Psalm 100 (NKJV)

A Psalm of Thanksgiving.
¹ Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands!
²Serve the LORD with gladness;
Come before His presence with singing.
³Know that the LORD, He is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

⁴Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
⁵For the LORD is good;
His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.

Daniel Pipes argues that "if militant Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution…." He then goes on to offer specific questions to identify moderate Muslims. Some of his suggested questions:

• May Muslims convert to other religions?
• When Islamic customs conflict with secular laws (e.g., covering the face for drivers’ license pictures), which should give way?
• Do you see Muslims who disagree with you as having fallen into unbelief?
• Do you accept that Western countries are majority-Christian and secular or do you seek to transform them into majority-Muslim countries ruled by Islamic law?

Notice that these questions all at their heart are asking, "Do you really believe the Koran to be true?"

In Christianity, we have a name for people who don’t believe the Bible means what it says: Liberals. Those who say the Bible means what it says, and our lives should be governed by Scripture are called Conservatives or Evangelicals. In Pipes definition, the Islamic Moderate equates to the Christian Liberal, and the Militant Islamic equates to the Conservative Christian.

Doesn’t it say something that the people who believe the Koran are the ones who are militant, and the ones who don’t believe it are peaceful? Why do people keep telling us that Islam is a "Religion of Peace"?

While in London, President George Bush was asked if Muslims worship the same God as Christians. He responded:

"I do say that freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every person. I also condition it by saying freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It’s much greater than that, of course. And I believe we worship the same god."

Is the President correct? According to the Washington Post, Richard D. Land, an official in the Southern Baptist Church, released this statement:

"We should always remember that he [President Bush] is commander in chief, not theologian in chief," Land said in a telephone interview yesterday. "The Bible is clear on this: The one and true god is Jehovah, and his only begotten son is Jesus Christ."

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal disagrees. He says that since Jews, Muslims, and Christians are all monotheists, they all believe that there is only one God. They disagree on the specifics when describing the one God, but "it makes no logical sense to describe a fellow monotheist as worshipping a ‘different’ God."

Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times agrees with Taranto. "Since Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all monotheistic religions, worshipping a single God, Mr. Bush was both theologically (and politically) correct."

Taranto and Pruden have a point. Technically, Jews, Muslims, and Christians agree that there is one God. But Taranto and Pruden miss how big the disagreement is between these religions. They all describe God in different and sometimes contradictory ways. Salvation is provided for us in different ways. They can not all be correct. They could all be wrong. But no more than one of them can be right.

The differences between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are not reconcilable. They are so divergent that I would argue they do not worship the same God. As a Christian, I firmly believe the Christian understanding of God, as gleaned from Scripture, is the correct understanding of who God is. And the teachings of Islam and Judaism are so far removed from God’s self revelation in Scripture as to be descriptions of a deity of man’s invention. As Calvin says in the Instututes of Christian Religion, we are idol factories, inventing our own gods to worship. Jews and Muslims are not worshiping the true God, but rather some other god. They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. We do not worship the same God.

Romans 1:18-32

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

It is very clear what President Bush was doing. As Pruden pointed out, he was giving the correct political answer. I understand the logic behind saying his answer was correct theologically. No one wants to offend Muslims or Jews. But whether or not he realizes it, President Bush denied the truth to be politically correct.

Question: What are the first words spoken by Lord Peter Wimsey in his literary life?

I remember the question from Trivial Pursuits. I don’t recall if I got the answer right or not. I would guess that I did not. Back when we played Trivial Pursuits, I was reading the Dorothy Sayers mystery novels, so it is possible that I did know the answer. Whether or not I got it right, the question has stuck with me.

It has been years since I last read any of the Dorothy Sayers’ books. For some reason the other day I decided to pull out the first, Whose Body?, and read it again. And so I was struck by the answer to the Trivial Pursuit question.

Answer: "OH, DAMN!"

Thus begins Whose Body? and thus begins the literary life of Lord Peter. I never thought much about it before I ran across the Trivial Pursuits question, but it is a somewhat odd way to begin a novel. I guess one of the tricks to being a successful novelist is to come up with a clever way to begin.

What I am struck by in reading the book again is how many times Sayers has someone commenting on how they are not in detective novel.

"Of course, if this were a detective story, there’d have been a convenient shower exactly an hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints in Niagara."

It somehow seems amateurish for her to point out how her detective story is "real life" rather than a detective story. And after doing it once, you would think she would have refrained from bringing it up again. (And again. And again.)

But that is a minor criticism. And I might add, I realize how silly it is for me to comment on how Dorothy Sayers could improve her writing. It is like Mike Tyson lecturing Larry King on how to enounciate clearly. I realize I never have and most likely never will write anything as well as Dorothy Sayers has done.

I’m enjoying reading the book again. I find that I remember some things from it, but I have forgotten most of it. So in some ways it is an old friend and in others it is a new one.

My memory of reading the series of books was that Sayers got better as she wrote them. Her later books have better developed characters, particularly after she introduces Harriet Vain. But it is always best to go back to the beginning when you want to start again. And so, "OH, DAMN!" is where you start.

I remember back twenty years ago, our family used to go to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving day. We started in the pre-Mario days and quit in the early Mario days. The Penguins were awful, but that was ok. We weren’t really Penguin fans, and so we just went to enjoy the hockey. But slowly the price of the seats started to get more and more, and eventually, we stopped going. I think what was the kicker was the last game we tried to attend turned out to be sold out. That had never happened to us before, and it had never occurred to us that a game might ever sell out in Pittsburgh. One of the benefits of going to see the Penguins when they were terrible was that few other people wanted to attend. So I haven’t been to a NHL game in years.

Last Saturday Montreal played Edmonton in the first ever outdoor NHL game. The temperature was listed at -19C at the end of the second period. That works out to be around zero degrees in American. So it was pretty cold. And they charged $100 per seat. Of course that was Canadian dollars, so it isn’t as bad as it sounds at first, but that still is more than the cost of a CD or a DVD. Despite all this discouragement, sixty thousand people showed up!

I’ll bet the Penguins are wishing it would get that cold here in Pittsburgh so they can have sixty thousand people come see them play at Heinz Field. But unfortunately for them, I wouldn’t attend. I’d buy the CD or DVD. More likely both.

I really appreciate reading Victor David Hanson. He has a way of turning a phrase that I enjoy. Here is an example of what I mean from his latest column.

[T]he military must finish the destruction of enemy forces in the unforgiving minute [of combat]. After all, a colonel who blows apart an Iraqi Baathist in April might win a medal, but if in October he shoots a round off near a terrorist suspect’s head to save the lives of his men, he can expect a court martial.

Much like reading G.K. Chesterton, I don’t always understand what the point is, but I love the way it is worded.

We all must start somewhere, and so we begin here.