There is a debate among evangelicals as to whether Christians should fast with Muslims during Ramadan. At Christianity Today Ruth Moon asked 10 church leaders to comment on the debate, and their different responses are…not sure what word to use here…unbelievable? I’m still looking for the right word. Several said it was fine as long as it was done appropriately, but Doug Wilson, in his typical style, gets to the heart of the issue:
“It is not appropriate to fast alongside Muslims. I wouldn’t make a point, if I were in a heavily Muslim state where everybody is fasting during the day, of fixing a hot dog and walking outside and eating it … but to observe Ramadan along with your Muslim neighbors and friends, letting them know that you’re observing Ramadan as an act of some sort of religious or spiritual solidarity, is simply a fundamental compromise. They’re observing Ramadan in the service of a false God and a false gospel, and we shouldn’t be trying to express our solidarity with that.”
You know, there is nothing like putting a matter in perspective. Some things that we come up with in the American church just wouldn’t go over very well in the Middle East, or for that matter, when you are surrounded by those who worship Baal, or those who burn incense to Caesar.
October 28th, 2009 | 7:57 am | #1
Seems like Paul’s words on meat offered to idols would be helpful. 1 Cor 10:15-22, perhaps.
October 28th, 2009 | 9:22 am | #2
I don’t get why it’s even a question; it’s an act of worship to a false god.
Paul didn’t offer a sacrifice to “the unknown god,” but neither did he smash down the altar. He instead explained to the Athenians who that “unknown god” is.
Perhaps Matt 6:16-18 would also be relevant?
October 28th, 2009 | 9:38 am | #3
I’m not sure I’d support observing Ramadan with Muslims, but I certainly take issue with the claim that Muslims worship a false god. I’ve written about this issue before (see here). But here are some reasons.
There’s no question that Muslims believe a lot of false things about God and engage in false religious practices, but they believe these false things about the God of Abraham. Their terms referring to God happen to be in a different language (e.g. they use ‘Allah’, which is the Arabic word for God), but that doesn’t magically make it refer to a different being. If I start calling President Obama “Baruch” and then start spreading a bunch of false rumors about him, would we say that I’m talking about someone else, or would we just accuse me of saying false things about him while using a different name for him?
This is much more like the case of the Samaritans than it is like the pagan nations around Israel who worshiped idols. Keep in mind how Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman. He didn’t pretend she was worshiping God properly (he contrasted what she did with worshiping in spirit and truth, and he called her on her sinful behavior), but he also didn’t tell her she was worshiping a false god, even though her people denied large parts of the Bible, with almost no notion of a coming Messiah, and her people used a severely edited version even of the Pentateuch.
October 28th, 2009 | 10:10 am | #4
Is the God of Abraham the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
October 28th, 2009 | 10:29 am | #5
@ Jeremy,
That’s a fair enough comment. But I think the difference with the Samaritan woman is that Jesus came to her understand what she did not yet know (Jn 4:22), whereas Islam is founded on an explicit rejection of Christ as Lord, savior, and mediator.
I also meant “false god” broadly in the sense that all worship not centered on Christ involves idolatry at some point. A god who can be approached apart from Christ is a false god, even if you call him YHWH.
October 28th, 2009 | 10:57 am | #6
Jeff,
Yes. It seems like “If you reject me, you reject the One who sent me” comes into play here.
The Muslim rejection of Jesus as the Christ would then necessitate their rejection of YHWH, making Allah (which isn’t only their word for god but is also his proper name), a false god.
October 28th, 2009 | 12:19 pm | #7
As many in here probably know, Brian McLaren did just that and blogged about it. He even calls Muslims his “brothers and sisters”. McLaren denies the existence of Hell and maybe even the exclusiveness of salvation through Christ alone. This is a dangerous thing to do. Muslims kill Christians all over the world, there are honor killings here in America on a regular basis. Even Rick Warren is “fellowshipping” with Muslims and partaking on a global ethic of good works with them.
How about preaching the Gospel to them instead of lying to them about there eternal state?
October 28th, 2009 | 9:56 pm | #8
James: The answer is yes. I don’t see how that’s relevant, though. Obviously Muslims do deny that, but I already said they say all sorts of false things about God. So do Jews. Does Paul ever say that Jews are worshiping a false god simply because they deny that Christ is from God? He seems to treat them as if they just haven’t recognized all that’s true about God.
Jeff and Daryl: If all you mean by “false god” is that they aren’t worshiping God properly (and thus their religion is false), then I have no problem with that, but I do think that way of putting it is misleading. It could be just as misleading to say as President Bush did that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. I would prefer to speak more precisely than either of those. But I think Bush’s statement is literally true, and the statement that Muslims worship a false god is literally false, even if what some people mean by it is true enough.
Todd: McLaren does a lot of things that I wouldn’t approve of. Rick Warren isn’t in the same category because he happens to work with them in doing good works. I’ve never seen any legitimate evidence that Warren compromises on the gospel itself, despite lots of slanderous claims that I’ve seen that he does. All it’s taken is a little fact-checking on my part to figure that out.
October 28th, 2009 | 10:20 pm | #9
I’m uncertain what Ramadan is about, and can’t comment on how compatable it is with Christianity (I’m guessing not very), but why wouldn’t Christians first try fasting with Arab Christians?
October 29th, 2009 | 11:11 am | #10
I wrote recently about McLaren’s Ramadan fast, and it’s broader implications on Interspirituality within the church. It’s sparked a pretty interesting discussion.
http://honeyandlocusts.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/discerning-the-doctrines-interspirituality-pt-i/
October 29th, 2009 | 12:22 pm | #11
Jeremy,
I get what you’re saying, but my concern is this: saying, “They worship God in error” leads one to think that it’s simply a debate over worship, not an issue of theology or saving knowledge of God.
No one worships God in perfect truth or knowledge. But there’s an important distinction between our worship of Christ being a mixture of truth and error, and not worshiping Christ at all.
My concern with saying Jews, Muslims, and Christians worship the same God is that it muddies what ought to be a clear line of demarcation — not because of worship practices, but because in not having the Son, they do not have the Father (Jn 5:23; 1 Jn 2:23).
Just curious — how does John 5:23 fit into your argument?
“He who does not (honor, revere, respect) the Son does not (honor, revere, respect) the Father”
November 10th, 2009 | 12:01 pm | #12
John 5:23 fits nicely with what I’m saying, since I’m saying that their worship doesn’t honor God.
Where I can’t go is as far as saying that there’s no sense in which they worship God. II Kings 17 insists on saying the syncretistic worshipers of Yahweh and other gods in the resettled northern kingdom were both (1) worshiping Yahweh and (2) not truly worshiping him. Their idolatary meant their worship of him was not genuine, and thus their worship was not truly worship of him. But the fact that they deliberately intended to be calling on the name of the god of the region they were inhabiting means that it was him that they were failing to worship properly.
The Bible itself uses this very language, so we should be willing to use it as well. If you can’t allow for both senses, then the passage is contradictory in saying that they both feared Yahweh and that they didn’t fear Yahweh.
November 17th, 2009 | 2:56 pm | #13
[responding to article, not to comments] As Christians we have our own fasts–both set fasts (Lent), and secret fasts such as Jesus commanded. If an inquiring Muslim is questioning the verity of Christian spirituality, why not simply point out to him that Christians also fast in our own way, with much integrity? Instead of simply copying the custom of society or another culture for the sake of “solidarity,” which is a political consideration not a spiritual one.
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