Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, we challenge you to think through the issue of Islam, freedom, and democracy. We are continuing with our series on a comparison and contrast between Christianity and Islam. And today, Islam, freedom, and democracy is the religion of Islam compatible with our way of life and governance.

We hear, for example, that one of the prime motivations for having gone into Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria, besides the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, ostensibly, and maybe killing terrorists, the reasons were to bring liberty and democracy to these places. In fact, the military campaign into Iraq, remember way back when, was codenamed Operation Iraqi Freedom. Oh, how was that turned out? The president at the time, W, President Bush, repeatedly proclaimed that Iraqis are now a free people. Yeah, what happened to that?

As much as I would like to believe that to have been true, I'm haunted by a persistent question. What do we mean by freedom? And can Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan or any other Muslim nation, for that matter, ever be free in the way in which we mean freedom? It goes right to the heart of the difference between Christianity and Islam and how both religions have shaped and determined the courses of their respective cultures and societies. Given the religion of Islam and its power to shape the worldview of its adherents, is it possible that freedom and a republican form of government will ever take root in any nation in which Islam predominates?

In order to answer this and other related questions, I'd like to make four points today with you. Four points. Number one, religion shapes worldview. Quite simply, religion shapes worldview. West or East, Arab, Caucasian, every rational, sentient man who walks the face of the earth answers the four basic questions that define religion.

That is, whence did I come? Whither do I go? Who am I? And number four, why am I here? Oh, every religion worthy of the name answers these questions for its adherents, Islam and Christianity being no exceptions.

Even the proud atheist, which comprise less than two percent of our country, they cannot escape the worldview shaped by religion. His very name, for example, atheist means no God, which means he defines himself in spite of himself in relation to God. He would have no definition if not for God. Atheism is a completely modern notion without precedent in the ancient world. Even the so-called atheists of the ancient world were not atheists in the sense in which modern atheists call themselves.

Most of the ancient atheists rejected, for example, the panoply of ancient gods, but still believed in some supreme being or beings, but hesitated to name them or define them too closely. In the end, even the atheist must answer the ultimate questions in terms of his religion. In turn, men behave consistent with their God and the answers to those questions I mentioned embodied in their religion. For instance, and I want to give just several specific concrete examples of how religion shapes worldview.

If the Muslim despises manual labor, and he does, seeing manual labor as beneath him and the work of slaves, then it will be impossible for him to nurture a work ethic that is so necessary for the building of a sense of citizenship and belonging in a republic. The Muslim's state of being is an answer to the who am I question. As Raphael Pattai, in his book, The Arab Mind, I urge you to read this book, as Pattai points out, he says, and I quote, his state, that is the Muslim's state, was the will of Allah, and man must obey God. In fact, Islam means submission, it's submission, by the way, dear listener.

Pattai goes on, he says, Allah made the Muslim to be a man of the soil, and such a man of the soil must remain one, unquote. In Arab and Muslim lands, one does not become rich, for example. One does not become rich and successful by hard work and frugal living. No, one becomes rich in the Muslim panoply of ideas when and if he finds, for example, or steals a treasure, or inherits a fortune, or finds a lamp with a genie in it, for example, as we see in the Arabian Nights, that will grant him three wishes. Oh, in contrast, the West has always cherished what has come to be known as the Protestant work ethic.

That is, God, from the very beginning in Genesis, has commanded that we subdue the earth and take dominion of it. That is, we work. Genesis 2.15 says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it, unquote. From the beginning, we were created to work and find dignity and purpose in even the most lowly of tasks. In the words of John Calvin, even the plowman and the washerwoman bear the image of God and the call of God in their lives to their tasks, plowing and washing.

In fact, he called even the simplest workman has a woka, a vocation, a calling. One of the reasons for the Industrial Revolution and unions and fair labor laws, the dignity and pride of the working man in the West, in complete contrast to the Middle East and Muslims, by the way, one of the chief reasons for that dignity and pride is the Protestant work ethic. Additionally, in thinking about how religion shapes culture, what will be the consequences for a culture's treatment of women? For example, if sin and the fall, that is, answers the question, where did we come from, can be traced back to sex and the woman as a temptress, right?

As it is in Islam, what will be the consequences? Voila! You see the consequences every day all across the Islamic world. That is the barbaric surgery of female circumcision, the burqas, the second-class status to males, and women have little or no appeal in the law system of Sharia, too, for example. So, I have sampled merely two examples of how religion determines worldview.

Religion determines worldview. Is it a mere coincidence that we find ourselves in the most prosperous, most powerful nation in the history of mankind? Or are there real, tangible reasons and explanations for it? In keeping with our Christian-bashing age, however, many try to explain it in strictly non-religious terms. But that fails to do justice to the evidence for the deep, strong Christian consensus at work in our nation and culture from its inception.

And that brings me to my second point. Number two, the Christian worldview shaped the Western understanding of freedom and a free republic. For the Christian, the gospel has deep implications and transforming effects not only in the life to come, that is, for eternity, but also for this life and all of its institutions. When Jesus spoke those immortal words, even the atheists like to quote, he said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Oh, well, he didn't speak those words in a vacuum.

Even the enemies of Christianity love to quote Jesus here, supplying their own definition, of course, for exactly what the truth is. But Jesus does not leave us in doubt as to what he means by the truth. And it is here that most men like to edit Christ. Three things I'd like to say about that. First of all, Jesus defining the truth.

He says, if you abide in my word and you are then truly my disciples, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free if you abide in my word, right? That's a very steep condition of knowing the truth that is following in and obeying Jesus and his teachings. It's a very steep condition of knowing the truth. One which most men reject and refuse to hearken unto. And secondly, Jesus also said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Ah, it is Christ, the living word that sets us free from sin. He sanctifies us and sets us free. And those thus set free from sin, from the tyranny of sin and death unto the liberty of righteousness and life, those are truly free. It is the Christian who is truly free.

Let no one misuse Jesus' words again and twist them to mean something other than he intends. And then finally, thirdly, Jesus says in the Gospel of John, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, unquote. Jesus locates the truth within himself and his mission. His mission was to reconcile men to his Father through his life, death, burial, and resurrection, to restore covenant status to them that they might know and see the Father.

For the Christian, then, this meant a spiritual birth from out of a spiritual death into which he had been plunged by his first father, or Adam, that is, that death. Now, however, in this new life brought about by the Son, he is part of an eternal world, the world of the Spirit, as well as the world of the flesh. Well, into the pagan world of the Roman Empire, this Gospel of freedom burst in the first century.

When a man is liberated in the realm of the Spirit, that is, free from the tyranny of sin and death, and a slave to righteousness and eternal life by his liberator, the Lord Jesus Christ, well, then, he can no longer be brought into slavery by any power. No, no matter what his earthly circumstances might have been. Though in his earthly circumstances, he may, for example, be a lowly slave in a Roman household, well, nevertheless, he was a freeman in the household of Christ and the Church.

And though his earthly circumstances, he might find himself, he might find himself in a prison cell, or a slave galley, or a Roman legion as a forced conscript, or in the Colosseum about to be slain for the entertainment of a pagan emperor, well, nevertheless, he was a freeman in the household of Christ and the Church. He knew, down to his toenails, this early Christian, by the promises of the Word of God, that his kingdom was an eternal one in the heavenlies, which no man could take or deprive. And there were consequences for this state of being. That brings me to point number three.

Christianity has brought a renewed focus on both individual liberties and, conversely, covenant responsibilities to the community. Liberties and responsibilities. Well, in Christianity, here was liberty and responsibility, not seen upon the face of the earth since the theocracy of Israel. No longer was the individual merely a cog, a nameless, faceless entity that existed for the use and sake of the state, which was the essence of paganism, to which we are headed as a culture now. But instead, here was an individual set in the midst of a community, that is the Church, to which he had first loyalties.

And this Christian had both liberties and responsibilities to God and his fellow man. This is what infuriated and threatened pagan statism in Rome, and it continues to infuriate and threaten pagan statism throughout the world today. And the pagan statism arising in modern socialist liberalism in the United States, and the pagan statism inherent within the very structure of Islam, we might add. The very name Islam, for example, means submission, ostensibly submission to Allah, but by implication also submission to the tribe and language and book of Islam, the Quran.

In Islam, there's no sense of a heavenly kingdom and its heavenly king, the Christ, to which one owes first loyalties, and which consequently liberates him from fleshly tyrannies. Instead, in Islam, we see what Roger Scruton calls a creed community, a creed community, that is a people defined by tribe, language, and Quran, which stakes its destiny in the kingdom of this world. Ha ha ha. Coincidentally, this world, not the world of the spirit. Now, how can I say this one?

All we seem to hear about are Muslims willing to die for Allah, go to heaven, enjoy virgins and oasis, and eat figs under palm trees. Doesn't that indicate they hold a greater priority of heaven than for earth? Well, that's only in appearance. Two observations I want to make with you on this. Number one, for the Muslim, heaven is merely a grand extension of this life, and not an entirely new creation, as it is for the Christian.

What the Muslim can't have here, like a child bride, for example, he will be able to indulge in heaven. Sex is taba'u here. There, in the Muslim heaven, it is to be indulged with great profligacy. Food is restricted here. That is no pork.

You have to fostering Ramadan, for example. But there, it is to be indulged food with gluttonous excess. Work and toil plague the Muslim here. There, in heaven, he will be able to lounge around in great sloth. In Islam, there is nothing of the spiritual realm, precisely because they are dead to the things of the spirit, rather than a spiritual kingdom, in which one will not be sexually united to 72 virgins, but to which the church will be united to Christ himself, even as a bride is united with her husband.

Instead, Islam merely extrapolates the world of the flesh on a grander scale to heaven. And then secondly, we also see, for the Muslim, all of this world of the flesh writ large, that's the heaven of the Quran, depends upon his performance here, his loyalty to tribe, customs, and laws of the Quran. It's a theology of works. Rather than seeing the spiritual kingdom of God as inherited as a free gift to an adopted son, given as a work of grace done by Christ on behalf of his covenant people. Instead, Islam sees the larger world of the flesh, that is heaven of the Quran.

He sees it as earned here in this smaller world of the flesh. That is why people like Osama bin Laden and fiery imams preaching in their mosques can urge their followers to throw their lives away in suicidal missions on behalf of Islam, because it will instantly earn them a place in this extended world of the flesh. Their kingdom is essentially a this-worldly kingdom, a kingdom of the flesh, meant to be extended by fleshly means, that is, the sword, jihad, and meant at all costs and without compromise to be extended over governments and nations and peoples of this world of the flesh.

And so, with no sense of true, eternal liberty and freedom, it is no surprise that Islam cannot comprehend nor abide genuine individual liberty and covenant responsibility. In fact, Islam is threatened by our Western sense of freedom with its roots in Christianity. For example, Osama bin Laden calls the values and freedom in institutions of the West and the United States in particular, the enemy of Islam. Yes, America, its values, the enemy of Islam. And the imam, Shamim Siddiqui, who is the author of The Need to Convert Americans to Islam.

That says it pretty plainly, the title of that book, The Need to Convert Americans to Islam. Well, Siddiqui calls our way of life and the freedom it brings as it makes its way to the Islamic world. He says he calls it the treacherous hands of the secular West. And another author, Islamic author, Issan Bagbi. He puts it this way.

He says, ultimately, we can never be full citizens of this country because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country. That says it pretty plainly. Every serious Muslim must confess this. Ultimately, we can never be full citizens of this country because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country, unquote. It becomes clear that as we examine the heart of Islam, that any nation with a primarily Islamic consensus will never understand nor adopt the principle of liberty and freedom as it is lived and cherished in the United States.

Islam is inherently and constitutionally incapable of practicing and embracing liberty and freedom. To do so would spell its own death. And then finally, fourthly, Christianity has nurtured the institutions of a democratic republic in the West. Christianity has nurtured the institutions of the democratic republic in the West. While our anti-religion, anti-Christian, socialist left and socialist left in the United States is desperately trying to cleanse and revise our history books.

It is nevertheless there for all to see who will take a little effort to look, Christianity has nurtured the institutions of a Christian republic in the West. While it is true that Rome has contributed much of what we know of the rule of law, it was not until the advent of Christian rulers like Justinian, for example, that law was tempered with both justice and mercy and wisdom. Additionally, the precepts for the rule of law have their roots in the rule of God's law, the Old Testament. Even the Supreme Court has in their chambers yet today a statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments as testimony to the biblical roots of the rule of law.

Now, while it is true that a primitive form of democracy can be found in ancient Greece, it was quickly tried and discarded as little better than mob rule, the tyranny of an ignorant and passionate rabble. It is not until democracy was taken up by our founding fathers and transformed into the Christian republic that it is today that democracy stepped out of the pagan darkness of its past into an institution that properly represents its people and the will of the majority on the one hand, but also respects the rights and privileges of the minority on the other hand.

Our democratic institutions are not strictly democratic, but republican in nature. For example, the passions and poor judgment of the majority are tempered by having legislation enacted by wise representatives, supposedly wise, enforced by an executive branch and then adjudicated by a separate judiciary, three branches of government. And as James Madison pointed out in Federalist number 10, he said that human nature is fallen and corrupt to a point that it needs to be restrained by the rule of law and a separation of powers so that power does not become concentrated into the hands of a few factions of men.

And also, the rights of the minority are protected in a bill of rights, appended to and part of the constitution, guaranteeing that the majority cannot tyrannize the minority in America. The founding fathers recognized that all of these institutions owed their existence to the Christian consensus that existed among the population and the Christian traditions that informed even the deliberations and writing of our constitution.

In fact, many years after the exhilarating days of the American Revolution and the early days of the Republic, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, could say of the role of his father and other founding fathers, John Quincy Adams said, and I quote, the highest glory of the American Revolution is this. It connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. But Islam, on the other hand, has a directly opposite view of government and rule. It is God who rules directly through the Quran in Islam and the body of law derived from it, Sharia, and the traditions of Islam.

To see any law in Islam derived from any other source than Allah is blasphemy. Once again, quoting Saeed Khutub, he says, it is God and not man who rules. God is the source of all authority, including legitimate political authority. Virtue, not freedom, is the highest value, he says. Therefore, God's laws, not man, should govern society.

Unquote. Dear listener, it becomes clear that as we examine the heart of Islam, that any nation with a primarily Islamic consensus, and America is headed that way if we're not careful, any nation with a primarily Islamic consensus will never understand nor adopt the principle of a democratic republic. They will never embrace liberty and freedom as it is lived and cherished in the United States of America. Look across the broad world of the Islamic nations and you'll see that this religious tyranny prevails in every nation that adopts Islam as its primary religion. Religion determines worldview.

Islam is inherently and constitutionally incapable of practicing and embracing liberty and freedom. To do so would spell its own death. They are not ever going to, even in the enclaves and ghettos of Islam here in America. So, let no one say that Christianity and a Christian republic and democracy are not bound together in this nation. They truly are.

And dear listener, you must do all that you can as well in practicing your Christian faith to also apply it directly to our ways in here in America, both our culture and our culture and our form of government. And thus, we will bring glory not only to God, but also then to the practice of the Christian republic here in this life as well as the next. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sundays. And we are meeting for the month of September at the Senior Citizens Center.

We have closed our church. We're renovating, doing some major renovations. So, we have closed the church, and we will be meeting every Sunday in the month of September at the Senior Citizens Center, which is located on the corner of 21st and Rolandette. And you can call us for more information on these things at area code 208-523-0196. Call us for further information at area code 208-523-0196.