Imagine for a moment that you were born and raised in a Muslim country (apologies if you're reading this and this is not a thought experiment for you. The majority of my regular readers were born and raised in Western Christian nations, and so this experiment is directed toward them.) So, you're a Muslim. All of the passion that you have now for Christ, you have for Allah. The joy you feel in singing hymns, you still feel, but they are Muslim hymns. You read the Koran and hear the very word of God. You are a Muslim, as is your family and loved ones. Maybe you have children, or nieces and nephews, or younger siblings. You love them, and, Allah be praised, they, too, are Muslim.
Statistically, it is unlikely that you would ever convert to Christianity (or Buddhism, or any other faith.) Most people believe what they were born into, at least culturally if not specifically what their own nuclear family believes (i.e., religious-minded Americans are likely to be some stripe of Christian.) So, you are a devout and happy Muslim, grateful to Allah that you were born into the true faith, saddened by the fact that so many around the world are not.
When you die, if evangelical Christians are right, you're going to hell. So is that son, or niece, or little sister.
How could a just and/or loving God send people to hell because of a geographical accident of birth? You may say that God isn't sending them to hell for being Muslims, but for being sinners. In the evangelical Christian take on things, everyone is going to hell because they're sinners, but God has foreordained to save those who believe in Jesus, which, for most people in the modern world, correlates very closely to accident of birth.
But, you may ask, what about missionaries? What about 'em? Can you really expect a devout Muslim in a Muslim country to take seriously a small Christian mission? How seriously do y'all take Hare Krishna?
The point is that as a native Muslim, you truly believe you know God, that you have heard His truth as revealed in His word. He hears your prayers, and sometimes answers them positively and sometimes answers them with the mystery of His silence. You are content in your faith and know in the depths of your heart that Allah is real.
If the God of Christians is real, and really created these souls (your soul, in the thought experiment) in a time and place where He knew they would not come to know Him through Jesus, how loving and just is He? Is it loving to stack the deck against some by placing them in Iraq, while bestowing the amazing grace on others of being born Southern Baptist in the Midwest of the US of A? Is it just to cosign these souls to eternal separation from God, when, to the best of their knowledge, they had a living and deep faith in Him all of their lives (even though they called Him Allah and did not accept Jesus as the savior)?
Christianity says, yes, it is loving and just of Yahweh to do just that. But try to remember, we're talking about your little brother, or your niece, or your baby girl, born Muslim, dying Muslim. Spending eternity in hell, not for telling God to sod off, but for being wrong.
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It doesn't really sound like something that a just and loving God would do. There is a person at work that I have had similar type discussions with. I didn't have an answer for her them either. We also talked about it from the perspective of the Muslim and she had the same problem with their view. From the perspective of the Muslim all christians would be going to hell because they don't follow Allah and Mohamad. If someone has answer that I can share, one that answers the question of a loving God can send people to hell because they didn't have the chance to be born where they can hear *the right message* please share. Don't get me wrong I do believe the Bible and what it says I just don't always understand (I am sure many can sympathize)
Yeah, I'm in the same boat, anonymous, when it comes to believing and understanding.
Well, of course she was trying to convert him. From her perspective his very soul was going to rot in hell forever. The most loving thing she could do for him (again, from her perspective) was lead him to Christ. Which, on first glance, makes sense. But when you start thinkinging about it, like the original post, it doesn't make sense (or, if it does, then it makes our God somewhat less than we proclaim him to be.)
Winter (or should I use the quotation marks, "Winter"?), I'm curious why folks who don't believe anything are more of a concern than those who believe something. If God acknowledges the honest (if mistaken) faith of {fill in everyone who got it wrong} then why would he not honor the honest (if mistaken) faithlessness of those who can't bring themselves to believe anything at all?
In either case, we have slipped away from what traditional evangelical Christianity (and, dare I say, historic orthodoxy) teach the Bible says about salvation. Are our only options blind faith, hypocrisy, or a pick-and-choose liberalism?
Hey just to let you know the anonymous was from me for some reason it didn't show my identity maybe the sight is waiting for me to sing ... maybe not. :-)
I'm not sure that I like any of those options but what are we left with if not those?
It's a tough question, one that I've pondered many a time, but never really come up with a good answer. Wish I could bestow some wisdom or light on the subject...
Welcome back to the blogging world, by the way. :)
I haven't converted over to beta blogger yet-- is it any better?
It's fitting that I finally choose today to try and get back into the blogsphere and coming across this post. This is an issue that has been strongly on my mind recently, and something I've been thinking about not so strongly for the past several years.
There was a time in my life where I thought I had an answer for this based in faith and righteousness. Over the years… I’m not so sure. I mean, we are told that the ways of God are not the way of Men and that we should simply accept. Do not question, but obey. Let not your heart be troubled by such confusion, simply trust.
Now… If this was any other organization that wasn’t of a religious nature, what would we be saying? Right on? …Or, what the hell is wrong with this picture?? Right now, I’m not sure I’m sure what to think or say… Or believe…
But I have some decisions that need to be made, so I guess I need to get this figured out sooner than later…
Susan, thanks for the welcome (and I just converted to beta today, so I can't tell any improvement, except now my blogger & google logins are the same!)
Winter, not knowing if you were addressing the previous poster (Susan) or the group in general... but to answer your question: yes, I've had an honest and passionate atheist as well as a Western student of Eastern religions both engage me in extended discussions of their faiths (and why mine was... lacking.) Through books, I've read some pleas/arguments for other positions. Arguments (for any position) are just that, and deconstructing is much easier than discovering truth.
Morgan, in a very real sense, these questions are what's guided my life. Looking at the sophmoric poetry and essays I wrote in high school, my pilgrimage to a religious school, and my follow-up in seminary (despite... a lot of things), I've been seeking to understand the numinous, the sense of God, and how it relates to religion(s), biology, psychology, philosophy.
I grew up in a quasi-liberal denomination, so reason and doubt and other paths were all open. I've mixed Christianity with Taoism, Zen, Ritual Magic, and naturalistic evolution in my crazy quest to understand. I've even tried being a fundamentalist for a spell!
Philosophers get into all kinds of debates over knowledge and belief, much of it seems like semantic crap to me (but at other times, I think the semantic is where most of the action is taking place anyway...) I wish I could say "This is the truth..." but in all honesty, at this point I can only say "This I believe today..." and beg that we don't look too closely at why.
Susan, the main difference that I see is that it updates a whole lot faster and you don't have republish your entire blog when you write a new post, otherwise pretty much the same.
I think the "This I believe today..." approach may be as good as any. I'm personally working on the "Many roads lead to God..." line of reasoning myself.
I too have conversed with those of a different faith, and I usually find it to be a fascinating conversation. But it has never assisted me in reasoning out why I believe as I do. I guess the simple answer of, I take it on faith, will due. Allow me to believe as I will, and I will reciprocate.
OH... One thing I've noticed regarding Beta - I get popup's now on your blog warning about secure vs non-secure. Of course, I'm using Beta IE 7. :)
The problem with the Many Roads approach is that, like everything else we've been discussing, it breaks on the shoals of reason. Many of the roads claim a certain level of exclusivism. Obviously, they can't all be right. If many roads lead to God, then these exclusive claiming roads are both wrong, yet still lead to God. Not everyone can be equally right.
Interestingly, though, we could all be equally wrong.
If there is a real God, then either some of us are right (and some are wrong) or we are all wrong. If there is no real God, then what we believe doesn't matter from a truth perspective, only from a pragmatic perspective.
The Many Roads theory does make sense if there is no being called God. If, instead, the sense of the numinous is inherent to the human animal (and maybe other species, but let's not go down that path right now!), then all religions started with humans trying to make sense of this non-rational (but not necessarily irrational) inner experience. They began to tie their musings of this with their pre-scientific graspings at understading the universe. Stories began to be told, and doctrines and rituals followed. Before long, there were religions. Before too much longer, there were power mongers who saw in religion a way to gain and hold power. And thus, our messy world...
The problem is, I'm not ready to toss out an actually real God. Thus, if there is a real God, some things must be true about said deity, and some false. But how in the name of Reason can we KNOW the difference?
Well… One of the criteria of a civilization is that it has some form of religious belief. It doesn’t matter who or what exactly that is being worshiped… There just has to be a belief… And I’m afraid that pretty much pre-dated the present Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Mormon, and Buddhism beliefs, just to name a few. So what does that tell us?
Anything? Nothing? It all boils back down to faith. Was there a Jesus Christ, and if so, was he really the son of God? Did Joseph Smith receive direct revelation from the angel Moroni? Did the angel Gabriel really talk to Mohammed?
OR… Is God something else? Not a God of a religious body, but a God who wants everyone to be able to find a path back and therefore has spread many truths to mankind over the years, covering the corners of the world… This could be the _real_ God and all of us (with maybe the exception being a total non-believer in anything) might know what we’re talking about. Or maybe my father was right… He was an atheist…
You know… I’m not ready to toss out a real God either. Even though I at time struggle to cling to my belief, I have not given up on trying to live my life as I believe God desires me to live it. Where I would like to know, in an empirical sense, that my belief is true, I do not have the desire to tempt God by asking Him to prove it to me that He exists. Therefore, I will know as the Sprit leads me to know… This may be the only way to know…at least in this lifetime…in this existence.
Wisdom there, Morgan, but no one can tell for sure whether the Spirit leads, or brain chemistry. The question of religion is separate from the question of God, I think we're both agreeing on that. It could be (like some argue) that all religions are human constructions: our words to try to describe our experience of the Other. If so, there's a lot of layers of accretion on top of the original experience when you look at laws, and prophecies, and other things, not as direct words from God, but as human attempts to explain what they experienced in their encounter with God. I dunno, seems both reasonable and not likely, all at once, to me. Maybe I'd be happier if I just embraced a fundamentalist approach to God and the Bible and stopped thinking so damn much!
Yeah, Slacker, I think we agree 100% that religion does not equal God. And I think it also true that would we not think about things as we do and simply follow the flock, we might have fewer headaches. And speaking for myself, maybe I would have a more fulfilling spiritual life. But, like many things, the thoughts come unbidden to the mind.
Now if you will excuse me, I need to catch the Black Ship and try, once again, to sail to Tanelorn…
Pax vobiscum, Brother.
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