God versus God

Sightings

by Martin Marty | March 8, 2010

We are in for another intense round of “God vs. God,” “Our God vs. Their God,” “Good God vs. Bad God=Devil.”  The current round comes from many readers of Mosab Hassan Yousef’s new Son of Hamas, which reads like a spy novel and whose “gripping” plot needs no publicity from me.  Yousef is becoming almost unavoidable in and on the media.  The work of a son of a founder of Hamas and a top spy for Israel’s Shin Bet, whose espionage efforts and about-faces others can appraise, is interesting to Sightings for its content on a particular subject, the author’s preached view of “The Islamic God.”

Sean Hannity, who may not often be cited here as a mild one, was chastised by bloggers for being unaroused by Yousef’s theology.  The Fox TV host was even criticized by many for being “PC,” too politically correct to join in the attack on Allah when he interviewed Yousef on March 4th.  And attack there certainly was.  Yousef: “There are no moderate Muslims.”  “All Muslims are the same,” namely fanatics.  “They believe in a god of the Koran and they believe that this Koran is from that god.”  More: “The most criminal terrorist Muslim has more morality than their God,” contended Yousef; “Their god is a terrorist and ignorant.”

The March 5th Wall Street Journal featured a page-wide bold-print headline above its interview of Yousef by Matthew Kaminski: “THEY NEED TO BE LIBERATED FROM THEIR GOD.”  Killing can play its part, but, you guessed it, Yousef also relies on spiritual demolition for such liberation.  Yousef says his father is not a fanatic, but “he’s doing the will of a fanatic God…a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God.”  Governments “don’t want to admit this is an ideological war…The problem is not Muslims.  The problem is their God.  He is their biggest enemy.”

Yousef – again, you guessed it – is living in the U.S. as a convert to Christianity.  In his book and in interviews he says nice things about “the grace, love and humility that Jesus talked about.”  It did take courage for Yousef to become an apostate and break with Islam, his family, and the spy-world he served.  Henceforth?  Max Scheler wrote that an apostate “is engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past.”  There may be plenty against which to react, but one has to ask what good his demonizing of his neighbor’s God will do in the already mutually demonizing conflicts of our day.  What René Girard calls “the mimetic principle” is in action here and these days:  You say something about our God and they say something worse about ours, so we say something “worser” yet about theirs, in a constant escalation which can lead to neither security for us or a better (in our eyes) alternative for them.

“Them” Muslims find texts from a book that serves “us” as the Koran serves “them:” namely, the Bible.  Several titles on my shelf signal the riches available (see below). The warrior God was cited on all sides in World War I, for example, where Christian clergy and laity alike invoked this God on the side of Germany versus this God on the side of France and, with denominational variants, of England and the United States.  World War I is not the last time “we” read a scripture in which “our God” inspired us to do the worst.  Most citizens and soldiers may not have licensed atrocity and indiscriminate mass killing, but “our God” did not help the merciful show grace, love and humility,” and made post-war peacemaking more difficult.

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References:
Sample titles about the warrior God in the Bible include Yahweh is a Warrior, by Millard C. Lind; The Problem of War in the Old Testament by Peter C. Craigie; Holy War in Ancient Israel, by Gerhard von Rad; the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, by various authors.

Read the Wall Street Journal interview with Yousef:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103481069258868.html?KEYWORDS=yousef

Watch the Hannity interview at http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/son-of-hamas-top-dog-moderate-islam-does-not-exist.html

Martin E. Marty’s biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

, 03/08/2010. Category: Culture, Theological Rant.

The Economy’s Immoral and People are Angry, But then What?

Beliefnet often has or links to quality articles.  I found this article from the Religious News Service on Beliefnet.  It is an interesting perspective on the economy and what persons of faith, specifically Christians, might do or are considering in response to this recession/depression.  As one that moved with a companion to a new city because she had a good opportunity I can tell you that the economy is tough inside church borders as well as outside.  I’ve applied for retail, for temp work through a service, for work at a local children’s museum, for Christmas work with UPS, and have found service as a part-time interim minister for a congregation that is 83 miles from my home.  We are lucky.  Our only debt is our mortgage, a student loan, and a car payment.  We have some revolving credit, but not too much.  We have made it on one salary, but the move spent much of our reserves.   We are physically healthy.  We are middle class.  This summer we will move again.  Yes, an opportunity that for my companion you don’t turn down when it is offered.  We are lucky.  So, I am seeking service in a congregation, an area, or for a Region where I can put my youth ministry experience, within a congregation and Regional, to use.  I ramble.  It is hard for people, middle class to the working poor, right now.  It might even be hard for the wealthy right now, but at least they have more to sell or more that can be cut back and still be comfortable.  A few paragraphs from this RNS article and a link.

The Economy’s Immoral and People are Angry, But then What?
by Solange De Saints | Feb. 22, 2010

(RNS) Ever since the Great Recession began in the fall of 2008, Christians and other faith leaders have criticized the speculative excess and greed that led to the crisis.

A consensus on what to do about it, however, has yet to emerge.

The parameters of the critique were recently staked out at the Trinity Institute’s “Building an Ethical Economy” conference here, at Trinity Episcopal Church in the heart of Wall Street. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams bemoaned the damage that results from “an economic climate in which everything reduces to the search for maximized profit and unlimited material growth.”

Others say change has to come about at the level of individuals. Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners, a Washington-based Christian social justice group, says the necessary questions in the wake of failed banks and 10-percent unemployment are not “When will this economic crisis end?” but rather “How will it change us?”

Click here to read more.

, 02/23/2010. Category: Culture.
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