“Will my boys grow up viewing woman as no different than the porcelain urinal on the wall of the boys’ room—an object (not a person) to relieve themselves into whenever they feel the urge or need? And will my daughters grow up believing that’s who they’re supposed to be? I hope not.” – Walt Mueller

When I first came across this quote it saddened and disturbed me. This is because it is remarkably accurate with its portrayal of the society and culture we live in. The worst part is that not many people care. Most people just accept this as the reality in which we live. There is a general consensus among westerners that Islam’s treatment of women is barbaric and that they view them as property to be owned like slaves. But rarely do we see those same westerners consider how they treat women. The above quote highlights that our society/culture does not treat women much differently. Slaves. Just in a different format. Brainwashed to believe that is all they are, porcelain urinals to be used whenever men have the urge or need. The quote reflects the very sad state of our world today.

Identified as the ‘raunch’ culture where ‘porn is the norm’ , you don’t have to go far to see the objectification of women by the main stream media, by men and even by the women themselves. It’s a vicious circle. Each influencing the each other, going around and around in a reinforcing pattern that only cements this view of women in our culture.

” If we honestly evaluate how women are frequently portrayed in the media, it is easy to see that they are often marketed as objects and used to sell products. And it is definitely easy for all of us – men and women alike – to judge our value on external appearances and functionality rather than our intrinsic value as children of God. ” – Paul Masek

The main stream media seems to be the biggest culprit when it comes to influencing society and culture. But they are just responding to the existing culture and giving them more of what they want. Society wants raunch, so the media gives it to them. Why does society want raunch? Because they have been already brainwashed by what the media gave them previously. And around it goes.

Take music for example. How does encountering sinful or even questionable lyrics influence society in a harmful way? Anthony Gerber answers this way :

” Is a child harmed when she encounters her parents fighting with one another? And what if that fight was played over and over and over like an iPod on repeat? If she is not harmed in a strict sense of the word, at the absolute least she will become numb and dulled to such occurrences. And this is certainly harmful for a whole litany of reasons which a good psychology book is ready to reveal for us.”

In music it’s the beat, the bassline or guitar rift that draws us into the song. And once the music has “hooked” us, the lyrical content can then do its work. It’s the same pattern with other forms of media. TV and movies will hook you with laughs, drama, music, special effects or action. Then once you are hooked many sinful themes are smuggled in and are absorbed by us un-noticed. For example the sit-com “Friends” uses a lot of humor to attract an audience. But the characters are promiscuous. So society keeps going back for the humor while all the time being conditioned to accept promiscuity as a normal behaviour for society because that’s what their idols are doing on TV. By the way, “Friends” is a relatively mild example of what is out there. If this is the effect “Friends” has on society and culture then how much more will sit-com’s like “Two and a Half Men” and “How I Met Your Mother” be a positive influence for the objectification of women.

An interesting article I found on the topic of music and culture called “Dysfunctional Love Songs” by Chris Stefanick is worth checking out. Where he discusses how the love songs getting all the air play seem to have a common theme; if it isn’t dysfunctional, it isn’t love.

“Thanks in large part to misguided love songs, teens tend to mistake things like codependence, enmeshment and promiscuity for love. It’s funny how the things they come to look for in dating relationships are precisely the things that set them up for failed marriages.”

The original article in which the “porcelain uninals” quote came from (“Dear Oprah“) is also well worth a read. Some notable parts are:

“After years of listening to music and watching videos on MTV, BET and VH1, I have to conclude that one of the most prominent life-shaping themes in today’s popular music is human sexuality, both what it is and how to experience it. The lyrical and visual messages are powerful and life-shaping, especially for our impressionable young children and curious question-filled teens. Because they are listening to and/or watching several hours of music a day, messages about sexuality come through loud and clear. In fact, a recent article in Pediatrics reports on a Rand Corporation study that found that “listening to music with degrading sexual lyrics is related to advances in a range of sexual activities among adolescents.” A growing body of research supports this relationship of cause and effect”

“My reason for mentioning this to you is that on September 25, 2006, just three days before your show “What Pedophiles Don’t Want You To Know,” Janet Jackson appeared on Oprah to promote her musical comeback and the next-day release of her album 20 Y.O. I want you to know that I think Janet Jackson is an extremely talented performer. I am, however, concerned about some of her musical messages—both lyrical and visual—and what those messages are teaching children and teens about sexuality.

Toward the end of your show, you introduced Janet Jackson with these words: “For the first time, Janet’s going to perform a song from her brand new CD in stores tomorrow, 20 Y.O. Here’s Janet Jackson singing ‘So Excited!’” I then watched her sing this new song, a song that I knew was sure to be marketed to and embraced by her young fans. I can’t help but see a huge incongruity between the song’s lyrics and the valuable message you sent to viewers just three days later.

I listened to Janet Jackson sing these words:
Breathe – You get me so - Get me so excited - I’m hot, come on, so get ready – And I’ll open my spot for you – Anytime you want me to – So you can act bad – Don’t hurt me – Look sexy – Talk dirty – And I’ll open my spot for you – Anytime you want me to – Get me so excited – For some reason – It might be the money that turns you on – But for me it’s an attitude that keeps me tight on the floor – And no words are suitable to describe your swagger babe - And my body is in overdrive when I have you inside of me – Do you like it when I do it? – I go head to toe – And whenever you pursue it – You’ll never hear the word no – So forget about them other girls baby – Cause now you’re rollin with a woman baby – I’ma keep you body thumpin baby - It’s the least I can do – Cause you get me so excited – So amused by mind control that I wanna get two steps up – As for me I’m a let you know that my body’s smoking hot – Throw me up against whatever’s close and get to bossin me around – And everytime I give you the assist you know how to slam it down - Is ya is ya is ya hungry? – I gotcha – I gotcha – I gotcha licking on my – Licking on my – Licking on my body like it’s something to eat …

At the conclusion of the song you said, “Janet Jackson! Thanks, Janet! Thank you, Janet! We’ll be right back. That’s so cool.” Oprah, I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this one. Knowing what I know about kids, the age of the kids who embrace Janet Jackson and her music, adults, and how they are all acting out sexually in our culture, I don’t think Jackson’s song was cool at all. Instead, it made me sad. When I later watched the song’s video, I was struck by the sad irony that some scenes depict Jackson and the male object of her song engaging in sexual foreplay and activity, in of all places, a dirty and dark men’s restroom, right in front of a wall full of urinals.”

So what can we do to battle this “moral mindlessness” plaguing our society? We need to employ our minds rather than just our hearts when it comes to determining whether a song, tv show or movie stays on or is turned off. We need discernment that comes from knowing right from wrong, good from evil and morality from immorality. That, I think, is a massive problem in society (including the church). So many people have no idea of the moral standard set out in the Bible. And if they do know the standard, they don’t care or don’t think it’s that big of a deal (even amongst those professing to have faith).

We need to first look to our own hearts. Do we look women in the eyes or do we give them the ‘up and down’ look that focuses on their bodies? Do we mindlessly consume media? Does pornography or lust have a hold on us? The Lord wants us to love women as He does, and He can help us to do so. I love the idea of following Jesus so closely that we actually see other people through His eyes. Women are so much more than porcelain urinals, even if they feel that way about themselves, and even if they are treated as such in the media and by men in their lives.

None of us are immune to the influence of society and culture. I know I’m not. Conditioned through much of my non-Christian life to view women like this, it is an extremely difficult conditioning to break. I need help. We all need help. It can’t be done alone. We’re not strong enough. We need help from the only one who can help because He has overcome the world.

To finish I would like to borrow again the words of Paul Masek.

“I also want to beg you women who are reading this to help us brothers out! In our over-sexualized culture, it is not easy for us to look you in the eyes; we have been trained otherwise and need to be reprogrammed. Not only will it help us if you expect – even demand – to be respected by men, but please call us out when you are not respected. We need to be challenged. And finally please prayerfully consider rediscovering modesty; try not to dress in a way that will incite the men in your life to look at you as an object. You have no idea how much the pursuit of modesty – and expecting more out of us – can help us out.”

Richard Dawkins was recently challenged to a debate with William Lane Craig. He declined. Craig, he said, was a “deplorable apologist for genocide” with whom he would not share a platform. The genocide in question is that of the Canaanites in the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy (see link).

One of Richards more famous quotes from “The God Delusion” on this issue is:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

One of the biggest problems that many people have with God as detailed in the Bible, which Richard has so clearly demonstrated above, is that of His judgment against nations like the Canaanites. One only has to read Biblical history to find God commanding the slaughter of the Canaanite men, women and children. Not even the livestock are spared. So what are we make of this? Is God a moral monster?

Paul Copan has attempted to answer this challenge in his book “Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God.” His answer to the charge that God commanded the genocide of the Canaanites is that this was not the genocide that it appears to be from a simple at face value reading of the text; that the text is hyperbolic and an exaggeration of what actually happened; that these were more like disabling raids of the military bases/cities and religious centers and not the leave no survivors destructive conquest that one might assume from a face value reading of the text. The passages on the women and children are just sweeping language being used as a disabling metaphor where central structures are undermined so that the Canaanite influence is disabled. For a more thorough explanation you can check out this interview (3rd hour) with Greg Koukl on his radio show at STR or their blog. Otherwise you can get his book.

While Paul Copan’s explanation on the issues of slavery, bigamy, child sacrifice and the treatment of women in the Old testament seems sound to me, I think Clay Jones comes to the correct conclusion on the issue of the “divine genocide” of the Canaanites. He argues in his treatise, “We Don’t Hate Sin. So We Don’t  Understand What Happened to the Canaanites”, that the face value interpretation of the text is the correct interpretation. Clay also appeared on Greg Koukl’s radio show in an interview that can be found here (3rd Hour) which is where I got most of his answers for the rest of this blog post.

The first thing that needs to be examined is the culture and behavior of the Canaanites to see if there could be any justification for their obliteration as described in the Old Testament. Archeologist William Allbright tells of an ancient Canaanite poem where the Canaanite God Baal, rapes his sister while she is in the form of a calf 77 even 88 times. We have here rape, incest and beastiality in the same act. Baal also has sex with his mother and daughter. If this is who the Canaanites worshiped, if this is their God whom they emulate, then according to Jones, this is certainly what they themselves are doing. And these acts are borne out with further study of Canaanite culture. God outlaws these practices in Leviticus and this sin is punished when both the Canaanites and Israel committed them. And that punishment was harsh. Sodom and Gomorrah were examples of Canaanite cities who were judged by God with good moral justification.

So how does Clay Jones answer the complete destruction passages of the Canaanites in the Old Testament? Clay starts off by making an observation of our own culture. We seem to have been inoculated to sin. Average people just does not care anymore about many sins. Our culture does not even recognize them as sin, let alone understand what the term sin actually means. We have become so Canaanite-like in our own culture to the point where, as Clay put it, “Studying these things over the years has led me to wonder if the Canaanites might stand up at the Judgment and condemn this generation”.

Livestock

Why kill all the livestock? You do not want to be around animals that are used to having sex with people. In Clay’s article he gives an example of a female gorilla sexually attacking a psychologist.

Women

If you want to erradicate these practices from a culture, then why would you leave women who were just as guilty and as equally dangerous as the men in participating in these practices.

Children

Yes the children too. Firstly what age do you start separating children from adults? 18? 12? Clay tells of fostering children because he and his wife could not have their own children. They learned that kids coming into your house at from as young as 4 years old were bringing their culture with them. Now, what if you had killed their parents? What would teenage rebellion look like for those children who were spared. Certainly they were exposed to a highly sexualised culture and were very much likely to have been molested by that time.

So how do you stomp out that culture in order to prevent if from affecting the Israelites adversely? If you want to erradicate the sinfullness of the Canaanites, how else can you do it?

But wait, I hear you say, the Bible talks of the continued Canaanite presence in the region after this “divine genocide” occurred. How does Clay answer that? Clay directs our attention to those “divine genocide” texts and points out that Gods command was only for a specific region. There was still a Canaanite presence outside the region that the Israelites were to inhabit and that’s why there were commands still in place not to take wives from outside the Israelite culture etc. But as we read further into the text, the likes of Kings David and Solomon did not uphold these commands perfectly (by taking wives from outside the Israelite community) and thus the Canaanite culture was reintroduced into the Israels culture and corrupted them to the point where God then dealt harshly with the Israelites via the Assyrians and Babylonians.

So in conclusion, I think we can accept the text at face value. The question that remains is what do you think of God for commanding such a thing? Does God have a right to do with His creation as He pleases? If you have a problem with the selective judgment of the Canaanites then how do you feel about the almost complete destruction wrought by God of the whole world during the Flood? And how do you feel about the impending destruction of everything at Armageddon?

One of the saddest things I’ve experienced recently in praying for people-I keep getting this question so I feel compelled to answer it publically. A lot of people coming up with their lives in very difficult circumstances, asking, “Is God punishing me? Is God punishing me?” I’ve had so many women I’ve prayed for recently, struggling with infertility, they’ve had abortions in their past, “Is God punishing me?” No. Because that would be unholy. If you’re a Christian, that means all your sin was placed on Jesus, he suffered and died in your place, for your sins on the cross. For the Father to punish the Son and punish you, that would be unholy. Because that would be unjust. (If we remove Christ that means punishment)

Now, when we sin, there are consequences. If you eat too much, drink too much, and spend too much, you’ll be unhealthy and broke. You reap what you sow. But that’s not God punishing you, that’s just consequence of folly. But no, God doesn’t punish you. God loves you. He does great things for you. Holy, all together good, that’s who he is.

See, Satan would whisper in your ear, when you’re suffering, struggling, sinning, and he would tell you, “God is hurting you.” And he’s a liar. God does great things. “Holy”-not unholy-“holy is his name.” See, what Satan wants you to do, he wants you to run from God rather than to him. He wants you to be worrying rather than worshiping.

Author Unknown

In the comments section of Fisher’s post John Calvin on Fatalism, the conversation seemed to have found its way to 1 Tim 2:4. And since this verse seems to generate a lot of debate these days, at least from my perspective, I thought it would be a good idea to explore 1 Tim 2:4 a little bit more thoroughly.

1 Tim 2:3-4 “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth”

The key part is “who will have all men to be saved” (KJV). Other versions state it as “who desires all men to be saved” (NASB) and “who wants all men to be saved” (NIV) but it essentially means the same thing.

The first thing we need to do is look at the context of this verse. According to John MacArthur (from whom I’m getting this explanation), this verse falls in the middle of a section of scripture addressing Evangelistic Prayer (verses 1 through 8). So given the context of this section, we should remember that Paul is addressing how we, as believers, should be praying for the lost to be saved as this lines up with Gods desire. It is Gods desire that all be saved so therefore it should also be our desire that all be saved.

The full explanation can be found here, but I just want to look at the words will, desire and want as used in verse 4 of the various english translations. In each case we find it has been translated from the Greek word “thelo” into will, desire, or want. Now, working back to the Greek from will (KJV). There are two basic Greek words for will and they are “thelo” and “boulomai”. So what does each of these words mean? “Thelo” reflects the will of desire springing from feeling and inclination while “boulomai” speaks of a will that comes from precise determination.

So the will/desire/want used in 1 Tim 2:4 is not the will/desire/want in the “boulomai” sense; that God has precisely determined the salvation of all men. It is not a sovereignly ordained fact that everyone is going to be saved. 1 Tim 2:4 is not talking about that kind of will but that of “thelo” which is the word used in the original Greek text.

It’s not simply a “What God wants he gets” in some sort of universalistic salvation or that we have some sort of impotent God who is unable to fulfil His will. There’s a distinction between God’s sovereign will and His moral will.

To put it another way, we would all agree without equivocation that God does not desire people to sin. Could we agree with that? We do not believe that God desires people to do evil, to sin, to be disobedient, to be unholy, to fail to give Him glory. No, we would all agree with that. In fact the spectrum of evangelical theology would agree to that. We know God desires men not to sin. We do not for a moment advocate anything different than that. So turn the table a bit. Would we would all agree then that God desires all men to be holy? No one would argue against that, right? God desires all men to be righteous. God desires all men to be sinless. God desires all men to give Him glory and give Him honour and give Him respect. God desires all men to be obedient. I mean, He commands men over and over and over and over to be obedient. He calls for righteousness. He calls for holiness. He calls for sinlessness. He calls for everyone on the face of the earth to give Him honour and give Him glory. He calls for all men everywhere to repent. Nobody debates that. We all know God wants men to be holy.

Therefore, we conclude that people sin though God does not want them to. That’s obvious. People are unholy though God does not want them that way. People do not give God glory though God does not want them not to give Him glory. Then why is it such a hard thing for some people to realise that people also go to hell though God does not want them to? God wants all men to be saved. That is the desire of God.

Men sin and they go to hell, not because it is God’s express sovereign purpose for them. They go to hell because they denied God’s moral will for their life. He calls them to repent. He calls them to be saved. If anyone goes to hell, they go there not because of the predetermined choice of God, but because of the rejection of Jesus Christ. That’s what He’s saying. He wants all men saved.

In the exact words of John MacArthur;

I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe in election, I believe in predestination, beloved, I also believe that God wills men to be saved and by their choice they are not saved and that is their responsibility not God’s. And if you ask me how those two things harmonize, I say I’ll tell you our first day in heaven, I’ll explain the whole thing. But I know this, God has a broken heart because He desires salvation from the ends of the earth, why else would Jesus weep over Jerusalem. “O how often I would, I willed to gather you together but you would not.” He said that. You wouldn’t do it. Why will you die? Why will you reject?

So in tying this with the challenge in the comments of Fishers post, I believe the will of God espoused by John Calvin, Ryft and Fisher with regard to the issue of choice, election and predestination is the will of “boulomai.” It is not the will of “thelo” that we find in 1 Tim 2:4.

[The following article was paraphrased and summarised from an interview with John MacArthur entitled “When believers stop believing: Portrait of an Apostate”¹]

No.

If you once professed faith and now don’t, then you were never saved to begin with.

People who believe it is possible to lose your salvation are usually brought to that position because of people like Charles Templeton. It isn’t because they find it in the Scriptures. It’s because they’re trying to explain how someone could be a Christian one day and not the next day. There are massive amounts of Christians around the world who think you can lose your salvation and they’ve got people to prove you can. We need to look at this issue Biblically to try to help those people who might be drawn to that conclusion because of people they know who denied the faith. Read the rest of this entry

I know I’ve asked this question before on my old blog, but I thought it would be a good idea to ask it again here in the interest of generating conversation from a different crowd. And being Easter it ties in nicely.

Eating meat on Good Friday? Is it blasphemous to eat red meat on Good Friday? Where did the vegetarian/fish policy come from?

After speaking to a Catholic colleague; the custom has was originally adopted by the early church (and since maintained by the Catholic Church) from the custom on the Jewish Sabbath. Not only is the Sabbath a no work day but is also a no meat day. And fish is not considered meat to the Jews.

My own thoughts were that there is no problem with eating meat on Good Friday. Looking at the words of Jesus in Matthew 15:10-11, 16-20

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.

Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.

To me this is Jesus lifting all the Jewish food restrictions and saying “Whats food got to do with anything, its just food. There are more important things to dwell on.”

If, on the other hand, having a meat ban on Good Friday leads you to reverent reflection and remembrance of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross, then I don’t see any harm.

In response to opposition of same-sex marriage, an often used retort from homosexual activists and their supporters is “Same-sex marriage will not affect you, so why not let homosexuals marry each other?”

Firstly, as Bill Muehlenburg wrote in his book “WHY vs WHY Gay Marriage”, the evidence shows that countries with pro-homosexual legislation and same-sex marriage have been a disaster for heterosexual marriage and the well-being of children. Consider Scandinavia. Stanley Kurtz, who has a doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University, has documented how marriage and children have suffered there. In 2004 he wrote:

Marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of firstborn children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend towards the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern – including gay marriage – is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.

More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was [already] increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birth rates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood is acceptable.

Later in 2006, Kurtz wrote:

Shifting to a broad ‘menu’ of experimental family forms may feel liberating to some, but it is really a recipe for thinning out society’s commitment to children. Each unconventional experiment reinforces the others, ultimately yielding a significantly less stable family regime. Which is to say, gay marriage undermines marriage.

Read the rest of this entry

The other night, 60 Minutes Australia ran a story on multiculturalism and focused on Islamic fundamentalism. See here for a transcript of the story. The story looked mainly at Islam in Britain and how a group of non-Muslims are fighting for the British way of life against the invasion of Islamic extremism. As evidence of this, 60 Minutes had some secret footage of an Islamic school in Birmingham which showed Muslim children being taught to hate anything non-Muslim.

This sentiment was also shown in the story to exist here in Australia where a similar story of Islamic extremism was told. The thing that got my attention was the response from a young Muslim woman Samah Hadid. Samah was Australia’s youth representative to the UN in 2010. What always seems to happen is that the media here in Australia will go to someone like Samah as a sample of the Islamic community here in Australia for their opinion. Her response to the presence of extremist Islamic ideology amongst the Muslim population was:

SAMAH HADID: I wouldn’t identify with that sort of ideology at all.

MICHAEL USHER: Would many Muslims identify with that?

SAMAH HADID: Absolutely not, not the ones that I know anyway. You know, there was a play about the Cronulla riots…

MICHAEL USHER: Samah Hadid is among the vast majority of Australian Muslims who embrace our social diversity and agree with the Federal Government that multiculturalism has been a stunning success here.

SAMAH HADID: I’d say I’m a product of multiculturalism and so I find it quite interesting when people say that multiculturalism has failed. The majority of young Muslims, Australian young Muslims, that I know do not care for political Islamic or Islamist ideology. They’re just going about their day-to-day existence, trying to contribute to their own professional fields, trying to, you know, make their communities a better place.

MICHAEL USHER: So they’re not out to force Islam on to everyone?

SAMAH HADID: Not the ones that I know and –

MICHAEL USHER: They’re not out to turn Australia into an Islamic state?

SAMAH HADID: Absolutely not. That’s really my representation of the majority of Australian Muslims that I know.

She then goes on to say at the end of the story:

SAMAH HADID: If we ever want to work towards a multiculturalism that works for everyone, we need to stamp out racism and we need to stake a stand on religious prejudices, but also take a stand on those who, you know, do peddle extremist views and say to them very clearly, “You do not represent us.”

While I would much prefer the ideology of Muslims like Samah to be the dominant Islamic ideology in this country – in any country for that matter – I do wonder how reflective her views are of the Islamic community. I don’t know the sample size of people she knows, but my concern is that this kind of reporting seems like a smokescreen designed to distract us from the real possibility that extreme Islam is present, and of considerable concern, in this country.

I also found her last statement quite interesting. The views of these extremist Islamic Muslims may not represent Samah, her friends or even the majority of the Muslim population, but are they representative of the Islamic religion? From my study of the Qur’an, there are ample texts to support “extremist” or “fundamentalist” ideology. So her statement is, perhaps, more revealing than she would have liked. It reveals how nominal her Islamic faith really is. The same is found in Christianity too. Nominal Christians, who associate with the religion but have really no idea of the tenets of that religion. In my opinion, nominal Christians are not really Christians at all and perhaps the same would apply to nominal Islamists.

Personally though, I would much rather be living next to a Muslim like Samah than a Muslim who actually knows and reads their Qur’an, and is committed to carrying out its precepts.

Abdu Murray is a Muslim who converted from Islam to Christianity. In an interview (Oct 17, 2010) with Greg Koukl on his radio show at Stand to Reason, Abdu shares a conundrum he had which triggered his journey from Islam and, eventually, into Christianity. 

Abdu was reading the Qur’an when he came across Surah 5:47 “Let the people of the gospel judge according to what God has revealed in it. And whoever judges not by what God has sent down, those are the transgressors.” Having been raised to believe that the Qur’an is God’s dictation in Arabic – which means that every word, verb tense, and grammar is perfect, and that the Bible had been corrupted before the Qur’an came and that the Qur’an had come to correct those corruptions - Abdu realises this is saying, in 7th-Century Saudi Arabia, the gospel existed for people to go and look at, and to judge it as the word of God; as a source of divine truth.

His conundrum was this: Why would God refer them to a corrupted version of the gospel? If the Bible was once God’s Word and it then became corrupted, two things follow. Either God couldn’t keep it from being corrupted or He wouldn’t keep it from being corrupted. If He couldn’t, then He is inept and not omnipotent but rather impotent. If He wouldn’t, then the very revelation in the Qur’an, that affirms the Bible, may not be revelation and why would we trust anything He has to say. 

Therefore, Abdu concluded that the Bible had not been corrupted at the time of the writing of the Qur’an in the 7^th century. From there it was a simple task to find out if the Bible of the 7^th century is the same as the Bible we have today. It was. And the evidence pointed to it being the same for centuries before as well. 

At this point Abdu was forced to believe, based on his faith in the Qur’an and his faith in evidence, that the Bible is the uncorrupted Word.

This conundrum is explored further in Alan Shlemon’s “Ambassadors’ guide to Islam” booklet (available from Stand to Reason www.str.org). In this booklet Alan identifies a logical argument with regard to the Qur’an and Islamic teachings and is highly recommended by Abdu Murray.

1. The Qur’an says the words of God cannot be changed or corrupted. Surah 6:34, 6:115 and 10:64
2. The Qur’an says the Bible is the Word of God. Surah 2:136 and 29:46
3. Therefore, on the Qur’an’s authority, the Bible could not have been changed or corrupted, as many Muslims claim

If you would like to learn more about Abdu Murray and his ministry – Aletheia International,  you can visit his website at  http://embracethetruth.org/

And you thought that postmodernism could not touch the field of mathematics. Well it has! As I discovered in Nancy Pearcey’s Book “Total Truth”:

These days’ philosophers no longer regard mathematics as a body of truths. The dominant philosophy of mathematics treats it as a social construction like a game. There are arbitrary rules, neither are true or false, they are just the way we choose to play the game.

This is being taught to school children. A school curriculum developed at Michigan State University for grades 6-8 called “Connected Mathematical Project” says that students should learn that “mathematics is man-made, that it is arbitrary, and good solutions are arrived at by consensus among those who are considered expert”

In Minnesota, teachers are instructed to be tolerant of “multiple mathematical worldviews” in their Minnesota State Statues Governing the Licensing of Teachers, 106, 111. And in New Mexico a recent graduate of high school tells of how a mathematics teacher labelled him a “bigot” for thinking it was important to get the right answer. As long as students worked together in a group and achieved consensus, the teacher insisted, the outcome was acceptable.

If mathematics is arbitrary, then there are no wrong answers, just different perspectives. The simplest, most universal form of knowledge – mathematics – is subject to some radically different worldview interpretations.

If this is happening with mathematics how much more will postmodernism effect more complex fields, biology, economics, law and ethics.

[Simplified for brevity - not an exact quote]

Surely, only the terms used to token mathematics are arbitrary (numbers will be different as spoken / written in other languages), but the qualities that make one (1) or two (2) appear to be universal.

This is dangerous territory we now walk into if the postmodern philosophy of “There is no truth” is the guiding rule for society. I certainly want truth when it comes to the medicine that my doctor prescribes to me, the truth of traffic light operations and I would hope that my bank manager isn’t taken in by this relativistic approach to mathematics either.

The problem at the heart of this philosophy that “There is no truth”, is that this proposition is indefensible. It is, in and of itself, a truth statement and therefore invalidates itself. In other words, they want the statement “There is no truth” to be accepted as truth. If someone were to try to make that statement, then the response should always be “Really, is that true?”

How can you have a meaningful conversation with anyone who holds this view?

All this reminds me of “Values Clarification” which is also being taught to our school children (more universally than this philosophy of mathematics) where they are told that their values and ethics are to be decided by themselves, individually and as a group, and that it is by this moral code that they are to live their lives. The problem arises when they decide that it is ok to cheat on their school tests or that it is ok to hurt others to get what you want. It’s just not a philosophy that can find any traction in reality because, when they grow older and apply what they have learned, they discover that society can and will punish them via the law (a fine or incarceration), if their “values” don’t match those existing already in society.