Friday, May 03, 2019

Synagogue shooter

The religious background of the terrorist who shot up the synagogue has received scrutiny. For instance: 



A few brief observations:

1. We should have a consistent standard regarding Christianity and Islam. If we attribute atrocities to Islam, should we attribute atrocities to Christianity? There's nothing wrong with raising the question. There's nothing wrong with asking if they are comparable. We shouldn't be offended by hostile scrutiny. And we should welcome the opportunity to defend our faith. However, we need to ask the right questions: 

i) Is there a statistically significant pattern?

There's an overwhelming number of atrocities committed by Muslims. There's nothing remotely similar in contemporary evangelicalism or Calvinism. 

ii) Are followers of said religion commanded to do that? Is that action a logical implication of their authoritative religious sources?

It's documentable that atrocities committed by Muslims are warranted by their authoritative religious sources. That's authentic Islam. That's original to Islam. And it's enshrined in centuries of authoritative tradition. 

2. There's nothing remotely analogous in the NT. There is, however, inescapable tension between NT theology and Rabbinic Judaism. They can't both be right. 

3. The Catholic persecution of "heretics" and "schismatics" does reflect traditional Catholic theology. 

4. Finally, there's the danger of compartmentalized preaching that expounds the Gospel, Bible history, and systematic theology, but shies away from publicly commenting on pressing social issues in reference to Christian social ethics. Some pastors are cowards in that regard. They play it safe. In fairness, pastors have a duty to preach on that while parishioners have a duty to support such preaching. It's a two-way street. 

4 comments:

  1. I forget who it was that said something like: it's better to hold the line where the line is weak rather than where it's strong.

    In that respect, I recall the English preacher Charles Spurgeon preached against slavery in America when it wasn't popular for him to do so and when printers wouldn't print his sermons for distribution or heavily revise his sermons. Yet that didn't stop him. He kept preaching against it. Or so that's my understanding.

    Today, I think the issues Christian pastors may wish to shy away from preaching but which (in general) they should preach against are: LGBTQ rights, anti-masculinity (many pastors don't seem to have a problem attacking men and masculinity though!), illegal immigrantion, and of course Islam.

    ReplyDelete
  2. --i) Is there a statistically significant pattern?

    There's an overwhelming number of atrocities committed by Muslims. There's nothing remotely similar in contemporary evangelicalism or Calvinism.--

    Hence the 'man bites dog' approach by the sensationalizing media.

    ...Yes, I got chided for my wording which could be construed as comparing Muslims to dogs.

    ReplyDelete