Tag Archives: religion

Mocking Muhammad Vs. Mocking Christ – A Deep Difference

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The headlines are full of the violent reprisals of the defenders of Muhammad.

David Mathis asks, “what, then, does it mean when Muhammad’s followers begrudge him the kinds of mockery Jesus embraced, and taught his followers to likewise embrace?“

In a briefly and timely article, which gleans from the wisdom of John Piper’s writings, Mathis reminds us of a deep — and beautiful — difference between Jesus and Muhammad: Jesus definitely intended to be mocked, humiliated — and killed.

Jesus is unique. And Christians believe there is a divine beauty in the mocking that he willingly subjects himself to by becoming man — because it’s a mocking and reviling and bruising and dying that is for us and for our salvation.

There is also significance to our (non-violent) response when our Savior is despised: “Jesus’s uniqueness and beauty is on display if his followers respond with grace when he is reviled.”

Read the whole thing at the Desiring God blog.

Your spiritual default mode

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Tim Keller has written a profound and insightful book, THE PRODIGAL GOD. Near the end he makes this observation [emphasis added]…

Religion operates on the principles of “I obey — therefore i am accepted by God.” The basic operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus Christ — therefore I obey.” As we have seen, believing the gospel is how a person first makes a connection to God. It gives us a new relationship with God and a new identity. We must not think, however, that once believing it, the Christian is now finished with the gospel message. A fundamental insight of Martin Luther’s was that “religion” is the default mode of the human heart. Your computer operates automatically in a default mode unless you deliberately tell it to do something else. So Luther says that even after you are converted by the gospel your heart will go back to operating on other principles unless you deliberately, repeatedly set it to gospel-mode. [pp. 114-115]