Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Waging Peace on Islam Part 2
I just returned from an excellent lecture at Milligan College regarding Islam and Christianity. Paul-Gordon Chandler spoke for about 90 minutes then answered questions. He is an Episcopal priest in Egypt. He spoke about Muslim followers of Christ. These are folks who remain Muslim yet follow the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. He greatly impressed me with his appreciation and understanding of the Muslim faith and the connections we can make. All of his books were sold out so I will have to pick one up. I recommend it highly. Here is his web page.
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That guy is pretty cool - seems like a decent read - and I really enjoy that author's call for peace (awesome)!
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading “Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road.” The life of Mazhar Mallouhi is a living example of how a personal relationship with Christ leads one to a life dedicated to doing God’s will and can transform a person into beacon of God's love and compassion. It is a witness of the true church—the invisible spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood of the family of God—which fosters spiritual unity between all faith born sons and daughters of God (Muslim, Christian or otherwise) regardless of their religion, creed, or race, opposed to the man made church of dogma and doctrines that in the name of uniformity persecutes the very Spirit of Truth and looks at times with disdain upon God’s children and the works of the Spirit because they don’t conform to their expected dogmatic uniformities—creeds, doctrines, and dogmas.
ReplyDeleteWhile some Christians erect creedal barriers to entering the religions of authority—the visible church of human origin—those who have experienced the faith union with the living Jesus are bearing the fruits of unity and building the invisible spiritual brotherhood of the Kingdom of God.
“Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one of its own slogans: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The non-Christian world will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. The living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church--the Jesus brotherhood--is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized by unity, not necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the earmark of the physical world of mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should refuse longer to handicap the progress of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them.”
“The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus' brotherhood of the kingdom should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh.”