Jesus Is Lord And The Muslims

Those who knew the great Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones will remember that he seldom gave a presentation without at some point lifting three fingers in the air and proclaiming, “Jesus Is Lord.” E. Stanley Jones labored in India and was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi. He had many Hindu and Muslim friends. But he never compromised the gospel message of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

It is a central affirmation of Christian faith that someday, even as the Scriptures say, “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10). That is why we sing, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun…” and “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon the throne.”

It was precisely because this central truth was being compromised that the Confessing Movement was birthed in 1995 around the affirmation that Jesus Christ is “Son of God, Savior of the World, and Lord of all.”

In 2000 the General Conference was presented a petition asking that the church also affirm that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord. The conference would not do that until the statement was compromised so as to be without significance. According to Christian Social Action, the official organ of the General Board of Church and Society, the negative reaction to the petition was because to proclaim that Jesus is Savior and Lord implies that other world religions are not means of salvation.

Of course. That is exactly the point. An issue today between evangelicals and progressives is precisely over whether Jesus is Lord, or, to put it another way, whether Jesus Christ is only one truth among many, or whether Jesus Christ is The Truth, in whom someday all things will be united (Eph. 1:10). Religious “progressives” are those who believe God is revealing new truth. One of the new truths progressives would embrace is that Jesus is no longer Lord of all and to claim otherwise subjects us to charges of “exclusivism” and “triumphalism” and “intolerance” and is inconsistent with the kind of relativity that is key to the progressive understanding of things.

And so we have the embarrassment before the Christian world that a United Methodist seminary (Claremont in California) which receives nearly a million dollars a year of United Methodist church offering money, wants to train clergy in all religions and speaks of its belief that it is inappropriate to bring persons of other religions to Jesus Christ.

All of this has immediate relevance for today because many in the nation are reacting negatively to the proposed Muslim center in New York near the location of 9/11, as well as to increasing Muslim aggressiveness around the world.

In the progressive world to be concerned about Islam, or to criticize Muslim aggressiveness is a form of Islamophobia (fear of Islam), as well as prejudice and intolerance. A number of persons are repeating the mantra today that Islam is a peace-loving religion and that any trouble is from a few extremist terrorists. So progressives urge more dialog and interfaith services (worshipping what kind of god?) to prove that we can all get along if Christians and Muslims would just be more progressive.

To keep this in perspective some observations are in order.

1) Jesus Christ is Lord. There is no latter-day revelation that this proclamation has been misunderstood or is in some way superseded by new truth. Jesus is Lord is still a central Christian affirmation and most of us make that affirmation without apology.

2) Because Jesus Christ is Lord, we cannot assume that all religions are equally valid paths to God. A world apart from Christ is a lost world. That is what gives us the impetus for evangelism: witnessing to the good news that Christ died for our sins and that it is faith in Christ that reconciles us to God. We understand this to be what the United Methodist mission statement is about: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. The world will be transformed when all come under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

3) Because Christian faith is predicated on the intrinsic worth of every individual there can never be a place, at least from the Christian perspective, for any kind of violence, persecution, coercion, or disrespect for other religions or for those who disagree with us. We ought, for instance, not to be in the business of burning Korans. Muslims in our midst are neighbors and friends, even if they are not brothers and sisters. Unlike Islam, Christian ethics is an ethic of means rather than ends. That is, the end does not justify the means. The weapons in our battle are truth, righteousness, faith, peace. We take the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:14-18). The Christian message is: believe in the Lord Jesus Christ because….” The Muslim message too often is: give obedience to Allah or else….”

4) For the sake of truth and justice, we deplore the double standard in the world which judges the actions of Islam differently from the actions of Christians, and the actions of nations with a background of Christian values to nations with a background of Muslim values.

For example, there is presently before the United Nations Human Rights Council a resolution submitted by the 57 member states of the organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to condemn any advocacy of religious hate that constitutes incitement to hatred, discrimination, hostility or violence. Specifically the resolution asks the council to speak out against “the recent call by an extremist group” (in the United States) to organize a day to burn copies of the Koran.”

It might be pointed out that not a single one of the 57 states guarantees in its own political order freedom of religion, including the freedom to evangelize. In many of these states Christians have been martyred, churches burned, and Christian activities declared illegal. More Christians were martyred in the 20th century than all the previous centuries combined. Much of that was at the hand of Muslims. Therefore, a resolution by the United Nations singling out the United States for “religious hatred” is a violation of the kind of fairness that the United Nations, as well as all civil societies, claim to embrace.

Nations influenced by Christianity generally allow freedom of religion and freedom to evangelize. Muslim dominated nations do not. It is almost unheard of to identify “Christian” terrorists. Muslim terrorists are commonplace. When the U.S. government confiscated and burned Bibles in Afghanistan (because Afghanistan objected to even to the existence of Bibles), Christians did not riot. When there is a threat of a Koran burning in a Florida city, mobs take to the streets in various Muslim places throughout the world and people are killed. Mosques are not being burned in America or in Canada or in England. Churches are being burned regularly in Muslim lands. Bibles are confiscated in Muslim lands. Korans are very visible in America. The list goes on…and on…and on.

We want to listen to what Muslims say. We hear them say that Islam is a peace-loving religion. But we want words to be backed up with actions. If there are Muslim-dominated societies where Christians are treated as neighbors, where freedom of religion is exercised, where Islam is indeed a religion of peace, then we would like to know where they are.

In the meantime, Christians proclaim that Jesus is Lord, and it is our task to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.