World Religions 101

I went from writing nearly every post on this blog, to writing nearly nothing in the last month. But with all the link-posting we've been doing here lately, I think it's time for a bit of original thought.

If only I *had* any actual original thoughts. Drat!

Since we were talking about different denominations and worship-styles -- like those crazy Pentecostals -- I thought I'd go even farther and talk about some different religions.

As many of you know, I've been rather fascinated with Judaism over the past couple of years. Jewish history (cue the NT Wright theme song) is vastly under taught in our churches, and because of that, we often don't grasp the historical context of Jesus' life and teachings.

But there is one other major world religion -- many say it's the fastest growing religion in the world, in fact -- that has a number of similarities to Christianity and Judaism.

Islam.

The majority of Americans see Islam as a religion of Middle Easterners, and a religion of terrorists and radicals. People holding AK-47s over their heads or strapping bombs to their chests.

But... We also talk about not judging a religion strictly on the actions of a few followers. After all, people do that with Christianity, and they get turned off right away. So what do Muslims actually believe?

Islam gets lumped in with Judaism and Christianity because in a way, the three religions all believe in the same "God." At least to the point in that they are monotheistic belief-structures that teach submission to that higher power. Islam actually holds the belief that we believe in the same God, but Judaism and Christianity, over time, distorted the messages of the prophets like Moses and Abraham and Jesus.

Since an in-depth discussion of Islam would take years, and more pages of text than I care to write, I'm just going to look at the Five Pillars of Islam:

• The shahadah, the basic tenet of Islam: "I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God." To my ears, that's eerily similar to the "statement of faith" that many Christian churches ask new members to recite: "I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God." It's straightforward, it's simple, it's the religion wrapped up in a nice little package.
  
• Salah, or ritual prayer. It's to be performed five times per day. Now this is dedication! In the comments to the last post, the discussion turned to whether some of our worship is "fake," and whether some of it is just performed out of discipline. Being required to do a ritual prayer five times a day? That's discipline.
  
• Zakat, or alms-giving. This would be the Muslim equivalent of the tithe. It's obligatory for all Muslims who can afford it. Besides being used to assist the spread of Islam, a fixed portion is spent to help the poor and needy. I wonder how much membership would dwindle in our (Christian) churches if tithing were an obligation, rather than voluntary?
  
• Sawm, which is fasting during the month of Ramadan. This is the practice of not eating or drinking (or doing a number of other things) from dawn to dusk during this month. It's to encourage a feeling of nearness to God. How many of our churches are talking about fasting? It seems to be a nearly forgotten practice. I know that I don't do it -- I'm too much of a fan of food. In my own church, it was mentioned in a booklet as a part of a recent stewardship campaign, but I never heard it mentioned anywhere else. I only know one person that made an effort to give up a number of certain foods, and people didn't even understand why she was doing it. (Although yes, technically, if fasting is being done correctly, no one else should really know about it anyway.)
  
• The Hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca. Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during his or her lifetime. There is really no Christian equivalent to the pilgrimage. I don't see a lot of people using their life savings to get to Jerusalem or Nazareth.

From just looking at these five pillars of Islam, on the surface it appears that the major difference between Islam and Christianity is how disciplined and devoted the followers are expected to be. What is truly expected of Christians? They are supposed to get baptized and follow the teachings of Jesus. Love people. Help the poor. Forgive. But overall, we have fairly low standards for each other. We have churches FULL of people that invest about one hour per week in Christianity.

One could argue that the difference is that we have grace. And maybe that's true, I don't know the Islamic teachings on grace.

We do have grace, but over time, we, as Christians, have just become a people of very low expectations of each other. We ask much, but require very little.

I don't know the answer, but I do know that we've become lukewarm as a result.


*Credit to Wikipedia, where I got most of this info. So who knows how much of it is completely accurate.

**I'm also wondering how many people will read this post and think that I've embraced Islam as my new religion. Insha'Allah!