The God You Worship

About twenty years ago in a lecture by Dr. John Killinger of Vanderbilt Divinity School I heard him state, “We become like the God we worship.” I have never forgotten this concise aphorism.

I think Dr. Killinger meant that we become in some small way like our Deity. We adopt the values of our God. In the specific Christian sense we value compassion, goodness, decency and truth. We understand that the foundation of Christianity means loving God with our entire being and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Many people in our culture who do not even think of themselves as Christians value freedom, equality of all peoples and genders, and the sanctity of human life. You can almost absorb Christianity by osmosis in Western culture.

Islam is the strangest of the world’s religions. Every other major religion has some form of the Golden Rule. Islam does not have a conception of the Golden Rule. Nor does it have a concept of human equality. Actually, Islam recognizes three classes of people. The first tier is Muslim men. Muslim women and children occupy a distant second place. Literally bringing up the rear is the rest of us, non-Muslims or kaffirs. Non-Muslims or kaffirs are considered barely human and can be treated brutally or even killed.

The God of Islam is Allah. The sole interpreter of God’s will  is Mohammed, the self appointed prophet of Allah. Mohammed’s life must be emulated by all devout Muslims. Thus, to know Islam we must know Mohammed. The values of Mohammed are treachery, brutality, deceit. supremacy, misogyny and killing in the name of Allah. In just one day Mohammed presided over the beheading of 800 Jews. Islam is the only world religion that has an organized theology of killing; Jihad. It also has a highly effective membership retention plan called the murdering of apostates. You can join Islam, but you can never leave. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence recognize the same penalty for leaving Islam. Apostates must be killed.

Be careful of the God you worship. For you will be molded slowly, inexorably and totally by your religion. Radical Islam is a toxic poison killing decency and finally destroying your humanity.