Is Radical Christianity Threatening?

Rosie O’Donnell, the new host of "The View," made an interesting comment comparing Christianity and Islam. On the September 12 edition, in response to fellow co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s comment that militant Islam is a grave threat, O’Donnell stated that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America."

Is radical Christianity just as threatening as radical Islam? I do agree that when both religions are practiced by their devoted followers, they have a threatening component to them.

Islam is threatening because its devoted followers live by the instructions of their prophet Muhammad to advance their religious beliefs by the sword. Anyone who would oppose or disagree with Islam is a target for death, whether by sword, bombs, or flying airplanes into buildings. Radical Islam is threatening to Rosie because a bomb might blow up the very building where she is employed.

Christianity is threatening because it holds up a standard of righteousness. For example, it clearly defines that immorality, impurity and greed are wrong. It also teaches that those who practice these behaviors will go to hell when they die. The thought of going to hell for sinful behavior is very threatening. Radical Christianity is threatening to Rosie because her immoral lifestyle leads to the eternal consequence of hell.

So, I do agree with Rosie’s comment that both religions are threatening. However, I totally disagree with her attempt to make the nature of their threats equal. Please allow me to explain.

It is true that Islam and Christianity both promote death. The instrument of death promoted by Islam is the sword. The instrument of death promoted by Christianity is the cross. Radical followers of Islam and Christianity both are willing to die for their beliefs. One teaches its disciples to “take up the sword”, and the other teaches its disciples to “take up the cross”.

Radical Islam teaches its followers to kill others in the name of Allah. Islamists use the “sword of man” to advance their agenda. For example, the world witnessed radical Islam on September 11, 2001 as planes crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The radical application of Islam leads to the death of many people.

Radical Christianity teaches that love is dying for another person so they can be saved and free. For God so loved the world he gave Jesus to die on a cross, so that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). Christians advance God’s kingdom by the sword of their message or words. They preach the Bible even to the point of death. They don’t kill people for not believing, but are often killed by those who disagree with them. The radical application of Christianity leads to the salvation and freedom of many people.

One final thought, prior to Christian influence in the world, a woman’s life was very cheap. Find me one nation where Islam is practiced, and women in that society have equal status to men. History has proven that only nations influenced by Christianity have liberated women.

In ancient Rome and Greece, the opinion of women was not very favorable. Plato taught that if a man lived a cowardly life, he would be reincarnated as a woman. Aristotle said that a woman was somewhere between a free man and a slave.

Take India as another example. Prior to Christian influences in India, widows were voluntarily or involuntarily burned on their husbands funeral pyres—a grisly practice known as suttee (which means “good woman”). Hindus believed it was a good woman who followed her husband into death.

In the Middle East, women have been observed laboring in fields yoked with animals to a plow. It was the teachings of Christianity that elevated women to an equal status with men. Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

How ironic that women like Rosie O’Donnell do not give credit to Christ or Christianity; in fact, they say it has oppressed women. In reality, it took people with a radical commitment to Christianity, to elevate the value of women enormously. Without Christianity’s influence in the world, Rosie O’Donnell would never have the freedom, or the setting, to criticize the very belief system that helped liberate her status, as a woman, in society. Without Jesus, instead of talking freely on television to millions of people, she would probably be bound by silence to her thoughts, while living under a veil today.