TRBC Youth Blog

John Piper
February 8, 2006

What we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

When it actually happened it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him” (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.”¹ Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.”² An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross.

That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

When Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar across the Muslim world was intense and sometimes violent. Flags were burned, embassies were torched, and at least one Christian church was stoned. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before them. What does this mean?

It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).

Footnotes
¹ Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk, Islam and Christianity: A Muslim and a Christian in Dialogue. (Nairobi: Usima Press, 1980), p. 141.
² Quoted from The Muslim World in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor, Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.

Genesis 32:24-26
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

I've always been fascinated by Jacob's audacity - this guy stole his brother's blessing from his blind father, wrestled with God, and had the balls to say "I will not let you go until you bless me"?! I've also thought it was poetic justice that Laban tricked him into 14 years of slave labour for Leah and Rachel - who says God doesn't have a sense of humour?

While frantically writing my report (due on Monday - stupid, stupid me for procrastinating!), this passage somehow came to mind, and thanks to the wonderful thing called the Internet, I could read it between fits of panic and prayer. I'm wondering what sort of relationship Jacob had with God, that he could actually say such a thing to His face.

While it's true that we're all children of God and beloved by Him, shouldn't most of our supplications run along the general lines of "we are not worthy, so if You have the time, and if it isn't too much trouble, could You please grant us this or that"? I cannot imagine demanding something from God, like it was my right to have something of Him.

God's relationship with us has always been described as something like from a Father to a child - family. There are certain things that I expect of my parents that I do not, or do not need to articulate; "invisible privileges", if you would. That's not what Jacob is asking here - he's asking for a carte blanche blessing - almost like saying "God, I will not let you go until you give me an ang pow." The analogy is imperfect, of course, since ang pows bring to mind money, but you get the gist of the idea - what rude manners he has!

And yet, God blesses Jacob - a strange blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. God changes Jacob's name to Israel, or "he struggles with God". Perhaps it's self-explanatory - if Jacob had such a strong, wilful personality, to be subject to God's ruling must have chafed quite a bit on his person.

Perhaps I see this as permission from God to wrestle - to discuss, think, dialogue, toss around, struggle, "work out (my) salvation" - it's not forbidden, and it's been done before, the story chronicled and legitimised in canonical scripture.

Yay.

In these days, where we want broadband instead of 14.4kb, where we want MMS instead of SMS, where we want to go at 110kmph when the speed limit says 90, it seems, nobody looks deeper anymore. Nobody bothers going deeper and seeing the people behind the facade. Everybody looks, but nobody SEES anymore.

And the strange thing is: everybody seems to be okay with that. Even in our church.

Yes, OURS. I'm not talking about "the world in general", or "everyone else". I'm talking about our own church, the one at number 45, the nice new beige-ish one, the one with the gorgeous sanctuary, the one with the idiosyncratic lifts.

We seem to be content with what we see in people. Oh, he's the holy-moly one. Oh, she's the one who never brings her bible. Oh, he's the one who only comes because the church bus comes to fetch him. Oh, she's the rich one, comes to church in a mercedes. He's the one, she's the one, he's the other one, she's that other one.

The trouble is, we've got many "ones" within us. He may be the holy-moly one who's also the rich one, who also is the one who drinks a lot of water, who may also be the one who actually has a problem. She may be the one who never brings her bible, who is also the one who talks very loudly, who is also in debt because she bought a new mobile phone beyond her means.

I'm dissatisfied with this state of affairs. I'm guilty of the "hi-kisskiss-bye" phenomenon that's so prevalent, but I'm still dissatisfied with this status quo. Perhaps it's just me, but I think that church, especially the youth, should be spending more time with each other of their own volition, and work together because they like each other, instead of being pushed into it by the older folk.

I used to hate it when the older folk would go "Hey, we need some young people in here... let's just call XXX and YYY lah, they are young, let them do it." Like I was part of some mindless mob, lumped together because we were of a certain demographic. As I grow (up? heh...) OLDER, I find myself slipping into this pattern.

I'd really rather not.

The solution, though right in front of our noses, is not at our doorstep. At least, not yet. Youth have got to hang out together, got to learn about each other, go past the hi-kisskiss-bye phenomenon at church, and start interacting, engaging each other, and start either hitting it off and creating sparks WITHIN the group itself. This is, of course, messy, but aren't human relationships always that way?

Let's try. Get involved. Don't just answer "fine", when someone asks you how your week was. Share a little. New Radicals (and the theme song of that i-forgot-the-name show that was on a couple of years back, Shake? Turn? Spin? Round? Something like that) did sing "You Only Get What You Give", and it's something of an anthem when I teach my kids in school - you only get as much from my coaching as what you give it. Come prepared, and I'll work on your material with you. Come with nothing, it'll get multiplied, but when you multiply nothing with something, it's still nothing.

Go deeper. With God, and with each other as well.

I want to go deeper
But I don't know how to swim
I want to be meeker
But have you seen this old earth?
I want to fly higher
But these arms won't take me there
I want to be, I want to be
- Deeper, Delirou5?