Chronicles of Diversity

11 October 2006; Volume 8, Issue 29

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/beyondgood10-11-6.pdf

In recent years, months, weeks, and days, two related terms are increasingly in the thoughts and conversations of much of western civilization. Those terms are worldview and Islam. I started out to say all thoughts, then most, but then realized that most conversations are exclusively about us, and the present and future stuff to which we link our security.

Most westerners no matter where they may be stationed in the world, are too insecure in their materialistic worldview, to truly look at this present reality. Why can’t the world just live in peace and harmony?  All we really want; that goodness will fill the world. We have been brainwashed that good thoughts, actions, and words will create a good world.

Truthfully, these lofty goals do not come from evolutionary dogma. Perhaps in Dispensationalism, where that fly away mentality saves us from evil might we find some solace, but linking goodness with global materialism seems also distinctively wanting.

The truth about Islam is that jihad is the prescribed conflict by which the whole world will be converted to the religion of Allah. That is, if Allah so wills it to be. If that does not come about, then that is not Allah’s will, but Allah may still bless his warring soldiers chosen to attempt to carry out his perceived jihadist will. Allah only promises paradise to those who die as martyrs in the cause, in which the best things of this world are given to self justified dead heros.

I have been studying the concept of worldviews for a number of years, but it is only recently that I have realized that no matter how you dissect these philosophies, religions, and their implementations in the lives of the individual, the larger community, and culture, Islam has been completely ignored as a distinct worldview in our western intellectual nirvana.

This is made all the more interesting by the fact that over it’s 1400 year history, the soldiers of Mohammed have been a bigger threat to the demise of western culture than all the serious and petty tyrants the post Islamic world has ever known. Hitler, Stalin and others were after all products of western civilization and no matter their evil works, they were still trying to reform or remake western culture within their sick image. Islam is a very different threat.

Contrasted with all the other major worldviews, Islam is the only one without any concept of grace. Allah’s unknowable will is all that is, and he is absolute in that nescience. All other worldviews, except for Christianity, grace is achieved through works, but it is achievable within the worldview paradigm in some absolute goal. Even in pure naturalism, where everything can be explained as having a natural, rational, cause and effect, man’s reason and time are those absolutes.

What this means is the current War on Terror, has little to do with lines on a map and political choice, it has everything to do with the actions within a particular sect of the Moslem faith, all others being infidels in the final outcome. The civil war, as it is now politically correct to call the war in Iraq, is really not civil at all, but just an extension of that final jihad.

I recently read some articles about how both Calvin and Luther viewed the Turks, or the Islamic invaders of their day. Both saw a similarity between the papists (Roman Catholic church) and the Turks. In their view both, must be converted to Protestant Christianity as the Lord Jesus Christ builds His church before His return. Interestingly Calvin found Islam, not Rome as the prime actor in much of the prophetic writings of Daniel and Thessalonians. Perhaps Dispensational writers could find new elysian fields of fame and fortune, redrawing the papacy and the revived Roman Empire of the Great Tribulation in the guise of Iran, or Saudi Wahhabism.

Western culture in a Biblical worldview must be based upon the blessing given to Japheth and his brother Shem by Noah in Genesis 9:24-27. In this regard the Islamic troubles with western culture including Israel, stems from the curse given to Ham and the blessing of God to Abraham’s son Isaac, but withheld from Ishmael.

Call it common grace, but western culture, throughout its history, and especially in our day, really can not comprehend the concept of evil. The common good is really the essence of western culture. Just as this good cannot be understood within the  intellectual worldview of Islam, neither can true evil be grasped within the intellectual framework of the west, except as a short term aberration.

Democrats, Republicans, Christians, atheists, Jews and even western Moslems are infected with this disease of maybe not love, but at least peaceful coexistence.  Bigots of all shades and descriptions come and go, but even in their self centered view of right, right exists as a good thing for them and their followers, this is if they have any converts.

Modern Christianity is really a western phenomena. Even in its worldwide influence it has been promoted and financed by western culture, and heavily by the United States. This does not mean that the United States was founded nor has ever been, or ever will be a Christian theocracy. However, for lack of a better term theocracy is the basis of all of Islamic society. Human theocracies don’t have to be good, because by definition they are right (meaning not wrong). Secular society allows for a diversity of goodness, hence using genetic terms, goodness can be bred or hybrid, and is not subject to man’s limitations, but the Biblical God’s grace toward all humanity.

Do you know of someone who doesn’t want to be a good person? There may be a few in western society, but goodness in the west is pretty much synonymous with normal. However this goodness in the short term, no matter how benevolent it might be is not and will not be a counter force in the march of Islam. In fact, tolerance and goodness, are looked upon as weaknesses by Islam, only accentuating their resolve and determination to eliminate that weakness by forced conversion to a disciple of Mohammed.

That goodness however, is over the long term more powerful than hate and evil. Maybe just because it is more energy efficient. Hate takes an incredible amount of energy to indoctrinate and to stay focused, and after all most people are basically lazy. The west has the laws of entropy on it’s side.

Discipline however, is not one of the west’s strong suits, to keep it up we need more than just the hope of the wide screen TV to get up and fight the battle everyday. Materialism is only capable of feeding our desires of life, but is unable to deal with life’s true reality. Why am I here and what am I to do? The true great questions of mankind are not capable of being addressed by the great trade deficit from China.

What about the nuclear attack, or the hurricane, or the earthquake, or the cancer, or the car wreck, or the —? Some material stuff is useful here, but most just gets in the way.

The common goodness of the west’s blessed people will help prepare the way for the doom of Islam, but it will come with an externally applied discipline, and without true moral absolutes most so called good people can be just as evil as the self appeasing jihadist. However, common western goodness, is part of the blessing given to a people by the God of the Bible, not the god of the Prophet Mohammed. That common goodness is evident in the catastrophic, or as I call it the stupendous  change event.

There is also a remnant of a deeper kind of goodness however. That is a goodness not of universal blessing, but of a specific act of God’s will, performed by God on the behalf of all evil men. Even those who are so evil that they compare themselves naturally on a par with God himself, are the beneficiary of this grace, by an act of faith. How does this take place? It is a miracle, beyond the nature of the natural or what we call the supernatural.

What can mankind do to receive this gift of holiness. Nothing for it is ultimately a gift of God’s grace alone. Through the gospel of Jesus the Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice on the cross of Calvary 2000 years ago, it was finished. Death and evil were defeated forever. What remains is an intervening period of time where the Bible says, Jesus of Nazareth will build his church and the gates of hell, or the wishes of Islam, or other man made worldly religion will not prevail.

Church building, through the gospel message, is the high calling of mankind. It is not so much done, as lived. For if we do it, then it is not grace at all, but merit in some degree. Both Calvin and Luther would be appalled of the doctrines of men, more worldly and wicked than the papist could ever have dreamed, are part and parcel of modern Protestantism. But they too were but fallen men saved by grace.

Islam will not prevail against the west, just as it has tried and failed over the last 1400 years, not by our armies, though we may write our histories in such fashion, but by the grace of God alone. That does not mean however, that the refining fires and stupendous changes brought about by a religion without a God of grace, will not change perhaps significantly the worldliness of western culture.

What it does mean is that God’s church will emerge from the chaos as the only place of hope and goodness in an evil world. I suppose even Calvin and Luther would call that The Rapture. The times in which we live, using the terminology of  Augustine, will demonstrate to the whole world, not just Islam, that the City of God, is truly unique and different than any city of man.

The Old Testament speaks of the cities of refuge in Israel, those cities were build and maintained on the basis of Mosaic Law. The New Testament gospel City of God is based on the grace and will of the Triune God of Christianity. Hence, the residents of the City of God are there by legal adoption by the city’s creator, not by their works. All this based upon a Biblical worldview where the covenant of grace has always superseded, the requirements of religious observance and piety.

Beyond the common good, is the gospel of the Christian God, nothing more, nothing less. No other worldview has this absolute power associated with it. Not because it is based upon God’s almighty power to create or recreate the world, but on God’s sovereign grace imparted to mankind through Jesus, mankind’s Messiah. Grace takes a little longer, and is infinitely more difficult to understand than shear power, but grace shall prevail, to those God has given the grace of faith alone.

Again the true gospel message is our only hope beyond common goodness, and it shall prevail against all the evil this world desires to bring its way.  Amen.

Our latest Chronicles:

Building; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/building7-26-6.pdf
Walls & ceilings; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/wallsceilings8-2-6.pdf
Building sanctification, Part I; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctI8-9-6.pdf
Building sanctification, Part II; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctII8-16-6.pdf
Welcome shade; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/welcomshade8-23-6.pdf
No Safe Egypt; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/nosafeegypt9-20-6.pdf
Lost in space; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/lostinspace9-27-6.pdf