2/7/06 6:19 PM evangelizing

Here is the problem we face with the Muslim. We want to present the picture of Christ for we know that people will want to be like him. It is as simple as that. But there is with the Muslim a thick morass to get through and that is the Muslims own tales of Jesus, which they hold as gospel, so to speak.

And so what must be done might be called an end run. We will begin with Paul, for here he is totally ignored by the Muslim, and we present the actual experience of the man by unimpeachable scripture (his own, uncontested letters) and then we are able to take this actual man and jump to the clear picture of Jesus, not as mere prophet (let each see what he will see), but as Christ, and to validate that in the image of Paul, and even in fact to validate both by the life of St. Francis and more recently John Wesley (among countless others today and throughout history).

And so we examine a man, Paul, and find the report of the miracle of God having taken this enemy of Christ and turned him into a friend and joyful servant of Christ and who lived his life from henceforth in that fact. This man proves, for all common intents and purposes, the fact of the gospel’s report and promise of Christ. Paul was unquestionably sincere and factual and through him then we can see the factuality of Jesus in his role as Christ.

We find in Paul a man who is in love with Christ and who joins with Jesus in a binity of the Christ, where each is a perfection manifestation,* the one in a totally innocent and righteous man, and the other a fallible servant of the Most High through Christ. One spirit then joins both individuals, Jesus and Paul, and they are one in the death of Jesus and they are one in the resurrection. As Jesus died for Paul, Paul now lives for Christ and when he dies, he will die for Christ. As Jesus rose from the dead even so Paul receives new life, a new birth, a brand new start, a new beginning, and lives now to bear his cross for his friend and master, the Lord Jesus, his spiritual brother in the unity of the binity, i.e., a perfect manifestations of one and the same thing and yet a difference, e.g., left and right hands.

[* This concept is developed in a short essay concerning the Trinity. (The back button must be used to return here.)]

And so in Paul we see the life of the binity of Christ, a man who is not perfect but who doesn’t let that bother him, for he counts his salvation as already given, and his life now, whatever the circumstances and conditions, is the life of the Christ in the person of this imperfect man (Paul) who more than anything in the world wants to bring all people to know and to love the Christ, the Lord Jesus, the one who did his part, his very best, at his time and now expects Paul to do his best, his part, in his time, and so on until his return at the appointed moment.

Paul counts neither reward nor cost. They are all the same to him now, for he is plainly and simply a servant of the exalted Christ and also his beloved friend, and whatever he does and whatever happens, without limitation, he trusts him and his approval is all the reward that Paul ever wants; and so where all else turns into dung and vanity. All he seeks is to tell others about this wonderful Christ who appeared in his earthly form as a Jew (given their belief in the Messiah). But he is much more! he is the Savior, the King, the One Who Speaks The Truth, the Righteous, the King of kings and Lord of lords. And he seeks to encourage others to follow Christ in and according to their own faith, never doubting, and to walk in the way of the Servant Christ where all things are utilized for his purposes, good or bad. All things are utilized by the servant who bears his cross and who stands and waits (à la Milton). All things are utilized in the service of Christ. That’s the mindset. You are become one with Jesus in Christ and you will do all you can for his sake even as he did all that he could for your sake, and you will then also share in all that he has even as he shares in all that you have, and he has eternal life, and that is a mighty gift to share.


Now when we finally come to the presentation of Jesus to the Muslims we can approach him first with Kant and present him as the perfectly natural Son of God,* the man who lived a totally righteous life, something that cannot be doubted, since it is required of all people (for we all know, Genesis 3:22). And still we tremble before such an image for it does seem so impossible, that one could have possessed the ring as Lord of the Rings and could not have been corrupted, although that is of course what the devil was saying at the temptation. Look, bow down to me, no one else will know about it, just me and you, and then you will have all the power you wish to make people become good people and live good lives, ad only you and I will know that he came about by bowing to me, for no one else needs to know. I shall smile at you and say: you see, by bowing to me all this good comes to your happiness. It was easy, once you decide to go along with the Prince of the World.

[* See an extended presentation of Kant's thesis concerning Jesus.]

And so Jesus rejects a show of his power and refuses to act until finally he is forced to act due to the plight of the helpless servants at a Jewish feast (John's gospel). The servants, I wager, were not Jews and they knew that they would be blamed by the evil master (I dream) and so were relieved when the master had no excuse to do harm and indeed rather rewarded them for their role in the beauty and thrill of the party. [Who knows??]

And so it is really quite in order to say that such a man, as Paul and the disciples show and tell us about, actually lived who refused to be a prophet, but was determined to take matters into his own hands and speak by his own authority and thus in that way to establish himself as the King of the humans. He introduced an entirely new religion, the moral religion of right conduct without the least regard for reward but only of a consolation that finally all the costs would be crowned with joy. He dismisses the old religion as an antique and established his new religion, and some entered into it during his life, e.g., Zachaeus. Time stops still and starts a new, the era of spiritual sight, the moral religion, the true religion, the one religion.

Now we can pause for a moment and notice that this Zachaeus entered into eternal life without having believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus or even having heard of any such thing (as far as we can tell). Zachaeus accepts what the man is calling for and announces this, and does it in order to become a brother with Jesus, to become one with him in spirit, like Francis became like Jesus, became a brother of Jesus.

Now the Muslim is welcome to come to Jesus as Zachaeus did, without consideration of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And now we must go out again from Jesus and back to Paul and get him to help us understand what Jesus did at the end of his life and why he did it and what happened as a result of what he did.

Jesus’ message that God is love is universal and is to be impressed as strongly as possible in an image for the sake of the humans. God offers the humans a new start in life, and must perforce convey this information in a way that would be accessible to all of his children (for God is the Abba/Daddy that Jesus tells us about). Now perhaps the most emphatic way to relay this information was to have Jesus give up his physical life for the sake of the convict, Barabbas. Jesus gives Barabbas a new start in life, an undeserved and unexpected new start in life, and Barabbas cannot even understand that Jesus has done this by the decree of God for Barabbas' own personal sake and salvation, but thinks, in his ignorance, that it is just the ways things work out in the world run by evil men, they often make big mistakes.

By dying to save Barabbas (instead of calling forth legions of angels in the way of the Prince of the World) Jesus says to the most rejected of all that God loves that wretched child (Barabbas) and wants to give him a second chance, and this time to guarantee success (the new Adam) through faith in Christ through the binity which joins us as two flesh of one and the same spirit. (if intimacy were involved, then it would also be a single flesh).

[* Like a right and a left manifestation of one and the same idea of hand (for each is perfectly a hand and yet they don’t wear the same glove).]

And so the Muslim is to understand that all that is required to be pleasing to God is a spirit that is one with the Christ. This information cannot be an intuition and thus it is not obvious to any man alive. There is great danger of doubt that will arise in the course of the rest of a convert's life. "But there is good news! Jesus did indeed die in order that all people might become new, become his friend. I (Paul speaking here) testify to this as do those who know me and who have known me. He died in order that we could become willing to enter into a binity with him, as I have done, by the grace of God. Because God was willing to do this, salvation comes to all who will simply want it enough to join in a binity with Christ as I have done." Then the story of the resurrection, which is mirrored in the transforming New Birth of Paul, brings the promise of success to those who trust in Christ. By trusting in Christ in their respective binity they are relieved of the responsibility of their salvation, for that is given through the power of his resurrection.

This new life is a fact as established by Paul and Francis and John Wesley, to name three, and should be attested to in the evangelist, at least in terms of progress and expectation.

[* As the Wesleyans often put it: while I am far from perfection, I am not as far as once I was; and I am on the way.]

And so the great good of Christ, according to Paul, is the assurance of salvation* and the experience of the Abba/Father consciousness which is immediate. Paul, through his own experience, doubts the ability of any man to live up to the righteousness that is called for in order to be pleasing to God. There can be no shame. Nothing else will enable a man to stand in the presence and not be on his knees begging for mercy for the wrong that he has done and that he has been willing to do.

[* This needs to be developed and presented to the Muslim. The Muslim has no assurance of salvation, but merely a hope, and so constantly remains in doubt and fear.**]

[** The exception is the Muslim "martyr" who dies in defense of the faith. Of course this certitude can only arises upon the assurance of death and so it is of very short duration, e.g., a few seconds to a few minutes at the end of life.]

The friend of Christ is permitted to stand, and he wants to stand, for he stands with Christ, and marvels at his prerogative, to stand in the presence of God, and even to be seated at his table because of a righteousness that was imputed to him by virtue of his binity with Jesus through Christ and which did not wait in order to be tested first. This is sheer grace and for this we must all always bow before God, that he has deigned to give us a second chance, a new start.

The word is: enter into a binity with Christ, which will make you a multinity as his church for then we become binities with others two, all in one and the same spirit.


That's the gist of the presentation of the gospel to the Muslim. The key is Paul and his validation by Francis and Wesley. From Paul we get to Jesus as Kant’s Son of God, and from there we marvel at the grace of God in giving his Son in order that Barabbas might know that he has a second chance and then having this Son rise from the dead to validate the efficacity of this second chance, namely that it will be successful and indeed is even counted as successful immediately without test.

Everyone will fail the test of perfection, but the Paulian is not discouraged at all ,for he is not counting on his own perfection but that of Christ, and so he is not on trial and is simply a man who is sincerely in pursuit of the likeness of Christ and who, even though he stumbles and falls; nevertheless will not fail for he trusts in Christ and has entered into a binity with him whereby his success is already given ahead of time, by gracious imputation, as was the case with Abraham at the beginning, when Abraham believed God [this was not the case in the matter of the sacrifice of his son.]




Note: we must then now swerve and enter into Paul’s conception of the Christian as a law giver and not a lackey to be ordered about, in the Jewish way. I would stress this to a certain degree, that the Muslims live in the Jewish way, i.e., having someone tell them what to do. There are Christians who live like that also, by the way, the Peterians who follow scriptural and/or ecclesiastic law, and subjugate it only to the Supreme Law, the Law of Love and the Second Chance. Most Christians are in Paulian bodies (although this is only slowly becoming apparent as more and more churches remove the stigma of gay even as they much earlier did with the stigma of being left handed or “normal” whatever that is supposed to mean.*

[* See Liberty of Gentile Christian.]

Liberty from law. Amazing. Here was the gospel story played at its best. Liberty from all law. Forget it. It is over. It is antique. It lives in antique religions like Judaism and even Islam and Mormonism.

There will be a gradation in the churches from the Roman Catholic or perhaps the Messianic Jews to such as the American Episcopalian which is about as lawless as you can get and which then best exemplifies Paul’s description of the liberty of Christ (see also John 5 where Jesus breaks the revealed law of God (according to Moses), for the sake of love).

I continue to think that it will be very expedient to utilize the Momon story, if for no other reason that to remind the Muslim that there are lots of stories. And we need to figure out a way of evaluating various stories as to their validity and authenticity.

[* See essay concerning the discernment of the divine and distinguishing it from the demonic with an appendix concerning the utility of the Mormon tale as an introduction for awakening the Muslim.]

But now I am thinking more of stressing Paul more immediately, as another would be revelator, and then of showing the validation of his revelation (in the actual experience of his lives and those who knew him) and compare that with Mohammed's method of validation, where his wife gets fresh and the vision retreats, as only an angel would do, for a demon would want to stay and watch what they were going to do (as we are told by the Muslims).