We spent about 2.5 hours this morning on the island of Taquile, in the Peruvian portion of Lake Titicaca.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph taken by Pavel Spindler in 2008)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every once in a while, impelled by comments on my blog, by emails sent directly to me, and so forth, I feel that I need to share this column that I published in the Deseret News<\/em> on 27 January 2011:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trying to make their view seem merely a minor logical extension of my own, several atheistic acquaintances have assured me that there is little difference between us: They just happen to disbelieve in one more god than I do.<\/span><\/p>\nThey seem to imagine that being a Latter-day Saint entails rejecting all non-Mormon religious experiences and disbelieving every doctrine of every other faith. This, however, is not true.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen Joseph Smith learned that the then-existing Christian churches were corrupt, that didn\u2019t mean that they were totally wrong. To say that something is \u201ccorrupt\u201d means that it has been damaged. We speak of \u201ccorrupted texts\u201d or \u201ccorrupted files,\u201d intending to say that they have been infected or tainted \u2014 not that their original content has been replaced by something completely different.<\/span><\/p>\nIn fact, many mainstream Christian doctrines were and are substantially correct. There is indeed a God. He has a divine Son who came to earth, atoned for our sins, rose again on the third day and now sits at the right hand of his Father. Those who taught prayer, preached of the Savior and translated the New Testament during the centuries between the early apostles and the Restoration preserved and transmitted many central gospel truths.<\/span><\/p>\nBut what about non-Christians? Do they worship false gods?<\/span><\/p>\nJews certainly don\u2019t. Believing Jews accept the Old Testament, venerating the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, spoke through the prophet Isaiah and was proclaimed by Jesus (a Palestinian Jew).<\/span><\/p>\nBut what of Islam? Isn\u2019t \u201cAllah\u201d a false god? No. According to the Qur\u2019an, Allah created the earth in six days, placed Adam and Eve in Eden, and then inspired prophets like Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Sound familiar?<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAllah\u201d is simply the Arabic equivalent of English \u201cGod,\u201d related to the Hebrew \u201cElohim.\u201d Moreover, Allah is the God not only of Muslims but of all Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews. \u201cIn the beginning, (Allah) created the heavens and the earth,\u201d reads Arabic Genesis. \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with (Allah), and the Word was (Allah),\u201d says the Arabic version of John 1:1. \u201cWe believe in (Allah), the Eternal Father,\u201d says the first Article of Faith in Arabic, \u201cand in his Son, Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMuslims, Christians and Jews disagree about God, but that doesn\u2019t create numerically different gods. My neighbor regards Senator Foghorn as the greatest orator since Daniel Webster; I think he\u2019s a noxious windbag. But there is, mercifully, only one Senator Foghorn. Our different opinions don\u2019t spawn multiple senators.<\/span><\/p>\nBut what of the non-Abrahamic religions? Are they too far wrong? It seems presumptuous to declare that mistaken but sincere devotion means nothing to our loving Father in Heaven.<\/span><\/p>\nIn fact, Christians have been quite willing over the centuries to equate Zeus, the supreme ruler and father of the Greek Gods (the Romans\u2019 Jupiter or Jove), with the God of Christian belief. Shakespeare\u2019s Juliet chides Romeo from her balcony with a close paraphrase of the pagan Roman poet Ovid: \u201cAt lovers\u2019 perjuries, they say, Jove laughs.\u201d The great medieval Christian poet Dante says that it was Jove who died on the cross (\u201cPurgatorio\u201d 6:118-119).<\/span><\/p>\nWhen the apostle Paul, preaching on Mars Hill, sought to connect with the pagan Athenians (Acts 17:24-28), he identified Zeus with Israel\u2019s God: \u201cFor in him we live and move and have our being,\u201d he taught, quoting the words about Zeus of a sixth-century B.C. Cretan philosopher. \u201cAs some of your own poets have said,\u201d he continued, citing a third-century B.C. philosopher\u2019s verse about Zeus, \u201c\u2018we are his offspring.'\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIn the final volume of C.S. Lewis\u2019 \u201cChronicles of Narnia,\u201d a Calormene soldier named Emeth (= Hebrew \u201ctruth\u201d) has been a sincere worshiper of the false god Tash all of his life. When, at the end, he meets Aslan and recognizes the true God, he expects severe punishment. But Aslan graciously reassures him that \u201call the service thou hast done to Tash, I accept as service done to me,\u201d explaining that, although Emeth had been unaware of it, his honest devotion was actually to Aslan, rather than to Tash. \u201cNo service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nGod\u2019s sheep recognize his voice, even when it\u2019s in a different language or imperfectly heard. They follow him as best they can and will not lose their reward.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Puno, Peru<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 Every once in a while, impelled by comments on my blog, by emails sent directly to me, and so forth, I feel that I need to share this column that I published in the Deseret News on 27 January 2011: \u00a0 Trying to make their view seem merely a minor logical extension of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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