Dave Andrews

“There are two completely different paradigms that Christians and Muslims have used through the centuries to understand their relationship to their religion – the ‘Closed Set Perspective Of Religion’ and the ‘Open Set Perspective Of Religion’.

“According to the ‘Closed Set Perspective’, a ‘set’ is defined by its ‘enclosure’. The very nature of the set is not ‘open’ but ‘closed’. From this perspective, a set of people who claim to have some connection to a religion, can be shown to be part of the set, by ascertaining whether their beliefs and behaviours are within certain set boundaries.

“It is through defending these boundaries of belief and behaviour that (these) religious people define their religious identity. Hence (some) Christians and Muslims have tended to fight to not only to define but also defend these boundaries of belief and behaviour to the death. Because not only their religious identity but also their eternal destiny depends on it.

“Thus the ‘Closed Set Perspective’ rips the heart out of religion – replacing the warm, kind-hearted compassion of God with cold, hard-headed propositions about God; and relating to people in terms of an ideology of religion, rather than the mercy of God.”

Dave Andrews p71-73 The Jihad Of Jesus http://bit.ly/1CedNDX