Scrutiny

9/13/17             Hamas                     23

Do your beliefs stand up to scrutiny?  Are you willing to find out?

Fairly early in a conversation at the park with Hamas, a grad student from Saudi Arabia, I asked if he had ever questioned the faith he had been raised in.  He had, he explained, because he grew up as a Shia Muslim in a country that is predominantly Sunni.  He was taught Sunni beliefs and traditions at school, and came to doubt his own family’s beliefs until he began to swim against the current and put both beliefs to the test.  He explained some of the differences and why he ultimately sided with Shia Islam.

Would he be willing in the same way to compare Islam and Christianity? I asked.  He was and in fact has had some in-depth conversations with Christian students at his university, enough to have boiled down the essential difference between the two beliefs as the question of Jesus’ identity – was he just another prophet like Muhammad, or truly God incarnate, Creator rather than creation, as Christians believe? 

 

I told him that to the casual observer, this might seem like a minor difference.  But it means all the world to Christians and I asked him if I could explain why.  Hamas was very interested to know, so I asked him, through a much more detailed explanation than I can include here, if He believes that God is good and perfect in all His ways.  “Of course”   So God would be perfectly loving and merciful, for example?  “Yes, that is what we believe.”  And God would also be perfectly just, right?  “Yes, perfect in every aspect.” 

So if God were to treat us with perfect mercy there would be no consequence for our sins, but if He were to treat us with perfect justice, the consequence would be just as infinite and eternal as Him whom we sin against when we break His laws.  If we could somehow “earn” forgiveness through good works or religious devotion, then God would have to compromise both His love and justice to meet us halfway, and He would not be “perfect in all his ways”. 

But if God made the perfect sacrifice of love – His own Son who has eternal existence and infinite worth – He would also be perfectly just in that the price of justice was perfectly paid.  There would be no compromise in His love or His justice.

Again, this is just a nutshell version of our conversation, but through it all I believe Hamas has to face the fact that his ideas about God cannot stand up to scrutiny.  If God is perfect he would not have to compromise his very identity.  He would have to break His many promises of both love and justice given throughout the Old Testament.   

A religion like Islam, with its works-based righteousness, cannot stand up to scrutiny.  Can yours?