Bacon & Beer

"It's all about the bacon." Jesus Christ, Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff. "THEY'RE ON OUR RIGHT, THEY'RE ON OUR LEFT, THEY'RE IN FRONT OF US, THEY'RE BEHIND US: THEY CAN'T GET AWAY FROM US THIS TIME." "Chesty" Puller at the Chosin Reservoir. “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!” Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly at the WWI battle of Belleau Wood.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Love in Islam v. Love in Judaism/Christianity

This is a sorta schlock way to make my point, but I did an online search of the K'o'ran' for the word love. There were 83 hits. Almost all are "Allah loves believers," and "Allah does not love unbelievers." It's about half and half.

Love in the Koran.

There are 508 references to the word "love" in the Bible.

Love in the Bible.

To avoid reading all of these to see whether any say "God does not love" something, I ran a search for "does not love."

"Does not love" in the Bible.

Typical of the 8 entries found was this:

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:7-9

Still being careful, I then ran a search for "God hates." There was one result.

Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole [a] beside the altar you build to the LORD your God, 22 and do not erect a sacred stone, for these the LORD your God hates.

That's it. The Jewish/Christian God, apparently, really, really doesn't cotton to rocks that are worshipped. Other than that, He's all about love.

These are, I submit, very different understandings of God. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament does it say God hates a human being. In the Qur'a'n' it say about half the time that God hates human beings, namely, those who don't obey Allah. The Quran (woops! ') also depicts Man as God's servant, not his companion or friend. The Islamic view of who God and Man are is radically different from the Jewish/Christian view, and not for the better (from now on in these essayss about the Korahn I'm not going to say "Jewish/Christian" and the like. I will say "Christian." Please understand that that includes Judaism. It couldn't not.). Typical of the Christain view of God is this:

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

I dare you to find anywhere in the K'Q'o'ra'n' where God offers to walk with a human being. And that means something.

By the way, this is all just soil-tilling for my upcoming reviews of the Koran (I'm not screwing around with that word anymore either. Too much trouble.).

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