitute who had her hair cut in disgrace, dressed in sackcloth and looking like a boy.
Boy, is he regretting it, when it is exactly too late.
Repent while you can.
By the way, if as an "artist" you find you just can't "resist" the "inspiration" to be negatively revisionist about the only good and holy people who ever lived, I suggest you convert to Islam where graven images are forbidden. It might save your soul. It just might.
He portrayed her with hair cropped like a prostitute who had her hair cut in disgrace, dressed in sackcloth and looking like a boy.
Boy, is he regretting it, when it is exactly too late.
Repent while you can.
By the way, if as an "artist" you find you just can't "resist" the "inspiration" to be negatively revisionist about the only good and holy people who ever lived, I suggest you convert to Islam where graven images are forbidden. It might save your soul. It just might.
For church sex abuse survivors who avoid church
I've blogged about this subject before, about this terrible blight of priest or other religious sex abuse in the Catholic Church. I understand the trauma (and have discussed my credentials for why I understand on all levels) and have given counsel, both secular and spiritual, about how to heal and recover one's balance in life, even though the past can never be erased.
Having said that, I need to have an urgent word with those of you who avoid your Catholic devotions, such as going to church and the sacraments, and who may even have stopped believing in God.
There is no reincarnation, and there is no guarantee of "later" in anyone's life. All one needs to do is watch the news and see how suddenly there can be no "tomorrow" for someone. One must be in a constant state of being "alright with God."
If you think that deciding whether to believe in God again or to observe the sacraments and worship him is something that "can wait until you are ready, after you have healed," that is an attitude that is incorrect, and not the attitude that believers of all faiths have had throughout history as they have endured abuse, slavery and even genocide in their lives. It is a survival trait of humans and a reality that they separate belief in God from human induced horror and abuse in their lives, whether the abuse is by a religious or by a secular. If humans abandoned belief in God whenever they were traumatized there would be no religions at all today, and no human society either.
No matter how broken you may feel, refusing to believe in God is simply not a rational option.
As regular readers know, I am not being unfeeling on this subject. It is because I care that I will always be honest with you for your own good, just as I've had to be brutally honest about the physical reality of hell with many who have refused to believe and who have acted accordingly.
It is essential that no matter how one has been abused or harmed that one continue to believe in God and find a relationship with him because you have no guarantee of "tomorrow," because that is the reality of life, where death is unpredictable and certain for all.
Children, those of you who can no longer enter a Catholic church and worship God because you have been sexually abused, I have to wonder if perhaps Christianity is not for you.
(Yes, I hear the thump of good priests fainting or perhaps screaming as they reach this part of my message...)
But I am serious. If you have been sexually abused and can no longer enter a Catholic Church and have lost your faith in God, then I am not sure that you ever really believed, or perhaps were robbed of the chance, to understand Jesus Christ, who was tormented and crucified despite being of total perfection, sent by God, to heal and save, and who committed no crime or fault of his own.
When Jesus resurrected and returned, did he say, "I no longer believe in humanity because they unjustly tormented and killed me? And therefore I will no longer save you?"
Therefore, when humans abuse other humans, why would they then turn to God and say, "I no longer believe in you."
If you in your pain and focus on your own counsel and healing cannot understand that Jesus Christ resurrected and returned for forty days, undaunted, to save humanity and provide the path to God, then I wonder if perhaps Christianity in general just does not resonate with you.
This is a very serious problem, then, because whether you believe or not, God is still there, and will be faced at some point when your life ends, and of course, God wishes to be with you throughout your life.
I therefore wonder if perhaps those of you who can no longer "stand to be in a Church," and question your faith should consider studying Islam.
I would rather see someone who is so wounded and lacking in structured belief in God as a result of their trauma of sexual abuse consider converting to Islam than live a godless life. A godless life is a lie because there is a God, whether you believe or not, whether you are too wounded to believe or not.
Think about it. If you cannot see the truth of what I say, that the entire premise of Christianity is that Jesus loved and saved despite how he was scorned, tormented and killed most unfairly, worse because of his existence only being for the benefit of humanity, then I wonder if Christianity just is not for you.
I am certainly not turning you away. I am talking to those who are keeping themselves away.
Rather than stay in the lie of no longer believing, serving and worshipping the one God who continues to most assuredly exist, even if no human exists at all, perhaps you should consider Islam.
I hope that you have found this something that you will give careful thought to. God cares about each individual and desires their return. But God also continues on in eternity for all time, regardless of what one human believes or not. It is more important that you re-establish your relationship with God than continue to try to make a point about your woundedness. There is nothing that a human can teach Jesus Christ about being unfairly wronged. If that is not your understanding of Christianity, then you need to connect to God nonetheless, and perhaps Islam will be your way.
And who knows, if you realize that you have exiled yourself from the Church in your woundedness, and spend some time looking at Islam, you might miss home after all. But that is not my objective, for you to comparison shop. I am addressing those of you who have unwisely severed your understanding of God due to the trauma of your abuse. I think that you most certainly can reconnect with God through Islam, if you remain immovable regarding your home Church.
Having said that, I need to have an urgent word with those of you who avoid your Catholic devotions, such as going to church and the sacraments, and who may even have stopped believing in God.
There is no reincarnation, and there is no guarantee of "later" in anyone's life. All one needs to do is watch the news and see how suddenly there can be no "tomorrow" for someone. One must be in a constant state of being "alright with God."
If you think that deciding whether to believe in God again or to observe the sacraments and worship him is something that "can wait until you are ready, after you have healed," that is an attitude that is incorrect, and not the attitude that believers of all faiths have had throughout history as they have endured abuse, slavery and even genocide in their lives. It is a survival trait of humans and a reality that they separate belief in God from human induced horror and abuse in their lives, whether the abuse is by a religious or by a secular. If humans abandoned belief in God whenever they were traumatized there would be no religions at all today, and no human society either.
No matter how broken you may feel, refusing to believe in God is simply not a rational option.
As regular readers know, I am not being unfeeling on this subject. It is because I care that I will always be honest with you for your own good, just as I've had to be brutally honest about the physical reality of hell with many who have refused to believe and who have acted accordingly.
It is essential that no matter how one has been abused or harmed that one continue to believe in God and find a relationship with him because you have no guarantee of "tomorrow," because that is the reality of life, where death is unpredictable and certain for all.
Children, those of you who can no longer enter a Catholic church and worship God because you have been sexually abused, I have to wonder if perhaps Christianity is not for you.
(Yes, I hear the thump of good priests fainting or perhaps screaming as they reach this part of my message...)
But I am serious. If you have been sexually abused and can no longer enter a Catholic Church and have lost your faith in God, then I am not sure that you ever really believed, or perhaps were robbed of the chance, to understand Jesus Christ, who was tormented and crucified despite being of total perfection, sent by God, to heal and save, and who committed no crime or fault of his own.
When Jesus resurrected and returned, did he say, "I no longer believe in humanity because they unjustly tormented and killed me? And therefore I will no longer save you?"
Therefore, when humans abuse other humans, why would they then turn to God and say, "I no longer believe in you."
If you in your pain and focus on your own counsel and healing cannot understand that Jesus Christ resurrected and returned for forty days, undaunted, to save humanity and provide the path to God, then I wonder if perhaps Christianity in general just does not resonate with you.
This is a very serious problem, then, because whether you believe or not, God is still there, and will be faced at some point when your life ends, and of course, God wishes to be with you throughout your life.
I therefore wonder if perhaps those of you who can no longer "stand to be in a Church," and question your faith should consider studying Islam.
I would rather see someone who is so wounded and lacking in structured belief in God as a result of their trauma of sexual abuse consider converting to Islam than live a godless life. A godless life is a lie because there is a God, whether you believe or not, whether you are too wounded to believe or not.
Think about it. If you cannot see the truth of what I say, that the entire premise of Christianity is that Jesus loved and saved despite how he was scorned, tormented and killed most unfairly, worse because of his existence only being for the benefit of humanity, then I wonder if Christianity just is not for you.
I am certainly not turning you away. I am talking to those who are keeping themselves away.
Rather than stay in the lie of no longer believing, serving and worshipping the one God who continues to most assuredly exist, even if no human exists at all, perhaps you should consider Islam.
I hope that you have found this something that you will give careful thought to. God cares about each individual and desires their return. But God also continues on in eternity for all time, regardless of what one human believes or not. It is more important that you re-establish your relationship with God than continue to try to make a point about your woundedness. There is nothing that a human can teach Jesus Christ about being unfairly wronged. If that is not your understanding of Christianity, then you need to connect to God nonetheless, and perhaps Islam will be your way.
And who knows, if you realize that you have exiled yourself from the Church in your woundedness, and spend some time looking at Islam, you might miss home after all. But that is not my objective, for you to comparison shop. I am addressing those of you who have unwisely severed your understanding of God due to the trauma of your abuse. I think that you most certainly can reconnect with God through Islam, if you remain immovable regarding your home Church.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The patriarch Jacob in the Qur'an
A while ago I wrote a series of posts about Jacob, one of the Old Testament (Torah) patriarchs. I promised to then turn to examining the Qur’an for all references to Jacob (Yaqoub) contained therein, and so now, here is that continuation of the topic. See previous posts about Jacob under the label of “Jacob.”
As a reminder of who Jacob is and his genealogy, here is a summary. Remember that Abraham, the patriarch of what would become the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This was a test of Abraham before granting him to be the father of all the divine faiths in the one God, and when Abraham demonstrated that he would do as the Lord commanded the angel of the Lord stopped him and substituted a ram. Isaac became prosperous, had sons, one of whom was Jacob, who supplanted the birthright of his brother Esau. Jacob was blessed by his father Isaac and earned through his faithfulness the blessings of God. Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom became the founder and patriarch of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. One son, Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, became favored by the Pharaoh due to his gift of dream interpretation by God, and hence saved not only Egypt but the entire region, including the Israelites, from seven years of famine.
Jacob is first mentioned in the second chapter of the Qur’an. In the Qur’an, the first chapter is a seven line introduction, while the second chapter is a lengthy two hundred and eighty six lines which sets forward the basic origins and belief context of Islam. The purpose of this chapter regarding the events that are recorded in the Torah (Old Testament of the Bible) is to neither refute them, copy and modify them, or exclusively claim them, as many Christians (and some Muslims) have incorrectly believed. Rather, the Prophet (PBUH) is recording what he has learned from God, through the archangel Gabriel, which is that the people who will become the Muslims are faith descendants of Abraham, just like the Jews and the Christians. To use a secular expression, the Qur’an is like a person who discovers his or her ancestry, and finds they belong to a third branch of a shared family. This shared family is defined as those to acknowledge only the one God, the one who created Adam, whose descendants faithfully knew and worshipped God, culminating in God’s blessing of Abraham and his descendants.
Because that is the purpose of this chapter, and indeed the entire Qur’an, this is why 1) the Qur’an does not record events in the detail that is in the Torah (Old Testament) because Muslims accept that all of those events took place and Gabriel therefore certainly did not repeat them all in the telling for the Prophet (PBUH) and 2) the patriarchs call themselves “Muslims.” “Muslim” a believer in Islam where Islam is defined as belief in the one true God, the same one who created Adam and was worshipped and served by his descendants in the faith, culminating in God’s covenant with Abraham where God promises Abraham will “father a multitude.” The archangel Gabriel is like someone who seeks out a branch of the family who do not even know who they are, and who explains it to them, and Gabriel does this, as in all things, at the behest of God. The Qur’an serves this one purpose, in addition to its other purposes, of recording the explanation that the archangel Gabriel (Jibreel) provides to the Prophet (PBUH) of the origins and the purpose of these Arabic people who will now become the Muslim people. At that time the Arabians lived among Jews and Christians, but did not realize their common origin or that they shared the same God. They also did not realize that they lived among sacred sites established by Adam and Abraham.
So here is the first mention of, specifically, Jacob.
Surah 2: 132-133, 136, 140
And the same did Ibrahim [Abraham] enjoin on his sons and (so did) Yaqoub [Jacob]. O my sons! Surely Allah [God] has chosen for you (this) faith, therefore die not unless you are Muslims.
Nay! Were you witnesses when death visited Yaqoub, when he said to his sons: What will you serve after me? They said: We will serve your God and the God of your fathers, Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Ishaq [Isaac], one God only, and to Him do we submit.
Say: We believe in Allah and (in) that which had been revealed to us, and (in) that which was revealed to Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Ishaq [Isaac] and Yaqoub [Jacob] and the tribes, and (in that which was given to Musa [Moses] and Isa [Jesus], and (in) that which was given to the prophets from their Lord, we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.
Nay! Do you say that Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Yaqoub [Jacob] and the tribes were Jews or Christians? Say: Are you better knowing or Allah? And who is more unjust than he who conceals a testimony that he has from Allah? And Allah is not at all heedless of what you do.
So Jacob is mentioned in the context of the other patriarchs, as a list of those faithful patriarchs who personally pledged themselves in covenant with God. The archangel Gabriel, therefore, is explaining to the Prophet (PBUH) what has transpired in the ages past, where the forefathers pledged themselves to the one and only God and rather than repeating all that is in the Torah (Old Testament) Gabriel provides statements of faith and avowal that summarize the feelings and faith of these forefathers.
For example, look at 2:133, which is a one line summary of Jacob’s deathbed reiteration of faith, which he solicits from his sons before he dies. This is a one line summary of what is described in detail in Genesis 48 and 49, two chapters that give a detailed accounting of Jacob being sick, taking to his deathbed, and blessing Joseph and his sons, and then to bless and prophesy for each of his own “twelve tribes of Israel” sons. The archangel Gabriel is, at the behest of God, taking the Prophet (PBUH) “back in time” in a sense, to learn “the bottom line” of the events that form what will become the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths.
This is why God did not send the archangel Gabriel to say to the Arab people, “You shall become either Jews or Christians.” That would be theologically incorrect. In the time of the patriarchs there were, obviously, no Christians yet but also, if you think about it, there were no “Jews” either. The Exodus had not happened yet, and thus Moses and the Law giving by God were still in the future. Thus in 2:140 God, through the archangel Gabriel, strongly enforces upon the Prophet (PBUH) that the patriarchs had a covenant of recognition and worshipping the one true God, a covenant that cannot yet be ascribed to a particular name of faith. This overall covenant with God is what the name “Islam” and the followers of Islam, “Muslims,” now comes into being, but the “new” name of the “new” faith is not disparaging Judaism or Christianity, but referencing back to the common faith source and giving themselves identification of that branch of the faith.
To look at our analogy, suppose our genealogist discovers that he and two of his neighbors have descended from an ancestor called “Smith.” The last names of the genealogist’s neighbors are “Csmith” and “Jsmith” and Jsmith is a descendent of Abraham through Moses, and Csmith is a descendant of Abraham through Jesus. Well, discovering that all three trace back to “Smith” means that it would be incorrect for the genealogist who has just discovered his place in this family tree to now change his name to “Csmith” or “Jsmith.” He is a descendent of “Smith.” So what should he call himself and his family to now become part of the authentic fold that he has just discovered that he belongs to? He decides that he cannot trace every relationship and descendent from Smith to the present, and thus pick up one of names in his own lineage, so he calls his entire family “Smith.” “Smith” is “Muslim.”
To use a contemporary term, this is “reconnecting with one’s roots.” The Arabians at the time of the Prophet (PBUH) obviously did not have a written record of their biological lineage all the way back to Abraham, as clearly do the Jews and the Christians. So it would be incorrect, both theologically and culturally, to now “decide” that the future “Muslims” is of either Jews or Christians. Finding one shares with others a great etc. grandfather does not mean that you are now the sons and daughters of the other two branches; you are sons and daughters of the common faith ancestor. This is why God, through the archangel Gabriel, gifted Muslims with the right to refer to the patriarchs as being “Muslims.” It is God’s way of saying, “Because you do not have in writing your lineage, then call yourselves ‘Smith,’ do not call yourself or adopt the ways of “Csmith” or “Jsmith.” In 2:136 you see that Muslims acknowledge and revere the Moses and Jesus “ancestry,” but they do not claim to insert themselves now into those branches of the tree.
Another way to understand this is to realize that what God had with the patriarchs, “Covenant,” is the heart of both of the ancestral Jewish and Christian faiths. Over time as the faiths matured, “Covenant” came to mean more than pledges of belief by the patriarchs to God, and God’s blessing in return. “Covenant” came to mean the set of Law for the Jews, and the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and the making of the New Covenant for the Christians. Thus use of the word or concept of “Covenant” would be problematic for these new Muslims and God, with his all-knowing and foreseeing, avoided this problem without eliminating, clearly, that Muslims are heirs of the patriarchal covenants. Pledging to God and having God confer recognition and gift in return, a covenant, is the basis for the Muslim “branch of faith and heritage” too. The covenant with these people who have now had their faith ancestry revealed to them, therefore, became codified not by that word “covenant,” but by the Qur’an. The Qur’an is God’s “covenant” with Muslims.
See, I know that this last sentence gives some Jewish and Christian readers a shock. That is exactly why God, in his wisdom, foresaw this problem of understanding and therefore gave the Muslims their own path and terminology to reference their share of Abraham’s covenantal descendant multitude. God never errs and he is never inconsistent; it is humans who fail to understand God’s consistency. God gathered the people who would become Muslims, believers who did not know their own faith history and heritage, and reintroduced them to the patriarchs, but gave them the terminology that would not cause confusion with the other children of Abraham.
There is a further problem that God avoids on behalf of humans by giving the Muslims their own “covenant” that references back to the original covenants with the forefathers and patriarchs. That problem is that the Jewish faith struggled with continual idolatry, as is repeatedly documented in the Old Testament, with even King Solomon succumbing to it in his old age. This is another reason why there are swipes at the Jewish faith regarding being “polytheistic” in the Qur’an and why Muslims are made by God to basically hit the “reset” button for themselves, rather than become Jews and enter the fray of keeping pure the continuity of that faith. Likewise early Christianity suffered from the inevitable arising of heresies. Muslims, as you see clearly in these and other citations, do not deny at all Jesus, and instead revere him. The concern is that early Christians (and indeed many nominally Christian moderns) argue about the “true nature” of Jesus for two thousand years, endangering their own faith in the one God. This is why God permitted Muslims to revere Jesus, but run rather than embrace Christianity and thus, as I commented above about Jews, “enter the fray” of idolatry.
It is like even if our genealogist was tempted to rename his family either Csmith or Jsmith, and join in their branches wholeheartedly, but he discovers that many of them quarrel about the foundations of their family, Smith. Worse he discovers that sects of those branches claim to have “Mr. Real-smiith” and “Ms. Super-smyth.” This is why one observes what seems to be a contradiction in the Qur’an, which is reverence for Moses and Jesus, and their descendent branches of the faith, but also a disparaging caution about those faiths. That is a topic for a whole other commentary and discussion, but I’d be remiss not to mention and explain it here as we cite passages from the Qur’an that are right next to what are, for many, both Muslim or not, some difficult to understand statements about Judaism and Christianity.
Surah 3:84
Say: We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us, and what was revealed to Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq and Yaqoub and the tribes, and what was given to Musa and Isa and to the prophets from their Lord; we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.
This is a repeat of what was said in 2:136, which is to punctuate throughout the Qur’an the basic statements of belief as asserted by the faith ancestry.
Surah 6:84
And We gave to him Ishaq and Yaqoub; each did We guide, and Nuh [Noah] did We guide before, and of his descendants, Dawood [David] and Sulaiman [Solomon] and Ayub [Job] and Yusuf [Joseph] and Haroon [Aaron]; and thus do We reward those who do good (to others).
Here Jacob is mentioned in a list of the holy people who God has given to humanity, through Abraham, as gifts. Notice that God is stating his guidance of these faith forefathers, a mixed list of patriarchs, kings, prophets and the faithful and his reward for those who are charitable. This is an example of where the passage goes in a slightly different direction than those who detract from religion may expect. God guides these faithful and rewards them, but where one expects to read that God rewards them for their faith, one sees that God rewards those he guides when they do good to others, when they love their neighbor and are charitable.
Surah 11:71
And his [Abraham] wife [Sarah] was standing (by), so she laughed, then We gave her the good news of Ishaq [Isaac] and after Ishaq of (a son’s son) Yaqoub [Jacob].
Here Jacob is mentioned that through the one miracle of God providing Abraham and Sarah with a child in their old age, Isaac, there is a cascading of goodness forward in time beyond the one child, such as the grandchild, Jacob now coming into being because his father was conceived through the gift of God. So the deeper meaning of this passage beyond reiterating the laughter of Sarah at the thought of becoming pregnant in her old age and restating that God keeps his word of the miracle, but that the “good news” cascades forward through the generations.
Surah 12:38
And I follow the religion of my fathers, Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub; it beseems us not that we should associate aught with Allah; this is by Allah’s grace upon us and on mankind, but most people do not give thanks.
Here Joseph attests his faith in front of the Pharaoh, including mention of his father Jacob, before interpreting the dream of famine of the Pharaoh.
Surah 19:6
Who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Yaqoub, and make him, my Lord, one in whom Thou art well pleased.
These are words that describe the concern that Zakariya (Zacharias), the Jewish priest during the time just before the birth of Jesus, had because he and his wife had no children. The Qur’an relates what we know from the Gospel of St. Luke 1, which is that the angel of the Lord appears to Zacharias as he was in the temple serving God with incense sacrifice, and announced that he and Elizabeth would give birth to the son who will be called John. This son will be John the Baptist, the herald of the coming of Jesus Christ.
This is an example of what is common in the Qur’an, which is to express an interior or exterior dialogue (spoken or unspoken) that quickly illuminates the faith of the speaker or thinker. Rather than repeat all of the dialogue that is in the Bible, as here in the New Testament Luke 1, in the Qur’an the priestly concern and heritage of Zacharias is illustrated by his thought where he is sad that he has no son to serve God, in the heritage of the children of Jacob.
Surah 19:49
So when he withdrew from them and what they worshipped besides Allah, We gave to him Ishaq and Yaqoub, and each one of them We made a prophet.
This passage recounts how once Abraham committed to God and withdrew from contact with pagans and non-believers, God have him sons and descendents that are true prophets.
Surah 21:72-3
And We gave him Ishaq and Yaqoub, a son’s son, and We made (them) all good.
And we made them Imams who guided (people) by Our command, and We revealed to them the doing of good and the keeping up of prayer and the giving of the alms, and Us (alone) did they serve.
Ah, now, see; take a close look at these two passages. One is a restatement of how Abraham received as a gift of God not only Abraham’s son, Isaac, but as the out flowing of having a son who is a prophet, Abraham’s son Isaac also fathers a prophet, Jacob. So at first it looks as just a restatement of how God’s mercy in granting a son moves forward in time in goodness, as that son also has a son who serves God.
But when you look at the next line, you now see that God is giving to the Muslims Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as “role models” for their Imams. Muslim Imams are not modeled after the priesthood, and this is why they are not priests, and they are not modeled after evangelists, preachers, scholars or rabbis. Muslim Imams are role modeled after the father-son-grandson filial relationship in faith as gifted by God. This is why the Imamate, the genealogy and authority of the Imams who descend from the Prophet (PBUH) are such crucial and often contentious component of Islamic faith. When Muslims ponder the Imams of their early history, and the Imams of their present, they think of the Imams as being “sons” and “grandsons” of the authentic faith, just as were Isaac and Jacob from Abraham. This is an essential component of understanding not only the theology but the living structure and dynamics of the faith of Islam, and the divisions therein.
Surah 29:27
And We granted him Ishaq and Yaqoub, and caused the prophethood and the book to remain in his seed, and We gave him his reward in this world, and in the hereafter he will most surely be among the good.
The idea of the Imam is developed further here, even though this passage does not refer to the Imamate, but is contained within a retelling of Lot’s rescue by God from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is the idea that the prophethood, as role modeled by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is contained and remains in their “seed.” Now this does not mean that literally it is a genetic basis for passing on the faith and prophecy. Here the Qur’an is explaining that faith is and passed on from father to son as each generation affirms their faith. Jacob would not have been the recipient and container of the “seed” of his father Isaac if Jacob disavowed God. Rather, each father must be understood as being not only a biological father, but a spiritual father, who passes on the seed of faith to their son. It is this role modeling that result in many modern day imams having sons who follow their footsteps, just as many rabbis have sons who are rabbis in the Jewish faith. The equivalent in the Catholic faith is the “laying on of the hands” when priests and bishops are consecrated and confirmed. If one looks in the Catholic Church hierarchy database, one can trace the ancestry of the consecrating bishops, back to when these records are last reliable and kept, which is the fourteenth century. The father to son to grandson role model of passing the seed of the faith is a fundamental understanding of all of the Abrahamic faiths.
Surah 38:45-7
And remember Our servants Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub, men of power and insight.
Surely We purified them by a pure quality, the keeping in mind of the (final) abode.
And most surely they were with Us, of the elect, the best.
By now it is familiar spiritual motif for you to observe that this progression from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob is a crucial role model constantly referenced within the theology of Islam. Having discovered, through revelation by God, their connection and spiritual ancestry to Abraham and his descendants, with great firmness and repetition the Muslims study and imitate the foundational manifestation of faith of these patriarchs. This passage builds on this understanding to make two points. One is that God purified each one of them. Again, it is not as though biology is the reason to pass along the seed of faith. Each spiritual heir and prophet must be purified and kept pure by God, since humans are not by themselves enough; only God can make and keep them pure. This purity allows them to always keep in mind that the earthly life is not the final destination, but the final abode is of either heaven or hell. That is the second point, which is that receiving and accepting purity from God results in both earthly gifts, such as power and insight, and also the eternal gift of being among the best, the elect, in heaven.
I hope that you have found this tracing of mentions of Jacob in the Qur’an and my accompanying commentary helpful.
As a reminder of who Jacob is and his genealogy, here is a summary. Remember that Abraham, the patriarch of what would become the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This was a test of Abraham before granting him to be the father of all the divine faiths in the one God, and when Abraham demonstrated that he would do as the Lord commanded the angel of the Lord stopped him and substituted a ram. Isaac became prosperous, had sons, one of whom was Jacob, who supplanted the birthright of his brother Esau. Jacob was blessed by his father Isaac and earned through his faithfulness the blessings of God. Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom became the founder and patriarch of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. One son, Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, became favored by the Pharaoh due to his gift of dream interpretation by God, and hence saved not only Egypt but the entire region, including the Israelites, from seven years of famine.
Jacob is first mentioned in the second chapter of the Qur’an. In the Qur’an, the first chapter is a seven line introduction, while the second chapter is a lengthy two hundred and eighty six lines which sets forward the basic origins and belief context of Islam. The purpose of this chapter regarding the events that are recorded in the Torah (Old Testament of the Bible) is to neither refute them, copy and modify them, or exclusively claim them, as many Christians (and some Muslims) have incorrectly believed. Rather, the Prophet (PBUH) is recording what he has learned from God, through the archangel Gabriel, which is that the people who will become the Muslims are faith descendants of Abraham, just like the Jews and the Christians. To use a secular expression, the Qur’an is like a person who discovers his or her ancestry, and finds they belong to a third branch of a shared family. This shared family is defined as those to acknowledge only the one God, the one who created Adam, whose descendants faithfully knew and worshipped God, culminating in God’s blessing of Abraham and his descendants.
Because that is the purpose of this chapter, and indeed the entire Qur’an, this is why 1) the Qur’an does not record events in the detail that is in the Torah (Old Testament) because Muslims accept that all of those events took place and Gabriel therefore certainly did not repeat them all in the telling for the Prophet (PBUH) and 2) the patriarchs call themselves “Muslims.” “Muslim” a believer in Islam where Islam is defined as belief in the one true God, the same one who created Adam and was worshipped and served by his descendants in the faith, culminating in God’s covenant with Abraham where God promises Abraham will “father a multitude.” The archangel Gabriel is like someone who seeks out a branch of the family who do not even know who they are, and who explains it to them, and Gabriel does this, as in all things, at the behest of God. The Qur’an serves this one purpose, in addition to its other purposes, of recording the explanation that the archangel Gabriel (Jibreel) provides to the Prophet (PBUH) of the origins and the purpose of these Arabic people who will now become the Muslim people. At that time the Arabians lived among Jews and Christians, but did not realize their common origin or that they shared the same God. They also did not realize that they lived among sacred sites established by Adam and Abraham.
So here is the first mention of, specifically, Jacob.
Surah 2: 132-133, 136, 140
And the same did Ibrahim [Abraham] enjoin on his sons and (so did) Yaqoub [Jacob]. O my sons! Surely Allah [God] has chosen for you (this) faith, therefore die not unless you are Muslims.
Nay! Were you witnesses when death visited Yaqoub, when he said to his sons: What will you serve after me? They said: We will serve your God and the God of your fathers, Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Ishaq [Isaac], one God only, and to Him do we submit.
Say: We believe in Allah and (in) that which had been revealed to us, and (in) that which was revealed to Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Ishaq [Isaac] and Yaqoub [Jacob] and the tribes, and (in that which was given to Musa [Moses] and Isa [Jesus], and (in) that which was given to the prophets from their Lord, we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.
Nay! Do you say that Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Yaqoub [Jacob] and the tribes were Jews or Christians? Say: Are you better knowing or Allah? And who is more unjust than he who conceals a testimony that he has from Allah? And Allah is not at all heedless of what you do.
So Jacob is mentioned in the context of the other patriarchs, as a list of those faithful patriarchs who personally pledged themselves in covenant with God. The archangel Gabriel, therefore, is explaining to the Prophet (PBUH) what has transpired in the ages past, where the forefathers pledged themselves to the one and only God and rather than repeating all that is in the Torah (Old Testament) Gabriel provides statements of faith and avowal that summarize the feelings and faith of these forefathers.
For example, look at 2:133, which is a one line summary of Jacob’s deathbed reiteration of faith, which he solicits from his sons before he dies. This is a one line summary of what is described in detail in Genesis 48 and 49, two chapters that give a detailed accounting of Jacob being sick, taking to his deathbed, and blessing Joseph and his sons, and then to bless and prophesy for each of his own “twelve tribes of Israel” sons. The archangel Gabriel is, at the behest of God, taking the Prophet (PBUH) “back in time” in a sense, to learn “the bottom line” of the events that form what will become the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths.
This is why God did not send the archangel Gabriel to say to the Arab people, “You shall become either Jews or Christians.” That would be theologically incorrect. In the time of the patriarchs there were, obviously, no Christians yet but also, if you think about it, there were no “Jews” either. The Exodus had not happened yet, and thus Moses and the Law giving by God were still in the future. Thus in 2:140 God, through the archangel Gabriel, strongly enforces upon the Prophet (PBUH) that the patriarchs had a covenant of recognition and worshipping the one true God, a covenant that cannot yet be ascribed to a particular name of faith. This overall covenant with God is what the name “Islam” and the followers of Islam, “Muslims,” now comes into being, but the “new” name of the “new” faith is not disparaging Judaism or Christianity, but referencing back to the common faith source and giving themselves identification of that branch of the faith.
To look at our analogy, suppose our genealogist discovers that he and two of his neighbors have descended from an ancestor called “Smith.” The last names of the genealogist’s neighbors are “Csmith” and “Jsmith” and Jsmith is a descendent of Abraham through Moses, and Csmith is a descendant of Abraham through Jesus. Well, discovering that all three trace back to “Smith” means that it would be incorrect for the genealogist who has just discovered his place in this family tree to now change his name to “Csmith” or “Jsmith.” He is a descendent of “Smith.” So what should he call himself and his family to now become part of the authentic fold that he has just discovered that he belongs to? He decides that he cannot trace every relationship and descendent from Smith to the present, and thus pick up one of names in his own lineage, so he calls his entire family “Smith.” “Smith” is “Muslim.”
To use a contemporary term, this is “reconnecting with one’s roots.” The Arabians at the time of the Prophet (PBUH) obviously did not have a written record of their biological lineage all the way back to Abraham, as clearly do the Jews and the Christians. So it would be incorrect, both theologically and culturally, to now “decide” that the future “Muslims” is of either Jews or Christians. Finding one shares with others a great etc. grandfather does not mean that you are now the sons and daughters of the other two branches; you are sons and daughters of the common faith ancestor. This is why God, through the archangel Gabriel, gifted Muslims with the right to refer to the patriarchs as being “Muslims.” It is God’s way of saying, “Because you do not have in writing your lineage, then call yourselves ‘Smith,’ do not call yourself or adopt the ways of “Csmith” or “Jsmith.” In 2:136 you see that Muslims acknowledge and revere the Moses and Jesus “ancestry,” but they do not claim to insert themselves now into those branches of the tree.
Another way to understand this is to realize that what God had with the patriarchs, “Covenant,” is the heart of both of the ancestral Jewish and Christian faiths. Over time as the faiths matured, “Covenant” came to mean more than pledges of belief by the patriarchs to God, and God’s blessing in return. “Covenant” came to mean the set of Law for the Jews, and the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and the making of the New Covenant for the Christians. Thus use of the word or concept of “Covenant” would be problematic for these new Muslims and God, with his all-knowing and foreseeing, avoided this problem without eliminating, clearly, that Muslims are heirs of the patriarchal covenants. Pledging to God and having God confer recognition and gift in return, a covenant, is the basis for the Muslim “branch of faith and heritage” too. The covenant with these people who have now had their faith ancestry revealed to them, therefore, became codified not by that word “covenant,” but by the Qur’an. The Qur’an is God’s “covenant” with Muslims.
See, I know that this last sentence gives some Jewish and Christian readers a shock. That is exactly why God, in his wisdom, foresaw this problem of understanding and therefore gave the Muslims their own path and terminology to reference their share of Abraham’s covenantal descendant multitude. God never errs and he is never inconsistent; it is humans who fail to understand God’s consistency. God gathered the people who would become Muslims, believers who did not know their own faith history and heritage, and reintroduced them to the patriarchs, but gave them the terminology that would not cause confusion with the other children of Abraham.
There is a further problem that God avoids on behalf of humans by giving the Muslims their own “covenant” that references back to the original covenants with the forefathers and patriarchs. That problem is that the Jewish faith struggled with continual idolatry, as is repeatedly documented in the Old Testament, with even King Solomon succumbing to it in his old age. This is another reason why there are swipes at the Jewish faith regarding being “polytheistic” in the Qur’an and why Muslims are made by God to basically hit the “reset” button for themselves, rather than become Jews and enter the fray of keeping pure the continuity of that faith. Likewise early Christianity suffered from the inevitable arising of heresies. Muslims, as you see clearly in these and other citations, do not deny at all Jesus, and instead revere him. The concern is that early Christians (and indeed many nominally Christian moderns) argue about the “true nature” of Jesus for two thousand years, endangering their own faith in the one God. This is why God permitted Muslims to revere Jesus, but run rather than embrace Christianity and thus, as I commented above about Jews, “enter the fray” of idolatry.
It is like even if our genealogist was tempted to rename his family either Csmith or Jsmith, and join in their branches wholeheartedly, but he discovers that many of them quarrel about the foundations of their family, Smith. Worse he discovers that sects of those branches claim to have “Mr. Real-smiith” and “Ms. Super-smyth.” This is why one observes what seems to be a contradiction in the Qur’an, which is reverence for Moses and Jesus, and their descendent branches of the faith, but also a disparaging caution about those faiths. That is a topic for a whole other commentary and discussion, but I’d be remiss not to mention and explain it here as we cite passages from the Qur’an that are right next to what are, for many, both Muslim or not, some difficult to understand statements about Judaism and Christianity.
Surah 3:84
Say: We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us, and what was revealed to Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq and Yaqoub and the tribes, and what was given to Musa and Isa and to the prophets from their Lord; we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.
This is a repeat of what was said in 2:136, which is to punctuate throughout the Qur’an the basic statements of belief as asserted by the faith ancestry.
Surah 6:84
And We gave to him Ishaq and Yaqoub; each did We guide, and Nuh [Noah] did We guide before, and of his descendants, Dawood [David] and Sulaiman [Solomon] and Ayub [Job] and Yusuf [Joseph] and Haroon [Aaron]; and thus do We reward those who do good (to others).
Here Jacob is mentioned in a list of the holy people who God has given to humanity, through Abraham, as gifts. Notice that God is stating his guidance of these faith forefathers, a mixed list of patriarchs, kings, prophets and the faithful and his reward for those who are charitable. This is an example of where the passage goes in a slightly different direction than those who detract from religion may expect. God guides these faithful and rewards them, but where one expects to read that God rewards them for their faith, one sees that God rewards those he guides when they do good to others, when they love their neighbor and are charitable.
Surah 11:71
And his [Abraham] wife [Sarah] was standing (by), so she laughed, then We gave her the good news of Ishaq [Isaac] and after Ishaq of (a son’s son) Yaqoub [Jacob].
Here Jacob is mentioned that through the one miracle of God providing Abraham and Sarah with a child in their old age, Isaac, there is a cascading of goodness forward in time beyond the one child, such as the grandchild, Jacob now coming into being because his father was conceived through the gift of God. So the deeper meaning of this passage beyond reiterating the laughter of Sarah at the thought of becoming pregnant in her old age and restating that God keeps his word of the miracle, but that the “good news” cascades forward through the generations.
Surah 12:38
And I follow the religion of my fathers, Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub; it beseems us not that we should associate aught with Allah; this is by Allah’s grace upon us and on mankind, but most people do not give thanks.
Here Joseph attests his faith in front of the Pharaoh, including mention of his father Jacob, before interpreting the dream of famine of the Pharaoh.
Surah 19:6
Who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Yaqoub, and make him, my Lord, one in whom Thou art well pleased.
These are words that describe the concern that Zakariya (Zacharias), the Jewish priest during the time just before the birth of Jesus, had because he and his wife had no children. The Qur’an relates what we know from the Gospel of St. Luke 1, which is that the angel of the Lord appears to Zacharias as he was in the temple serving God with incense sacrifice, and announced that he and Elizabeth would give birth to the son who will be called John. This son will be John the Baptist, the herald of the coming of Jesus Christ.
This is an example of what is common in the Qur’an, which is to express an interior or exterior dialogue (spoken or unspoken) that quickly illuminates the faith of the speaker or thinker. Rather than repeat all of the dialogue that is in the Bible, as here in the New Testament Luke 1, in the Qur’an the priestly concern and heritage of Zacharias is illustrated by his thought where he is sad that he has no son to serve God, in the heritage of the children of Jacob.
Surah 19:49
So when he withdrew from them and what they worshipped besides Allah, We gave to him Ishaq and Yaqoub, and each one of them We made a prophet.
This passage recounts how once Abraham committed to God and withdrew from contact with pagans and non-believers, God have him sons and descendents that are true prophets.
Surah 21:72-3
And We gave him Ishaq and Yaqoub, a son’s son, and We made (them) all good.
And we made them Imams who guided (people) by Our command, and We revealed to them the doing of good and the keeping up of prayer and the giving of the alms, and Us (alone) did they serve.
Ah, now, see; take a close look at these two passages. One is a restatement of how Abraham received as a gift of God not only Abraham’s son, Isaac, but as the out flowing of having a son who is a prophet, Abraham’s son Isaac also fathers a prophet, Jacob. So at first it looks as just a restatement of how God’s mercy in granting a son moves forward in time in goodness, as that son also has a son who serves God.
But when you look at the next line, you now see that God is giving to the Muslims Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as “role models” for their Imams. Muslim Imams are not modeled after the priesthood, and this is why they are not priests, and they are not modeled after evangelists, preachers, scholars or rabbis. Muslim Imams are role modeled after the father-son-grandson filial relationship in faith as gifted by God. This is why the Imamate, the genealogy and authority of the Imams who descend from the Prophet (PBUH) are such crucial and often contentious component of Islamic faith. When Muslims ponder the Imams of their early history, and the Imams of their present, they think of the Imams as being “sons” and “grandsons” of the authentic faith, just as were Isaac and Jacob from Abraham. This is an essential component of understanding not only the theology but the living structure and dynamics of the faith of Islam, and the divisions therein.
Surah 29:27
And We granted him Ishaq and Yaqoub, and caused the prophethood and the book to remain in his seed, and We gave him his reward in this world, and in the hereafter he will most surely be among the good.
The idea of the Imam is developed further here, even though this passage does not refer to the Imamate, but is contained within a retelling of Lot’s rescue by God from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is the idea that the prophethood, as role modeled by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is contained and remains in their “seed.” Now this does not mean that literally it is a genetic basis for passing on the faith and prophecy. Here the Qur’an is explaining that faith is and passed on from father to son as each generation affirms their faith. Jacob would not have been the recipient and container of the “seed” of his father Isaac if Jacob disavowed God. Rather, each father must be understood as being not only a biological father, but a spiritual father, who passes on the seed of faith to their son. It is this role modeling that result in many modern day imams having sons who follow their footsteps, just as many rabbis have sons who are rabbis in the Jewish faith. The equivalent in the Catholic faith is the “laying on of the hands” when priests and bishops are consecrated and confirmed. If one looks in the Catholic Church hierarchy database, one can trace the ancestry of the consecrating bishops, back to when these records are last reliable and kept, which is the fourteenth century. The father to son to grandson role model of passing the seed of the faith is a fundamental understanding of all of the Abrahamic faiths.
Surah 38:45-7
And remember Our servants Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub, men of power and insight.
Surely We purified them by a pure quality, the keeping in mind of the (final) abode.
And most surely they were with Us, of the elect, the best.
By now it is familiar spiritual motif for you to observe that this progression from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob is a crucial role model constantly referenced within the theology of Islam. Having discovered, through revelation by God, their connection and spiritual ancestry to Abraham and his descendants, with great firmness and repetition the Muslims study and imitate the foundational manifestation of faith of these patriarchs. This passage builds on this understanding to make two points. One is that God purified each one of them. Again, it is not as though biology is the reason to pass along the seed of faith. Each spiritual heir and prophet must be purified and kept pure by God, since humans are not by themselves enough; only God can make and keep them pure. This purity allows them to always keep in mind that the earthly life is not the final destination, but the final abode is of either heaven or hell. That is the second point, which is that receiving and accepting purity from God results in both earthly gifts, such as power and insight, and also the eternal gift of being among the best, the elect, in heaven.
I hope that you have found this tracing of mentions of Jacob in the Qur’an and my accompanying commentary helpful.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
My thoughts about Mumbia, India situation
No one has official word about who is behind the terrorist attacks, so to give advice I have to make some assumptions. I'll assume that they represent Islamic believers on the extreme end of the faith scale.
India has put itself into quite a pickle with their deliberate ignoring of their own Christians being tortured, killed, raped, publicly paraded naked, and driven out of their homes into the jungle and camps, where they are homeless and sick. Why does this have an impact on the terrorist attacks? Disdain. One cannot negotiate with Islamic extremists if you are demonstrated unbelievers, who persecute other believers. While many assume that Islamic terrorists only consider fellow Muslims to be believers, when negotiating, one still wants to avoid their contempt and disdain that has resulted from showing that you are a persecutor of believers, especially in such an immodest way. The USA learned that to their extreme discomfort in what they did to some Iraqi prisoners, making them be naked and depraved in prison. Remember also that Islam is a belief based on total equality, where there is no class system, unlike the most repressive class system what was ever created, which still exists in India.
So while I am not saying that the terrorists made their action for any reason other than their own cause, I am giving India some cultural diplomacy advice that they have ignored, including in their dealings with me, at their peril. I find it interesting that there are reports of a Jewish prayer center being occupied with hostages of a rabbi, his wife and others. If true, I think the odds of the hostages surviving are best if they are perceived as believers rather than political representatives. You see what I mean? But this is all guesswork at this point, is it not?
My point is that the "land of Gandhi" has no credibility as far as being perceived by those who have devout and even fanatic motivation by their serving God, whether their actions bring credit to God or not in fact. There is no Muslim who would not be horrified at what treatment the Indian government has ignored (and even the police encouraged), when priests and nuns were stripped, sexually assaulted, tortured, murdered, paraded and defamed. Muslim extremists would make note of the weakness and complicity of the police in attacking Christians. Notice that high ranking police were quickly killed in the assault. You are in a difficult position, in both battle and negotiation, if your opponent has total contempt for you. It creates an "anything goes" mentality in achieving one's objectives, one that is difficult to either thwart or negotiate with, especially as they will gladly achieve what they consider to be martyrdom.
Ten years ago I had a job where I had dozens of Indian green card holders working for me. I was fond of them and defended them against those who poked fun at their Hindu beliefs. Yet, my sense of fondness was drained away as I found that Indian occult beliefs (astrology) informed many of those who stalked and persecuted me. Indians, behind the scenes, stalked and persecuted me, making my life miserable, because of their imaginary beliefs in crazy reincarnation, and their ambition at trying to manipulate the future, rather than trusting in God and having any sort of humility.
One must remember that the way you treat your own people opens the door for how extremists will treat you. That is called "escalation." Even if there is no common ground between people your country persecutes, Christians, in this example, and the presumed Islamic terrorists in Mumbai, they watch TV, they read the papers, they do their research, and they observe whenever a country, especially its police, loses the moral high ground due to their own disgraceful behavior. This is why the terrorists will usually fight to the death, since they are confident they have the moral high ground. It is never helpful in fighting terrorism or negotiating if a country inflates the terrorists perception that indeed, they are fighting immoral and corrupt institutions.
That said, it is never right to take innocent life. But again, we look around the world and see those areas where life is perceived as being "cheap." The tone is first set by the home culture, not by the intruder.
India has put itself into quite a pickle with their deliberate ignoring of their own Christians being tortured, killed, raped, publicly paraded naked, and driven out of their homes into the jungle and camps, where they are homeless and sick. Why does this have an impact on the terrorist attacks? Disdain. One cannot negotiate with Islamic extremists if you are demonstrated unbelievers, who persecute other believers. While many assume that Islamic terrorists only consider fellow Muslims to be believers, when negotiating, one still wants to avoid their contempt and disdain that has resulted from showing that you are a persecutor of believers, especially in such an immodest way. The USA learned that to their extreme discomfort in what they did to some Iraqi prisoners, making them be naked and depraved in prison. Remember also that Islam is a belief based on total equality, where there is no class system, unlike the most repressive class system what was ever created, which still exists in India.
So while I am not saying that the terrorists made their action for any reason other than their own cause, I am giving India some cultural diplomacy advice that they have ignored, including in their dealings with me, at their peril. I find it interesting that there are reports of a Jewish prayer center being occupied with hostages of a rabbi, his wife and others. If true, I think the odds of the hostages surviving are best if they are perceived as believers rather than political representatives. You see what I mean? But this is all guesswork at this point, is it not?
My point is that the "land of Gandhi" has no credibility as far as being perceived by those who have devout and even fanatic motivation by their serving God, whether their actions bring credit to God or not in fact. There is no Muslim who would not be horrified at what treatment the Indian government has ignored (and even the police encouraged), when priests and nuns were stripped, sexually assaulted, tortured, murdered, paraded and defamed. Muslim extremists would make note of the weakness and complicity of the police in attacking Christians. Notice that high ranking police were quickly killed in the assault. You are in a difficult position, in both battle and negotiation, if your opponent has total contempt for you. It creates an "anything goes" mentality in achieving one's objectives, one that is difficult to either thwart or negotiate with, especially as they will gladly achieve what they consider to be martyrdom.
Ten years ago I had a job where I had dozens of Indian green card holders working for me. I was fond of them and defended them against those who poked fun at their Hindu beliefs. Yet, my sense of fondness was drained away as I found that Indian occult beliefs (astrology) informed many of those who stalked and persecuted me. Indians, behind the scenes, stalked and persecuted me, making my life miserable, because of their imaginary beliefs in crazy reincarnation, and their ambition at trying to manipulate the future, rather than trusting in God and having any sort of humility.
One must remember that the way you treat your own people opens the door for how extremists will treat you. That is called "escalation." Even if there is no common ground between people your country persecutes, Christians, in this example, and the presumed Islamic terrorists in Mumbai, they watch TV, they read the papers, they do their research, and they observe whenever a country, especially its police, loses the moral high ground due to their own disgraceful behavior. This is why the terrorists will usually fight to the death, since they are confident they have the moral high ground. It is never helpful in fighting terrorism or negotiating if a country inflates the terrorists perception that indeed, they are fighting immoral and corrupt institutions.
That said, it is never right to take innocent life. But again, we look around the world and see those areas where life is perceived as being "cheap." The tone is first set by the home culture, not by the intruder.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Understanding God (7 of a series)
In blog post 6 of this series I mention how God appears to comfort Hagar, the mother of Ismael. Since I think that some of the readers of my blog may not have easy access to a Bible, or would feel uncomfortable looking up this section online, I'd like to copy that chapter here in this post for your convenience. It is a very beautiful moment and after you read it we will discuss how this event gives you more perspective about the attributes that we have discussed of God, specifically is all-knowing and his love.
Genesis 16
Abram's wife Sarai had borne him no children. She had, however, an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. Sarai said to Abram: "The Lord has kept me from bearing children. Have intercourse, then, with my maid; perhaps I shall have sons through her." Abram heeded Sarai's request. Thus, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, his wife Sarai took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abraham to be his concubine. He had intercourse with her, and she became pregnant. When she became aware of her pregnancy, she looked on her mistress with distain.
[Let me pause here and point out a few important insights. Here is another example where the desire for children, both for love of children and also for the status, is one of the key drivers to not only human reproductive survival but also events that shake the world. Think about this. If Sarai had not been a normal woman of her time, desperate to have a child, she would never have thought of giving Hagar to Abram and Ishmael, the patriarch of the future Muslims, would never have been born. This is why God has given to all true men and women a burning desire for children. Those who stifle and deny that urge, not individually, but as a societal set of values, have no idea of how much goodness they have inadvertently truncated. Thus God did not intervene here, he did not have to, since Sarai's burning desire for a child did what it naturally was supposed to do.
This is why Hagar was able to, once pregnant, even though a slave, look with disdain upon Sarai. It's not that she was being mean or prideful, far from it. And she had no way of knowing that her child would be the patriarch of his own people of the faith. She was simply "walking tall," in a way, of having been an Egyptian slave, and now being pregnant with the child who would be the first born of Abraham. Sarai, of course, being human, finds the reality of her plan working out, and Hagar being pregnant-and proud of it-harder to bear than she anticipated!]
So Sarai said to Abram: "You are responsible for this outrage against me. I myself gave my maid to your embrace; but ever since she became aware of her pregnancy, she has been looking on me with disdain. May the Lord decide between you and me! Abram told Sarai: "Your maid is in your power. Do to her whatever you please." Sarai then abused her so much that Hagar ran away from her.
[Poor Abram, for Sarai was indeed a handful! Sarai now blames Abram because her servant, Hagar, is now abloom with pregnancy and has status, even though that was what Sarai wanted. This biblical history, by the way, if read carefully helps humans who live today to understand that these were real people with real events and real foibles, not, as determined non-believers like to accuse, quaint mythologies and folktales. This is because, as the footnotes in this copy of the Bible that I am using, confirms that the reaction and behavior of Sarai is actually consistent with "the laws of the time, as known from ancient extra-biblical sources." In other words, Biblical scholars can find outside of the Bible instances of ancient custom and law that confirm that Sarai would have reacted exactly as she did, and not because it is some folktale drama.
Notice that Hagar is showing quite a bit of spunk in running away, as I don't need to remind people, this was harsh desert land. As a woman of Egypt she is already showing some of what one will many generations later understand as the hardiness of Arabic women!]
The Lord's messenger found her by a spring in the wilderness, the spring on the road to Shur, and he asked, "Hagar, maid of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She answered, "I am running away from my mistress, Sarai."
[Just as later in Genesis we read, as I commented upon in 6 of this series, angels who appear as travelers, one of whom is the Lord, appeared to Abraham and Sarah, here the Lord appears as an average man, hence he is called a messenger. Even though the Lord addresses Hagar in a way to let her know that he knows who she is, in her distress she does not notice this knowledge, and just assumes that this is a man who just happens to know who she is, even though she has never met him.]
But the Lord's messenger told her: "Go back to your mistress and submit to her abusive treatment. I will make your descendants so numerous," added the Lord's messenger, "that they will be too many to count."
[Notice that Hagar must be realizing that this is the Lord himself, first as he states the reason that she is running away even before Hagar had said so, but more importantly as the Lord prophecies to her in the "I will" mode of speech.]
"Besides," the Lord's messenger said to her:
"You are now pregnant and shall bear a son;
you shall name him Ishmael,
For the Lord has heard you,
God has answered you.
He shall be a wild ass of a man,
his hand against everyone,
and everyone's hand against him;
In opposition to all his kin
shall he encamp."
To the Lord who spoke to her she gave a name, saying, "You are the God of Vision"' she meant, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after my vision?" That is why the well is called Beer-lahai-roi. It is between Kadesh and Bered.
Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named the son whom Hagar bore him Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Now, the prophecy the Lord gives Hagar and the act of the Lord naming Ishmael himself is such an illumination of God's all-knowing-ness and his love that everyone should know about this event and ponder its meaning. Also, Hagar's response is also commendable for several reasons. Let's look at each of these points in turn.
The Lord first of all indicates that he knows that she is pregnant, so he opens his extended discourse by confirming that he is indeed the all-knowing. The Lord then immediately tells her, now that she knows that he is the all-knowing, what she cannot yet know on her own, which is that the child that she bears is a son. This is the way that the Lord typically dialogues his all-knowing with humans, first by telling them something they already know, but he would not know if he was an average person passing by. Jesus many centuries later will be known for doing exactly that. The second step is then to tell the person the essence of the prophecy, in this case that she bears a son (and thus an heir).
Then the Lord names the child. This is a sign of God's approval and acceptance of Ishmael. If God had not approved of Ishmael himself, and was only "stopping by to comfort Hagar," the Lord God would never have named the child for her and Abram! The Lord would have just let Abram name the child whoever he chose. So God is affirming the birthright and heritage of Ishmael, but with the earlier prophecy about his descendants being numerous, God does not become specific in Ishmael's role because much of God's work with Abraham had not yet taken place. So God indicates to Hagar that her son will have a great legacy and many heirs.
When God, by the way, uses the image of heirs being as numerous as the stars, God is referring to not only biological progeny but spiritual descendants. This is the same as recognizing that Abraham is the patriarch of the three faiths without actually passing on his biological genes. Abraham passes on his spiritual genes in the sense that those who belong to the faiths that he founded (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) can call Abraham their spiritual father.
Speaking of this, Bible readers know that God also told Abraham, when he renamed him from Abram to Abraham that "I am making you the father of a host of nations." I will include here that entire passage but first I want to make this point. God does not rename Abram and give him the prophecy and his covenant until Abram is ninety-nine years old, a full thirteen years after Ishmael was born!
So you see, the Lord God is telling Hagar that he is reserving for her son, Ishmael, a great legacy, even before God establishes the covenant with Abraham and announces that Abraham and Sarah will conceive Isaac. God is thus demonstrating his all-knowing when he tells Hagar what to name Ishmael and that Ishmael will make his descendants so numerous that they are too many to count. Carefully reading and comprehension of the order of these events allow one to understand that God is giving Ishmael his own promise and his own legacy, for if it was to be the normal legacy of oldest (and at the time only) heir to Abram, God would have spoken these words directly to Abram.
Instead, we infer that obviously Hagar upon her return told Abram what God said, so that Abram obeyed and named the born boy Ishmael. Abram would have probably assumed that this consolation by God of Hagar was affirmation that Ishmael was going to be his spiritual heir, without realizing that God was intentionally speaking of something quite different, which would be the Muslim people.
We know this because as I said, it is thirteen years later (the traditional age when a boy is becoming an adult in the sense of having heir and family responsibility) that God makes clear the renaming of Abram, his calling, and the covenant. Further, God then tells Abraham that God blesses Ishmael and will make him the father of a great nation, but that the covenant with Abraham will be via Isaac, the son the Lord promises Abraham that he will have by Sarah in a year.
Regular reading of the Bible and/or the Qur'an, whichever is your book of faith, reveals to you that God always knows what will happen, and that all that happens is his will yet God allows events to unfold in a natural pace filled with human beings exercising free will. Like I said, God did not impel Sarai to select Hagar to bear a child; it was human nature and free will that motivated Sarai to want a child so desperately that she conceived of the idea to have Hagar conceive. The normal urge for a child resulted in a decision that blessed by God results in the family of Islam, some 1.6 billion living adherents today!
Imagine what it is like to be God and to combine the all-knowing with the love. As he decided to comfort Hagar, an Egyptian slave girl, and console her as she has been abused, God indeed shows that no one's suffering escapes his notice and pity. At the same time, God being the all-knowing, as I described in my analogy of the subatomic particles of all time and their future being constantly and totally known by God, as God gazed on Hagar, imagine how God was looking at the future descendants of Ishmael, not yet born, and seeing how someday they will be the people who heed the Prophet (PBUH) and return to the knowing of the one God becoming indeed "descendants so numerous that they will be too many to count."
But God allows people to live with his encouragement, and his peace of mind (that is what is truly meant by the expression "the peace of God") without providing a robotic type of road map that crushes hope and puts undue burden on humans. God lets Abram think whatever he is going to naturally think of Ishmael, being simply father and son, for thirteen years. It is only after thirteen years that God says the following to Abram, now Abraham.
Genesis 17:1-8, 15-22
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, "I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless. Between you and me I will establish my covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly."
When Abram prostrated himself, God continued to speak to him: "My covenant with you is this: you are to become the father of a host of nations. No longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations. I will render you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings shall stem from you. I will maintain my covenant with you and your descendants after you throughout the ages as an everlasting pact, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. I will give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are now staying, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God."
...[I'm skipping over the part where God gives Abraham circumcision as the sign of the covenant].
God further said to Abraham: "As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai; her name shall be Sarah. I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. Him also will I bless; he shall give rise to nations, and rulers of peoples shall issue from him." Abraham prostrated himself and laughed as he said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Or can Sarah give birth at ninety?" Then Abraham said to God, "Let but Ishmael live on by your favor!"
[Notice Abraham, because he can't quite believe that they will bear a child, is actually somewhat 'passing up' on the chance to have another heir, and is saying that he would be more than willing to stay with Ishmael as his only heir.]
God replied: "Nevertheless, your wife Sarah is to bear you a son, and you shall call him Isaac. I will maintain my covenant with him as an everlasting pact, to be his God and the God of his descendants after him. As for Ishmael, I am heeding you: I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of twelve chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation. But my covenant I will maintain with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you by this time next year." When he had finished speaking with him, God departed from Abraham.
[After this Abraham immediately has every male, including Ishmael, circumcised.]
Now we've reached Genesis 18, which I provided with commentary in 6 of this series.
Before closing this post topic I'd like to point out another attribute of God that can be observed and learned from in the event of the appearance of God to comfort Hagar.
Notice that God spends some time in somewhat poetically describing how Ishmael will be a real handful, a "wild ass of a man" and in "opposition to all his kin." Some Jewish scholars have erroneously interpreted this as being disapproving in tone by God. Usually Jewish scholars are excellent, and as I've commented, no one really "gets" (comprehends) God the way the orthodox Jewish scholars do. However, this is an example of where there is both bias (they are "rooting for Isaac") and just a missing of a nuance of God's "personality." God is with constancy expressing his support and kinship for Ishmael as, we have seen, God comforts his mother Hagar with his actual presence, accepts and names Ishmael, ensures that Abram fully embraces Ishmael as heir and loved son, and even rebuffs Abraham when Abraham wants to just stick with Ishmael (and thus Ishmael would have not had his own separate legacy, the Muslim people, which we now know with hindsight that is what God was prophesying for him). God is insistent that Ishmael, while part of the covenant with Abraham, will have his own great legacy.
Thus one need to read what God said to Hagar as being just what it is, an expression of what a real handful Ishmael will be! You can be safe in even thinking you are detecting droll humor by God in what he says about Ishmael. It is not disapproving at all, for God is God and he would have corrected any deviance from his will real fast and really firmly. God is content that Ishmael be combative and feisty. And thus one cannot help but think of the very robust nature of the roots and branches of Islam and realize that God as all-knowing and all loving, was preparing the trunk of the tree that will reach into the harsh conditions of the desert and one day give rise to Islam, his call for the people who were living pagan ways to rediscover their connection back to Abraham, back to Adam, and know and serve the one true God.
I hope that you have found this helpful and interesting! I wanted very much for people to know about God's encounter with Hagar so her name and legacy is not forgotten.
Genesis 16
Abram's wife Sarai had borne him no children. She had, however, an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. Sarai said to Abram: "The Lord has kept me from bearing children. Have intercourse, then, with my maid; perhaps I shall have sons through her." Abram heeded Sarai's request. Thus, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, his wife Sarai took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abraham to be his concubine. He had intercourse with her, and she became pregnant. When she became aware of her pregnancy, she looked on her mistress with distain.
[Let me pause here and point out a few important insights. Here is another example where the desire for children, both for love of children and also for the status, is one of the key drivers to not only human reproductive survival but also events that shake the world. Think about this. If Sarai had not been a normal woman of her time, desperate to have a child, she would never have thought of giving Hagar to Abram and Ishmael, the patriarch of the future Muslims, would never have been born. This is why God has given to all true men and women a burning desire for children. Those who stifle and deny that urge, not individually, but as a societal set of values, have no idea of how much goodness they have inadvertently truncated. Thus God did not intervene here, he did not have to, since Sarai's burning desire for a child did what it naturally was supposed to do.
This is why Hagar was able to, once pregnant, even though a slave, look with disdain upon Sarai. It's not that she was being mean or prideful, far from it. And she had no way of knowing that her child would be the patriarch of his own people of the faith. She was simply "walking tall," in a way, of having been an Egyptian slave, and now being pregnant with the child who would be the first born of Abraham. Sarai, of course, being human, finds the reality of her plan working out, and Hagar being pregnant-and proud of it-harder to bear than she anticipated!]
So Sarai said to Abram: "You are responsible for this outrage against me. I myself gave my maid to your embrace; but ever since she became aware of her pregnancy, she has been looking on me with disdain. May the Lord decide between you and me! Abram told Sarai: "Your maid is in your power. Do to her whatever you please." Sarai then abused her so much that Hagar ran away from her.
[Poor Abram, for Sarai was indeed a handful! Sarai now blames Abram because her servant, Hagar, is now abloom with pregnancy and has status, even though that was what Sarai wanted. This biblical history, by the way, if read carefully helps humans who live today to understand that these were real people with real events and real foibles, not, as determined non-believers like to accuse, quaint mythologies and folktales. This is because, as the footnotes in this copy of the Bible that I am using, confirms that the reaction and behavior of Sarai is actually consistent with "the laws of the time, as known from ancient extra-biblical sources." In other words, Biblical scholars can find outside of the Bible instances of ancient custom and law that confirm that Sarai would have reacted exactly as she did, and not because it is some folktale drama.
Notice that Hagar is showing quite a bit of spunk in running away, as I don't need to remind people, this was harsh desert land. As a woman of Egypt she is already showing some of what one will many generations later understand as the hardiness of Arabic women!]
The Lord's messenger found her by a spring in the wilderness, the spring on the road to Shur, and he asked, "Hagar, maid of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She answered, "I am running away from my mistress, Sarai."
[Just as later in Genesis we read, as I commented upon in 6 of this series, angels who appear as travelers, one of whom is the Lord, appeared to Abraham and Sarah, here the Lord appears as an average man, hence he is called a messenger. Even though the Lord addresses Hagar in a way to let her know that he knows who she is, in her distress she does not notice this knowledge, and just assumes that this is a man who just happens to know who she is, even though she has never met him.]
But the Lord's messenger told her: "Go back to your mistress and submit to her abusive treatment. I will make your descendants so numerous," added the Lord's messenger, "that they will be too many to count."
[Notice that Hagar must be realizing that this is the Lord himself, first as he states the reason that she is running away even before Hagar had said so, but more importantly as the Lord prophecies to her in the "I will" mode of speech.]
"Besides," the Lord's messenger said to her:
"You are now pregnant and shall bear a son;
you shall name him Ishmael,
For the Lord has heard you,
God has answered you.
He shall be a wild ass of a man,
his hand against everyone,
and everyone's hand against him;
In opposition to all his kin
shall he encamp."
To the Lord who spoke to her she gave a name, saying, "You are the God of Vision"' she meant, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after my vision?" That is why the well is called Beer-lahai-roi. It is between Kadesh and Bered.
Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named the son whom Hagar bore him Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Now, the prophecy the Lord gives Hagar and the act of the Lord naming Ishmael himself is such an illumination of God's all-knowing-ness and his love that everyone should know about this event and ponder its meaning. Also, Hagar's response is also commendable for several reasons. Let's look at each of these points in turn.
The Lord first of all indicates that he knows that she is pregnant, so he opens his extended discourse by confirming that he is indeed the all-knowing. The Lord then immediately tells her, now that she knows that he is the all-knowing, what she cannot yet know on her own, which is that the child that she bears is a son. This is the way that the Lord typically dialogues his all-knowing with humans, first by telling them something they already know, but he would not know if he was an average person passing by. Jesus many centuries later will be known for doing exactly that. The second step is then to tell the person the essence of the prophecy, in this case that she bears a son (and thus an heir).
Then the Lord names the child. This is a sign of God's approval and acceptance of Ishmael. If God had not approved of Ishmael himself, and was only "stopping by to comfort Hagar," the Lord God would never have named the child for her and Abram! The Lord would have just let Abram name the child whoever he chose. So God is affirming the birthright and heritage of Ishmael, but with the earlier prophecy about his descendants being numerous, God does not become specific in Ishmael's role because much of God's work with Abraham had not yet taken place. So God indicates to Hagar that her son will have a great legacy and many heirs.
When God, by the way, uses the image of heirs being as numerous as the stars, God is referring to not only biological progeny but spiritual descendants. This is the same as recognizing that Abraham is the patriarch of the three faiths without actually passing on his biological genes. Abraham passes on his spiritual genes in the sense that those who belong to the faiths that he founded (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) can call Abraham their spiritual father.
Speaking of this, Bible readers know that God also told Abraham, when he renamed him from Abram to Abraham that "I am making you the father of a host of nations." I will include here that entire passage but first I want to make this point. God does not rename Abram and give him the prophecy and his covenant until Abram is ninety-nine years old, a full thirteen years after Ishmael was born!
So you see, the Lord God is telling Hagar that he is reserving for her son, Ishmael, a great legacy, even before God establishes the covenant with Abraham and announces that Abraham and Sarah will conceive Isaac. God is thus demonstrating his all-knowing when he tells Hagar what to name Ishmael and that Ishmael will make his descendants so numerous that they are too many to count. Carefully reading and comprehension of the order of these events allow one to understand that God is giving Ishmael his own promise and his own legacy, for if it was to be the normal legacy of oldest (and at the time only) heir to Abram, God would have spoken these words directly to Abram.
Instead, we infer that obviously Hagar upon her return told Abram what God said, so that Abram obeyed and named the born boy Ishmael. Abram would have probably assumed that this consolation by God of Hagar was affirmation that Ishmael was going to be his spiritual heir, without realizing that God was intentionally speaking of something quite different, which would be the Muslim people.
We know this because as I said, it is thirteen years later (the traditional age when a boy is becoming an adult in the sense of having heir and family responsibility) that God makes clear the renaming of Abram, his calling, and the covenant. Further, God then tells Abraham that God blesses Ishmael and will make him the father of a great nation, but that the covenant with Abraham will be via Isaac, the son the Lord promises Abraham that he will have by Sarah in a year.
Regular reading of the Bible and/or the Qur'an, whichever is your book of faith, reveals to you that God always knows what will happen, and that all that happens is his will yet God allows events to unfold in a natural pace filled with human beings exercising free will. Like I said, God did not impel Sarai to select Hagar to bear a child; it was human nature and free will that motivated Sarai to want a child so desperately that she conceived of the idea to have Hagar conceive. The normal urge for a child resulted in a decision that blessed by God results in the family of Islam, some 1.6 billion living adherents today!
Imagine what it is like to be God and to combine the all-knowing with the love. As he decided to comfort Hagar, an Egyptian slave girl, and console her as she has been abused, God indeed shows that no one's suffering escapes his notice and pity. At the same time, God being the all-knowing, as I described in my analogy of the subatomic particles of all time and their future being constantly and totally known by God, as God gazed on Hagar, imagine how God was looking at the future descendants of Ishmael, not yet born, and seeing how someday they will be the people who heed the Prophet (PBUH) and return to the knowing of the one God becoming indeed "descendants so numerous that they will be too many to count."
But God allows people to live with his encouragement, and his peace of mind (that is what is truly meant by the expression "the peace of God") without providing a robotic type of road map that crushes hope and puts undue burden on humans. God lets Abram think whatever he is going to naturally think of Ishmael, being simply father and son, for thirteen years. It is only after thirteen years that God says the following to Abram, now Abraham.
Genesis 17:1-8, 15-22
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, "I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless. Between you and me I will establish my covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly."
When Abram prostrated himself, God continued to speak to him: "My covenant with you is this: you are to become the father of a host of nations. No longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations. I will render you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings shall stem from you. I will maintain my covenant with you and your descendants after you throughout the ages as an everlasting pact, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. I will give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are now staying, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God."
...[I'm skipping over the part where God gives Abraham circumcision as the sign of the covenant].
God further said to Abraham: "As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai; her name shall be Sarah. I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. Him also will I bless; he shall give rise to nations, and rulers of peoples shall issue from him." Abraham prostrated himself and laughed as he said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Or can Sarah give birth at ninety?" Then Abraham said to God, "Let but Ishmael live on by your favor!"
[Notice Abraham, because he can't quite believe that they will bear a child, is actually somewhat 'passing up' on the chance to have another heir, and is saying that he would be more than willing to stay with Ishmael as his only heir.]
God replied: "Nevertheless, your wife Sarah is to bear you a son, and you shall call him Isaac. I will maintain my covenant with him as an everlasting pact, to be his God and the God of his descendants after him. As for Ishmael, I am heeding you: I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of twelve chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation. But my covenant I will maintain with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you by this time next year." When he had finished speaking with him, God departed from Abraham.
[After this Abraham immediately has every male, including Ishmael, circumcised.]
Now we've reached Genesis 18, which I provided with commentary in 6 of this series.
Before closing this post topic I'd like to point out another attribute of God that can be observed and learned from in the event of the appearance of God to comfort Hagar.
Notice that God spends some time in somewhat poetically describing how Ishmael will be a real handful, a "wild ass of a man" and in "opposition to all his kin." Some Jewish scholars have erroneously interpreted this as being disapproving in tone by God. Usually Jewish scholars are excellent, and as I've commented, no one really "gets" (comprehends) God the way the orthodox Jewish scholars do. However, this is an example of where there is both bias (they are "rooting for Isaac") and just a missing of a nuance of God's "personality." God is with constancy expressing his support and kinship for Ishmael as, we have seen, God comforts his mother Hagar with his actual presence, accepts and names Ishmael, ensures that Abram fully embraces Ishmael as heir and loved son, and even rebuffs Abraham when Abraham wants to just stick with Ishmael (and thus Ishmael would have not had his own separate legacy, the Muslim people, which we now know with hindsight that is what God was prophesying for him). God is insistent that Ishmael, while part of the covenant with Abraham, will have his own great legacy.
Thus one need to read what God said to Hagar as being just what it is, an expression of what a real handful Ishmael will be! You can be safe in even thinking you are detecting droll humor by God in what he says about Ishmael. It is not disapproving at all, for God is God and he would have corrected any deviance from his will real fast and really firmly. God is content that Ishmael be combative and feisty. And thus one cannot help but think of the very robust nature of the roots and branches of Islam and realize that God as all-knowing and all loving, was preparing the trunk of the tree that will reach into the harsh conditions of the desert and one day give rise to Islam, his call for the people who were living pagan ways to rediscover their connection back to Abraham, back to Adam, and know and serve the one true God.
I hope that you have found this helpful and interesting! I wanted very much for people to know about God's encounter with Hagar so her name and legacy is not forgotten.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Taliban sympathizers spray girls with acid
What kind of men are these? Who spray girls with acid just because they are going to school AND they are modest and fully veiled? What more were the girls supposed to do? Oh, that's right, these extremists don't believe in education for girls.
Well, ask yourselves, why then would they disfigure and possibly blind these girls, so that then these so called pious men can say they are "not suitable for marriage?" Which way do you want it, extremists? You do not want girls to go to school, yet then you "punish" them by endangering their lives, their beauty and their chances at marriage? You hypocrites!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/asia/13afghan.html
Well, ask yourselves, why then would they disfigure and possibly blind these girls, so that then these so called pious men can say they are "not suitable for marriage?" Which way do you want it, extremists? You do not want girls to go to school, yet then you "punish" them by endangering their lives, their beauty and their chances at marriage? You hypocrites!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/asia/13afghan.html
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Cultural diplomacy tutorial case study Part 1
I was listening to a talk show, and there was, by one of the guests, a mention of what he thought was an ironic contrast. The commentator was annoyed that some people make "value judgments" regarding "gay marriage" while the "same people" are "silent" about issues such as "female genital mutilation." Whoa, that really got my attention, since he did a bit of a rant about female genital mutilation (also incorrectly called female circumcision), accusing liberals of being soft on horrors such as this that he says they rationalize by calling it a "cultural" context. So I realized here is a great case study about cultural diplomacy.
Let me start by saying that female genital mutilation is never right, it is an abomination, it is not rationalized at all in the Qur'an, and it sprang up as a local cult belief among some tribal regions in Africa. I do not agree that either side, liberals or conservatives, are ignoring this issue or giving it a cultural "free pass." I do not agree AT ALL. I've seen great work and education by both "sides" of the western political persuasions. But here is what is missing. Both sides lack tools, understanding and adeptness at how to conduct cultural diplomacy.
Once a practice has taken root over hundreds of years, one cannot go in and argue that it had no legitimate foundation since unfortunately, there it is, and often large parts of the ethnic society are now structured around this belief. So even if you bring in Muslim scholars and elders to dispute the practice, that often is not a help except to guide when a decision has been made to actually stop the practice. In other words, religious leaders and elders from other villages or tribes can help facilitate the change and problem solve the process once agreement is made to abandon the practice. So how does one get a village, just to use an example, to abandon the practice?
The most common error by Westerners is to not 1) identify what cultural value the village is attempting to protect through the practice and then 2) propose an alternative activity or solution that protects the value without continuing the practice. Westerners often let themselves be blinded by the horror of what is being done, without considering what "horror" the traditionalists are seeking to avoid. Here is what I would do.
First of all, I would identify what cultural value they believe female circumcision is promoting or protecting. It is obvious that dialogue would reveal that the value they are attempting to protect is a girl or young woman's virtue. Many of these customs developed because they believe that 1) if sexual delight is destroyed in a girl that she will not have extra-marital sex and thus 2) in the marriage contract men can be assured she is a virgin and that she will not stray in marriage. As a result they do draconian things such as not only removing the clitoris, but they also actually sew up the vaginal openings of girls, barely allowing urine or menstrual blood to pass through. Needless to say childbirth and all natural functions become painful, infected and life endangering.
Arguing that this is unhealthy, painful, cruel and not a guarantee of virtue is mostly futile, since all the elders have to reply is "Well, we are still here, are we not?" So long as the population thrive, they will be fearful to remove even the most draconian practice. Westerners have no valid answer to the argument that their population is thriving (even with misery). Thus, what I would recommend is to agree that virtue is a valued and prized objective, and propose alternative ways to achieve it than female circumcision. Rarely do you get anywhere by jerking the rug out from under them, convincing them that it is "wrong," but then not replacing it with a new and powerful cultural practice that is consistent with their beliefs.
An example of an alternative is to propose that they create a system of "virtue chaperons" that girls can join at the age when circumcision would have been performed. Women, such as teachers or elders, could have a responsibility for monitoring the virtue of young girls who are joined with them in such a relationship. For example, a girl could be offered the alternative, circumcision or joining this kind of virtue guardianship. So while a girl might give up some privacy (perhaps agreeing to forgo some activities that circumcised girls could attend), she can avoid being circumcised. When the village has had a chance to see side by side girls who opt traditional and those who opt for the new virtue guardianship, and see that it works, they will not fear putting circumcision aside. Remember, those cultures have different views of privacy than westerners. Young girls would not mind an "auntie" kind of "virtue guardianship," even after they are married. Good health practices can also be taught, but be careful not to dive into western birth control and other ideas if they are not welcomed yet at that time. But what I am saying is that the virtue guardians can have a warm role, such as helping with a young girl's health questions, helping with babies when she is first married, that is more than a compensation for the "lack" of privacy, that is questionable in its cultural context anyway.
Young men, potential suitors, would be more likely to value a young girl with a certification of virtue guardianship than one that is suffering and mutilated. Once trust is established that virtue is being monitored (and the virtue guardians provide genuine helping hands to the young couple and family), it becomes win-win for all, while still preserving the cultural imperative to protect virtue.
I hope that you have found this case study of cultural diplomacy to be useful.
Let me start by saying that female genital mutilation is never right, it is an abomination, it is not rationalized at all in the Qur'an, and it sprang up as a local cult belief among some tribal regions in Africa. I do not agree that either side, liberals or conservatives, are ignoring this issue or giving it a cultural "free pass." I do not agree AT ALL. I've seen great work and education by both "sides" of the western political persuasions. But here is what is missing. Both sides lack tools, understanding and adeptness at how to conduct cultural diplomacy.
Once a practice has taken root over hundreds of years, one cannot go in and argue that it had no legitimate foundation since unfortunately, there it is, and often large parts of the ethnic society are now structured around this belief. So even if you bring in Muslim scholars and elders to dispute the practice, that often is not a help except to guide when a decision has been made to actually stop the practice. In other words, religious leaders and elders from other villages or tribes can help facilitate the change and problem solve the process once agreement is made to abandon the practice. So how does one get a village, just to use an example, to abandon the practice?
The most common error by Westerners is to not 1) identify what cultural value the village is attempting to protect through the practice and then 2) propose an alternative activity or solution that protects the value without continuing the practice. Westerners often let themselves be blinded by the horror of what is being done, without considering what "horror" the traditionalists are seeking to avoid. Here is what I would do.
First of all, I would identify what cultural value they believe female circumcision is promoting or protecting. It is obvious that dialogue would reveal that the value they are attempting to protect is a girl or young woman's virtue. Many of these customs developed because they believe that 1) if sexual delight is destroyed in a girl that she will not have extra-marital sex and thus 2) in the marriage contract men can be assured she is a virgin and that she will not stray in marriage. As a result they do draconian things such as not only removing the clitoris, but they also actually sew up the vaginal openings of girls, barely allowing urine or menstrual blood to pass through. Needless to say childbirth and all natural functions become painful, infected and life endangering.
Arguing that this is unhealthy, painful, cruel and not a guarantee of virtue is mostly futile, since all the elders have to reply is "Well, we are still here, are we not?" So long as the population thrive, they will be fearful to remove even the most draconian practice. Westerners have no valid answer to the argument that their population is thriving (even with misery). Thus, what I would recommend is to agree that virtue is a valued and prized objective, and propose alternative ways to achieve it than female circumcision. Rarely do you get anywhere by jerking the rug out from under them, convincing them that it is "wrong," but then not replacing it with a new and powerful cultural practice that is consistent with their beliefs.
An example of an alternative is to propose that they create a system of "virtue chaperons" that girls can join at the age when circumcision would have been performed. Women, such as teachers or elders, could have a responsibility for monitoring the virtue of young girls who are joined with them in such a relationship. For example, a girl could be offered the alternative, circumcision or joining this kind of virtue guardianship. So while a girl might give up some privacy (perhaps agreeing to forgo some activities that circumcised girls could attend), she can avoid being circumcised. When the village has had a chance to see side by side girls who opt traditional and those who opt for the new virtue guardianship, and see that it works, they will not fear putting circumcision aside. Remember, those cultures have different views of privacy than westerners. Young girls would not mind an "auntie" kind of "virtue guardianship," even after they are married. Good health practices can also be taught, but be careful not to dive into western birth control and other ideas if they are not welcomed yet at that time. But what I am saying is that the virtue guardians can have a warm role, such as helping with a young girl's health questions, helping with babies when she is first married, that is more than a compensation for the "lack" of privacy, that is questionable in its cultural context anyway.
Young men, potential suitors, would be more likely to value a young girl with a certification of virtue guardianship than one that is suffering and mutilated. Once trust is established that virtue is being monitored (and the virtue guardians provide genuine helping hands to the young couple and family), it becomes win-win for all, while still preserving the cultural imperative to protect virtue.
I hope that you have found this case study of cultural diplomacy to be useful.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Congratulations on advent of Ramadan
Thinking of all the faithful with friendship and prayers for a blessed time.
http://www.spa.gov.sa/English/details.php?id=586139
snip
Chairman of Supreme Judiciary Council congratulates Muslim nation on holy month of Ramadan
Taif, Saudi Arabia, , August 30, SPA--The Chairman of Supreme Judiciary Council Sheikh Saleh bin Mohammad Allehaidan has congratulated the Muslim nation on the holy month of Ramadan, praying to Almighty Allah for all success for the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Saudi people and Muslims.
In a speech on the advent of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday, Sheikh Saleh praised Almighty Allah for making the starts and ends of worships connected with matters and cosmic signs obvious to everyone, pointing out that a lunar crescent can be seen by all people to determine the start of fasting and at the end of the month to break fasting. In conclusion, he prayed to Almighty Allah for glory for Islam and Muslims and for their protection from the evils of their enemies.
***
I echo the words and sentiments of Sheikh Saheh.
I also want to point out that he explains that the lunar crescent is used so that all people have a way to determine Allah's will for starting and ending worship. This is because all people, rich or poor, learned or illiterate, could look at the sky and share the same clock, provided by God.
This is one reason that the Catholic Church developed the art of stained glass windows in churches to tell the story of Jesus. Rich or poor, learned or illiterate, all could gaze on the windows and understand, knowing the story of Jesus, of Mary, of all the saints, and of God's works on earth. Churches used to be unlocked and open all the time so any, no matter how poor, could come in and learn and pray.
This is quite different from the idolatry of astrology and other occult and arcane arts, who seek to undermine the will of God by claiming manipulation of the "signs" by the few, wealthy and powerful. That is an abomination to God.
http://www.spa.gov.sa/English/details.php?id=586139
snip
Chairman of Supreme Judiciary Council congratulates Muslim nation on holy month of Ramadan
Taif, Saudi Arabia, , August 30, SPA--The Chairman of Supreme Judiciary Council Sheikh Saleh bin Mohammad Allehaidan has congratulated the Muslim nation on the holy month of Ramadan, praying to Almighty Allah for all success for the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Saudi people and Muslims.
In a speech on the advent of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday, Sheikh Saleh praised Almighty Allah for making the starts and ends of worships connected with matters and cosmic signs obvious to everyone, pointing out that a lunar crescent can be seen by all people to determine the start of fasting and at the end of the month to break fasting. In conclusion, he prayed to Almighty Allah for glory for Islam and Muslims and for their protection from the evils of their enemies.
***
I echo the words and sentiments of Sheikh Saheh.
I also want to point out that he explains that the lunar crescent is used so that all people have a way to determine Allah's will for starting and ending worship. This is because all people, rich or poor, learned or illiterate, could look at the sky and share the same clock, provided by God.
This is one reason that the Catholic Church developed the art of stained glass windows in churches to tell the story of Jesus. Rich or poor, learned or illiterate, all could gaze on the windows and understand, knowing the story of Jesus, of Mary, of all the saints, and of God's works on earth. Churches used to be unlocked and open all the time so any, no matter how poor, could come in and learn and pray.
This is quite different from the idolatry of astrology and other occult and arcane arts, who seek to undermine the will of God by claiming manipulation of the "signs" by the few, wealthy and powerful. That is an abomination to God.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Case study: Haj (Islam) Hindu shrine worship
Being a Catholic I don't have a horse in this race. But I cannot help but be struck by difference in attitude toward pilgrims. The Haj was troubled by stampedes and unsafe conditions so the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques ordered great infrastructure improvements to keep the millions of pilgrims safe. He recognizes that he is the host of God's guests.
In India you have many women and children sent in packed crowds up dangerous paths among people prone to rumor and panic, and hence you have frequent stampedes. And do you see any changes take place for safety year after year after year after year after year after? Um, no. It's the caste system and mindset, like it or not, still at work. Why invest in keeping pilgrims safe when you can worship at high tech altars instead? And then the victims feel that God has let them down. Um, no, the same government and society that has the lowest caste handle raw sewage from the street since they don't build sanitation facilities at all for a billion people or whatever continues to let them down.
In India you have many women and children sent in packed crowds up dangerous paths among people prone to rumor and panic, and hence you have frequent stampedes. And do you see any changes take place for safety year after year after year after year after year after? Um, no. It's the caste system and mindset, like it or not, still at work. Why invest in keeping pilgrims safe when you can worship at high tech altars instead? And then the victims feel that God has let them down. Um, no, the same government and society that has the lowest caste handle raw sewage from the street since they don't build sanitation facilities at all for a billion people or whatever continues to let them down.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A book I'd write for Muslims
If I had the opportunity I would write a book with this following idea. For all the Prophets who are revered in the Qur'an, especially Isa, Jesus, I would extract sayings from the Bible and collect them in a book for Muslims in particular. I would avoid putting in the collection any quotations that would be troubling to a devout Muslim (such as Jesus' statements about his relationship with God) because the purpose of the book would be to bring more enlightenment and comfort, rather than cause consternation or confusion. However, because Isa is attested to as being a Prophet sent by the one God in the Qur'an, reading some of his sayings would not be contrary to teachings about the faith in the Qur'an, nor would be a ploy for conversion efforts. I would compare it to the Hadith, or the sayings of the companions of the Prophet (PBUH), where the purpose is to gain as much holy insight from the approved Prophets regarding how to please God and know God's will as possible.
This way a devout Muslim could also read the sayings of the shared Biblical prophets without causing consternation that they are reading the actual Bible.
Anyway, this is an idea I've had for a while, and thought I'd mention it here.
This way a devout Muslim could also read the sayings of the shared Biblical prophets without causing consternation that they are reading the actual Bible.
Anyway, this is an idea I've had for a while, and thought I'd mention it here.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Another thought about what I just wrote
I know people who like to argue (or "better understand" to put it charitably) will run to their Bibles to look for passages about how people's days are numbered etc. They will say, "See! The Bible says each person's days are numbered and their time is up!"
Listen, again, I am trying to orient you back toward wise reading of those passages, rather than defensive and agenda driven reading of them.
What would I say, if I was a pastor, talking to this family? I would say "God is in control" rather than "It was God's will that her time was up." "God is in control" is the more accurate Christian contemporary type of abbreviated condolence saying because it is not targeted on the death of the person herself. "God is in control" of everything, which means the dispensation of all people and agencies involved at all times. God does not focus his will or control on just one person's accidental death. God is in control of the ultimate outcome of all of human beings' own actions. God makes all things good; God does not make the errors. So to comfort a family you tell them that God is in control, assuring them that justice, mercy and blissful joy will be awarded to even those who suffer at the hands of deliberate or accidental cruelty and loss by other humans.
That is the meaning that all days are numbered, which is there are limitations, and God in his all knowing knows in advance what people will do to each other, and the number of days each person has before age, mishap or illness catches up with them. It's a totally different meaning than God winding up some clock for each person! Gosh I hate that New Age thinking. God knows and foresees all that happens and it is "his will" that it takes place because he does not intervene, in general, in how humans manage themselves. He is not disinterested, and the Holy Spirit works tirelessly to convert and bring everyone to more charitable and responsible behavior, for the glorification of God and for the survivability of humanity. So no one can accuse God of being some detached blob of "universal energy" "detached" and "not caring" about what goes on with individuals, each of whom, truth be told, he knows in their very soul and cares about deeply.
People keep forgetting about guardian angels too. They are not guardian angels in the sense of throwing themselves in front of irresponsible drivers to save their charges from disaster. They are, though, the voice that whispers "Don't drink and drive" and "Put on your seat belt" and "Care about your neighbor." Guardian angels are just one proof that no human lives, or dies, alone. Remember that when this lady in the car hit and run died, her guardian angel went to see God with her. That's an uncaring God? Get over yourselves, please!
Now, Muslims often use the expression "It is God's will." They will say it at times like this, such as tragically losing a family member. But they really are saying "God is in control" because when they say "It is God's will" they are not saying "God did this to her," but they are confessing their knowledge that God is in control of everything, and that events like this fall within his universal control and will. Again, this is a broader and thus more theologically accurate statement than what Christians have come to mean in these personally obsessive and "God limiting" phrases and observations. So when a Muslim says "It is God's will (that a person died)" they will not claim that they know what God is planning or thinking, or even how God perceives humans at all. They mean "God is in control and it is his will that events like this do happen (because he has given life to humans and life does have sorrow and loss by definition.)" Muslims, no matter what sect they are, have a firm and accurate perception of God that God is unknowable and has a much more vast scope of control and perspective than humans could ever have, and that no one event or human life can be interpreted as being a humanly understandable example of his taking action. It is God's will but it cannot be claimed that a human understands what, if any, action God is taking in a human life or event. Only Christians and others who think they can cut God down into understandable parcels think like that. Muslims don't.
I hope this helps. My next blog posting touches, actually, even though I wrote it earlier this morning, on an extreme example of where people need to better understand how they cannot characterize God's will in any correct or understandable way.
Listen, again, I am trying to orient you back toward wise reading of those passages, rather than defensive and agenda driven reading of them.
What would I say, if I was a pastor, talking to this family? I would say "God is in control" rather than "It was God's will that her time was up." "God is in control" is the more accurate Christian contemporary type of abbreviated condolence saying because it is not targeted on the death of the person herself. "God is in control" of everything, which means the dispensation of all people and agencies involved at all times. God does not focus his will or control on just one person's accidental death. God is in control of the ultimate outcome of all of human beings' own actions. God makes all things good; God does not make the errors. So to comfort a family you tell them that God is in control, assuring them that justice, mercy and blissful joy will be awarded to even those who suffer at the hands of deliberate or accidental cruelty and loss by other humans.
That is the meaning that all days are numbered, which is there are limitations, and God in his all knowing knows in advance what people will do to each other, and the number of days each person has before age, mishap or illness catches up with them. It's a totally different meaning than God winding up some clock for each person! Gosh I hate that New Age thinking. God knows and foresees all that happens and it is "his will" that it takes place because he does not intervene, in general, in how humans manage themselves. He is not disinterested, and the Holy Spirit works tirelessly to convert and bring everyone to more charitable and responsible behavior, for the glorification of God and for the survivability of humanity. So no one can accuse God of being some detached blob of "universal energy" "detached" and "not caring" about what goes on with individuals, each of whom, truth be told, he knows in their very soul and cares about deeply.
People keep forgetting about guardian angels too. They are not guardian angels in the sense of throwing themselves in front of irresponsible drivers to save their charges from disaster. They are, though, the voice that whispers "Don't drink and drive" and "Put on your seat belt" and "Care about your neighbor." Guardian angels are just one proof that no human lives, or dies, alone. Remember that when this lady in the car hit and run died, her guardian angel went to see God with her. That's an uncaring God? Get over yourselves, please!
Now, Muslims often use the expression "It is God's will." They will say it at times like this, such as tragically losing a family member. But they really are saying "God is in control" because when they say "It is God's will" they are not saying "God did this to her," but they are confessing their knowledge that God is in control of everything, and that events like this fall within his universal control and will. Again, this is a broader and thus more theologically accurate statement than what Christians have come to mean in these personally obsessive and "God limiting" phrases and observations. So when a Muslim says "It is God's will (that a person died)" they will not claim that they know what God is planning or thinking, or even how God perceives humans at all. They mean "God is in control and it is his will that events like this do happen (because he has given life to humans and life does have sorrow and loss by definition.)" Muslims, no matter what sect they are, have a firm and accurate perception of God that God is unknowable and has a much more vast scope of control and perspective than humans could ever have, and that no one event or human life can be interpreted as being a humanly understandable example of his taking action. It is God's will but it cannot be claimed that a human understands what, if any, action God is taking in a human life or event. Only Christians and others who think they can cut God down into understandable parcels think like that. Muslims don't.
I hope this helps. My next blog posting touches, actually, even though I wrote it earlier this morning, on an extreme example of where people need to better understand how they cannot characterize God's will in any correct or understandable way.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
The Prophet's child marriage NOT justification
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/world/middleeast/29marriage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
snip
“This is the first shout,” said Shada Nasser, a human rights lawyer who met Nujood, the 10-year-old, after she arrived at the courthouse to demand a divorce. Ms. Nasser decided instantly to take her case. “All other early marriage cases have been dealt with by tribal sheiks, and the girl never had any choice.”
But despite a rising tide of outrage, the fight against the practice is not easy. Hard-line Islamic conservatives, whose influence has grown enormously in the past two decades, defend it, pointing to the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a 9-year-old. Child marriage is deeply rooted in local custom here, and even enshrined in an old tribal expression: “Give me a girl of 8, and I can give you a guarantee” for a good marriage.
***
It is an outrageous insult to the Prophet (PBUH) that raping ignorant louts who marry children, raping and beating them, should DARE compare themselves to the Prophet (PBUH) and how he treated his wives.
I would think that such men, their tribes and their families would cover their heads in shame over THAT. First of all, the Prophet (PBUH) married someone of a correct age for many years and treated her with glory. He did not "start out" with a child bride. Second, the Prophet had the mercy and justice of God within him. He never treated anyone, not even the poorest servent or his worst enemy, the way the "men" in this article treat these children, stripping and raping them as tiny youngsters. It is disgusting to me and to God that anyone should even say the words of the Prophet (PBUH) on their stinking breath as justification for their cruel, disgusting, ignorant and infidel ways.
God bless the good judges who acted so promptly, and those who fight this cursed behavior.
snip
“This is the first shout,” said Shada Nasser, a human rights lawyer who met Nujood, the 10-year-old, after she arrived at the courthouse to demand a divorce. Ms. Nasser decided instantly to take her case. “All other early marriage cases have been dealt with by tribal sheiks, and the girl never had any choice.”
But despite a rising tide of outrage, the fight against the practice is not easy. Hard-line Islamic conservatives, whose influence has grown enormously in the past two decades, defend it, pointing to the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a 9-year-old. Child marriage is deeply rooted in local custom here, and even enshrined in an old tribal expression: “Give me a girl of 8, and I can give you a guarantee” for a good marriage.
***
It is an outrageous insult to the Prophet (PBUH) that raping ignorant louts who marry children, raping and beating them, should DARE compare themselves to the Prophet (PBUH) and how he treated his wives.
I would think that such men, their tribes and their families would cover their heads in shame over THAT. First of all, the Prophet (PBUH) married someone of a correct age for many years and treated her with glory. He did not "start out" with a child bride. Second, the Prophet had the mercy and justice of God within him. He never treated anyone, not even the poorest servent or his worst enemy, the way the "men" in this article treat these children, stripping and raping them as tiny youngsters. It is disgusting to me and to God that anyone should even say the words of the Prophet (PBUH) on their stinking breath as justification for their cruel, disgusting, ignorant and infidel ways.
God bless the good judges who acted so promptly, and those who fight this cursed behavior.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Discussion about the death penalty
There is a lot of confusion and disagreement among people about the use of the death penalty for criminals. Many claim to speak on God's behalf, on both sides of the issue. No one can speak for God.
The Catholic Church is entirely correct and within their rights to take a stance that opposes the death penalty. This is because the Catholic Church is founded on the principle of role modeling themselves after the admonitions and teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not address himself to issues such as the death penalty for criminals. He did, however, convey God's New Covenant that emphasizes the continuing power of redemption, even for those who have committed the most grievous sins. In the sacrament of Confession, for example, the Catholic priest who models himself after Christ must listen to the totality of a person's sins, no matter how dreadful, and apply absolution as appropriate. So while the Catholic Church does not explain it in exactly this way, I'm trying to make it as easy to understand as possible. The Catholic Church fears that executing a criminal shuts down the possibility, no matter how remote, of that person finding personal redemption while still alive and able. This is why the Catholic Church opposes the death penalty. It feels that it is closest to the spirit of what Jesus personified by leaving open ended the opportunity for any person to seek redemption and reconciliation. So this is why I defend the Catholic Church's doctrine in this regard.
However, this does not mean that God has "said" that the death penalty is "wrong." Indeed, both the Old Testament and the Islamic Qur'an record God's permission of the death penalty in specific instances. Therefore one can be in compliance with God's will by being a Catholic who opposes the death penalty AND being a non-Catholic who favors it (if it is done, of course, as rarely, fairly and mercifully as possible). God does not take sides on this issue. Furthermore, one is not more "virtuous" than one's neighbor if you take one position and your neighbor holds the opposite belief.
So I have said that I approve of and endorse the Catholic Church's opposition to the death penalty. I believe their theory of giving a person a chance to repent, confess, and reconcile his or her self to God until the last moment of their natural life is the most Christlike stance to have. Further, I think it gives a lofty but understandable goal of a society where the death penalty is not necessary.
However, let's get realistic for a moment. Cain slew Abel, his own brother, out of jealousy of the goodness of Abel's providing of sacrifice ritual and goods to God. God spared Cain and forbade anyone from harming him. But think about it. Cain did not run around telling every brother to slay his brother as a solution to their jealousy and anger management issues. Cain did not start a business of being a hit man. Cain did not make a movie about the killing and profit from it. In other words, Cain sinned, was forgiven and did not perpetuate his sin to the harming of other innocents or the stability of the society at large. We cannot say that about the many criminals today who merit death row. Society has a very difficult situation where there are criminals who continue to drain and warp society even from prison. I am perfectly alright with societies who in their pious tradition and in their desire to protect the public who continue to have a death penalty. With the prolonging of life and the heinous nature of many crimes today, sometimes the death penalty is a very reasonable way to manage the damage that has been done by the criminal. While I don't openly cheer when the Saudis execute someone, for example, I do not lose one wink of sleep over the criminal getting the well understood and well advertised penalty that he or she merits for their crime in that society.
It is the same here in the United States. As a Catholic I believe in the possibility of redemption up to the end. But as a citizen and a realist I know two things. One is that Catholics cannot even populate their parishes with priests for their law abiding laity, say nothing about minister in the prisons on a daily basis. So who is supposed to "do the work?" The Holy Spirit? Catholics would have much more credibility if they had the entire prison population eligible for the death penalty totally covered with their ceaseless attempts to convert their hearts. The second thing that I know is that there is a ferocity of criminal in this generation who is outside of the reach of normal humanity, say nothing of spiritual appeal. Baby raping murderers come to mind. Remember that Jesus said it is better to cut one's own hand off than harm a child. Jesus would not blink an eye at the fair, just and merciful execution of a baby raping murderer. Jesus would explain that if you read the Old Testament, sometimes the loss of one's life enables an unrepentant egregious sinner to argue for mercy before God. You will read in the Old Testament examples of where God explained that a king who slipped into idolatry will die soon, usually in battle against an enemy that God has raised up against him. This is an example of where the pre-Messiah teaching indicates the possibility that the penalty of one's life on earth can have merit for the unrepentant (or more accurately, those who are too "damaged goods" to achieve full mindful repentance during life). Jesus alludes to this in a way when he says what he did about it being better to cut one's hand off than harm a child, or pluck one's own eye out. He is not just being figurative for the purpose of teaching. He is saying that literally there is merit in physically preventing one's self from doing what is morally evil to another. One could use the example of castration of a chronic sex offender against children as being justifiable completely by what Jesus taught. But that is another topic, that of punishment, and here I speak only of the viewpoints and teachings about the death penalty.
I hope that you find this useful. I'm really tired of each side staking out some sort of moral superiority over the other side, when actually neither side can explain themselves within a theological context with any depth of understanding or accuracy.
Just a personal aside, since people are so fond of creating an entire life and career about misunderstanding me. In college we young people would have these discussions, of course. I would tell people that I'm "a liberal who supports the death penalty." I've later learned that people think "Ah ha! She's a Catholic who opposes Church doctrine! And she's mean!" Nooooo *said with clenched teeth patience*. I support the Catholic stance that in the ideal world that no one should be executed because that is a human defined end point to their chance for repentence and conversion. So I support the Church doctrine. However, I support the state's right to have a penalty system that includes the death penalty for a set of crimes where the death penalty is in the public interest and is fairly and rarely administered. That is, of course, an application of what Jesus said, "Render to Caeser what is Caeser's and to God what is God's." Notice that you did not see Jesus picketing and demonstrating at the weekly crucifixions carried out by the Romans. The civilly imposed death penalty was "not his thing." Saving souls and teaching people to live as Christians "in hope" was his thing. So the Church can correctly take a stance that death penalty terminates the hope of conversion by taking the life of someone who might still take a chance at repentence and conversion. However, Jesus fully supported the civil system that forms the society within which one must live. (This was, in fact, a point of disappointment for some of his followers, that Jesus would not oppose the system where it most grated them). Too bad! Deal with it! Jesus had only two years or so of public ministry and he was there to be the Messiah and bring the New Covenant, not comment on what kind of chariots with what mileage to buy, the civil penalty system of the Romans and the Jews, whether pollution is bad or not, etc. If you were able to "ask Jesus" about any of these modern day issues, Jesus would tell people that this is why they should be well formed in the entirety of their faith (the WHOLE Bible, for example) for guidance as to God's will. He would tell people to perfect their knowledge of the complete teachings of their own faith and let that gradually mature and inform them in their civil responsibilities.
So this is why I support the Catholic Church's hopeful stance opposing the death penalty, but have absolutely no problem living in any state that has a fair penal code that includes the death penalty. If only someone had asked me this a long time ago, instead of just evesdropping, spying, distorting and "judging" what I've said both publically and privately. I have not been inconsistent. Humans are inconsistent in their intelligence and understanding, and have a mean spirited lack of generosity in looking for stumbling blocks rather than illumination about either issues or my overall authority.
The Catholic Church is entirely correct and within their rights to take a stance that opposes the death penalty. This is because the Catholic Church is founded on the principle of role modeling themselves after the admonitions and teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not address himself to issues such as the death penalty for criminals. He did, however, convey God's New Covenant that emphasizes the continuing power of redemption, even for those who have committed the most grievous sins. In the sacrament of Confession, for example, the Catholic priest who models himself after Christ must listen to the totality of a person's sins, no matter how dreadful, and apply absolution as appropriate. So while the Catholic Church does not explain it in exactly this way, I'm trying to make it as easy to understand as possible. The Catholic Church fears that executing a criminal shuts down the possibility, no matter how remote, of that person finding personal redemption while still alive and able. This is why the Catholic Church opposes the death penalty. It feels that it is closest to the spirit of what Jesus personified by leaving open ended the opportunity for any person to seek redemption and reconciliation. So this is why I defend the Catholic Church's doctrine in this regard.
However, this does not mean that God has "said" that the death penalty is "wrong." Indeed, both the Old Testament and the Islamic Qur'an record God's permission of the death penalty in specific instances. Therefore one can be in compliance with God's will by being a Catholic who opposes the death penalty AND being a non-Catholic who favors it (if it is done, of course, as rarely, fairly and mercifully as possible). God does not take sides on this issue. Furthermore, one is not more "virtuous" than one's neighbor if you take one position and your neighbor holds the opposite belief.
So I have said that I approve of and endorse the Catholic Church's opposition to the death penalty. I believe their theory of giving a person a chance to repent, confess, and reconcile his or her self to God until the last moment of their natural life is the most Christlike stance to have. Further, I think it gives a lofty but understandable goal of a society where the death penalty is not necessary.
However, let's get realistic for a moment. Cain slew Abel, his own brother, out of jealousy of the goodness of Abel's providing of sacrifice ritual and goods to God. God spared Cain and forbade anyone from harming him. But think about it. Cain did not run around telling every brother to slay his brother as a solution to their jealousy and anger management issues. Cain did not start a business of being a hit man. Cain did not make a movie about the killing and profit from it. In other words, Cain sinned, was forgiven and did not perpetuate his sin to the harming of other innocents or the stability of the society at large. We cannot say that about the many criminals today who merit death row. Society has a very difficult situation where there are criminals who continue to drain and warp society even from prison. I am perfectly alright with societies who in their pious tradition and in their desire to protect the public who continue to have a death penalty. With the prolonging of life and the heinous nature of many crimes today, sometimes the death penalty is a very reasonable way to manage the damage that has been done by the criminal. While I don't openly cheer when the Saudis execute someone, for example, I do not lose one wink of sleep over the criminal getting the well understood and well advertised penalty that he or she merits for their crime in that society.
It is the same here in the United States. As a Catholic I believe in the possibility of redemption up to the end. But as a citizen and a realist I know two things. One is that Catholics cannot even populate their parishes with priests for their law abiding laity, say nothing about minister in the prisons on a daily basis. So who is supposed to "do the work?" The Holy Spirit? Catholics would have much more credibility if they had the entire prison population eligible for the death penalty totally covered with their ceaseless attempts to convert their hearts. The second thing that I know is that there is a ferocity of criminal in this generation who is outside of the reach of normal humanity, say nothing of spiritual appeal. Baby raping murderers come to mind. Remember that Jesus said it is better to cut one's own hand off than harm a child. Jesus would not blink an eye at the fair, just and merciful execution of a baby raping murderer. Jesus would explain that if you read the Old Testament, sometimes the loss of one's life enables an unrepentant egregious sinner to argue for mercy before God. You will read in the Old Testament examples of where God explained that a king who slipped into idolatry will die soon, usually in battle against an enemy that God has raised up against him. This is an example of where the pre-Messiah teaching indicates the possibility that the penalty of one's life on earth can have merit for the unrepentant (or more accurately, those who are too "damaged goods" to achieve full mindful repentance during life). Jesus alludes to this in a way when he says what he did about it being better to cut one's hand off than harm a child, or pluck one's own eye out. He is not just being figurative for the purpose of teaching. He is saying that literally there is merit in physically preventing one's self from doing what is morally evil to another. One could use the example of castration of a chronic sex offender against children as being justifiable completely by what Jesus taught. But that is another topic, that of punishment, and here I speak only of the viewpoints and teachings about the death penalty.
I hope that you find this useful. I'm really tired of each side staking out some sort of moral superiority over the other side, when actually neither side can explain themselves within a theological context with any depth of understanding or accuracy.
Just a personal aside, since people are so fond of creating an entire life and career about misunderstanding me. In college we young people would have these discussions, of course. I would tell people that I'm "a liberal who supports the death penalty." I've later learned that people think "Ah ha! She's a Catholic who opposes Church doctrine! And she's mean!" Nooooo *said with clenched teeth patience*. I support the Catholic stance that in the ideal world that no one should be executed because that is a human defined end point to their chance for repentence and conversion. So I support the Church doctrine. However, I support the state's right to have a penalty system that includes the death penalty for a set of crimes where the death penalty is in the public interest and is fairly and rarely administered. That is, of course, an application of what Jesus said, "Render to Caeser what is Caeser's and to God what is God's." Notice that you did not see Jesus picketing and demonstrating at the weekly crucifixions carried out by the Romans. The civilly imposed death penalty was "not his thing." Saving souls and teaching people to live as Christians "in hope" was his thing. So the Church can correctly take a stance that death penalty terminates the hope of conversion by taking the life of someone who might still take a chance at repentence and conversion. However, Jesus fully supported the civil system that forms the society within which one must live. (This was, in fact, a point of disappointment for some of his followers, that Jesus would not oppose the system where it most grated them). Too bad! Deal with it! Jesus had only two years or so of public ministry and he was there to be the Messiah and bring the New Covenant, not comment on what kind of chariots with what mileage to buy, the civil penalty system of the Romans and the Jews, whether pollution is bad or not, etc. If you were able to "ask Jesus" about any of these modern day issues, Jesus would tell people that this is why they should be well formed in the entirety of their faith (the WHOLE Bible, for example) for guidance as to God's will. He would tell people to perfect their knowledge of the complete teachings of their own faith and let that gradually mature and inform them in their civil responsibilities.
So this is why I support the Catholic Church's hopeful stance opposing the death penalty, but have absolutely no problem living in any state that has a fair penal code that includes the death penalty. If only someone had asked me this a long time ago, instead of just evesdropping, spying, distorting and "judging" what I've said both publically and privately. I have not been inconsistent. Humans are inconsistent in their intelligence and understanding, and have a mean spirited lack of generosity in looking for stumbling blocks rather than illumination about either issues or my overall authority.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
