Comfortable, but Not Very Helpful

Ancient is the temptation to attempt to make God in our own image, rather than to content ourselves with our being made in His. In light of that fact, Elton John's declaration that "Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man" is neither original nor surprising, heretical as it is (see here). It is the quintessence of self-worship and self-absorption to take sentences that one might well have written about oneself, swap out one's own name for the name of God, and feel very comfortable with all that we share in common with our favorite deity.

Of course, the real Jesus—the Jesus who actually lived in Judea 2,000 years ago and whose life is recorded in the gospels—must make Mr. John quite uncomfortable. He makes me uncomfortable. If He doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you're either not reading the New Testament or you're not reading it seriously.

And yet, no matter how much Mr. John may derive greater enjoyment from a Jesus of his own making, the remainder of Parade Magazine's interview with him shows clearly how much he needs an encounter with the real Jesus.

He needs the real Jesus because in spite of every conceivable advantage in his life, he's found nothing but heartache. His homosexual profligacy didn't satisfy him:

I'd always choose someone younger. I wanted to smother them with love. I'd take them around the world, try to educate them. One after another they got a Cartier watch, a Versace outfit, maybe a sports car. They didn't have jobs. They were reliant on me. I did this repeatedly. In six months they were bored and hated my guts because I'd taken their lives and self-worth away. I hadn't intended to.

Along with sexual perversion came chemical addictions, which also consumed his soul and left him with nothing:

Just about every relationship I ever had was involved with drugs. It never works. But I always had to be with someone, good or bad, otherwise I didn't feel fulfilled. I'd lost the plot.

. . . . . . . .

For some people a gram of cocaine can last a month. Not me. I have to do the lot, and then I want more. At the end of the day, all it led to was heartache

Underneath and around these perversions and addictions—leading to them and growing out of them—Elton John slumps under the burden of his own guilt. He has chosen the old path of seeing whether he can accrue enough good works to make his own atonement for his sins:

I set up my foundation because I wanted to make amends for the years I was a drug addict.

How much money will it take? How many good works? Who gets to read the scales?

I'm so thankful for Emir and Ergun Caner. We've seen two Muslims profess faith in Jesus Christ here at this little rural Texas church thanks to the witness and pastoral advice of Emir Caner. They are so right when they tell us about the brutality of the scales versus the beauty of God's grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But this message of grace is not a message for Muslims alone. The world is full of Elton Johns, toting around counterfeit Jesuses, all very comfortable to them, but no help at all. And all the while, "Jesus , the Mighty to Save" is not far away at all, and is their only hope.

Ignored Honor Killings

I have very little to add to this excellent bit of analysis other than to extend my deepest sympathies to those family members who give a rip about Noor Amaleki. This, of course, will not be classified as a "hate crime," since it is an accepted dogma in the United States of America that only conservative Christians are capable of hate. This, on the other hand, is mere multiculturalism.

And I'm sure that somehow, someway, Israel and George W. Bush are at fault.

On the Christian Use of the Name "Allah"

One small facet of the discussions in the past year over deceptive or syncretistic approaches to Moslem evangelism has dealt with the use of the name "Allah" to refer not to the false god worshipped by Moslems but to the One True God who has revealed Himself in the Bible. Many have demonstrated that, in Arabic, no other good word exists by which to refer to God, and that Arabic Christians have long employed the name "Allah" to refer to the True God.

I have repeatedly stated that I have no problem with the employ of the name "Allah" in those contexts, so long as differentiation is clearly made to ensure that the hearer knows that we as Christians reject the false Islamic deity promoted by the false prophet Mohammed in the false scripture the Qur'an. We are sometimes led to believe that, of course, this is always done and that nobody anywhere would ever conceive of trying to blur the lines of distinction in order to bait-and-switch potential Moslem converts.

But, as I have given the matter more thought, I find that I have a question nagging me. I can see why, in an Arabic-speaking place like Saudi Arabia, missionaries might have few good choices other than to employ the Arabic name "Allah" when speaking of the Christian God. But a great deal of Moslem evangelization takes place in areas other than Arabic-speaking countries. In fact the book The Camel itself reminds us that not only is Arabic not the first language of many Moslems, but that an innumerable population of Moslems don't even speak Arabic at all.

So, in a non-Arabic-speaking population that has no linguistic limitation requiring the use of the Arabic name "Allah"—populations in which the word "Allah" is no less a loan-word from another language than the English word "God" would be—what good reason, other than trying to confuse Moslems and blur the distinctions between the Christian God and the Moslem god, would there be for bypassing the "heart-language" words available to describe God in favor of the foreign word "Allah"?

Mark Dever on Allah and Yahweh

A Book for Your Consideration

I hear good things about Sam Schlorff's recent work entitled Missiological Models in Ministry to Muslims. I plan to obtain a copy for review and for my own edification. I also recommend the book to my readership.

It isn't exactly on Amazon, but you can find ordering information here. A review of the book in the January 2008 volume of the journal Missiology will probably pique your interest, if you have a copy handy to you. The book itself is under $20 plus S&H. I'll host a conversation after I've read it, so if you read it too, we'll all have an informed dialogue.