Monday, July 6, 2009

Rick Warren: Christians & Muslims

Big news in the Christian World is a speech Rick Warren gave asking Christians and Muslims - the two largest "faiths" of the world to come together to combat the 5 big world wrongs. People keep asking the question: "Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" (click on title to go to link of article)

First of all it seems he was simply asking we both make a team effort to fix some major problems in our world - he didn't ask us to agree on our biblical differences and opinions. I really am not for or against this as I'm not sure what to think of it. But I DO think that people are misunderstanding the key issue - that he wants to work alongside Muslims not BECOME Muslim. We work with sinners and so did Jesus, is there something wrong in working with them? Now to agree or conform to their ways, their thoughts yes that would be wrong for Christians but we can work with them - I mean we ARE a loving Body of Christ here to spread the gospel right? Yet we sound like shut-in extremists who don't want to talk to anyone peacefully about anything. It's our way or the highway - which yes I do understand it is either heaven or hell there is only one option and choice. But Jesus was a FRIEND to the sinners, even to the persecutors of Christians, so shouldn't we be too?

I'm interested on every one's take on this...

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Um... dangerous topic for me to comment on. :) There's such a fine line between working with them and allowing our hearts/minds to become numb to the differences over time.

A lot of media and several movies lately have been pushing the image of the "friendly Muslim"... saying the the only violent Muslims are the extremists and they are few and far between. A real study on the stats and recent publishings of the leaders of the Muslim world suggests differently. Jesus did work among sinners and loved them for sure - but it was with the purpose of bringing them truth and with the hope of setting them free.

This could turn into hours of debate in person, pages of commentary on here, and probably a whole lot of misunderstanding about each others' view points because we may be starting from different places of study on the subject. So... I'll leave it be and just say... I don't know - I will choose to pray for wisdom and know that the Holy Spirit will lead me into whatever I am supposed to, or not supposed to, do. :)

poison_ivy777 said...

I actually agree with everything you said - I really thought over that article a lot because I really wasn't sure what to think of it. I was mainly upset at people's comments to it than the article itself. People who proclaim themselves as Christian (me included) can be SO rude and crude sometimes (again me included). I wish we could keep our mouths shut and when we did open it that it would be full of grace like it should be.

But I'm really glad you commented. I liked what you had to say and your words were full of "grace". :) Well put Elizabeth! Thanks for helping my thought train.