Sorrow For Muslims

There are times when I am gripped with a profound sorrow for Muslims. It doesn't matter whether or not theirs is a religion of peace. The reality is that their religion is religion of a godless eternity.

Allah (which is, literally, simply the Arabic word for 'God' but I will use it for the Muslim understanding of God to differentiate from the God of the Bible) is eternal. But apparently, Allah is not omnipresent. The reason the Christian understanding of the nature of Jesus is blasphemous to Muslims is because Allah simply refuses to and is incapable to have anything to do with the material world. That Allah should draw near to a human being (let alone touch or - horror - take on human flesh) is to become contaminated.

Christians take tremendous comfort and even joy at the marvelous mystery that God not only thinks of human beings and desires to be with them but that he actually took on the complete human form and nature. Other than his divine nature, the only difference between Jesus and us is that he was pure, wholly without sin.

But the thing over which I grieve for my Muslim "cousins" is that their eternity is spent apart from Allah!! A Christian cannot imagine such a thing for him/herself. At the consummation of the ages, all the saints who have ever lived join around the throne of God in his very presence to worship him altogether. In fact, the definitions of life and death hinge on the presence of God. Where God is, there is life. Where God is not, there is death. Death is the absence of life. Death is the absence of God.

Never mind that the Muslim idea of eternal paradise revolves around fleshly pleasures (they get the things that are forbidden them, now). Who cares that they can drink all the booze they want and have their virgins at their beck and call? Allah is absent. The one they are to revere most of all is completely absent - for eternity!!

To be eternally separated from God is not paradise or heaven... even if all fleshly pleasure is available. There are many in this world who even now can attest to that. Eternity without God is hell.

How I ache for my Muslim friends. I do not want to kill them. They can mock my faith. They can mock my Jesus. I will not strike them. Far worse for them, they will be stricken with an eternal emptiness for which there is no cure except that Allah should touch them to heal them, to replace their eternal death and give them Eternal Life. Alas, he will not... he cannot.

May God have mercy on them. Praise and glory to God through Christ who gives us life.