Opinions on an Article

[gibby]

Take a moment and read this article:

Somali elders meet with local leaders : localnews : FortMorganTimes.com, Fort Morgan, CO

This appeared in our local newspaper recently.

After you read it, can you point out anything that is troubling? All in all, it appeared to be a positive experience except for one thing...can you spot it? Just wondering.

[inquisitive]

Part of the meeting was to embrace the Somali faith community, said UMC Pastor Phil Tarman, who asked everyone to pray together to "the one God," he said.

Well 'the one God' bit in there jumped out at me, encouraged by a Pastor, when they are Islamic.

[onesiphorus]

What do they mean by the "one God" ?..obviously they are muslim as they use a venue as a mosque why would they want to use the methodist church, the women are also under sharia law .It appears so

[gibby]

Ok, thanks. Then it isn't just me then. That immediately jumped out at me as a red flag too. The watering down of the gospel continues...

[gibby]

Onesi, the pastor was the Methodist Church pastor if you caught that.

[onesiphorus]

My biggest fear is not wars or the economy or earthquakes , my fear is the tendency in christendom today for denominations encouraged by church leadership to accept this erroneous call to join together with all religions ...it is not biblical .....

To welcome anyone into a community is polite and right in society but to embrace another religion as if it is acceptable , such as everyone praying to "The One God " is wrong , because the God in this article is not the God we believe in , and also it would not happen in a Muslim country where christian worship is at best forbidden and in the worst areas punishable by death as is still the case as in Somalia where a christian aid worker was beheaded in October just as a latest example .

Anyway the point is as a fellow human being of course we welcome but forget this lets all pray together nonsense because that is not accepting the fact that the difference is deep , its fundamental , and it irreconcilable, and the reason is scriptural , it goes all the way back to Isaac and Ishmael

[JIP]

I wish to give my opinion here, as I have lived half my life in the middle-east. I lived close to Muslims even from my birth since I was in Malaysia all through childhood to my college days. They have tolerated me and my religion and when asked and I reply that I am a Christian, most often their reply would be with a smile and a handshake, ‘we are brothers’. I have been as a friend and as a brother to many of my Muslim friends. They too have been the same to me and even were there for me when I needed help.
For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one religion, which, in its original purity, was the religion of Abraham.
We often tend to follow the flow without taking time to give our personal thoughts about the moral issue being addressed – the right and the wrong- our conscience. For Muslims their religion is one except for a small fraction of fanatics like Osama and the Taliban, etc. But under the Christian banner there are so many doctrines and faiths that Christianity seems to be a religion with so many other religions within it. When you have a different believe, my friends it is not only a different doctrine, IT IS A DIFFERENT RELIGION. If we can tolerate this then where is our tolerance for other religions like Islam. The present rate of growth is 2.9% for Islam and 2.6% for Christianity. At this rate it is reported that by the year 2023 there will be more Muslims than Christians in this world. How can we then talk about tolerance?
Jesus was a man of peace and Christianity is tolerance. While the former can be argued, give or take an attack on money changers in the Temple (hey that was a joke so please don’t pounce on me ), the latter is patently false. To claim any sort of tolerance in historical Christianity, with the exception of some fringe groups like Quakers, is to ignore history. I have not forgotten the Crusades, the Reformations and the whole lot. Where was our tolerance then? We did not even tolerate our own Christian brothers. Each Christians group tries to limit God’s mercy to those who believed in only certain dogmas. Everyone who failed to hold the dogmas was an outcast or a miscreant, to be persecuted for his or her soul’s good. This is happening even now and also in this forum. When one with a different perspective gives an opinion I don’t see any tolerance. ( Me = guilty).
Tolerance is one of the most abused words in the English language today. It always used to mean putting up with someone you disagreed with. It meant allowing the other person the right and courtesy to express their views, even though you strongly opposed those views.
In engineering, I associate the word tolerance with working within limits; there is a point beyond which a mechanical system will break down if those limits are ignored. Why do we apply reason when designing a bridge but throw it out the window when applying it to human behaviour? Today, the word, ‘tolerance,’ whilst retaining its outer packaging has had its contents replaced with, there are no limits, no definitions, and no categories. “It’s all good” as kids say today. The result is the breaking down of society.
In Matthew 13, Jesus gave a parable about legitimate tolerance and its limits.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ ”

And in Matthew 25:31, he says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, and he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

So much for tolerance.

I know that tolerance is not automatically a good thing. We are being told that holding to absolute truth or universal morality is divisive and I also know that by writing this I would myself be subjected to intolerance and judgmentalism ( sorry that’s not a dictionary word). But I had to stand up for the many Muslim friends I know and have been with. No harm in giving a little thought to it and also to the extent of our tolerance for Christian brothers of other denominations.

[onesiphorus]

I am not talking about humanism or tolerance . i am speaking of the truth of the word , a fellow human being can be a friend but he cannot be a brother in Christ , no more than I would be regarded as a brother to a muslim .. no JIP there is a difference between regarding someone as a friend than as a brother , you show me where God is tolerant of other gods or other idols ,no where , you show me where Jesus, love extended to false religion ..nowhere . We must separate what God says from what universal new age humanism says , this is not Christianity no matter how we wrap it up what I am saying is accept the differences as they are and stop this facade of we are all the same we are not the same and the qur,an is not our bible or our truth and a muslim would and quite rightly argue the same . you assure me that we are not infidels according to the qur,an

[JIP]

One of my brothers can be a doctor, another can be a convict... but both are still my brothers.
If we believe that there is only one God and God created everything, then He did create the people who are Muslims too. If God calls all His creations as His children, they are our brothers too.
God send Jesus to save the lost not the just only.

Today, most Christians, Muslims and Jews are against religious intolerance. There must be an end to the small minorities in each religion that say that only they know the "truth," and who would use that "truth" to surpress or eliminate any who do not agree. The majority need to work together to ensure equal rights for all, regardless of religion or sex until we are in this world. We are not God and we do not have the authority to do so.

Onesi.. my earlier post was on a general note.

[onesiphorus]

Dear JIP whilst your earlier post was general it was still forwarding a philosophical and humanistic ideology which while being socially acceptable is not endorsed by the truth of the word .

It has nothing to do with intolerance ...the problem today is because of political correctness there is no allowances for accepting or respecting opposing viewpoints and that to disagree signals extremism or intolerance , whereas the reverse is true that by accepting that we as Christians are not the same , in ideology , as say a Conservative orthodox Jew , toleration is not even a consideration, I accept it is not the same .a muslim would never regard me as his brother no more than I would accept him , but that has nothing to do with whether he would be my friend .

Your comment about Jesus , to be biblically precise he came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel , in fact when praying in John chapter 17:9 , also i refer to His comment in John 15 :17-19 .

Being a christian does not mean you love everybody ini the same vain as the hippie ,spiritual , new age philosophy prevalent today , while religious councils liberalise and water down Christianity to fit the world JEsus Christ is moving further and further away from these philosophies , and it is taking on a facade of humanistic philosophy which is not christian .