Contradict Meme #1

I finally figured out how I can create memes quickly without have someone else’s url on it and with no additional costs to myself .  This means I plan on making plenty of memes.  They seem to be easy ways of promoting Contradict Movement.  Here is a meme I meme I made using the Contradict logo:

contradict meme1I posted this image to Facebook and almost instantly I received a question about who considers Contradict to be hate speech.

The following was my response:

I can provide an example of a person who essentially says that it is hate speech. The person says that it isn’t hate speech, but often times in this paragraph uses the word “hate” in application to Contradict and does in fact call Contradict a bully:

“Islam, Christianity, Buddhism etc. Most are “the only truth” to countless people. And it’s fine to believe that. But, what’s not fine is not allowing others to have their individual beliefs in the truth. Who cares if they’re wrong? Is it really hurting you? Only if you fight them. Only if you threaten. Only if you belittle, offend, annoy…There’s a saying that hate is like a burning coal you are intending to throw at someone. The only one who gets burned by holding onto hate is you. This isn’t necessarily hate, but it’s close-minded. The Contradict movement is, for all intents and purposes, a bully. And yet, look at how many previously bullied people who have now found God are getting behind it. And before you go and argue that Coexist people are bullies, too, here’s a reminder–they aren’t expecting you to do anything but let people live out their own lives, as ignorant to your version of the truth as they want. It is a wise man who realizes that action speaks louder than any amount of scripture reading and referencing ever will.”

This quote comes from the following blog url: http://dreamsandrevelations.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/coexist-and-its-copycat-brother-contradict/

Also most sites where this image has been posted have responses from naysayers asking why Christians have to hate other religions and why we can’t accept them all and have tolerance?

My brother-in-law works with someone who has a Co-exist sticker on his car. His co-worker parks next to his car with a Contradict sticker quite often. After work, his co-worker told him that when he sees his Contradict sticker all he sees is hate and asked him why he has to hate others. Basically I think the Co-exist-er hates knowing that my brother-in-law professes John 14:6 and thus places his hatred of my brother-in-law’s beliefs onto the message itself, making the message a message of hate because it does spur people towards hatred, just as Jesus said, “The world is going to hate you because of me.”

Another person chimed in to my answer, adding:

Like the guy admits in the quote they want to willingly stay in ignorance, and in actually they’re lashing out and calling you the “hater” because they know they have no ground to stand on when it comes to their claim that “truth is relative”. Most people result to name calling and labeling when they’re exposed, and when the call you the “hater” they’re actually projecting what they are and what they feel toward you.

Check out Contradict Movement!  You can watch videos, get linked to Facebook, get access to free group study guides, and even better, order stickers, shirts, mugs, magnets, and cell phone covers adorned with the Contradict logo. 

Andy Wrasman2 Comments

What do all religions have in common?

Building off the last post, after hearing the difficulty of defining the word religion, how do you define what is a religion so that everything that we generally call a religion is included, yet everything we generally consider to be secular is excluded?

Reading Michael Molloy’s Experiencing the World’s Religions I learned that the etymology of the word religion is two words, “re” and “lig”.  “Re” means again; makes sense, reply, rebound, repeat, etc.  “Lig” means “to connect” or “to join,” as in ligament.  Together, religion means “to connect again.”

This concept is easily found in most religions.  They offer ways or processes of returning to some sort of original state of mankind that has been lost or severed from some problem.  For Christianity, the problem is sin that separated Adam and Eve from God and thrust them out of the Garden of Eden.  Their sin then was passed on to all men and the ultimate effect of our sin is eternal death and separation from God.  The way to “reconnect” with God and that original state of humanity before the “Fall” is through faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  Other religions offer a different problem, a different separation, and a different way or path of reconnecting with that original state of being.

Moving beyond the etymology of religion, Molloy says that instead of making a set definition that can encompass all religions it is best to simply list common characteristics of religions.  He lists 8 common characteristics and I address them in the following video:

After watching the video, post a comment giving examples of how the 8 elements are found within Christianity.  Also, ask yourself, does Atheism have these 8 elements?  If it does, then should it be considered a religion?  If it doesn’t, should it not be considered a religion?

Andy Wrasman2 Comments

What is religion?

Have you ever tried to define what religion is?  This video gives a hint at the immense difficulty of defining what should considered religion?

BTW, this video was extremely easy to make.  I already had the PowerPoint created from a class I teach. The PowerPoint is simply used as a conversation starter on the first day of class to get students thinking about what is religion.  Played out in class, this can make a very interactive lecture.  Students often times debate intensely if some of the “secular” examples I gave are religious or non-religious.  I asked once if they could think of any other celebrities whose fans followed them, “worshiped” them, in a religious way, and someone pointed to a female student in the class and shouted, “Justin Bieber!”  And I saw that her laptop had several Bieber stickers on it and I made that comment, and the person sitting next to her said, “You think that’s religious, look at her wallpaper.”  The student shrugged and said, “Yea, I admit it; I’m a Bielieber.”

I hope you liked the video and I’d love to read how you would define the word, “religion”.

Andy WrasmanLeave a comment

Charles Colson – Against the Night #1 – The Ideas that Brought the New Dark Ages

I started reading the late Charles Colson‘s book Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages.  This book was written in 1989, and I’m sure Colson would have far more to say if it were written today.  He writes about the setting sunset and our entrance into the “new dark ages.”  What makes our times dark?  It’s moral decay!  We’ve lost the fundamental truths upon which absolute morality is established.  The age of relativism is bringing down Western society as we know it.

In the first chapter of my soon to be published book, Contradict – They Can’t All Be True, I address this same problem, but my focus is on religious pluralism more so than moral relativism, but the two go hand in hand.  I trace the origin of this “new dark age” in the West from its religious origins of Hinduism’s influence on Western culture from the transcendentalist movement that began in 19th century through authors such as Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. Colson begins earlier in 1610 with the French philosopher Rene Descartes.  Descartes came to the conclusion that the one thing he knew was certain was the fact that he doubted.  He could not doubt that he doubted, which led to his classic statement, “I think, therefore I am.”

Colson sees this teaching as the root of our current age of moral decline and loss of truth:

Descartes’s now-famous postulate led to a whole new premise for philosophic thought: man, rather than God, became the fixed point around which everything else revolved; human reason became the foundation upon which a structure of knowledge could be built; and doubt became the highest intellectual virtue. … Men and women could not order their lives according to what they could see for themselves through reason, and the fetters of faith and tradition fell away.  … For centuries people had established their moral standards according to the discerned will of God or by appealing to Aristotelian concepts of virtue.  Now Enlightened thinkers sought to root morality not within a transcendent authority or classical conceptions of virtue, but within the mind and heart of man.  Moral judgments would be measured by what men and women could know or feel for themselves.

René Descartes
René Descartes – Is this the man we can blame for our current state of moral decay and loss of the belief absolute truth within our culture?

I find it interesting that Colson traces the problem back to a philosophy that ultimately strips God from the picture and makes Man the end all, be all of determining reality, and I traced the problem back to a religion that says everything is divine and thus each of us is God!  The two go hand in hand.  One reached the mind through philosophy and the other spoke to the heart through an Eastern religion that is experiential.  The one, two punch combo that has knocked us down.  Are we going to get up?  Are you we going to fight back?  We must reclaim absolute truth, not for ourselves, but for all of mankind who needs a saving relationship with God.

2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises.  He is patient!  He desires that no one perishes, but that everyone comes to eternal life through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.”

Andy Wrasman1 Comment

Reza Aslan’s Interview on Fox and his new book Zealot!

An interview on Fox News of Reza Aslan and his new book Zealot has received numerous social media posts recently.  Here is a copy of the interview that currently has over 2 million views:

The interviewer is slammed for asking him again and again why he is writing this book as a Muslim.  I think Reza’s answers could have been much better, but the interviewer just keeps asking the same question again and again and it gets nowhere and we don’t get to learn much of what Reza actually believes concerning the life of Jesus.

What stood out the most to me in the interview is that Reza states that it is a fundamental truth that everyone agrees that Jesus was crucified, but that’s not the Muslim belief and teaching of Islam as he also states! Reza must mean that every historian believes Jesus was crucified.

Why do Muslims believe Jesus wasn’t crucified?  Sura 4:157-158 clearly states that he wasn’t.  These two verses read:

“That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah”;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not -Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise.”

This leads me to believe that Reza is a very liberal Muslim.  It even makes me think that he isn’t Muslim at all to so openly deny a teaching of the Qur’an like this.  However, I was told that there were different Muslim interpretations on this passage.  I however don’t think that Jesus actually being crucified was one of them.  Some Muslim scholars believe that Jesus never died and others believe that he died of natural causes, but which Muslim scholar besides Reza believes that Jesus was crucified.

Before Reza I have only read Muslim teachers and Muslims I have spoken with to hold to the interpretation that Jesus did not die, at all! According to Adil Salahi who wrote on this topic on Muslim.org says that there are two views within Islam. He writes:

“The first, which is held by a majority of scholars, is that Jesus Christ did not die but was raised by Allah and that he will make a second coming at a time determined by Allah, when he will be preaching the message of Islam. The other view is that Jesus Christ died a natural death after Allah had saved him from his enemies. Both groups of scholars agree that Jesus Christ was neither killed nor crucified. Needless to say, those who subscribe to the second view do not speak of a second coming of Jesus Christ.” (http://www.muslim.org/islam/deathjarab.htm)

It appears as if Reza has an interpretation which does not fit with the interpretations of mainstream Muslim scholars on the teachings of the Qur’an and the Hadiths, so I’m very interested to read his book to see where else he skews not only on orthodox Islam but also Christianity. I wish the interviewer allowed him to get into such things, but it would have been nice if he had answered her question in a better fashion by just saying, “As a Muslim, I’m very deeply concerned with and interested in the person and history of Jesus (peace be upon him) because there is more in the Qur’an about Jesus (peace be upon him) than Muhammad (peace be upon him) and since the teachings of Christianity contradict the teachings in the Qur’an I have every right and interest as a religious scholar, Muslim, or any person interested in seeking religious and historical truth to research the life of Jesus.” I think if he had answered in such a way it would have shut down her stupid string of questions. She clearly is very ignorant on the subject of religious studies and the desire that any religious adherent should have in researching the claims of religions other than their own.

If Reza and other Muslim scholars are beginning to say that Jesus was crucified then it seems like a direct leave from the direct statements of Sura 4:157-158. I see where there is room for Jesus to have died a natural death in that passage, but there is clearly no room given for him to have died by crucifixion. I have never met a Muslim who has read the Qur’an to say that Jesus died of natural causes, much less that he was crucified, and these were leaders of Muslim unions on college campuses and teachers from whyislam.org who I invited to my world religions class to speak. You can check out their website and they very clearly state that Jesus did not die! (http://www.whyislam.org/submission/prophethood-in-islam/jesus-peace-be-upon-him/jesus/) They leave no room for any other interpretation. I’m afraid to say that Reza doesn’t seem very reliable as a Muslim theologian.

Andy WrasmanLeave a comment