What Is Saving Faith?

    One of the saddest facts about contemporary Christianity is the large number of people who were raised in conservative, evangelical homes and have since left the faith. They can often point to an event in their childhood in which they "accepted Jesus as their Savior," and for a while, at least, appeared to be honest, sincere believers. Today they are not in the church. What happened?
    Is it possible for a genuine believer to lose his salvation? Or were they not really saved to begin with? Or were they not really saved in the first place? Whatever the individual case may happen to be, we suspect that there are, in fact, many professing Christians, many of them still active members of evangelical churches, who are not genuine believers. Jesus Himself said, "Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (Matt. 7:22,23; NKJV).
    There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs. First of all, many churches do not do a very good job of explaining the gospel clearly. Anxious to attract new members in an increasingly secularized and materialistic society, many pastors are reluctant to talk about sin, and thus leave the central issue in salvation unclear. In many cases young children, ages four and five, are pressed to "invite Jesus into their hearts" when they are probably too young to understand what the issues are. Our general observation is that people who make professions of faith at age four are generally not Christians at age twenty four. To further confuse matters, if a young person was raised in a strong Christian home, he may not have had a very strong consciousness of sin and guilt – as far as he can remember he always tried to do what was right. Sometimes young people raised in Christian homes get the impression that "being saved" or "having a personal relationship with Jesus" basically means being active in church and trying to do the right thing.
    Very often young people who grow up in this environment have what amount to a second-hand faith. They know how they are supposed to think and act, and may genuinely want to please their elders. But it isn't until they have left home and are exposed to the broader world, and are forced to start thinking for themselves that their true spiritual state becomes apparent. And in all too many cases they wind up falling by the wayside.
    All of which raises the question, what is true, saving faith? What makes a person a genuine Christian?
    First of all, true saving faith is not a mere mental assent to a set of doctrinal propositions. "Even the demons believe – and tremble!" (James 2:19). In that sense Satan is a far better theologian than any mortal human being. He knows the truth, and yet it does him no good.
    Nor is faith a blind leap into the dark – belief in something for which there is no evidence, as our atheist friends like to say. The Bible does, in fact, present rational arguments for belief in God.
    Nor is faith a matter of self-effort or self-improvement. On the contrary, faith is the very opposite of works. "But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness" (Rom. 4:5).
    What, then, is faith? The verse just quoted gives us the answer: "believes on Him who justifies the ungodly." Faith looks away from oneself to another – to Someone who is able to save. It is a trust and confidence in God's willingness and ability to do something to help us. Specifically, in this case, it is faith in Christ, a firm trust and reliance on Him and the merits of His shed blood to secure for us the forgiveness of our sins and make us right with God.
    Paul goes on to explain, citing the example of Abraham. Abraham had been given a promise by God that he would become "a father of many nations." Humanly speaking, it did not seem possible – his wife was well past her child bearing years. But Abraham reasoned that God is omnipotent – He "gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did" (v. 17). He then deduce from this that "what He had promised He was able to perform" (v. 21).

Abraham receives God's promise of a son.

    Thus true, saving faith is based on prior knowledge – what Abraham understood God to be and what God had promised; and it resulted in concrete action – Abraham demonstrated his faith by acting on God's promise. But it was fundamentally confidence in what God would do, not an exercise of Abrahams own ability or effort.
    The Westminster Shorter Catechism sums it up well when it says: "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel" (Q. 86).

Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s House of Horrors

    Yesterday a court convicted Dr. Kermit Gosnell on three charges of murder stemming from botched abortions at this clinic in Philadelphia. The babies were born alive and then killed by snipping their spinal cords with scissors. Dr. Gosnell maintained that there were no live births at his clinic, but the jury found otherwise.
    By all accounts the clinic was a chamber of horrors with unsanitary conditions and an underqualified staff. The jury's verdict was welcomed by both sides in the contentious abortion debate.
    The case, we think, raises a pertinent question in that debate. A woman goes to Dr. Gosnell's clinic to obtain an abortion. If the procedure is successful, Dr. Gosnell has done nothing wrong. (Actually, in this particular case there were numerous other charges involving racketeering, drug trafficking, and other violations of Pennsylvania's abortion law, but for purposes of this discussion we will focus only on the abortion procedure itself.) But what if the abortion was not successful? What if the baby was born alive? The woman came to the clinic to have her pregnancy terminated. She did not expect to leave with newborn infant. What should the doctor do then?
    It appears that in some cases he made sure that the baby did not survive. He ordered his staff to cut the baby's spine with a pair of scissors, and the baby died. Hence the murder convictions.
    This raises a profoundly disturbing question about abortion itself. If the fetus is destroyed before birth, the procedure is perfectly legal. But if it is killed minutes after birth, then we are dealing with a case of murder. What makes the difference?
    If the logic advanced by the "pro-choice" movement is correct, the determining factor in an abortion is the woman's "reproductive freedom" – she should have the freedom to decide if and when she will get pregnant, and that freedom presumably includes the right to terminate a pregnancy if she so desires. She should not be made to bear the burden of motherhood if it would disrupt her life or interfere with her career. The women who came to Dr. Gosnell's clinic presumably came for precisely those reasons. Would that not mean that Dr. Gosnell had a responsibility to make sure that the babies did not survive?
    On the other hand, if taking the life of a newborn is murder, why is it any less so "in utero"? Is the dignity and worth of a human life dependent merely on its physical position relative to the womb?
    Dr. Gosnell reportedly saw himself as an advocate for women who were poor and desperate. His attorney, however, noted the difficulty of the case: "There's a lot of emotion. You have the baby factor, which is a big problem. The media have been overwhelmingly against him." (Associated Press). The "baby factor" was a "big problem" indeed.
    What makes a human life sacred at all? The traditional Judaeo-Christian position is that murder is forbidden because human beings bear a special resemblance to God – we were created in His "image." But what if there is no God? What if we are merely the result of a blind, impersonal, natural process? Would human life still be "sacred"? What would make it so?
    In all the sordid and squalid details of the Gosnell case one fact stands out: abortion involves the taking of a human life. If we permit abortion, we cheapen human life and degrade our own dignity and worth. Can a civilized society tolerate such a practice?
    

What Must I Do to be Saved?

    To anyone who has given serious thought to the question, "What will happen to me when I die?," and has thought about the moral dimension to the problem, the obvious follow-up question is, "What must I do to be saved"? To the one who come to understand what the stakes are, there can be no more important question.
    As we have seen, Christ offered Himself up as an atonement for sin, but that does not mean that everyone is automatically saved. In order to receive the forgiveness of sins we must be personally joined to Christ in a kind of legal and mystical union, and that requires action on our part.
    But exactly what action? At first the answers found in the Bible seem confusing and even contradictory. When the Jews at Pentecost asked the apostle Peter, he said "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. . ." (Acts 2:38; NKJV). But when the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas the same question, they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31).
    There is no real contradiction here. The fact of the matter is that repentance, faith and baptism are three different aspects of the same thing. The essential thing is faith – we are "justified by faith." But in order for faith to be genuine it must be accompanied by repentance, and then it must be expressed in a formal commitment to Christ in baptism.
    It is the repentance part with which most modern Americans have difficulty. Americans are possessed with a consumer mentality (see our book America's Deadliest Enemy), and the church has sometimes made the mistake of trying to market Christianity as a consumer product. Evangelists are eager to tout all the advantages of Christianity without mentioning any of the demands of discipleship. It all sounds so easy! "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life"!
    The Bible makes it clear, however, that if we would receive the forgiveness of our sins we must first repent of them. "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins bay be blotted out . . . " (Acts 3:19). The whole problem is our sin and our guilt, and we are hardly sincere in asking for forgiveness is we don't repudiate the lifestyle that created the problem in the first place.
    The point was beautifully illustrated in a story told by Jesus. In Luke 18:9 we are told that He confronted "some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." Jesus proceeded to tell them one of His famous parables, or stories. Two men went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. One was a Pharisee, a member of a very strict sect of observant Jews who were scrupulous about keeping the Jewish law. The other man was a "publican" or tax collector. The publicans, however, were not tax collectors in the modern sense of the word. They were generally private contractors who were hired to collect taxes for the Roman government. They were notoriously dishonest and corrupt, little better than extortioners in some cases. To make matters worse, because they worked with the Roman authorities who, of course, were Gentiles and did not keep the Jewish law, the publicans were regarded by their fellow Jews as ceremonially unclean. They were, in effect, unholy renegades. In other words, in this story the tax collector represented the opposite end of the social spectrum from the Pharisee. The Pharisee represented the elite of Jewish society; the tax collector the filthy scum.

    Jesus goes on to describe the prayers of these two men. The Pharisee's prayer went like this: God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector" (v. 11). He then proceeds to list his own accomplishments: "I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess" (v. 12).
    Far different was the tax collector's prayer. "Standing afar off," he "would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast" (v. 13). His request was simple, frank, and to the point: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" (The text literally reads, "the sinner," as if in his own eyes he was the only sinner in the world, so mortified was he with his own guilt – cf. NASV; Amp.) He did not pretend to be a righteous man. He knew all too well that he was not. He frankly admitted the case and begged for mercy. He realized that that was all that he could do under the circumstances.
    Jesus then drew the moral of the story: "I tell you, this man [i.e., the tax collector – RWW] went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (v. 14).
    For many it is this element of repentance that prevents them from coming to Christ in a genuine way. It is our pride that stands between us and Christ. We don't like to admit that we are lost sinners, and we don't like to be in the position of humble suppliants. We would rather pretend that we are basically alright and would like to think that we are doing God a favor by lending our good name to the membership rolls of His churches. But there is no true Christianity where there has not first been sorrow and contrition for sin. Salvation begins with heartfelt repentance.

Right with God

Francisco de Zurbaran: St. Francis Kneeling

    We have seen that the problem of evil is pervasive, and that all of the world's great monotheistic religions agree that God is just. But for each one of us as individuals these basic facts create an acute problem. If God is just and we are sinners, how can we escape divine judgment? Our doom is sure.
    How can we possibly be made righteous in the sight of a holy God? There is hardly a question more important, for on its answer hangs all eternity.
    The Bible does offer an answer, however. It says that were are "justified freely by His grace" (Rom. 3:24; NKJV). The Greek word translated "justified" basically means "to declare righteous" or "pronounce righteous." It is the jury acquitting the defendant. The question then is, how can God declare us righteous when He knows perfectly well that we are not; that we are, in fact, sinners? The answer is, by means of imputation.
    To "impute" something means to credit it or charge it to someone's account. The apostle Paul explains it like this: "For He [i.e., God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (I Cor. 5:21). Notice that there is a double imputation here. First of all, Christ was "made . . . to be sin for us." What does this mean? It obviously does not mean that Christ became an actual sinner. He was perfectly blameless. What it means is that our sin was charged to His account. He took the blame for us. "But He was wounded for our transgressions, / He was bruised for our iniquities; / The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5).
    But then, secondly, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to those who believe on Him. As our text puts it, "that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." The phrase "in Him" is critical. We receive the benefits of salvation by virtue of being "in Him." When we put our trust in Christ we are united to Him both legally and mystically – legally we are counted as one with Him, so that the rights that He secured are transferred to us. If He died, we are considered to have died with Him; and if He rose from the dead, we are considered to have risen with Him. If He is righteous, we are also considered righteous (Rom. 6:1-11). In this way His righteousness is said to have been "imputed" to us. Thus our standing with God is not based on our own actual righteousness, the works that we have done, but on the righteous, but on the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.
    The nature of justification became a huge issue during the Protestant Reformation. The position of the Catholic Church is that we are justified by an infused righteousness – that God makes us righteous by producing actual righteousness in us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way: "The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us 'the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism" (§1987). We receive God's grace through the sacrament of baptism, and then we are required to cooperate with grace to produce actual good works. This, in turn, if accomplished successfully, results in our of achieving merit with God "Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can merit for ourselves and for others the grace needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life" (§2010). But even those "who die in God's grace and friendship" may have to undergo further purification in purgatory before they finally enter heaven (§1030). In other words, in the Roman Catholic view, we are judged on the basis of what we have actually done, as imperfect as that is.    But the Protestant (and we believe biblical) view is this: "Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone" (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 33). In other words, we are justified by an imputed righteousness, Christ's own righteousness credited to our account.
The difference is crucial. It is the difference between whether we are finally judged on the basis of what we ourselves have done, or what Christ has done for us. If we have to stand before Almighty God on the basis of our own works, we are doomed. But if, on the other hand, we are credited with Jesus' own spotless perfection, our salvation is secure. It is literally the difference between death and life.

For "Why the Reformation Was Necessary," click here, here, and here

What God Thinks About Modern Western Society

    We have been considering some of the differences between Christianity and Islam, and have noted that the concept of jihad is rooted both in the Quran and Islamic history. But does that make Western society superior to the Islamic world? What does God think about us?
    Atheists sometimes advance what is known as the moral argument against the Bible: the Bible cannot possibly be taken seriously as a moral guide because it shocks and offends our sensibilities. The critics who advance this argument will point to certain episodes, mostly contained in the Old Testament, such as Abraham being told to sacrifice his son Isaac, the Israelites being told to wipe out the Canaanites, the toleration of slavery, and the treatment of women generally. The argument is then made that the Bible reflects the barbaric standards of a primitive society, and therefore cannot be taken seriously today.
    The criticism, however, masks a fatal weakness on the part of the critic. In order to sit in judgment on the Bible, one must have a standard external to the Bible by which to judge it. But what is the standard, and where does it come from? When pressed the critic is generally forced to admit that there is no standard – most modern secular critics of the Bible do not admit the existence of moral absolutes. In their view there is no universally binding moral code. Morality is culturally relative.
    But if morality is culturally relative, how can someone in one culture sit in judgment on another culture? He is inevitably applying the culturally relative standards of his own, modern, Western society on others. One might ask, however, how a modern society that could drop an atomic bomb on a civilian population during World War II could sit in judgment of an ancient moral code that contains such quaint aphorisms as "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," or how a society that can support a multi-billion dollar sex industry can criticize the way women were treated in the Bible, but such is the arrogance of modern Western (politically correct) society.

Modern Progress

    But beyond that we ask the fundamental question: should we judge God by our standards, or should we judge ourselves by His? Exactly who or what determines right and wrong in the first place? Once it is conceded that God exists, the answer is obvious. If God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Judge, His will is normative. His opinion is the only one that counts. It is for us to comply with His standards.
    In point of fact God has told us what He thinks of us. In Romans 1:18-32 we have a scathing critique of a society in deep moral decline – and it is an apt description of us.
    The apostle Paul is writing to the early Christian church in the city of Rome. He had never been there before, and he was describing to the Roman Christians his mission and his message. In setting the stage for his exposition of the Christian gospel he records his impressions of Graeco-Roman society. It is a remarkable piece of psychological insight.
    Interestingly, in his analysis of human society he traces the moral decline to a form of secularism. "The wrath of God," he says, "is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men . . ." (Rom. 1:18; NKJV). "Ungodliness" is the failure, or perhaps we should say, the refusal to acknowledge God. "Unrighteousness" is the failure to live by His laws. What makes this a crime in God's sight? The fact that God is our Creator and we owe everything to Him. We are surrounded by evidence in nature of God's wisdom and power, and our conscience bears witness to His existence as well. Hence our refusal to acknowledge His is nothing less that a species of moral rebellion against our Creator. It is the clenched fist of human defiance, and if affects our whole way of looking at reality. They "became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools . . ." (vv. 21,22).
    And how does God respond to this? "Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves" (v. 24). As hard as it may seem to believe, God sometimes abandons us to our own lusts. People sometimes say that they see no evidence of God at work in the world today, and up to a point they are absolutely right. God is largely absent from our world, and for good reason. When we ignore Him, when we systematically exclude Him from our thinking and our lives, we fall under His judgment. He leaves us to our own devices.
    The "sexual revolution" is a symptom of this abandonment by God, and the prevalence of homosexuality is specifically mentioned as a particularly egregious example of this. "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful" (vv. 26,27). It is a picture of a society sunk in moral degeneracy.
    The terminal stage of social and moral decline is marked by a wide range of compulsive, anti-social and self-destructive behavior. And not only is the behavior indulged in, it is openly condoned. " . . . who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them" (v. 32). It has become a truly godless society.
    It is not hard to see the parallels with modern western society. We have witnessed the radical secularization of our culture, and with it the breakdown of public morality. We have become sexually permissive, and marriage has largely become a meaningless institution. A whole generation of children is being reared in dysfunctional one-parent households. Yet even as we careen toward the precipice of social disintegration, we lack the presence of mind to turn around. We have become a morally bankrupt society bent on self-destruction.
    "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting . . . " (v. 28).

For a fascinating article by Rod Dreher of The American Conservative on gay marriage and the sexual revolution, see Sex After Christianity

Christianity and Islam

   

The Sacrifice of Isaac. (According to Islamic tradition, it was Ishmael who was nearly sacrificed)

   In our last blog post we discussed the difference in attitude between Christianity and Islam toward violence. But there is a more profound difference the two religions, one that strikes right at the very essence of religion itself, and that is in the nature of our relationship with God.
    There are similarities between the two religions, of course. Both are monotheistic: they both believe that there is only one God Who is the Maker of heaven and earth. But what makes Christianity unique and distinctive is its belief in a Savior – a divine-human being who came into the world and died on a cross to save us from our sins. This notion Islam utterly rejects.
    "O People of the Book! / Commit no excesses / In your religion: nor say / Of Allah aught but the truth. / The Messiah Jesus son of Mary, / And a Spirit proceeding / From Him: so believe / In Allah and His Messengers. / Say not 'Trinity': desist" (Quran 4:171). To a devout Muslim to say that God is three-in-one is thinly disguised polytheism, and is blasphemy.
    Does it make a difference? Yes! For a Christian the idea of a Savior is crucial.
    Both Christianity and Islam believe that God is the sovereign Ruler of the universe and is just. Both religions teach that there will be a Last Judgment in which God will reward good and punish evil. But what Islam fails to reckon with is the extent and depth of human depravity. It is, of course, obvious that the world is full of evil – everything from marital spats to world wars. We are confronted with dishonesty and discord on a daily basis. But what is the cause of all this dysfunction? The Bible offers a striking diagnosis: the root problem is human nature. "The heart is deceitful above all things, / And desperately wicked; / Who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9; NKJV). And then the prophet adds this terrifying prospect: "I, the Lord, search the heart, / I test the mind, / Even to give every man according to his ways, / According to the fruit of his doings" (v. 10). What makes the judgment of God different from that of a human court is that God is able to examine our inward motives. And no matter what pretense we can maintain before our fellow human beings, God knows the real truth about who we are, and how we think and feel.
    That being the case, how will any of us escape divine scrutiny? How will any withstand God's judgment? For the plain fact of the matter is that we are all guilty in His sight. "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, / To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. / They have all turned aside, / They have together become corrupt; / There is none who does good, / No, not one" (Ps. 14:2,3).
    It is at this point that the Bible proposes a unique solution to the problem. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Jesus claimed to be more than just a prophet; He is the Son of God and Savior of mankind. Coexisting eternally with the Father, He came into the world by being born of a virgin, died upon the cross as an atonement for our sin, and then rose from the dead and ascended back into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of God the Father making intercession for us. Because Christ alone is qualified to be the Savior, there is no salvation apart from Him.
    Islam, then, leaves us in a hopeless position. It acknowledges the fact that God is just and will judge the world, but leaves us with no means of atoning for our sins and reconciling us to God. It's only answer to our innate lack of righteousness is "try harder." But if we are at all honest with ourselves, and measure ourselves by God's standards, we are left with the certain prospect of damnation. This is why Christianity, and only Christianity, can meet the need of mankind. Islam is a non-solution to the problem.

Radical Islam v. the West

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar Tsarneav

    The major news event of this past week, at least here in the U.S., was the terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday. One suspect was subsequently killed in a shootout; the other is now in custody. They were brothers: Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – Muslims of Chechen extraction.
    It is too soon to know for sure exactly what their motives were. Friends and acquaintances find it hard to believe that they would have been capable of such a crime. But there is some evidence to suggest that the older of the two brothers, Tamerlan, had become more serious about his Islamic faith in recent years, and that he was troubled by what his fellow Chechens had suffered at the hands of the Russians, as well as the ongoing civil war in Syria. He also reportedly had difficulty relating to American culture.
    The bombing was just one more in a string of events involving the Islamic world that has left Americans baffled. Why the hostility? What have we done to them? How can one justify terrorism in the name of religion?
    Part of the problem is that we tend to assume that Islam is much like the religions with which we are familiar: Christianity and Judaism. But it is not, and understanding the differences is crucial to making sense out of the world situation today. Consider two key events: one in Christianity and the other in Islam.
    According to the Gospel of John, shortly before His crucifixion, when Jesus appeared before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, Pilate asked Him straight out: "Are You the King of the Jews?" (John 18:33; NKJV). Jesus answered that "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here" (v. 36).
    The Jews had been looking for a political Messiah to deliver them from Roman rule. But in its present form at least, Jesus' kingdom is not an earthly kingdom – it is not a geo-political entity that can be defended through force of arms. Rather, it is a spiritual kingdom – it exists in the hearts of believers who embrace the gospel.
    Now fast forward nearly 600 years. The scene is a valley near the city of Badr, about eighty miles southwest of Medina in the Arabian Peninsula. On the one side is a relatively small band of Muslims led by Mohammed. On the other side was a larger force from Mecca determined to stamp out the Mohammedan nuisance (the Muslims had been raiding caravans). Mohammed pleas for divine guidance. He believes he received it; the Muslims attack, and the Meccans are routed. It was the beginning of a long march of conquest through the Near East and North Africa.
    In a Surah written shortly before the Battle of Badr, Mohammed lays out the rules for his community. He says, among other things, "Fight in the cause of Allah / Those who fight you, / But do not transgress limits; / For Allah loveth not transgressors. / And slay them / Wherever ye catch them, / And turn them out / From where they have / Turned you out; / For tumult and oppression / Are worse than slaughter; / But fight them not / At the Sacred Mosque, / Unless they (first) / Fight you there; / But if they fight you, / Slay them. / Such is the reward / Of those who suppress faith . . ." (2: 190, 191).
    It is important to recognize two things here. One is that the use of force in the defense of the faith is explicitly sanctioned in the Koran. The second is that there are rules that govern the use of force: indiscriminate killing is not permitted.

Sir John Glubb

    Sir John Glubb, a former British army officer who was once Commander of the Arab Legion, summarized the difference between the two cultures this way: "Their respective attitudes to the legitimacy of physical force has, ever since then, been one of the most marked contrasts between Muslims and Christians . . . The fact that Muslims believe that war can sometimes be a religious duty has resulted in the fact that Muslim soldiers are often extremely religious and enjoy a far higher status than they do in Christian countries." But then he went on to add, " . . . once violence is admitted, it is all too easily abused" (A Short History of the Arab Peoples, chapter II).

    The majority of Muslims today do not support the terrorist campaigns of the radical jihadis, but the jihadis themselves believe that they have just cause. They can point to the actions of Israel and to tyrannical governments in their own countries, and to the tacit support that the U.S. government gives to both as ample reason to attack us. We need to understand and address their concerns. Simply calling them "terrorists" resolves nothing. At the same time it will do little good to pretend that Islam is no different from Christianity. Muslims cannot be expected to think and act like Christians. And "by their fruits you shall know them."