Even after all the acts of terrorism committed by Muslims in the last few decades, Islam is still the fastest growing religion in the world. Our knee-jerk response to a terrorist attack might be to condemn all Muslims. That would be wrong. Many Muslims are decent, upstanding people that try to make their corner of the world a better place. I know Muslims that I respect as decent people. What they have maintained is something too many Christians have forgotten...a strong sense of right and wrong.
Individuals most often are the face of a religion to non-believers. Christian martyrs were responsible for the world taking notice of the faith, and for the conversion of many, many people. Unfortunately, in our time, Christianity has become so filled with paganism and so watered down as to bear little resemblance to the faith once delivered. Christian churches and their ministers have adopted so many of the worlds values that the church is almost indistinguishable from the world. They've made the faith appear to be a joke to many non-believers. Modern Christianity has failed to do what ‘the faith once delivered’ did. There are people calling themselves ‘Christians’ with little to no moral values. The message this sends the world is that the faith is no better than a collection of myths filled with hypocrisy. That's far from the light to the world it was intended to be.
In our modern world we have adopted a kind of ‘anything goes’ philosophy. Moral relativism, the ‘buzz word’ of the day, says there is no ultimate right and wrong. It says that those are relative values determined by time and place; every culture is different. This can leave honest people, who sincerely seek the right way to live, feeling empty and without purpose. This attitude has even crept into Christian churches, infecting them with a sense of moral ambiguity. They removed the Ten Commandments from their pulpits long before the ACLU began removing them from government buildings.
Islam appeals to many people because of the failure of Christianity to live up to its true purpose. The very first words Christ is recorded to have uttered when He began His ministry are: “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand!” Repentance is to return to obedience to God. That’s a message that has been lost by Christians trying to fit in to a world without a moral center.
Islam has some measure of righteousness, where much of the Western world has none. Islam often appears to be uncompromising in its moral code in many ways. The way of Islam is submission to 'The God'. (Al = the, Lah = god) The faithful of Islam live by a strict religious code that demands that submission. Right and wrong are moral certainties. To a world without a moral code, that certainty can be very appealing.
Unfortunately many ‘Christian’ churches that offer some kind of moral certainty are actually cults. Cults tend to focus on their leaders and their own agendas more so than Gods. They tend to pick and choose their list of do’s and don’ts from the Biblical tradition and strictly enforce them, while missing the bigger picture of the message of the Gospel.
Many mainstream ‘ministries’ have removed the less palatable parts of the Gospel to try and appeal to more people. The result is a gospel devoid of any real meaning other than some ambiguous emotional appeal. The message of Jesus the Christ was meant to bring people back to the knowledge of, and obedience to the one true God.
When looking for the reason why Islam’s growth is on the rise…Christians should look first to their own failures. The world needs the Gospel of Jesus the Christ now more than ever. We’ve lost our way because we follow our own desires and deny that there is an ultimate code of right and wrong…and it’s found in the pages of the Bible.
Instead of putting the Ten Commandments out of public view in more and more places, we should be putting them in every public square, every school, every church and every government office in the land.
We should be writing them on the tables of our hearts….
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