Saturday, June 23, 2007

'Have you prayed for bin Laden today?'


Wow, that's a gut check, right? I found that headline on the Christianity Today homepage. It's an interesting question that leads into a Q & A with a Mid East missionary about the crisis in the Palestinian territories and Christian relations with Islamic fundamentalists.

Why have there been so many suicide bombers in recent years?

I challenge the Hamas leaders about the suicide bombers, which I'm terribly, terribly opposed to. I've preached against it. I contended in the strongest terms when speaking with the Hamas leaders, and they said, "Brother Andrew, we agree with you. The Qur'an forbids suicide." I said, "What is it that I see all around me?" They said, "But that is religious." I said, "Of course, you make it a million times worse because now you have a million volunteers."

There's no way we can cope with or challenge that level of dedication. They believe in something, and they're going to die for it. We fight [Islamic ideology] with bombs and armies. We're doomed to lose that battle. We have to go back to the root causes. We have to listen, we have to understand, we have to talk, and then I think we can still make progress.

Speaking as a Christian, they are not our enemies. God loves the world. And in my new book, Secret Believers, we propose the question, "Have you prayed for bin Laden today?" That question should shock a lot of Christians. Of course we haven't! That is why he is what he is. We have an evangelical black list of people we don't want to see in heaven and put bin Laden on top. Saddam Hussein is probably second.

Well, Team America has taken care of the latter, and look where that's gotten us. Who knows if we're even still looking for bin Laden. You'd think U.S. intelligence would have spotted him streaking the White House lawn.

1 comment:

aBrinley said...

Interesting picture to post with an article encouraging people to pray for bin Laden. I think that the assertion made in the Article is true.

One might even assert that Islam would have never become a world religion if the "civilized world" had paid a bit more attention to what is now the Middle East.

Instead all teachers holding heretical views were exiled to what is now Saudi Arabia and Iran. No wonder Muhammad had some odd views about Christian, and Jewish religion.