Over the years some men have always been at the forefront of advocating fellowship with error. In the 60s the leaders of apostasy were W. Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett. They were joined in the 70s by Mission Magazine. In the 80s Rubel Shelly defected to the ranks of those who desired to fellowship denominations, and the Joplin Unity Meeting went along for the ride. Many of the Christian colleges climbed on board, and sailed on Max Lucado’s Fellowship. Who would have thought having all this loose fellowship with unauthorized religious denominations would eventually result in seeking out Muslims?
On Saturday, September 19, 2009, the Orlando Sentinel published just such an account: “Some Christians Join Muslims in Fasting during Ramadan” (all quotes are from page A13). What kind of pinheads would do such a thing? Try to keep your teeth in your mouth: the answer is Ben Ries of the Sterling Drive Church of Christ in Bellingham, Washington. No, this is not a joke; neither is the truth particularly funny, either.
According to the Associated Press article by Eric Gorski, the “pastor” of the Sterling Drive Church of Christ sought out local Muslims to join with them in their Ramadan observance. He fasts by day and meets with them in the evening “to find fellowship and break the fast with a handful of dates and a welcome glass of water.” This nightly meeting has opened his eyes “to their graciousness and hospitality.”
Ries said that he was questioned by members “of his flock.” One can only pray that someone in this ”church” might be better spiritually informed than this man is. The first question should have been: “What are you thinking?” The second one should be: “When are you going to repent and quit such a practice?” Can anyone honestly imagine Jesus participating in any religious practice begun by a false prophet? Anyone who actually can has not been reading the New Testament.
Jude, the Lord’s brother, advised brethren to contend for the faith, not compromise the faith (v. 3). Paul marked false teachers and encouraged brethren to do the same (Rom. 16:17-18). The chief priests, elders, and scribes crucified Jesus because He admitted to being the Son of God. Muhammad could have participated in that action because he denied the Deity of Jesus, also. The Qur’an records:
…Christians say, “The Messiah is a Son of God.” Such the sayings of their mouths! They resemble the sayings of the infidels of old! God do battle with them! How they are misguided! They take their teachers, and their monks, and the Messiah, the son of Mary, for Lords beside God, though bidden to worship one God only. There is no God but He! (Sura 9:30-31).
Despite these facts, Ries protests:
There is no violation of my own faith in this. The concern is that somehow, I’m endorsing this other path. But I tell people I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe he is the way, the truth, and the life. But I believe I don’t get to say who goes to hell and who doesn’t. That’s God’s job.
Such “brilliance” is rarely seen today—fortunately. This verbal gibberish probably does not merit analysis, but it is going to receive some. Ries may not be violating his faith, but he is trampling all over the faith. He might profit from reading again 2 Corinthians 6:14-15, since it has apparently been awhile.
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?
To be sure, Paul has in mind specifically not fellowshipping with idols (v. 16), but the principles remain applicable regardless of what the error (the darkness) is. Muslims do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. As such, they will be lost. Jesus said: “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). Not only do Muslims reject Jesus as the Son of God, Muhammad condemned such a view and wrote, “God do battle with them!”
How can believers have spiritual fellowship with unbelievers? If Ries reads the Qur’an long enough, he may stumble across these words of Muhammad: O believers! Take not Jews or Christians as friends” (Sura 5:56). Does this statement seem ambiguous? Will learned theologians be required to decipher the mystical meaning of this verse? How about if we “lay” people make an attempt to explain it?
First, since Muhammad was addressing his own people, by believers he must mean his followers, Muslims. Second, two groups of people are not to be taken as friends; a friendship relationship is not to be developed with these two classifications of individuals. The third fact is that those two groups are Jews and Christians. Jews are those who follow (at least to some extent) the Old Testament, the Law of Moses, and reject the New Testament, the gospel of Christ. Christians do follow the New Testament, the gospel of Christ.
Ries says that he believes that Jesus is the way; so if the Muslims he has been celebrating Ramadan with know he is a Christian, a problem exists. Either they do not know what Muhammad taught, or they are ignoring their prophet. (A third option is that they cannot figure Ries out and are just flabbergasted.) It is unlikely that they do not know what Muhammad wrote. Do they disagree with the Qur’an, their holy book? If they disagree in one point, they must deny all of it, and such a thing is most unlikely. Is it possible that they have assumed a friendly posture until such time as they gain control of the nation? Look at how friendly they are to Jews and Christians in nations where they exercise control. Hmm.
Concerning the remarks about getting to say who goes to heaven or hell, such explanations are evasive. The Lord explained Himself clearly, as John 8:24 made known. Those who reject Christ will be lost. Such is not our judgment, but that of Jesus. No man comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). Neither Jews nor Muslims are exceptions. We need not sit around and wonder if these people are lost; they are. To indicate that we will not be their judge is superfluous. We all know God’s determination in the matter.
We do not, however, have any animosity toward them or anyone else. God loves them; Jesus died for their sins, also (1 John 2:2), and our prayer is that they might be saved. We can also be genuine friends with them, but that does not include participating in their worship or fellowshipping error.
The “Emerging” or “Emergent” Church
The same article ties Ben Ries to Brian McLaren, a leader in the Emergent Church movement. According to Gorski, “Ries is among a small group of Christians who’ve joined well-known evangelical author and speaker Brian McLaren….” What this sentence tells us is that Ries was already drawing water from the wells of compromise before following McLaren in his “reaching out” to Muslims.
McLaren says of his Christian-Muslim fast fiasco that “it’s a neighborly gesture of solidarity that deepens their respective faiths and sends a message about finding peace and common ground.” Behold, the Ted Jason of religion! (To understand this allusion, read Allen Drury’s Come Nineveh! Come Tyre!) Being neighborly is always a Christian attribute, but Christianity and Islam cannot possess solidarity. Peace would be wonderful if Muslims would be content to fight with ideas and words rather than terrorism and bombs. The only common ground that exists among Jews, Christians, and Muslims is that we all believe in Jehovah. After acknowledging that common belief, we all depart in different directions.
Who is McLaren? He is described as “the godfather” of “a looseknit movement that seeks to recover ancient Christian worship practices and, in some cases, question traditional evangelical theology.” This is a bit of an understatement. According to the Wikipedia, McLaren has said: “I believe people are saved not by objective truth, but by Jesus. Their faith isn’t in their knowledge, but in God.” This statement is misleading at best.
First, he arranges a false dichotomy—that salvation must come either by objective truth or by Jesus. He may have graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland (with a B.A. in English) in 1978, but in theology he cannot receive passing marks. Does Jesus save people? Yes. One wonders why he did not say, “saved from their sins.” Does he believe in sin, and if not, what does Jesus save from?
But is man not also saved by objective truth? The Scriptures answer, “Yes!” Jesus told Pilate that He came into the world to bear witness of the truth (John 18:37). He prayed that the Father would sanctify His apostles through the truth, adding, “Your Word is truth” (John 17:17). Is it possible that McLaren is unfamiliar with one of the most often-quoted verses in the Bible?
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32).
The Lord thought objective truth was important and that it played a part in setting us free from sin. Since the objective truth is also the Word of God, McLaren ought to be reminded of James’ plea that brethren “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save their souls” (1:21). God has a few times revealed Himself personally, as at the burning bush, but both then and at other times He has always used the medium of words. When Moses bowed in His presence at the burning bush, God did not just “radiate” His will to him. He spoke words and reasoned with this shepherd of 40 years.
When Jesus was with His disciples, He taught them with words; He did not tell them to just sit around, meditate, and try to pick up His thoughts through telepathy. Nor when He taught them did He say, “You are free to decide personally what ‘love one another’ means to you.” Commands and teachings are objective in nature; to insist otherwise is merely an attempt to obfuscate the genuine meaning of a text. Just because there may be a few texts that are ambiguous to us does not mean that they were obscure to the apostles or that no one can understand them.
When God prohibited the use of molten or graven images, for example, some “emergent” souls among the Israelites undoubtedly said, “To some people, that prohibition probably excludes most images, but we think that a golden calf, under our definition of truth, is not included. Therefore, we think that, according to our subjective truth and understanding (and, remember, no one has the right to judge us), a golden calf to represent God would be acceptable.” The results of that experiment are well-known. The purpose for the “emergent” church is for men to make religion into whatever they want.
When McLaren says their faith is not in their knowledge but in their God, he presents another false choice. Our faith in God comes from the knowledge concerning Himself that He has given us; how else would we get it—through osmosis, or contemplating our navels? For anyone to argue that we understand God subjectively, intuitively, or through “feeling” or sensing Him runs contrary to the whole tenor of the Bible. If God were going to communicate to people in that way, He would have had no need to inspire the Bible. The fact that we have the Bible proves that He chose to communicate with us in a way that involves knowledge. Our faith is built on the knowledge that we have. In fact, John says He recorded the miracles of Jesus so that we would have the proper evidence we need to believe (John 20:30-31).
According to the Wikipedia, McLaren also said the following gobbledegook:
I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts…rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … (A Generous Orthodoxy 260, 262).
What do these words mean? If we were all postmodernists, as McLaren is, they could mean anything we wanted them to, but since our approach is to discern the meaning intended (instead of making up the meaning desired), our interpretation is that he thinks people can be “Christians” and still remain Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish. He further seems to be saying that we should not pronounce judgments against those who are in religions other than ours. This faulty notion was dealt with earlier. The “paradox” does not revolve around what we think but about what God declared. None of us might know how McLaren “interprets” John 14:6, but we all know what God meant by it.
“Emerging” Morality
Not only does objective truth not exist in the “emergent” church, neither does objective morality. The Bible is clear, for example, concerning its teaching on homosexuality (Gen. 19:4-5; Lev. 20:13; Rom. 1:26, Jude 6, et al.), but such is not the case for the godfather McLaren. Once again he is quoted on the Wikipedia Website:
If we think that there may actually be a legitimate context for some homosexual relationships, we know that the biblical arguments are ((nuanced)) and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex. We aren’t sure if or where lines are to be drawn, nor do we know how to enforce with fairness whatever lines are drawn.
Does anybody understand this sidestepping effort? The Biblical arguments are ((nuanced))? How much of a nuance can be made out of calling homosexuality a vile passion and “against nature”? Is there something about the adjective vile that makes people think that the practice is probably acceptable? Where are these multi-layered arguments in the Bible?
God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for the practice (Gen. 19:4-5), Moses commanded two homosexual males to be put to death, Paul was already cited, and Jude said that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah serves as an example. Their “suffering of the vengeance of eternal fire” shows what happens to those who have given themselves over to sexual immorality and going after strange flesh (v. 6). In place of nuances and multilayered, Biblical arguments, we see straightforward language. If we understand language at all, we know that God considers homosexuality an abomination; the matter is simply not complicated.
All that postmodernism does is to lamely attempt to undo the obvious force of language in an effort to undermine the Word of God. At the very least, it tries to make doctrine subservient to personal experience and subjective thinking. It fails because no one can argue in its favor except by the use of words (which are allegedly) subject to interpretation. Its ultimate destination is to accept everyone else’s beliefs as equal to the truth by denying objective truth in the first place. Then it seeks to eradicate moral principles on the same basis. The Bible warns against putting darkness for light (Isa. 5:20).