Legislating Morality: Comparing Islam and Christianity

[FYI, this is only the last couple pages of a ten page paper, in which I establish the fact that I am aware of the diversity of views within both the Muslim and Christian community, and therefore do not presume to speak for the whole of each religion]

[also FYI, I loved writing this paper, a lot. 18 hours, a lot]

Political philosopher Sayyed Qutb is one of the most famous Muslim intellectuals to emerge from his faith and is very well known for his views on the role of Islam in politics. In his book Islam and Universal Peace, he calls Islam "the religion of unity in this great universe." Coupled with this religion of unity he presents an equally "unified ideology to confront life and its problems, an ideology that will solidify our strength against our foreign and domestic enemies." Sayyed saw peace as the ultimate, unifying goal coming first to the individual conscience, then in the home, then in society, and finally resulting in world peace. One might call "peace" his faith's ultimate moral principle. The way to achieve peace, according to Sayyed, is by adhering to the legislation set forth by the Islamic state which proceeds directly from God who is the "Supreme Legislator." It is in the application of God's law that the Muslim community achieves justice, and Sayyed contends that "Islam is a complete system. One cannot enforce a part of Islamic law and neglect another for then it would not be Islam." It would seem, then, according to Sayyed Qutb, that Islam and the law cannot be separated. An example of this indivisibility can be seen in Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws which say that "whoever willfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Quran or of an extract therefrom or uses it in any derogatory manner or for any unlawful purpose shall be punishable for imprisonment for life." Upon the adoption of secular or dual legal systems in Islamic countries, the very things, spirituality and the law, that Sayyed said should not be separated have been pulled apart.
This fusing of law and religion rings a bell in the mind of all who have opened the pages of the Bible's Old Testament. This inseparability takes its most memorable form in the daily workings of the Israelites, whose whole lives were directed by laws said to proceed directly from the mouth of God. The Israelites were God's "chosen people," and though they often forgot, they were obligated to perform certain rites and practices to honor the God who went before them. The Christian should remember that the Israelite tradition is his ancestry, with the concurrent realization that this is no longer the way God requires man to live. It is absolutely imperative in the development of a Christian's political philosophy that he discovers the nature and origin of this change from a religion united with the law to a religion seen as a separate entity from the law. The change can be seen to occur around the same time Jews began to interact with a man named Jesus. This man came to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, proclaiming that he had come to fulfill the law. In Matthew 5:17, he proclaims, "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill." How is it that a law can be fulfilled? He fulfilled "the law and the prophets", synonymous with the Scriptures, by bringing them the meaning and the motivation that they were waiting for. Jesus seemingly called his followers to an even higher law: the law of love. When asked by the Pharisees, "'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?' Jesus replied, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind...The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." This law of love was even more difficult to practice than various acts because it implied a distinct attitude of love within one's heart coupled with the action. Whereas in the Jewish community law was a series of practices that centered mainly on the concept of justice and on doing what was right, Jesus came and revamped this sort of legalistic motivation by creating a space for the deference of justice in order that love, often seen in the form of grace, might triumph. This is seen in the culminating act of his life—his unjust death on the cross—that through his death and resurrection he might bring life to those who would come to believe in him and accept this gift of love.
And so Christians live, live in accordance with Jesus' revolutionary words, "You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles." Christians live in response to his death and resurrection which were the ultimate example of this transformation. This transformation from law to love does not abolish law, but it most certainly does not use the law to achieve its ultimate purpose—a change in human hearts. After all, can the law legislate the motivation of love in all of one's actions? Perhaps this is why when asked about tax laws, Jesus tells the people to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." The law desires specific actions, but God desires a change in the heart of man that is then manifested in his actions.
This Christian attitude toward Caesar, or governmental power in general, lies in sharp contrast to the Muslim attitude toward “Caesar.” In the Muslim faith, "Caesar" legislates morality using the Koran as the ultimate rule of law in the same way that in the Jewish tradition the Torah, gives man a rule of law. The origin of this huge gap between Christian political philosophy and Islamic political philosophy can ultimately be seen in the person of Jesus Christ. "In Christianity, the word of God (logos) becomes Christ; in Islam it becomes the Koran." Islam and Christianity both have a wide range of views on how involved the legal system should be in this process of incorporating ethics into daily living, but when the specific doctrines of the two religions are taken at face value, the law plays a distinctly less important role in the life of a Christian. How could it ever appropriately legislate the human heart, where true transformation must occur in response to the grace it has been given. The logical next question then is, "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" To which Paul responds, "By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?...For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace." In essence, in order for Christians to fully "legislate morality," they would need to be God, or at the very least an omniscient being, capable of knowing every thought and motivation of man. Since this is quite impossible, God remains the judge, and man is subject to His law first. In the same way, Muslims are subject to God's law first, but God's law is seen in the form of sharia law as laid out in the Koran. The "legislation of morality" matters to a greater extent in the life of a Muslim, a person much more interested in peace and unity achieved through justice which is most often, realized through governmental enactment of this sharia law.

Next Semester.

See this girl? 

She is going to live with me next year. 

what an answer to prayer.

Pride.

I hate medicine. I hate the way that most medicines deal with the effects, the symptoms, instead of the cause.  All painkillers do is make me painfully aware that i'm dulling the pain instead of dealing with a very real problem.

However, after a bout with migraines for a week, i decided medicine was my only option (or sleeping my life away, which had happened already that week).  The lovely woman at the health center prescribed me some meds (4 to be exact) to deal with the cause, allergies, and increased sinus pressure.

and then it hit me.

I never effectively deal with my allergies because I don't want to be dependent on medication, and now I must take medication to get at the cause of another problem, my migraines. SO, i will take medicine when they are a cause of something else, but not when they aren't causing anything?  Silly.

Allergies are caused by something, and in turn have caused something even worse. I assume that there is not an infinite regress of causes, meaning that if i learn how to truly be heathy, to rearrange my body chemistry so that these issues are not a problem, then I will eliminate said migraines by eliminating said cause.

Perfect.

One problem. that takes serious focus on sleep, water, diet, exercise, knowledge of my body's predispositions for vitamin deficiencies. Oh man.  I'm not ready for that. I want to be, idealistically. But, thats just not going to happen.

Therefore, I will take medicine. And I will hate it, but I will love that I'm living comfortably numb with not a migraine in site.

ugh.

This post is for Andrew Smith and all those who once agreed with him...

So, there was this one conversation, this one time.

It was about the word dinner, as applied to sunday. Some people, not saying who, think that on Sunday, the word dinner magically changes to represent the meal directly after church, which is, on all other days, called LUNCH.

I think this is silly. And I had, and still have, a good argument as to why it is a ridiculous use of language, but I thought that maybe I would provide a little anecdotal evidence for those who remain unconvinced:

This past Sunday I went to lunch at the house of a couple in our church.  I went with two friends, and this couple really wanted us to meet their kids who, just like us, are college students.  We were all very excited, especially the nice woman who had created a masterpiece of a meal.  But, in a strange turn of events, she gets a phone call from her son, saying that unfortunately when she said "Sunday dinner," they took it to mean what it literally means--the evening meal.  Perhaps if she had said Sunday lunch things would have worked out.  So, the kids never showed, and we got to enjoy even more food than we anticipated.  I had a little convo with her about her use of the word "dinner" and "supper" on sundays, we went over the history of it, and the age group that generally uses it.  I understand all of this. However, pragmatically, if the older, midwestern generation wants to communicate with the younger generation with greater clarity--Dinner is an evening meal, Lunch happens around noon, and Supper is only to be used interchangeably with Dinner. 

End of story.

please read the comments on the post that this is linking to. :)

What a few short years will do.

Weird. 

Time is such an odd thing.

A Comparison of Responses

Apparently, as humans, we have a tendency to overreact, overcorrect, and overrespond. Perhaps this explains huge paradigm shifts throughout history, and most recently the shift from Modernism to Postmodernism (not to oversimplify it or anything :)).  This train of thought started today in my my Contemporary Issues class as we dialogued about moral relativism.  

Dr. Smith told a story about sitting under two professors while in grad school, a couple of overt moral relativists.  One was an African American woman, the other was a Jewish feminist.  He, at certain times, would engage in conversation with these women, asking questions and prodding at the root of their convictions.  Once he expressed to one of the women that he was surprised by her moral relativity.  She was equally surprised at his surprise, and asked, "And why does this surprise you?"  He answered by telling her that he would assume there were definitely somethings that she would see as moral absolutes, rape, for instance.  She replied, "Well, if that is true, then why isn't rape within marriage illegal?"  To which he replied, "Well, if it isn't, I think it should be."  At this point his professor got uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation and said, "I'd love to talk to you about this sometime later."

After telling this story, he started talking about the history of relativism as a response to absolutism.  He said that it was his personal opinion (and one with which I tend to agree) that much of how these women got to this place of moral relativity is due to the misuse of absolutism in history.  After all, both of these women are part of a culture or race that have been, historically, overrun with prejudice and hate towards their people groups.  The disgusting institution of slavery and the holocaust run rampant with justifications on the basis of "moral absolutes."  And though there is such an obvious correlation between absolutist principle and gross misconduct, to insist that that there is a causation is to fall prey to a fallacy.  As I am reminded by my Intro to Psych professor, "Correlation does not imply causation."  

And this is true.

Moral relativism is not a valid conclusion following from the simultaneous existence of absolute principles and gross misconduct.  And though it seems and probably is natural to rebel against principles that in any way partook in social structures that served to demean, dehumanize, and destroy people based on race, that does not mean that we do away with principle altogether. What is does mean is that we stop misinterpreting principles that are, in fact, worth something and we rid ourselves altogether of those which serve no good purpose at all.

And now let me make my comparison.

In the same way that relativism is an invalid conclusion because its "causes" are really not causes at all, but correlations, so too with emergentism and those things that have "caused" it.  Some of the most obvious result of the emergent movement include a rejection of doctrine and an exodus from traditional church bodies.  It is my aim to use the above example to draw a sharp comparison between the overreaction of those offended by various absolutist principles and those (primarily within the emergent movement) who have also, seemingly, overreacted to the offense of "failed" doctrine and stagnant church bodies.

There is no doubt in my mind that the emergent movement is calling good things into question.  Why is the church not more concerned with social justice? With engaging culture? With using the arts, and thus our creative natures, to engage in acts of worship?  These, as I have mentioned much before, are valuable critiques, not to be ignored.  However, it does not follow that doctrine or the church structure itself are to blame for these things. Just because churches follow tradition and endorese very specifict doctrines within their bodies, we cannot thus imply that their lack of social conciousness or altruism is a result of the dogma they claim to adhere to.  

It is possible to ignore those things you don't want to deal with the implications of within your doctrine.  It is possible to ignore the mission of the Church.

It is possible misinterpret doctrine. It is possible to misinterpret "Church".

It is possible to have incorrect doctrinal statements.  It is possible to have incorrect views of what Church is intended to be.

Do we blame the doctrine?  Do we blame Church?

When we find absolutist principles that we don't concur with, we don't give up ethical systems all together.  We enact reform.  We change it.  We don't leave ethical studies, we engage them all the more to flesh out what exactly is right.

In the same way,

When we find doctrine that we don't agree with, when we find churches that seem dead.  When we find a part of our mission as believers that is absent from the every day lives of those who claim to follow Jesus Christ, we don't give up on doctrine. We don't give up on church. We don't give up on people.  What an overreaction that would be, and is.

I suppose my charge is to the emergents (and the relativists alike), don't overreact. 

Stay.

Help.

Enact change from within.

Don't allow those who would misuse truth to triumph. 

Don't reject truth.

Reclaim truth.

To me this seems the most loving thing to do.  

Let's make this the "love movement" ok?

on the stretch between the library and olson.

I thought to myself...

though story-telling, enticing rhetoric, and flashy points are often good tools for engaging people in the word.  It often masks the truth of what we are trying to relay, as if we need those tools to up the excitement factor of the actual content of our message.  

"It is the dogma that is the drama--not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspiration to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death--but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world, lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death.  Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe." --Dorothy Sayers, Letters to a Diminished Church

Maybe I thought about this because Fergus MacDonald gave a great talk tonight about engaging scripture in a postmodern context.  He did it mostly in a monotone voice and he definitely wasn't there to entertain. But i was drawn in. I was drawn in by truth, not by rhetoric.  By scripture not by anecdotes. And by exposition, not entertainment.

Thanks Fergus.

Kluck, round two.

Well, chapel today was a lot of repackaging of what was heard last night.  Again, we were graced with his observations and reasons for loving the church.

The Church is important. Very important (so important, in fact, that I've capitalized it). And now we are aware that Mr. Kluck believes this.  He loves expositional sermons. He loves structure. He loves worship. He loves authority. He loves the gospel. I don't dispute this. I love these things too.

BUT, if expositional sermons always focus on what was done for us on the cross and not at all on the implications of that as Christians who are called to act, to respond, then we have missed a huge part of the Gospel. (He was very ready to shrug off our duties as people to people outside the Church).  If structures are not serving the correct purpose or have lost the meaning and value they were intended to posses, then they need reform and reevaluation, truth is to be valued far above authority and structure (luckily, they are usually manifested in those contexts)--God's inspired Word, the Truth, is our highest authority. If we are missing any part of that, it is our duty to root that out and reclaim it.  The Gospel is the very foundation of who we are, how we think, and what we do, therefore it is to be protected above all else.  This means that distortions of the Gospel, most specifically within the emergent church must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.  

While that is being done, in part, by Mr. Kluck, there is another aspect of protecting the Gospel that he, among many others (often including myself), have failed to do.  Knowing that we are depraved, acknowledging that we're prone to error, wouldn't it be prudent to utilize the critique (whether appropriately conducted or not) of the emergent church, to do a little self reflection and analysis--to recognize the parts of the Gospel that as fallen people we have forgotten to remember?  Perhaps a little humility from both sides?  There is no doubt in my mind that much of the action and stance (or intentional lack thereof) of what has become the increasingly loathed or loved emergent church is some good (or distorted good) pursued in the wrong way, and in the wrong context. I just think it would serve the purpose of unity and truth to find those similarities and work to flesh out where we have both gone wrong, because no doubt there is incorrect orthodoxy and orthopraxy on both sides.

Rebellion.

Tonight I attended a special seminar that Taylor offered by a guy named Ted Kluck.  He is one of the Co-Authors of "Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys That Should Be".  I attended, expecting something phenomenal, and I was sorely disappointed.  I wasn't dissatisfied with everything, but his knowledge seemed to be somewhat lacking for someone who wrote a book on the subject. I was disturbed all the more by his statement that "after writing the book he was done with the emergent church."

There are a vast array of reasons I was less than excited by his presentation, but the biggest one has to do with a very evident contradiction in his critique of the emergent church and the way he goes about reacting to it.  One of the 9 or 10 things he heralded as "observations" (which were, in most cases, true enough) was that the emergent Church has a distinctly rebellious undertone, that this rebellious ethic is sexy (which is by the way, such a sexy word to use to use when critiquing this movement because of the obvious unrest the word causes in the mind of conservative evangelicals).  

He laid the claim that the members of the emergent church are generally those who are rebelling against problems in churches and the structures of organized religion (valid, in many cases).  He did mention (briefly) that much of what they are rebelling against is a deficiency that can be seen in the way we (as evangelical churches) do or do not engage in culture. However, he did not spend much time on that really, and focused for the most part on the distinctives of the emergent church: savvy marketing (which does not seem to be bad to me, unless it is an end in itself), "saving the world" arrogance, seeker friendly megaplexes, heavy-handed left sided theology (as if the only good Christians are right wingers), etc.

All this to say, besides presenting what seemed to a quintessential example of a "straw man" argument against the emergent church, he also fell prey (in this presentation) to the very thing he was speaking against.  With all the talk of rebelling against something being such a bad idea, he sure did his fair share.  It seems logically inconsistent for him to be so heavily anti-rebellion, when, in fact, he is doing the same thing.  Instead of responding to logical inconsistencies, postmodern relative mindsets, and widespread theological misconstruction, he seemed to slam the Emergent church at its weakest points, without giving much thought to the strengths in the things that motivated the emergent church to act (whether they did that correctly or not).

 Just like the emergent church would have done a much greater service to the cause of Christ if they had responded and reclaimed the things they saw as problematic in the church instead of rebelled, so to could Mr. Kluck have done a greater service to the cause of unity in the body if he had responded to the things he saw, reclaiming those ideas of peace and reconciliation (which are fundamental to scripture) instead of rebelled.  I am not saying that he should have said that the Emergent church is "ok," but at least given value where value is due. Perhaps by bringing up the very valuable critique that the Emergent church has put forward, and responding to their methods for dealing with that critique.

I am not emergent either, but I do think that the emergent church has emerged (if you will), with some hugely important ideas that the evangelical church has left behind, but often have wrenched them out of context.  There are many truths that they have brought back into the light that, if put in the correct context (of the historical doctrine, dogma, and theology) could be that much more powerful in extending our hand to those who are sick, hungry, thirsty, shirtless, and searching.  

And side note: He was very much Mr. Reformed, and thats fine, however, we must remember that in order to be a "reformed" evangelical, a reformation had to happen (reform and rebellion seem to be similar things, one with a less unfortunate linguistic implications than the other, but both include recognizing a problem and working against it).  Interestingly enough, there were many things that the reformers got wrong that we have been working towards fixing today. But that requires conversation and intelligent critique, not rebellion against a whole cause, but instead responses to specific ideas within a cause. Often that's MANY responses, and sometimes only a few. Either way, we must be willing to enter into conversation about this. We must be willing to see even the beauty in retrieving the often lost ideas of peace and social justice, while still maintaining that we must be adamant about placing them in the correct context--the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A funny side note: I typed this whole thing, spelling "emergent" as "emmergent".  Perhaps I am now tipping my hand, showing you my lack of book knowledge on this subject. However, I, as most, can observe, and this was one facet of my observation this evening.

A clarifying side note: I am not rebelling against Mr. Kluck, merely critiquing the points that I thought could use some help. I do think that he is doing a valuable thing in reacting, i just don't think he is doing it in the correct manner/that tonight he did it in the correct manner.

We'll see him again in chapel tomorrow. Topic: valuing church authority. Right on. But i value truth more, i think. Sometimes, historically, churches, and church authority have gotten it wrong. Thank goodness there were people to call us out on it. Thank goodness the emergent church is calling us out. And thank goodness we don't have to eat up their methods or agree 100% with one side. Thank goodness its not an either/or. 

Commit Already.

Today i was hunched over, running across the street towards the student union, when i looked up and saw a car about to hit me. So he slowed down, then i motioned for him to go, then he waited so i started to go, but he started to go just as soon as i did. We both were a bit indecisive, i suppose.

I was less frustrated by the fact that he almost hit me than by the little piece of paper in the corner of his windshield. A bumper sticker. Besides the painfully obvious fact that the sticky rectangular self-advertisement was not even on the bumper, there was also the little annoying (ooh, shooting myself in the foot if you've ever read my post about annoyance) fact that is was not, in any way, attached to the car. I mean, really, you buy a bumper sticker because you believe in a cause, but if you are so uncertain about whether or not you will believe in the cause you are advertising via your vehicle, why buy it in the first place? Perhaps bumper stickers just annoy me all together because the essential purpose of a bumper sticker is more of a self monologue than a conversation. If you believe in Jesus, or Obama, or pre-trib rapture, please don't tell me with your car. I have no way to respond, no way to ask questions, no way to tell if recently the car came under new ownership and is thus entirely misrepresenting the person who now occupies the driver's seat.

Interestingly enough, it is equally bothersome to me when a bumpersticker is permanently attached to a vehicle as it is if it just sits in the window, waiting to be removed.  The former instance seems to imply a self presentation tactic in which others must accept what you see to be true of yourself, driving, life, God, etc, and leaves no room for humility.  But on the other hand, if you can't even commit to putting a bumpersticker in your window, then how can you even commit to an idea at all?  Perhaps the temporary bumpersticker user attempts to remedy the prideful aspect of the bumpersticker by showing that their beliefs could be changed as quickly as a hand could remove a slip of paper from the dashboard, as long as someone would present a good case. Eh. 

OR MAYBE, the whole point of a bumper sticker and its permanent nature is to show that there are some things that are and will always be true of you and the way you see the world (what a silly way to show this).  Therefore, the whole idea of just placing a bumper sticker in your window to be taken out at a moments notice is self-defeating. Using something permanent in a transient manner.  Good idea, it just doesn't work, and it gives way less credibility to whatever the idea is that your are trying to purport.

All this to say, if you have a bumper sticker, you better be REAL ready to defend and live by the words or phrase that sit on your bumper permanently. And if you have a bumper sticker sitting, unattached to the car, maybe you should consider why you can't bring yourself to adhere it to the car in such a way that if you were to attempt to remove it, loads of forrest green paint would be removed with it.

Just a thought i had when i almost got hit by the most indecisive (in terms of driving AND ideas) person in history. (hyperbole)

What an odd way to re-enter the blog community. With talk of bumperstickers.

silly really.