http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2006/05/danish-peoples-church-muslims-and.html
Oh heck -I'm copying the whole post---since I didn't start my blog til 2008-I'm lucky to have 'stumbled' onto this:
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Danish People's Church: "Muslims And Christians Do Not Believe In The Same God"
In yet another sign that Europe is waking up to its problem with Islamofascism, the official church of the state of Denmark has announced that Muslim Imams are not welcome in their churches, and that Muslims and Christians do not direct their worship at the same entity (report from Dymphna at Gates of Vienna):
(The) state church, Folkekirken, which is Denmark’s official evangelical Lutheran denomination. No one has to join, and you can opt out of paying any tax for its upkeep, though if you’re a lazy or indifferent type and don’t phone the local municipality, you will be billed for church maintenance. What’s interesting is that while eighty four per cent of Danes pay the tax and are official members, only about five per cent of these citizens are actually church-goers.
" ... Imams are not welcome in Danish state churches," says a new network of Islam-critical priests and theological experts.
The purpose is to state that Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God, and that the church and the mosque are not religious equals says the new network of 60 priests and theological experts.
Well-known priests and opinion-makers such as Niels Højlund, Sørine Godtfredsen, Edith Thingstrup, Morten Kvist and Katrine Winkel Holm are among the prominent members.
According to the Newfounded Network admitting imams into Danish churches is problematic.
The Danish People’s Church cannot agree with the imams without betraying the Lord Christ — who according to Islam is nothing but an inferior “prophet”, subordinated to Mohammad.
When priests and imams are praying together, they are in essence ridiculing the Gospel, the network states. At the same time it distances itself from recent events such as religious councils with imams.
Bishops and imams are not religious colleagues separated only by different merchandise. It is of paramount importance that priests in the Danish Church make that fact very clear — as well as studying and criticizing Islam, says the network — which at the same time underscores that the intention is to criticize Islam, not the individual Muslim.
Dymphna, at Gates of Vienna, comments:
Is this what Christians would call a “Christian attitude”? In a smaller sense, no. But in the larger sense of putting a stop to the inroads some of the more notorious imams in Denmark have made into a hither-to civilized cultural life, and the economic damage they have caused Denmark by spreading taqiyya in the Middle East, causing boycotts of Danish goods and the destruction of Danish embassies, they are possibly serving a greater good.
The shameful spineless of American mainstream churches in the face of militant Islam, their divestment from tiny, besieged Israel, their unwitting and ignorant support of the spread of Islamicist propaganda in this country, makes Denmark’s line drawn in the sand a refreshing change.
I think this is a good starting point for me to discuss something I have been thinking about of late. The question Dymphna poses is a wise one. "Is this a Christian attitude," or, in other words, does it betray Christian values to reject ecumenicism, or, an approach of agreement, cooperation, and understanding, with an Abrahamic religion?
In short, I think we need not even address that question. Because, before we even get to it, our answer should be clear to us.
The first principle of the Judeo-Christian Christian tradition, and really, the first thing the Bible, itself, discusses, in Genesis, about the relationship of God and man, is that man was created in the Image of God. This does not mean that we look like God. What it means is that we were created with the attributes of God.
And, what are the attributes of God?
We need only look at that passage in the beginning of Genesis to understand.
"In the beginning,
1) God created the heavens and the Earth,"
2) He created the beasts of the field,
3) He separated the waters,
4) He created man of dust, and
5) breathed His own life into him, and then,
6) seeing that it was not good for man to be lonely, and moved by compassion, He created, for him, a female companion named Eve.
We can take from this that man God and, thereby man, are, among other things,
1) Creative and magnificent of vision
2) in love with reproduction and the process of life
3) analytical in our creativity, and completely willing to remake, or reshape, what we have already made, even if we have seen that "it is Good."
4) in love with matter itself
5) generous, willing to give of ourselves in our own creative process
6) loving, reasonable, and willing to change our plans, when moved by compassion.
There are many other things that can be inferred from the opening passage of Genesis, but this is enough for my argument.
The point is, both Judaism and Christianity teach that God is loving, reasonable, and creative. Both Judaism and Christianity teach that man, having been made in the Image of his Creator, also inherently possesses these attributes to some extent. Therefore, man is meant to be creative, he is meant to love matter, he is meant to be reasonable and analytical, he is meant to reshape his work, and even, the work of God's hands, using the gifts of reason and analysis, and more than anything, man is meant to be Free, as God, most indubitably, is Himself.
And, what's more, God wants man to have Freedom of choice. He wants man to come to Him of his own accord. When man sinned, God could have unmade the sin, and started over, but instead, God worked with the new reality man had created, and even promised to make something more glorious of it.
In other words, when God was confronted with man's sin, and He banished the sinners from the Garden of Eden, He did not make it His next step to take away man's Free Will, but instead, chose for man to retain Free Will, and He chose to remain a partner in man's creative endeavors.
Reading the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospels, and the Letters, it becomes apparent that God made this decision precisely because He wants man to be Free, otherwise, man would not be free to choose Him.
In other words - and I can't stress enough how important this is -
The first principle of the Bible is that man needs to be Free, and this comes before anything else.
This is not at all a principle of Islam. In Islam, a good Muslim is to learn the Koran by heart, and to follow its rules by rote. He is not to be analytical, because his analysis can never add anything to that which Allah has already provided. The Koran, itself, is the final word of Allah to man. It is not to be amended or added to. It is to be followed only.
Man's creativity is to be impeded. Music must not be made of anything more than chanting and drums. Art must not be representational. It is forbidden for a Muslim to depict the human form in a sculpture, for instance.
Man is to love the paradise Mohammed calls him towards. He is not to love the Earthly realm of matter. In fact, much of the material world is haram, to the extent that man is forbidden to even view the form of any female not his own wife.
In Islam, man is not forbidden to be generous to other men, so long as his fellow man is a Muslim. But, there is no reason to be generous to a non-Muslim. In fact, one is not to take a non-Muslim as a friend.
In Islam, compassion is not the central theme. Allah can not be said to be the equivalent of Love, as the Bible tells us Yahweh is. Allah is instead, probably, more easily called a god of justice, as defined by Allah. Or, is that justice defined by Mohammed. We can't be sure, because when it comes right down to it, the only person from whom we have learned of Allah, is the prophet himself. And, we shall never hear another new word about Allah from anyone else.
So, we see, the god of Islam is not anything like the God of the Bible. We delude ourselves if we think the two can be compared.
What's more, we put ourselves in danger, and, we put our very ability to practice our religion in danger, if we accept the idea that God and Allah are the same. Because Allah does not accept divergence of opinion. It's Allah's way, or the highway. No other opinions, or ideas, or beliefs, are allowed.
Free Speech, Freedom of Conscience, Democracy, these are all but the baubles and bangles of a decadent Western Civilization, as far as the most learned men of Islam are concerned. They all lead to disobedience, and sloth, and weakness, we are told. And most importantly, what we need to know is they all lead away from Allah.
Therefore, if we are to accept that Allah is the same as the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible, we are accepting that Allah is preeminent, and our God must be subservient. We are accepting, therefore, that we are no longer to be free, rational, and analytical beings.
Therefore, we are accepting that we no longer can make our own choices, for Democracy, for Freedom of Conscience, or for our God Himself.
If we accept such, we are condemning ourselves to the destruction of Western Civilization, and we are taking away the very duty of man himself, that is to express himself as a being made in the Image of God.
The Christian Church, in general, must come to understand these things. The most important endeavor the Christian Church can undertake at this point in time is to understand that the defense of Western Civilization is of utmost importance to the existence of Christianity. Without the protection Western Civilization provides to Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, and Democracy, Christianity itself would go into a dark age. Christians would be forced to worship underground, away from the light of day. Fewer people would hear the gospel preached, and therefore, fewer people would be free to make a choice to follow the God of the Bible.
The Christian Church must understand that Western Civilization and the Bible go hand in hand. The Christian Church must become warriors for Western Civilization. I am not saying that this means the Church itself must call for violence. No, the Church, at this juncture has the luxury still of keeping its advocacy in the realm of peace. We can still fight our battles in the realm of ideology.
However, if the Christian Church, and the West, allow too many of our cherished Freedoms to slip away, it will become incumbent upono the Church, once again, to go into the business of War. And, that will be a shame upon us, not because it would be wrong to call for war in such a case, but, because we could have won our war without violence, if we had only acted sooner.
Let this be a warning to all Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, and Teachers of the Bible of the God of Abraham.
(The) state church, Folkekirken, which is Denmark’s official evangelical Lutheran denomination. No one has to join, and you can opt out of paying any tax for its upkeep, though if you’re a lazy or indifferent type and don’t phone the local municipality, you will be billed for church maintenance. What’s interesting is that while eighty four per cent of Danes pay the tax and are official members, only about five per cent of these citizens are actually church-goers.
" ... Imams are not welcome in Danish state churches," says a new network of Islam-critical priests and theological experts.
The purpose is to state that Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God, and that the church and the mosque are not religious equals says the new network of 60 priests and theological experts.
Well-known priests and opinion-makers such as Niels Højlund, Sørine Godtfredsen, Edith Thingstrup, Morten Kvist and Katrine Winkel Holm are among the prominent members.
According to the Newfounded Network admitting imams into Danish churches is problematic.
The Danish People’s Church cannot agree with the imams without betraying the Lord Christ — who according to Islam is nothing but an inferior “prophet”, subordinated to Mohammad.
When priests and imams are praying together, they are in essence ridiculing the Gospel, the network states. At the same time it distances itself from recent events such as religious councils with imams.
Bishops and imams are not religious colleagues separated only by different merchandise. It is of paramount importance that priests in the Danish Church make that fact very clear — as well as studying and criticizing Islam, says the network — which at the same time underscores that the intention is to criticize Islam, not the individual Muslim.
Dymphna, at Gates of Vienna, comments:
Is this what Christians would call a “Christian attitude”? In a smaller sense, no. But in the larger sense of putting a stop to the inroads some of the more notorious imams in Denmark have made into a hither-to civilized cultural life, and the economic damage they have caused Denmark by spreading taqiyya in the Middle East, causing boycotts of Danish goods and the destruction of Danish embassies, they are possibly serving a greater good.
The shameful spineless of American mainstream churches in the face of militant Islam, their divestment from tiny, besieged Israel, their unwitting and ignorant support of the spread of Islamicist propaganda in this country, makes Denmark’s line drawn in the sand a refreshing change.
I think this is a good starting point for me to discuss something I have been thinking about of late. The question Dymphna poses is a wise one. "Is this a Christian attitude," or, in other words, does it betray Christian values to reject ecumenicism, or, an approach of agreement, cooperation, and understanding, with an Abrahamic religion?
In short, I think we need not even address that question. Because, before we even get to it, our answer should be clear to us.
The first principle of the Judeo-Christian Christian tradition, and really, the first thing the Bible, itself, discusses, in Genesis, about the relationship of God and man, is that man was created in the Image of God. This does not mean that we look like God. What it means is that we were created with the attributes of God.
And, what are the attributes of God?
We need only look at that passage in the beginning of Genesis to understand.
"In the beginning,
1) God created the heavens and the Earth,"
2) He created the beasts of the field,
3) He separated the waters,
4) He created man of dust, and
5) breathed His own life into him, and then,
6) seeing that it was not good for man to be lonely, and moved by compassion, He created, for him, a female companion named Eve.
We can take from this that man God and, thereby man, are, among other things,
1) Creative and magnificent of vision
2) in love with reproduction and the process of life
3) analytical in our creativity, and completely willing to remake, or reshape, what we have already made, even if we have seen that "it is Good."
4) in love with matter itself
5) generous, willing to give of ourselves in our own creative process
6) loving, reasonable, and willing to change our plans, when moved by compassion.
There are many other things that can be inferred from the opening passage of Genesis, but this is enough for my argument.
The point is, both Judaism and Christianity teach that God is loving, reasonable, and creative. Both Judaism and Christianity teach that man, having been made in the Image of his Creator, also inherently possesses these attributes to some extent. Therefore, man is meant to be creative, he is meant to love matter, he is meant to be reasonable and analytical, he is meant to reshape his work, and even, the work of God's hands, using the gifts of reason and analysis, and more than anything, man is meant to be Free, as God, most indubitably, is Himself.
And, what's more, God wants man to have Freedom of choice. He wants man to come to Him of his own accord. When man sinned, God could have unmade the sin, and started over, but instead, God worked with the new reality man had created, and even promised to make something more glorious of it.
In other words, when God was confronted with man's sin, and He banished the sinners from the Garden of Eden, He did not make it His next step to take away man's Free Will, but instead, chose for man to retain Free Will, and He chose to remain a partner in man's creative endeavors.
Reading the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospels, and the Letters, it becomes apparent that God made this decision precisely because He wants man to be Free, otherwise, man would not be free to choose Him.
In other words - and I can't stress enough how important this is -
The first principle of the Bible is that man needs to be Free, and this comes before anything else.
This is not at all a principle of Islam. In Islam, a good Muslim is to learn the Koran by heart, and to follow its rules by rote. He is not to be analytical, because his analysis can never add anything to that which Allah has already provided. The Koran, itself, is the final word of Allah to man. It is not to be amended or added to. It is to be followed only.
Man's creativity is to be impeded. Music must not be made of anything more than chanting and drums. Art must not be representational. It is forbidden for a Muslim to depict the human form in a sculpture, for instance.
Man is to love the paradise Mohammed calls him towards. He is not to love the Earthly realm of matter. In fact, much of the material world is haram, to the extent that man is forbidden to even view the form of any female not his own wife.
In Islam, man is not forbidden to be generous to other men, so long as his fellow man is a Muslim. But, there is no reason to be generous to a non-Muslim. In fact, one is not to take a non-Muslim as a friend.
In Islam, compassion is not the central theme. Allah can not be said to be the equivalent of Love, as the Bible tells us Yahweh is. Allah is instead, probably, more easily called a god of justice, as defined by Allah. Or, is that justice defined by Mohammed. We can't be sure, because when it comes right down to it, the only person from whom we have learned of Allah, is the prophet himself. And, we shall never hear another new word about Allah from anyone else.
So, we see, the god of Islam is not anything like the God of the Bible. We delude ourselves if we think the two can be compared.
What's more, we put ourselves in danger, and, we put our very ability to practice our religion in danger, if we accept the idea that God and Allah are the same. Because Allah does not accept divergence of opinion. It's Allah's way, or the highway. No other opinions, or ideas, or beliefs, are allowed.
Free Speech, Freedom of Conscience, Democracy, these are all but the baubles and bangles of a decadent Western Civilization, as far as the most learned men of Islam are concerned. They all lead to disobedience, and sloth, and weakness, we are told. And most importantly, what we need to know is they all lead away from Allah.
Therefore, if we are to accept that Allah is the same as the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible, we are accepting that Allah is preeminent, and our God must be subservient. We are accepting, therefore, that we are no longer to be free, rational, and analytical beings.
Therefore, we are accepting that we no longer can make our own choices, for Democracy, for Freedom of Conscience, or for our God Himself.
If we accept such, we are condemning ourselves to the destruction of Western Civilization, and we are taking away the very duty of man himself, that is to express himself as a being made in the Image of God.
The Christian Church, in general, must come to understand these things. The most important endeavor the Christian Church can undertake at this point in time is to understand that the defense of Western Civilization is of utmost importance to the existence of Christianity. Without the protection Western Civilization provides to Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, and Democracy, Christianity itself would go into a dark age. Christians would be forced to worship underground, away from the light of day. Fewer people would hear the gospel preached, and therefore, fewer people would be free to make a choice to follow the God of the Bible.
The Christian Church must understand that Western Civilization and the Bible go hand in hand. The Christian Church must become warriors for Western Civilization. I am not saying that this means the Church itself must call for violence. No, the Church, at this juncture has the luxury still of keeping its advocacy in the realm of peace. We can still fight our battles in the realm of ideology.
However, if the Christian Church, and the West, allow too many of our cherished Freedoms to slip away, it will become incumbent upono the Church, once again, to go into the business of War. And, that will be a shame upon us, not because it would be wrong to call for war in such a case, but, because we could have won our war without violence, if we had only acted sooner.
Let this be a warning to all Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, and Teachers of the Bible of the God of Abraham.
No comments:
Post a Comment