260 Jesus, Prophet ofIslam
The laws which exist in the 'Christian' countries of the West
today - the laws goveming birth and death, the formation and dis
solution of marriage, the rights over property within and outside
marnage, or in the event of divorce or death, adoption and guardi
anship, commerce and industry and all the rest - are not to be found
in the Gospels. The laws which define what constitutes criminal
behaviour and the various penalties for such behaviour, are no
longer derived from the Bible. Murderers are no longer executed,
for example, and adulterers are no longer stoned to death. Sorne
laws, such as those which legalise usury in all its forms, flatly con
tradict what has in fact always been forbidden by God.
Most of these laws are not laws which have been revealed to
man by God. They are the fruits of deductive knowledge. They are
either inherited from the Roman system of law, or are based on the
common practice of people over a long period of time, or are stat
utes formulated and amended whenever it is considered neces
sary in accordance with the democratie method, which is alleged
to be the bequest of the ancient Greeks. No one in today's courts of
law can refer to the Gospels as a binding authority in his or her
dealings with another person, and have their submissions or rep
resentationsbased on themjudicially accepted. A person may swear
to tell the truth on the Bible -but it must remain tightly shut!
The Christianity of today is inseparable from the culture of the
West, which has now been successfully exported virtually through
out the world. The established Christian Church and the State are
at one with each other and support each other. And the individu
als who work within their respective institutions do not live as Je
sus lived, however much sorne of them may wish that they were.
The spiritual impoverishment of Christianity today is due to
the inescapable fact that the believing Christians of today·lack a
science of social behaviour, based on that which was originally em
bodied by Jesus and his true followers -and that lack has left them
at a loss in this life and unprepared for what happens after death.
As Wilfred Cantwell Smith writes:
To say that Christianity is true is to say nothing signifi
cant; the only question that concerns either God or me,
or my neighbour is whether my Christianity is true, and
whether yours is. And to that question, a truly cosmic
one, in my case the only valid answer is a sorrowful
'not very ... ' 12http://www.islamicbulletin.com