Calendar

08/25/2014

Thoughts

Some horrific things are happening in the news in 2014. People are being slaughtered in Syria and Iraq just because they are not Muslims. Some of the recorded videos of the slaughter are extremely violent and terrifying. (Who would think that the description of heads being cut off in the book of Revelations would be relevant in this day and age of lasers, nuclear bombs and the advanced technological warfare. But Revelations is accurate.)

What type of person is able to kill with conviction? It's either a person that is psychologically ill or a person that is convicted of their worldview. There are only a few worldviews that have absolutes as their foundation, These worldviews are Christianity, Islam and the Jews. Each of these believe that there is absolute truth. Amazingly each of them are established by the same person. All can claim Abraham as the patriarch of their religion. The Jews and Christians hold the same lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all the way through the person of Jesus. Christians believe Jesus is the Messiah that came into the world to reveal God, while the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah to come. Muslims have a different lineage as they hold that Abraham was the father of Ishmael from whom Mohammad descended.

Christianity is different from Islam and Judaism in that without the specific acts of Jesus in the history of time, they don't have a foundation to build upon. Islam and Judaism are a set of teachings that could have been taught by any person deemed holy enough. It is not the person per se that makes the difference in the teaching but it is the message in the teaching that is important. This is why history and archaeology is very important to Christians.

So here we are in 2014 with three worldviews that claim absolutes. These three will war until the end of the world.

Unlike Islamic thought, Christians are more likely to die for their faith than to kill for it.

(As I review this daily thought a year after writing it, it is skewed in that I suggest only a few worldviews have absolutes when all word-views have absolutes. Some world-views know they have them, others claim they don't. Just the phrase, 'there are no absolutes' is an absolute! The phrase 'there is no God' is an absolute.)