The Pilgrim’s Protest

By Dr. Warren Larson

A Dutch Catholic bishop’s recent admonition that everyone refer to God as Allah produced a storm of protest. The incident illustrates widespread polarization on who should use the term “Allah” and is indicative of the pervasive confusion as to who God really is. A Muslim spokesman for CAIR (Council of American-Islamic Relations) quickly endorsed the comment, a view that seems to be line with the Qur’an: “We believe in the revelation which has come down to us … our God and your God is one” (29:46). According to this theory, all Muslims, Christians and Jews believe in, and worship the same God. At the other end of the spectrum is Robert Morey, who for many years has popularized the theory that Allah was originally the moon god, worshiped in Arabia long before Muhammad. This article will attempt to show that both positions are simplistic and fail to address the most important issues in our discussion with Muslims about God.

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By Collin Cornell

Presumably the Apostle Paul did not spend his Sunday afternoons writing poetry; nor, I expect, did he daydream of moonlighting as a playwright on the side of apostleship. His life was characterized by a passion so strong that he described it even as a compulsion; he was a man “under obligation” to preach the gospel, set apart from birth for that end, and he took every opportunity, in season and out, to do so. He did not wrangle with the prospect of pursuing a different course in life.

In contrast to the Apostle’s vocational assurance, however, is the tension CIU students often experience. One of my friends recently remarked that she wished she had eight lives to live, so various are her interests and gifts – interior decoration, conference speaking, biblical languages, homemaking, etc. Her diffuse ambition is far from rare here. “I might be a missionary,” many upperclassmen will say, “or maybe something else. I don’t know.” At their introductory chapel, the majority of incoming students cited missions as a dream job; that same majority also stated other life goals, like teaching, or dancing, or skateboarding, or dairy farming. For CIU students, the relationship between these interests is complex and ambiguous: are they exclusive, complementary, successive, hierarchical?
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By Sarah Nixon

Gretchen Wilhelm is a new teacher in the Elementary Education Program at CIU.

How did you start on your journey of teaching?
It was definitely a God thing. In high school I was really resisting being a teacher. I knew I had gifts in teaching—I come from four generations of teachers—but I wanted to try my own thing. I went to a music conservatory and was really pursuing music performance, but then I had terrible tendonitis in both of my arms and God really redirected things. I started teaching music and loved it, and I felt that instead of the performance stage I should be in the classroom. So after I got my bachelor’s [degree] I got a specialty degree in the Masters level for education and taught high school, middle school, and elementary. It was one of those things where God had gifted me but I hadn’t recognized it as God’s course until He slammed on the brakes.
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