One of the most remarkable features of Jesus' teaching is that it repeatedly overturns ordinary human reasoning. His sayings are not merely surprising; they appear to contradict the very logic by which people naturally live. Whoever wishes to save his life must lose it. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The last shall be first. The grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die before it can bear fruit. These are not isolated aphorisms scattered throughout the Gospels. Together they reveal a single underlying principle—a law that governs the Kingdom of God.
It is commonly assumed that Jesus criticizes pagan prayer because pagans are using an ineffective religious technique. They use too many words, so their prayers fail; Christians, by contrast, are supposed to use fewer, purer, more correct words, and then prayer will work properly.
Every practical approach must begin with a foundation. If the foundation is wrong, everything built upon it will eventually collapse. My entire understanding of demons rests upon one principle that may initially sound strange, perhaps even offensive:
The problem of demonic affliction belongs foremost to the exorcist.
One of the most misunderstood questions in religion concerns the purpose of worshipping God. Many people assume that worship is something God requires from human beings, as if the Creator had fashioned humanity in order to receive praise. This idea leads critics to ask a familiar question: why would a perfect and self-sufficient God need validation from His own creatures?
The question arises from a mistaken assumption about the nature of worship.
The Qur’an states:
“I did not create jinn and mankind except that they worship Me.” (51:56) — Qur'an
God is perfectly just. Sin violates His holiness and law. Justice requires punishment. Because humans cannot pay the penalty, Christ bears it in their place. His death satisfies divine justice so God can forgive without compromising righteousness.
The boundary can be made very clear if we do not frame it simply as “doing something” versus “trusting God.” That would be too weak. The real boundary is between created means and rival spiritual means.
A good governing principle could be:
We may cooperate with God through the created, public, bodily order; but we may not imitate, invoke, or participate in a hidden spiritual order as though it were another channel of protection or power.
There is an important distinction which must be kept clear whenever we speak about trust in God, prayer, human action, and protection from harm. A person may pray to God for food, for safety, for healing, and for deliverance from danger; yet this prayer does not require him to sit idle as though God’s providence excluded the use of the body, the mind, and the created world. On the contrary, the ordinary means by which a person receives food, safety, and health are themselves part of the order through which God works.
I confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Lord.
I do not hide this. I do not soften it. I do not reinterpret it to make it socially acceptable. It is the center of my faith, and I proclaim it openly.
At the same time, I do not experience contradiction when standing in a Muslim house of prayer where strict monotheism is affirmed and where it is said that “God has no son.”
To many, this sounds impossible. It sounds like compromise, duplicity, or confusion. It is none of these.