The Muslim and the Christian

Introduction

We continue in our Answers series with another question which was submitted by one of you. This is a question that, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really want to address. With some topics, it’s much more comfortable as a Christian, and especially as a preacher, to just pretend they don’t exist. But recent events reminded me that we don’t have the luxury of remaining comfortable in life.

The question I want to answer is this: How can we honestly view Muslims as non-enemies when their ideology is fundamentally antithetical to Christ and they consider all non-Muslims to be infidels? Now, that’s a big question—much bigger, in fact, than I’d be able to address in any kind of detail. But it’s an important question for two reasons.

First, if we believe, as we discussed last week, that the time really is near—that Christ’s return is imminent—then our answer to this question means the different between heaven and hell. There’s roughly 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. That’s the first and biggest issue.

Second, there are practical implications to how we answer this question. How do we as Christians relate to and interact with people who are our enemies? What does it mean for a Christian to have an enemy and what posture do we take towards that person? Notice that I said, “as Christians”—because I think it’s very easy for us to think of enemies is a geopolitical sense. Our greatest challenge as we think about this is going to be to continually remind ourselves that we are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11) in this world.

Nevertheless, recent events have reminded us of the appropriateness of the question. It wasn’t but last week that several men drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians in London and stabbed still more in a horrific attack which lasted all of 82 seconds. Only a few weeks earlier, a bomb exploded at a concert in Manchester. We’ve become all too familiar with these scenes in the media.

The response of Christians to Islamic terrorism has varied tremendously. It has fueled anger and hatred in some. In others, fear and anxiety. The political response to these events and their Islamic connection has been anything but helpful. Our nation’s perspective on Islam has become increasingly binary.

Those on the left have pushed to affirm that the terrorism we see is anything but Islamic. Speaking of ISIS, former president Barrack Obama has emphatically referred to it as “non-Islamic.” Those on the right have emphasized the opposite—that Islam as inherently jihadist and any peaceful manifestation of the religion is a sham.

I believe both perspectives are misinformed, even dangerously so. The issue is much more complicated. In March 2015, Graeme Wood wrote a monumental piece for The Atlanticentitled What ISIS Really Wants, in which he went to the very sources themselves to understand ISIS ideology. His conclusion:

The reality is that the Isalmic State is Islamic. VERY Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

He goes on to say,

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adhered to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.

As Wood goes on to explain, the Islamic State believes itself to be the one true Islamic nation, with a Caliphate to which all Muslims must pledge baya’a—allegiance. They’re driven by a theology that is thoroughly apocalyptic. Their goal is to expand their territory, bringing justice first to apostate Islam, and then to the non-Muslim world, until the arrival of the Mahdi—a messianic figure who will lead them to victory before the end of the world.

On the other hand, it would be wrong for us to lay this kind of ideology upon the entire Muslim world. It’s one thing to affirm it as “Islamic.” It’s quite another to insist that only it is Islamic. In fact, the existence of a “true Muslim faith” is something that hasn’t even been settled within Islam itself. As one of my former seminary professors, Bill Barrick, said—who spent 15 years as a missionary in Bangladesh—there are over 70 variations of the Muslim faith around the world. Just like the dispersion of denominations and offshoots among Christianity and Judaism, Islam itself suffers from its own lack of self-identity.

Nevertheless, as we look at how Islam views Christians, we come to some fundamental truths. First, according to Muslims, Christians are “people of the book” in that they share a common religious foundation and common monotheistic convictions. The Qu’ran is viewed in Islam as the final revelation of God. But the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospels are also viewed as part of the sacred writings. Barrick tells of giving copies of the New Testament to Bengali Muslims to joyful reception. In fact, they allowed him to read from the gospels during one Muslim prayer service. This was a book that they had heard about their whole lives but had never seen. Often times, he said, they’d wipe their hands or even wash them, take the New Testament in both hands and kiss it repeatedly.

Christians are also viewed by the Muslim world as worldly and lascivious. Barrick talks about families weeping when their children converted to Christianity, because in their eyes, they had abandoned all moral living. This association, of course, is fueled by the fact that Christianity and the West are one in the same in the eyes of the Muslim world. In this case, the insistence of the Christian right—that America is, indeed a “Christian nation”—has ended up being a self-inflicted wound. Now, the two have become inseparable.

But there’s no getting around the fact that, despite our common religious heritage, Christians are, in the eyes of Islam, infidels—those who don’t believe. They are those who have rejected Muhammad and his teachings.

Transition: So we come back to our original question. If Muslims view us as infidels, how must we view them? Are they our enemies?

Answering that question requires going back to the very beginning. And when we do that, we’re going to see that our view of Muslims is less about how they view us. It’s, in fact, much bigger than that, and it encompasses a view of the world that goes far beyond any one particular group of people.

It all starts when we understand that Christians are in a war.

The Christian’s War

So turn in your Bibles to Genesis 3. The opening chapters of Genesis, of course, lay the foundations for the rest of the story of the Bible. It opens with God’s creation of a perfect world, in which he placed human beings to rule the world as his ordained representatives.

But, as we learn, it’s not long before these divine representatives reject God, lured and emboldened by a most unlikely figure—a serpent. Wooed and lured by the false promises of the serpent, the two disregard the words and warnings of God and rebel.

What follows is judgment. The woman is consigned to painful childbirth and strained relational dynamics with her husband. The man is forced to toil painfully for food, cultivating a cursed ground that yields thorns and thistles. No longer is this the perfect paradise of God. Rather, the two are driven out of the garden and away from God’s presence.

But the greatest judgment falls on the mastermind of this rebellion—the serpent. In verse 14 we read that he is cursed to crawl on his belly and eat dust. But in verse 15, before God’s judgment is pronounced against the woman and the man, we find a faint glimmer of light in the midst of the darkness:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15)

“Enmity”—it’s a word that signifies ongoing hostility and animosity. In other words, this event marks the beginning of a war—a war between two parties. On one side of this war you have the woman and her offspring. On the other—the serpent and its offspring. And this perpetual enmity will exist between them.

But there’s hope given. Because while the serpent will deal an injury to the woman’s offspring, he will deal a fatal blow to the serpent himself. Theologians refer to this passage as a protoevangelium—the first gospel—because it introduces a coming victory that will occur over the serpent and his offspring achieved by the woman’s offspring.

Nevertheless, in the meantime, hostility exists. The world is in a perpetual state of war—war between the serpent and his offspring and the woman and her offspring.

Now, it’s not hard to understand who’s referred to as the woman’s offspring. It is Christ who will deal the fatal blow to the serpent. But in reality, that Hebrew term is interesting because it can function as a singular or as a collective. And as we read the rest of the Bible, we come to discover that the woman’s offspring turns out to be those who belong to God, who are believers. So in the NT, it refers to Christians—those who belong to that singular offspring of the woman, Christ.

As for the serpent. Well, while the text doesn’t identify the serpent here, all we have to do is look at Revelation 12:9 to have our deepest suspicions confirmed—that the serpent is none other than the enemy of God, Satan. And as we survey the rest of the NT, it becomes clear.

Transition: Yet we still have this looming question. If there’s war between the serpent and the woman, and between his offspring and her offspring; and if the woman’s offspring is Christ and those who belong to him; and if the serpent is Satan—then who is Satan’s offspring? Who is it that also wars with Christ and those belong to him?

In other words, for believers, who are our enemies in this war?

The Christian’s Enemies

I think the best place to start is to look at James 4. James is addressing the quarrels and conflicts that break out among believers. These, he writes, are rooted in sinful desires. “You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (Jas 4:1-3).

Worldliness—that’s what fuels these conflicts. But then James goes on to say something even more foundational:

“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

The world and God are enemies. They are at war. That word “enmity”, as it turns out, is the same term used in the Greek translation of the OT to translate “enmity” in Genesis 3:15.

We see a similar statement made with reference to the world in John 7:7, except that here the object of hatred is Christ. Jesus is speaking to his as-yet unbelieving siblings, who were urging to reveal his miracles publically at the Feast of Booths. They’re thinking with worldly minds. But it wasn’t Jesus’ time to be revealed, because when he did that, it would mean his death. So he said to them, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.”

That is to say, the world posed no danger to his brothers—they were a part of it. But Jesus was not part of the world. Instead, he exposed the world for what it was world—evil. And for that reason, the world hates him.

And for that reason, the world hates us too. Later in John, when Jesus was teaching his disciples in the upper room, he said to them,

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

The world—at war with God and at war with Christ—is therefore at war with believers as well. And these divisions go beyond national or ethnic boundaries. Because when the war is over Christ, and over the truth, and over the gospel, the battle lines are drawn anywhere and everywhere—even within one’s own family.

In Matthew 10:34, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” In other words, Christ came to bring to the forefront that ancient hostility—that war—that has existed since Genesis 3:15. And the catalyst is Christ and the gospel. And for that reason, Jesus says, “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matt 10:35-36). The gospel is going to split up families by plucking people out of the world, thus setting them in spiritual hostility.

And all this happens because, as 1 John 5:19 states, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” The world hates Christ and hates the church because it belongs to Satan. He is, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this world who has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”

Satan is at war with God and at war with Christ and his people, and Satan’s offspring—the world, unbelievers—follow in the pattern of their father. Was it not Jesus who said to the Pharisees in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”

Transition: So we discover that when it comes to this war, our enemy is Satan, and those who belong to him—the world—unbelievers. This hostility doesn’t always manifest itself. We interact with unbelievers every day. We may have unbelieving family or friends who are amiable, who are fun, who are close to us.

And so it is with the Muslim community. There are believers who have close relationships—even friendships—with Muslims. There is no outward hostility. And there are Christians who are suffering intense persecutions.

And all this helps us to shape a worldview according to Scripture—there is war in progress, between God and Satan, and between God’s people and Satan’s people. And the dividing line is Christ and the gospel.

The Christian’s Role

And the question we have to answer next is this: What is our role in this war? We know there is ultimate victory. We know Satan is crushed under Christ’s foot. But what do we do? Do we fight? Do we do battle with the world, with unbelievers?

Well, to start, we have to understand the nature of this war. Yes, there’s a war going on. But it’s not like other wars, because we’re talking about two different kingdoms. The war is between the domain of darkness and the kingdom of light. And it was Jesus who said to Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world”(John 18:36).

Perhaps a clearer explanation of this is found in Ephesians 6. Paul says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph 6:10-11). Sounds to me like believers are more than just spectators. Yet the fight is going to be different—“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

What’s all this saying? It’s not a physical war, it’s a spiritual war. And it’s not physical fight. And the enemies we fight aren’t people. This is a total paradigm shift from jihadist ideology. To them, the spiritual war IS is physical war—because they’re seeking a kingdom that is of THIS world.

But it’s also a shift from our Christian right ideology. The Christian answer to Islam is not political. That’s just another kind of fleshly warfare. The answer is spiritual. Are there political implications to Islam and our nation’s foreign policies? Absolutely. But what America does or doesn’t do has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

We have to recognize that we’re NOT of this world. And the war around us is a spiritual war for the hearts and minds taken captive by the god of this world. So in 2 Corinthians 10:3 we see that the war is fought with spiritual weapons rather than earthly weapons. “Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor 10:3-4). If we waged earthly war, we would be limited to human strength. But because we wage spiritual war, we wield weaponry that is as powerful as God—because they come from him.

So how do we wage spiritual war, especially when we face people who, at times wage physical war? The answer is surprisingly simple and equally counterintuitive. Turn to Luke 6:

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them” (Luke 6:27-31).

That’s how you wage spiritual warfare. You love them, do good to them, bless them, pray for them, refuse to retaliate against them, give to them, and treat them as you would like to be treated. When you do that, Jesus says you will demonstrate yourselves to be “sons of the most High”—God’s offspring. They’re going to see Christ in you, and those kinds of spiritual weaponry have are POWERFUL.

Paul said something very similar in Romans 12. He told his readers that when it comes to the way we interact with unbelievers:

“Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:17-21).

Conclusion

So when it comes down to it, it makes little difference if Muslims view us as infidels or if we view them as enemies. On the one hand, they can be friends, and we can have relationships with them. On the other hand, they are part of the world, and the world hates Christ and the gospel. So they are part of this war as we are, and we are on opposing fronts.

But when we stop and consider them at a spiritual level, we discover something more. They’re lost. They’re blind. They follow a god who is too transcendent to be known and who offers no guarantee of grace or salvation. They deeply desire forgiveness, but they have to earn it, and when they die they know that even then, they have no assurances that Allah will forgive them.

How do we reach them? Love them. Do good to them. Bless them. Pray for them. Don’t retaliate if they persecute you. Be generous to them. And treat them as you would want them to treat you. Live at peace with them as much as it’s up to you. SHOW THEM CHRIST. Show them that the gospel is alive in you.

And then, give it time, and be ready to give an answer if they ask you for the reason for the hope that is in you (1 Pet 3:15).