No, We Do Not Worship the Same God

By: Bill Muehlenberg
Monday, 20 August 2007,

... there are other fundamental differences. In Islam, Allah is a despotic sovereign, not a loving Father. He is utterly transcendent, and has no personal involvement with his creatures. A commentator in a previous post said this: “Your description of Allah as ‘an inscrutable, harsh and remote deity’ sounds remarkably like the God of the Old Testament”. I responded by saying that she is clearly unfamiliar with both the Koran and the Old Testament. Such a comparison is ludicrous ...

Very early on we get a glimpse of the warmth and compassion of God. In Genesis 6 we read of God’s broken heart over his wayward people. “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:5-6). The grief and hurt which God experiences over his rebellious creation is a common theme of the Old Testament. It is a sign of a God who is deeply in love with mankind. Such a conception is quite foreign to the Koran ...

The truth is, God always has been madly in love with us, and his heart breaks when we reject that love. This is not how the Koran depicts Allah ...

Thus the attempt to say we all worship the same God, and the attempt to find a lowest common denominator amongst the various world religions, simply results in a truncated and diluted Christian faith.. And it more often than not is just an attempt to appease Muslims anyway. But why should Christians water down their faith to keep Muslims happy?

Two recent columns pick up this theme, following on from the piece I recently wrote about the Dutch Bishop who said Christians should call God Allah. They offer some insightful, if humorous, comments about the logical outcome of such a move.

Doug Giles asks, why stop here? Why not compromise other key beliefs and practices, in order to not offend Muslims? He offers this list for starters:

“-Start calling our churches mosques.
-We could call Jesus ‘Slappy White’ because Slappy was a beautiful person, a great jazz guitarist - and he made some tasty BBQ ribs.
-Yank the steeples off the roofs of our churches and replace them with gold domes.
-Start circumcising our young girls.
-Start hating Israel.
-Start hating America.
-Grow long beards.
-Replace Easter with Ramadan.”

Kathleen Parker also has some concerns about the Bishop’s remarks: “The Doxology of my Protestant childhood is problematic with the two-syllable Allah instead of the monosyllabic God, but not impossible: Praise Allah, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Not perfect, but workable. America’s familiar childhood blessing is downright euphonious: Allah is great, Allah is good, let us thank him for our food. But the Apostle’s Creed is a mess: I believe in Allah the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son … . Oops.” ...

n a secular postmodern culture, even fellow believers are getting pretty weak-kneed and simple-minded when it comes to the vitally important distinctives of the Christian faith. Now is not the time to abandon Biblical absolutes, but to hold them even more tightly.