One of the core ideas in Islamic theology and philosophy is an absolute sovereignty of God. That God is not bound in any way by anything: that he can choose to make or unmake as he will, and that if his words contradict themselves it is because that God has done so. That if God calls evil, good then it is good. This essentialism — that everything depends on the will of God — is wrong. God is not man, that he should change. What he says, and what is covenantal, is binding. This is why spurning his salvation is so damning.

Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors: his teaching was by way of illustration. But underlying that is the covenantal and legal nature of the agreements made: these are binding, and these can be relied upon. To call these things metaphors is to misread the text, and to consider that God will change because we have is an error.

Hebrews 6:13-20

¹³When God made a promise to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, ¹⁴saying, “I will surely bless you and multiply you.”¹⁵And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise. ¹⁶Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all dispute. ¹⁷In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath, ¹⁸so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. ¹⁹We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, ²⁰where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Consider setting up a legal structure, such as a company, or a trust. These documents are binding: if you set up a trust then that trust has bank accounts, and a legal identity that is separate to you: it can owe you money, you can gift properties to the trust or company, you can owe the company money and the company owes you. There will be consequences to you if you steal or defraud the company as if it was a person. In Christ we have our salvation in trust, and that relies on the unchangeable word of God.

This allows us a certainty of salvation that our Islamic neighbour lacks. For our salvation does not depend on our success, but on God. This also allows for us to explore nature, to predict, to develop an understanding of the laws of nature, for nature flows out of the character of God, and God is consistent. Our Muslim neighbour cannot predict, for (in his mind) all depends on the whim of God, and doing such things as predicting laws is of no use, for God will decide. In the Caliphate the ‘Sons of Martha’ were not Muslims, for they do not have the correct spirit.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they dam’-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s day may be long in the land.

One of the problems that the Islamic jihad is facing is that the Christians and Jews, who are people of the covenant, who should live by the covenant, and by doing that and being righteous preserve society, are being driven out.

Open Doors said earlier this month that it had documented 2,123 “martyr” killings over the year, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said.

“The one glaring fact that emerges from this report,” American-born scholar Raymond Ibrahim said in his analysis of the statistics on the Christian Broadcasting Network News website, “is that the overwhelming majority of Christian persecution around the world today is being committed at the hands of Muslims of all races, languages, cultures and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America’s allies (Saudi Arabia) and its enemies (Iran); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar) and from poor nations (Somalia and Yemen); Muslims from ‘Islamic republic’ nations (Afghanistan) and from ‘moderate’ nations (Malaysia and Indonesia); [and] Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait).”

But the people of the word know darn well that this world is fallen, and one of the laws of this world was written by Murphy. Things will go wrong. Maintenance and redundancy is important. Assuming it is the will of God that things will go well is wrong: one should maintain, prepare, provide, for we pray that we may not be put to the test, but for over 2000 brothers and sisters last year the test came. There are consequences to rejecting the ways of God. We are seeing them in the bloody sand of the Middle East. May we not see them for much longer.