Christian/Muslim relationships

I'm very interested in how Christians should relate to Muslims. I struggled with this last year in Turkey, and have continued to wade through it since.

Piper explains the recent outreach of Muslims to Christians in their "A Common Word Between Us and You." The entire document, as well as signatories, responses, and other news items can be viewed on www.acommonword.com

Hoping in God…and Why It Matters

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

For I will yet praise him,

My savior and my God. Ps. 42:5

Introduction

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that within the last 2 years no verse has ‘put ballast in my hull’ or fixed my eyes on the gospel of Jesus as has this one. Since my unwitting discovery of this Psalm, I have begun listening to sermons and reading books carefully for ‘hope in God’ language, but have been shocked with how little attention the doctrine gets within our culture. Initially, I was perplexed and not a little frustrated. I think now that there are two primary reasons why it has been largely neglected. 1) Cultural unfamiliarity/uncomfortability with the term ‘hope’. ‘Hope’ carries with it a strongly negative connotation. For instance, it wouldn’t be uncommon to hear a student who stayed up all night playing Halo instead of studying for an exam the next day say, ‘I hope I pass this test…’. He could pass it, but the odds are strongly in his disfavor. 2) ‘Hope’, even when understood within a proper biblical context, seems so far removed from any immediate solution. If a close friend of mine’s child died, a phrase like ‘brother, just hope in God’ doesn’t seem to help at all. ‘Joy’ and ‘peace’, while also involving future and eschatological elements, can be experienced and savored now and seem so fitting for just such crushing circumstances. But ‘hope’?

Response to 1): We aren’t hoping in baseball games or lottery tickets or relationships, we’re hoping in the One who says things like, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please’, and about One of whom things are said like, ‘In the Lord alone are righteousness and Strength. All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame…’ (Is. 45:18, 24). When we hope in God, we hope in the only One/Thing capable of bearing the staggering weight of human expectation.

Response to 2): First, it feels distant but is in fact intimately immediate simply because it (as defined above) is the impetus for and foundation of every ‘more immediate’ action and emotional response toward God. Could we rejoice in or have peace about a God who couldn’t first demonstrate his Own self-sufficiency? Certainly not. Second, creatures must/will hope in something, and if we aren’t consciously Godward with our expectations, we run the risk of damnation. All that to say: the stakes are high.

The more I read Scripture and think on the subject the more I’m convinced that without stockpiling a ‘ready supply’ of Godward hope, we doom ourselves to a slow and torturous death.

D. M. Lloyd Jones/John Piper’s Ideas on Ps. 42:5

The first thing we are struck with as we read this song is the psalmist’s horrific state of spiritual depression, brought on primarily by his sense of utter abandonment by God. ‘My soul thirsts for God…When can I go and meet him?’ Then his enemies, like salt rubbed into a deep wound, assault and mock him by asking ‘Where is your God?’, strikingly reminiscent of Job’s friends as they berate him for invoking the wrath of God by his own wickedness. What is it that keeps him afloat? What gives him fortitude to let the accusations role off his back? What shines light on his ‘downcast’ soul (vs 5b)? To what does he cling as ‘all [God’s] waves and breakers’ sweep over him? His ‘hope in God’.

What is initially startling but ultimately admirable about the psalmist here is that while enduring incomprehensible oppression, he is seen talking to himself. D. Jones observed that most of us, in contrast, are guilty of too readily listening to ourselves. When we wake up and discuss with ourselves how we don’t ‘feel’ ready to fight sin or how we don’t ‘feel’ joy in the Spirit, we aren’t lending our ears to the right audience. The poet here doesn’t fall in that trap. No, he speaks to his aching soul…and he speaks what’s true. We might object though, ‘How can I hope in God?’ This does appear to be a tenuous question, for our sins are great and the anger of the ‘I AM’ is fearsome. But, it is precisely at this seemingly ‘hopeless’ realization at which the scene explodes with vitality (and, yes, especially ‘hope’) for us as A.D. earth-dwellers. Peter says it best when he writes: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…Through [Christ] you believe in God, who raised him from the Dead and glorified him, so your faith and hope are in God’ (1 Peter 1:3, 21). We’re in a Covenant with the Sovereign One, sealed in His Son’s blood. If ever there was a reason to hope and to preach that hope to again and again to ourselves and our brothers and sisters, surely this is it. In short, we hope in God through/because of the Gospel. So, brothers, do it. Hope in God because of the Gospel. Hope in God because hope of this sort (namely one rooted in the One who never trips on a hurdle or topples off a balance beam but is Sovereign over every sparrow and galaxy) cannot fail, for it’s been secured by a Covenant of infinite value since it was inaugurated by the Infinite’s blood. Hope in God because if we don’t hope in Him we’re hoping in a lesser thing that can’t bear the weight of expectation and will serve only to banish us from his presence. May it be said of us like those in Hebrews 11 that God is not ashamed to be called our God. We can be willing to sacrifice anything because our Hope is other-worldly.

Thinking about humility...

Hey guys, since everyone has been too busy to post anything (including myself), here is something brief to chew on.

A tentative definition of humility:

True humility is a constant acknowledgment of a higher and more infinitely valuable being that leads to a total re-orientation of one’s desires, thoughts, and actions.

This is in contrast to common notions such as humility being self mutilation in deed or in thought, the absence of thinking of oneself (potentially thinking of others first), or that humility is the lack of intelligence or a lack of various forms of talents and gifts.

In these notions all thoughts are still on us but in the former all thoughts are consumed in the magnitude of the almighty God.