The Seinfeld Strategy to Stop Procrastinating in 2015

By James Clear, January 5, 2015

By almost any measure of wealth, popularity and acclaim, Jerry Seinfeld is among the most successful comedians of his generation.

However, what’s most impressive about Seinfeld’s career isn’t the awards, the earnings or the special moments–it’s his remarkable consistency. Show after show, year after year, he performs, creates and entertains at an incredibly high standard. Jerry Seinfeld produces with a level of consistency that most of us wish we could bring to our daily work.

Compare his results to where you and I often find ourselves. We want to create, but struggle to do so. We want to exercise, but fail to find motivation. Wanting to achieve our goals, but–for some reason or another–we still procrastinate on them.

What’s the difference between Jerry and the rest of us? I’m not sure about all of his strategies, but I recently discovered a story that revealed one of the secrets behind Seinfeld’s incredible productivity, performance and consistency.

Let me tell you what he does and how you can use the “Seinfeld Strategy” to eliminate procrastination and achieve your goals.

To explain the Seinfeld Strategy, it helps to know the following story: Some years back, Brad Isaac was a young comedian starting out on the comedy circuit. One night, he found himself in a club where Seinfeld was performing. In an interview on Lifehacker, Isaac shared what happened when he caught the comedy legend backstage and asked if he had “any tips for a young comic.”

Seinfeld told Isaac that the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes, and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. “He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red Magic Marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day,” Isaac recalled.

Seinfeld continued: “After a few days, you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

You’ll notice that Seinfeld didn’t say a single thing about results.

It didn’t matter if he was motivated or not. It didn’t matter if he was writing great jokes or not. It didn’t matter if what he was working on would ever make it into a show. All that mattered was “not breaking the chain.”

And that’s one of the simple secrets behind Seinfeld’s remarkable productivity and consistency. For years, the comedian simply focused on “not breaking the chain.”

Top performers in every field–athletes, musicians, CEOs, artists–are all more consistent than their peers. They show up and deliver day after day while everyone else gets bogged down with the urgencies of daily life and fights a constant battle between procrastination and motivation.

While most people get demotivated and go off–track after a bad performance, bad workout or simply a bad day at work, top performers settle right back into their pattern the next day.

The Seinfeld Strategy works because it helps to take the focus off of each individual performance and puts the emphasis on the process instead. It’s not about how you feel, how inspired you are or how brilliant your work is that day. Instead, it’s just about “not breaking the chain.”

All you have to do to apply this strategy to your own life is pick up a wall calendar and start your chain.

There is one caveat with the Seinfeld Strategy: You need to pick a task that is meaningful enough to make a difference, but simple enough that you can get it done.

It would be wonderful if you could write 10 pages a day for a book you’re working on, but that’s not a sustainable chain to build. Similarly, it sounds great in theory to be able to deadlift like a maniac every day, but in practice you’ll probably be overtrained and burnt out.

So, choose a task that is simple enough to be sustainable and make sure that your actions are meaningful enough to matter. Doing 10 pushups per day could be simple and meaningful depending on your level of fitness and it will make you stronger. But reading a fitness book each day, while simple, won’t get you in better shape.

Don’t break the chain on your workouts and you’ll find that you get fit rather quickly. Don’t break the chain in your business and you’ll find that results come much faster. Don’t break the chain in your artistic pursuits and you’ll find that you will produce creative work on a regular basis.

So often, we assume that excellence requires a monumental effort and that our lofty goals demand incredible doses of willpower and motivation. But really, all we need is dedication to small, manageable tasks. Mastery follows consistency.

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A British House Overflowing With Lords Draws Scorn

By Stephen Castle, NY Times, Aug. 22, 2015

LONDON–Britain’s unelected and overcrowded House of Lords lost one of its members last month, when a newspaper exposé prompted the resignation of Lord Sewel of Gilcomstoun in Aberdeen, a former university lecturer who was accused of snorting cocaine with a prostitute and pictured wearing an orange bra.

But after this brief downward blip, the second chamber of the British Parliament seems poised to resume the long expansion of its ranks.

Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to nominate several dozen new members soon, continuing a tradition in which the party in power adds to its representation in the House of Lords, which, while limited in authority, can amend or delay legislation.

Though adding new peers to the Lords is standard in British politics, there is growing disenchantment with political institutions across Europe. Support for mainstream parties is fragmenting, and populism is on the rise.

The House of Lords is an easy target. Swollen numbers mean its ornate, gilded chamber is too small to seat all attendees on busy days, let alone the entire membership, while its age profile can make it look like a retirement home.

With 781 members entitled to vote, the Lords enjoys the dubious title of the world’s largest legislative chamber outside China.

“The House of Lords is growing out of control,” said Darren Hughes, deputy chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, a group that promotes representative democracy. The society recently released a report that described the chamber as “a shockingly out of date and unrepresentative institution.”

More than half of its members are 70 or older, and just two are younger than 39, according to the society. Of the 781 peers, 589 are men.

Advancing years have not always brought wisdom, judging by the recent resignation of John Sewel, 69, who, as news reports gleefully recounted, was the chairman of a Lords committee responsible for upholding standards among members. That job ended when the tabloid The Sun on Sunday accused him of snorting cocaine off the breasts of a prostitute, and released a video that showed him consuming a white powder.

These days, members are less likely to be scions of the landed aristocracy than politicians, advisers or party supporters, ennobled as a reward for loyal service or other (sometimes financial) contributions.

Yet that has not prevented some peers from behaving as if they had strayed in from a distant country estate.

Last year, they resisted a cost-cutting measure to share catering services with the House of Commons, because the quality of their champagne might suffer.

More recently, The Daily Mail highlighted written complaints by unnamed lords and ladies about the food they were served, including one peer who moaned that a cheese crème brûlée consumed in February “wasn’t very cheesy,” and that a supreme of hake was “completely unadorned, with a hard crust on top.” Another member fumed that “cabbage, broccoli, sprouts and spinach have almost vanished completely in favor of root vegetables!”

Despite such privations, a seat in the Lords remains prized. With it comes a title and the right to claim up to 300 pounds, or about $470, as a daily allowance for attending sessions (without having to give up any other job). Benefits include a desk in the historic Parliament buildings and access to facilities like a parking lot, restaurants and watering holes, including the wood-paneled Bishops’ Bar.

For those who have spent their lives in politics, the House of Lords is also seductive because it gives them a public platform, and an opportunity to shape laws, without the inconvenience of standing for election.

Though much less expensive to the taxpayer per seat than the salaried legislators in the Commons, costs in the House of Lords are under scrutiny. According to the Electoral Reform Society report, in the 2010-2015 Parliament, peers who failed to vote even once in some years claimed a total of £360,000 in allowances, and the appointment of an additional 50 members would cost “at least £1.3 million per year.”

Kirsty Blackman, a member of the Scottish National Party who was recently elected to the House of Commons, described the House of Lords as bloated, outdated, undemocratic and a “horrendous waste of money.”

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The Surprising Science of Praise

Joel Peterson, Huffington Post, Aug. 19, 2015

As parents, we love to praise our children. When a daughter or son has succeeded in something at school, at home or in an activity, we love telling them, “You’re so smart!” “You’re so talented!” “You’re the best!”

After all, reinforcing a child’s success with praise is good for them, right? Well, maybe. But, it may depend on the praise that’s given, and certain kinds of praise can actually do harm.

Lewis Terman was a pioneering psychological researcher at Stanford University and was the person responsible for creating the Stanford-Binet IQ test in America between 1904 and 1915. He modified the original test created in 1905 by Frenchman Alfred Binet. In fact Terman coined the term “intelligence quotient” or IQ. He launched a study of high IQ students in 1921, tracking 1,528 individuals in what has become the longest running research study. Participants were followed throughout their lives using surveys about all aspects of their lives every 5 to 10 years. Current participants are in their 80s and 90s.

The study uncovered some highly interesting findings.

In 1968, Terman’s associate, Melita Oden compared the 100 most successful and 100 least successful men in the group, defining success as holding jobs that required their intellectual capability. For instance, those who were deemed successful were in professions such as medicine, while those deemed unsuccessful were in jobs such as sales clerk. She found that the IQs of the two groups were nearly identical; the difference being meaningless in any practical term. The big difference turned out to be in “will power, perseverance and desire to excel.” And these traits were discernible by grade school.

So we see that IQ may be less important than personal traits, like persistence. But are not personal traits fixed? Aren’t children born with unique personalities, which may predispose them to persistence or resilience? Maybe, but there is some compelling science that says that traits can be instilled or, at least, strengthened.

A former Columbia University researcher, who is now currently at Stanford, psychologist Carol Dweck, conducted a series of landmark studies with her colleague, Claudia Mueller, in the late 1990s about praise and education outcomes. Their findings have been replicated and expanded by numerous studies since.

The findings repeatedly showed that praising intelligence or talent made children actually less persistent, less confident and less resilient. Because intelligence and talent are things they can’t control, every challenging situation they faced became a confrontation that could discredit their being labeled intelligent or talented.

But praising improvement and the process children engage in–like their effort, hard work, strategy or focus–led to greater persistence, greater resiliency and greater success. Dweck and her colleagues showed that the traits identified by Oden are not fixed, but can be instilled and strengthened.

Especially in children and teenagers, the brain and personality–and personal traits–are being found to be elastic, adaptable and capable of change. Both for the better or otherwise.

Praising correctly can improve traits linked with education and life success. It involves praising for things, processes, approaches and outcomes that children can control and replicate on their own. What the praise should do is concretely identify these for the child, because he or she may not be able to link the correct cause and effect; link their effort or focus to a successful outcome.

Praise can help them make that connection and associate positive emotional reinforcement with that cause-effect connection.

Telling children they are the best may make them think that ability at something is fixed and they may avoid situations that could disprove their status as the best. But telling children they have gotten better because of what they did or how they did it, lets them know that ability at something is not fixed; that it can improve and they have the power to make it happen.

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Assim na Terra Como no Céu: Empurrando a Escuridão

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Dena Dyer

— Puxa, foi incrível! — Disse minha filha mais velha.

Concordei, com lágrimas escorrendo pelo rosto. E respirei fundo para me recompor.

Tínhamos acabado de assistir à última cena do filme Les Miserablés, de 2012, baseado em uma peça musical com o mesmo nome. Eu tinha visto a produção ao vivo umas tantas vezes, mas a última cena sempre me fez chorar.

Depois que os personagens tão imperfeitos e ao mesmo tempo tão fieis lutam para se libertarem da tirania e injustiça, tanto os que morrem como os que sobrevivem cantam juntos sobre o céu em um emocionante final, “Can You Hear the People Sing?” (“Consegue Ouvir as Pessoas Cantando?”[1])

As vozes sobem junto com suas bandeiras, o elenco, agora unido, pergunta:

Você ouve as pessoas cantarem
Perdidas no vale da noite?
É a música daqueles
Que estão subindo rumo à luz...
Viverão novamente em liberdade
No jardim do Senhor.
Eles andarão atrás do arado,
Abandonarão a espada.
As correntes serão quebradas
E todos os homens receberão sua recompensa.

A canção cala fundo para mim, pois meu coração anseia pelo encontro da terra com o céu. Meu espírito geme à espera de ver Satanás ser lançado fora de uma vez por todas.

Mas quando eu digo, “Senhor, seja feita a Tua vontade, assim na terra como no céu”, o que isso realmente significa? Como posso viver com a mente no reino de Deus neste solo frágil enquanto continuo a orar—e trabalhar—por frutos espirituais tais como paz e amor?

Como filhos da luz, você e eu somos criados para brilhar com tanta luz que a escuridão é empurrada, nem que seja um pouco. Quando fazemos isso, o céu beija a terra.


Somos todos chamados

Quer trabalhemos como mães ou agentes de mudança, contratantes ou cozinheiros, quando servimos diligentemente no lugar onde Deus nos colocou, estamos lutando pela liberdade. Plantamos sementes de esperança com cada ação, interação e reação. “A fé pode … ser a energia espiritual que possibilita as transformações pelas quais nosso mundo anseia desesperadamente,” diz Jim Wallis em Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change. (Fé Funciona: Como Viver Suas Crenças e Acender Mudanças Sociais Positivas[2]).

Somos parte de um sacerdócio real, e nossa esfera de influência é nossa congregação. Com a ajuda do Espírito, você e eu podemos trazer o reino de Deus à terra de uma série de maneiras. Podemos criar uma obra de arte redentora, desempenhar tarefas ingratas com um espírito alegre, e responder a insultos ou depreciações com perdão.

Em seu livro Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World (Comum: Fé Sustentável em um Mundo Radical e Irrequieto[3]), Michael Horton escreve:

O reino está crescendo de várias maneiras, das quais nem estamos cientes, e nossos vizinhos estão sendo servidos. Talvez seja uma referência tranquila na sala do café que leva um colega de trabalho a lhe perguntar semanas depois algo sobre a vida e a morte ... Você fez o almoço para as crianças e as levou à escola na hora. Trabalhou bem com suas mãos para suprir seus vizinhos com o que eles precisavam ... Agora está livre para fazer as pequenas coisas que têm valor, sem ansiedade sobre como tudo será no final.


Não depende de nós

Lembra-se do que Jesus disse a Pedro, o discípulo cheio de fogo que tinha por hábito meter os pés pelas mãos? Ele anunciou: “Edificarei a minha igreja, e as portas do inferno não prevalecerão contra ela.”[4]

É um paradoxo: somos chamados para trabalhar pela restauração e renovação, orar pela transformação e agirmos segundo a nossa fé. Contudo, no final, confiamos que Deus vai agir através de nós, por nós e em nós.

É importante lembrar isto quando nos engajamos em libertar os escravos do mundo moderno, alimentamos o faminto e vestimos o pobre. O número de pessoas que vivem em todo o tipo de cativeiro é assombroso. “Cansar de ter compaixão” é um mal comum que afeta aqueles que servem outros às margens da vida.

Enquanto buscamos o reino e fazemos das prioridades de Deus as nossas, devemos descansar no fato de que Deus é que muda as pessoas e instituições. Seu espírito o leva ao reavivamento. Sua graça leva salvação. Não temos que temer achando que vamos bagunçar as coisas.

Tal como Paulo escreveu para a igreja romana: “Portanto, isso não depende do desejo ou do esforço humano, mas da misericórdia de Deus.”[5]

Obrigada céu!

De http://www.thehighcalling.org/work/earth-it-heaven-pushing-back-darkness, © 2001 - 2011 H. E. Butt Foundation. Todos os direitos reservados. Reimpresso com permissão de Laity Lodge e TheHighCalling.org. Artigo de Dena Dyer.


[1] Em tradução livre.

[2] Em tradução livre.

[3] Em tradução livre.

[4] Mateus 16:18.

[5] Romanos 9:16 NVI.

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Made in the Image and Likeness of God

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By P. Amsterdam

Audio length: 10:06
Download Audio (9.2MB)

God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ … So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.1

Human beings (both male and female) were created in the image and likeness of God. God was saying that He was going to create beings that were like Him. He wasn’t saying that humans would be exactly like Him or that those He was about to create would be divine like He is, but rather that human beings would possess some similarities to God.

Human beings were made to have similarities to God. Even though Adam and Eve sinned and were separated from God, and through sin all of humanity is separated from God, this hasn’t caused the image and likeness to be completely lost. After destroying all humanity in the flood, except for Noah and his family, God reiterated that humans are made in His image. In the New Testament, reference is also made to people being in God’s image: God made man in His own image.2

While humans are still in the image and likeness of God, it’s not exactly the same as it was before the fall. Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve were pure and able not to sin. While they could choose to sin, they could also choose not to sin. After the fall they were different. Their moral purity was gone, and the desire and ability to stay aligned with God’s will was distorted. From that point on, humans were sinners by nature, and while they can refrain from sinning sometimes, by nature they sin and don’t have the ability to not sin. Though we are still in the image of God, that image has become altered due to sin.

The original human nature was that of prefallen man, but human nature ever since the fall has been corrupted by the effects of sin. Thankfully, as Christians, we can counter some of the effects of our fallen nature through believing, abiding in, absorbing, and applying God’s Word; and at the time of the resurrection of the dead, when Christians are raised in glory and reunited with their bodies, we will be freed from the effects of our fallen human nature.
Humanity’s unique features

As humans are the only creatures that God states are made in His image and likeness, this makes humans significantly different from all of the animal creation. While animals might have some elements of these features, or have them to some degree, man has them in a qualitatively greater fashion.

As God is a plural being in the Trinity, in a similar fashion, human beings reflect some of that plurality in that man and woman are two which become one flesh in marriage. Humans are personal beings. We interact and establish deep and complex relationships with others.

We have self-awareness; we are conscious of ourselves, of our own existence. We can know, examine, and judge ourselves. We are moral beings and have an inner sense of right and wrong.

We possess free will and self-determination. We have the ability to choose among options, and having decided on an option, we can move toward achieving that goal.

Our immaterial invisible spirits are immortal. God has always existed, and immortality is part of His essence. And being in His likeness (though not exactly like Him), the spirits of human beings are immortal in that they live forever after their separation from the body at death.

We are rational creatures with the ability to think logically, to reason, to be aware of the past, present, and future. We experience a wide range of emotions.

We are creative. While we don’t create to the degree that God does, we possess creativity of ideas and thought and thus can “create” new music, art, or literature. We can think of new ideas and possibilities and bring them into being. We use complex language to communicate.

There are other ways in which God’s image and likeness are manifest within humankind, but these are some of the most significant.
Original goodness

The Bible says that when God completed creation, He stated that everything He made was very good. This included Adam and Eve. It also says that man was made upright.

God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.3

Having been created very good, with elements of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, would mean that Adam and Eve were not created in a state of innocence with moral neutrality, but rather were created morally upright. From the time they were created until the time they sinned, Adam and Eve were morally upright and were capable of not committing sin.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they continued to be in the image and likeness of God; however, they were not as fully like God as they had been. They were no longer morally upright as they once had been, because they had chosen to disobey God’s command. It corrupted the original human nature.

It also changed their relationship with God, as they were sent away from Eden and blocked from returning “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Along with this, physical death entered into humanity. God telling them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die, implies that if they didn’t eat of it, they wouldn’t have died. Exactly how that would have happened, Scripture doesn’t tell us, but it does express that death entered humanity due to sin.
God’s plan of salvation

Adam and Eve sinning brought changes in humanity of epic proportions. The consequences of their sin brought a separation between God and humankind. It caused a distortion and degradation within the image of God in man so that man was no longer morally pure, causing men to live in a state of sinfulness, no longer having the ability to not sin. Thus God’s Word says that all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.4

While the human spirit lives beyond the death of the physical body, the body returns to dust, in accordance with God’s judgment for sin.

The consequences of sin among humanity are deeply connected to God’s plan of salvation. In Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and return, these consequences are overcome. His death and resurrection have brought about the salvation of our souls, meaning that the sins of humanity have been atoned for by Christ and that atonement is available to all who accept Him. The separation between God and the believer is no longer there, as Jesus’ death has brought reconciliation between God and those who have received His Son.

You, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.5

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.6

While all the bodies of believers die, at Jesus’ return their bodies will rise from the dead (the bodies of those believers who are alive at that time will be immediately changed), and their spirits will be joined with their resurrection bodies, and their rejoined bodies and spirits will live forever.

Through God’s love, grace, and mercy, manifest in Jesus’ death and resurrection, humans have been given the opportunity to overcome all of the effects of their sins and fallen nature. Physical death will be defeated as we rise from the dead and receive resurrected, imperishable bodies. The spiritual separation caused by sin will be gone and fellowship with God will be fully restored. Instead of being like the first man, the man of dust, Adam, we will be like the man from heaven, Jesus,7 and will bear His image.8

Originally published July 2012. Adapted and republished August 2015.
Read by Jon Marc.


1 Genesis 1:26–27.

2 James 3:9.

3 Genesis 1:31.

4 Romans 3:23.

5 Colossians 1:21–22.

6 Romans 5:10–11.

7 1 Corinthians 15:47.

8 1 Corinthians 15:49.

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What We Learned From German Prisons

By Nicholas Turner and Jeremy Travis, NY Times, Aug. 6, 2015

EARLIER this summer, we led a delegation of people concerned about the United States criminal justice system to visit some prisons in Germany and observe their conditions. What we saw was astonishing.

The men serving time wore their own clothes, not prison uniforms. When entering their cells, they slipped out of their sneakers and into slippers. They lived one person per cell. Each cell was bright with natural light, decorated with personalized items such as wall hangings, plants, family photos and colorful linens brought from home. Each cell also had its own bathroom separate from the sleeping area and a phone to call home with. The men had access to communal kitchens, with the utensils a regular kitchen would have, where they could cook fresh food purchased with wages earned in vocational programs.

We hoped that we were getting a glimpse of what the future of the American criminal justice system could look like.

This is an encouraging moment for American advocates of criminal justice reform. After decades of callousness and complacency, the United States has finally started to take significant steps to reverse what a recent report by the National Research Council called a “historically unprecedented and internationally unique” experiment in mass incarceration. Congress, in a bipartisan effort, seems prepared to scale back draconian federal sentencing laws. Many states are making progress in reducing their prison populations. And President Obama, in a gesture of his commitment to this issue, last month became the first American president to visit a federal correctional facility.

The delegation that we took to Germany represented the emerging national consensus on this issue. It included a Democratic governor; corrections officials from across the political spectrum; chief prosecutors; formerly incarcerated individuals; a liberal scholar of race and criminal justice; and representatives from Right on Crime and the Charles Koch Institute, conservative groups that advocate reform, as well as the evangelical Christian group Prison Fellowship.

But for all the signs of progress, truly transformative change in the United States will require us to fundamentally rethink values. How do we move from a system whose core value is retribution to one that prioritizes accountability and rehabilitation? In Germany we saw a potential model: a system that is premised on the protection of human dignity and the idea that the aim of incarceration is to prepare prisoners to lead socially responsible lives, free of crime, upon release.

While the United States currently incarcerates 2.2 million people, Germany–whose population is one-fourth the size of ours–locks up only about 63,500, which translates to an incarceration rate that is one-tenth of ours. More than 80 percent of those convicted of crimes in Germany receive sentences of “day fines” (based on the offense and the offender’s ability to pay). Only 5 percent end up in prison. Of those who do, about 70 percent have sentences of less than two years, with few serving more than 15 years.

The incarcerated people that we saw had considerable freedom of movement around their facilities and were expected to exercise judgment about how they used their time. Many are allowed, a few times a year, to leave the prison for a few hours or overnight to visit friends and family. Others resided in “open” facilities in which they slept at night but left for work during the day. Solitary confinement is rare in Germany, and generally limited to no more than a few days, with four weeks being the outer extreme (as opposed to months or years in the United States).

The process of training and hiring corrections officers is more demanding in Germany. Whereas the American corrections leaders in our delegation described labor shortages and training regimes of just a few months, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, less than 10 percent of those who applied to be corrections officers from 2011 to 2015 were accepted to the two-year training program. This seems to produce results: In one prison we visited, there were no recorded assaults between inmates or on staff members from 2013 to 2014.

Germans, like Americans, are greatly concerned with public safety. But they think about recidivism differently. During our visit, we heard prison professionals discussing failure in refreshingly unfamiliar terms: If, after release, an individual were to end up back in prison, that would be seen as a reason for the prison staff members to ask what they should have done better. When we told them stories of American politicians who closed a work-release or parole program after a single high-profile crime by a released inmate, they shook their heads in disbelief: Why would you close an otherwise effective program just because one client failed?

To be sure, there are significant differences between the two countries. Most notably, America’s criminal justice system was constructed in slavery’s long shadow and is sustained today by the persistent forces of racism. The American prison-building binge was fueled by a political environment in which “tough on crime” was a winning campaign strategy.

But the German context still provides a vision of a possible American future. The first article of the German Constitution reads, “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” Granted, our own Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment and protects individuals against excessive government intrusions. As was noted by the Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy in a landmark 2011 opinion ordering California to reduce its prison population: “Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons. Respect for that dignity animates the Eighth Amendment.”

These words hold much promise, but currently they have far too little impact on actual conditions in American prisons. In Germany, we found that respect for human dignity provides palpable guidance to those who run its prisons. Through court-imposed rules, staff training and a shared mission, dignity is more than legal abstraction.

Nicholas Turner is the president of the Vera Institute of Justice. Jeremy Travis is the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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Concept of God in Islam and Christianity

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William Lane Craig

Do Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same God? Dr. Craig explains the essential differences between the Islamic and Christian conceptions of God.

My interest in Islam was quickened by my study of the history of the cosmological argument for a personal creator of the universe. Early Christian commentators on Aristotle living in Alexandria, Egypt, developed this argument in response to Aristotle’s doctrine of the eternity of the world. They sought to show that the universe had a beginning and was brought into being by a transcendent creator.

When Islam swept across North Africa in the eighth century, this argument was taken up into Islamic theology and developed during the Middle Ages to a high degree of sophistication. Because of the contribution of Islamic thinkers to this argument, I dubbed it the kalam cosmological argument, the word “kalam” being the Arabic word for Islamic theology. I believe that this is a sound argument for God’s existence, and it has served me well in reaching out to Muslims with the gospel.

My interest in Islamic theology thus quickened, when I did my doctorate in theology at the University of Munich in Germany, I chose Islam as one of my side areas of specialization. I never dreamt at that time that this might someday become a topic of interest to popular audiences.

With the attacks of 9/11, Islam suddenly burst into public consciousness in the West, and its profile has risen with each passing year, as Islamic terrorism has spread across the world. This heightened awareness of Islam has piqued people’s interest in Islam and given me the opportunity to speak about the commonalities and contrasts between Islam and Christianity. Today I’ve been asked to speak about the concept of God in Islam and Christianity.

The question which drives our inquiry is not merely one of comparative religion; rather it is whether the Christian or Muslim concept of God is true. In our day of religious relativism, such a question is incredibly politically incorrect. All religions are supposed to be equally true, right? So what’s the fuss all about?

Well, the answer to that question, it seems to me, is that religious relativism, which is almost unthinkingly accepted by many people today, is simply not true. In fact, religious relativism is logically incoherent and so cannot be true. For the world’s religions conceive of God, or gods, in so many contradictory ways that they cannot all be true. In particular, the concept of God in Islam and Christianity is so different that both religions cannot be right. Islam and Christianity have different doctrines or teachings concerning what God is like. For example, Christians believe that God is tri-personal, that there are in the one God three persons whom we call the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Muslims deny this doctrine or teaching. They believe that God is a single person. We cannot both be right. We could both be wrong—maybe it’s the Buddhists who are right and God is impersonal—but we cannot both be correct. Therefore, part of the job of evaluating the competing claims of Islam and Christianity will be assessing their differing concepts of God.

Accordingly, in this morning’s talk I want, first, to look at the principal Islamic critique of the Christian conception of God, and then, second, to examine critically the Muslim concept of God, with a view toward determining its adequacy.

So let’s look first at the Christian concept of God and ask why Muslims find it rationally unobjectionable. Christians believe that God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-holy, eternal, spiritual Being who created the universe. Muslims agree with all these attributes (or properties) of God. This isn't surprising, since Islam, historically speaking, is an off-shoot of the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. So our understanding of what God is like is in many respects the same.

But the major objection lodged by Islam against the Christian concept of God concerns the doctrine of the Trinity. In particular Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and shares the same divine nature with God the Father. Muslims reject this doctrine because they believe that it commits the sin they call shirk, which is the sin of associating anything with God. Since God is thought to be incomparable or without peer, He cannot have a Son, as Christians claim. Thus, the Qu’ran denounces anyone who holds that God has a Son as “an unbeliever” and consigns him to hellfire for such a blasphemous assertion. The Qur’an states: “They are unbelievers who say, ‘God is the Messiah, Mary’s son . . . .’ Surely, whoever associates anything with God, God shall prohibit him entrance to Paradise and his home shall be the Fire. None shall help the evil-doers” (5.73).

Unfortunately the Qur’an’s denunciation of the doctrine of the Trinity seems to be based on a gross misunderstanding of that doctrine. First, a bit of history here: Early Christian creeds had adopted the language of speaking of Mary as “the Mother of God” because she bore Jesus Christ. Now to someone not familiar with the theology of the early Church Fathers, such an expression as “the Mother of God” is almost guaranteed to be misleading. What the Church Fathers meant is that the person whose human nature Mary bore is a divine person. Mary did not give birth to the divine nature of Christ; nevertheless, Mary could be called the Mother of God, since Christ, whose human nature she bore, was a divine person.

But Mohammed evidently thought that Christians believed in a Trinity composed of God the Father, Mary, and their offspring Jesus. It’s no wonder that he regarded such a ridiculous doctrine as blasphemous! Mohammed’s misunderstanding of the Trinity is evident in passages such as the following found in the Qur’an:


God will say: ‘Jesus Son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind: “Worship me and my mother as gods besides God?”’

‘Glory be to you,’ he will answer, ‘I could never have claimed what I have no right to.’ (5.117)

The Creator of the heavens and the earth—how should he have a son, seeing that He has no consort, and He created all things . . . ? (6.102)

The doctrine that Mohammed rejected, namely, that God the Father should consort with a human female to sire a son and these three should then be worshiped as gods, would be rejected by any Christian.

According to the Bible, Jesus is called God’s Son because he had no human father, but was miraculously conceived of a virgin. In the Gospel according to Luke, the angel says to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and God’s power will rest upon you. For this reason the holy child will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1.35 TEV). What makes this ironic is that the Qur’an affirms the virgin birth of Jesus! In the Qur’anic account the angel says, “I am but a messenger of your Lord and have come to give you a holy son.” Mary answers, “How shall I bear a son when I have neither been touched by any man nor ever been unchaste?” The angel replies, “Thus did your Lord speak. That is easy enough for me . . . . Our decree shall come to pass.” (19.20-22). Whereupon Mary conceives Jesus. Thus, no Muslim should object to calling Jesus God’s Son in the sense of his being miraculously conceived.

So if the doctrine of the Trinity is not the caricature rightly rejected by Mohammed, what is it? It is the doctrine that God is tri-personal. It is not the self-contradictory assertion that three Gods are one God, nor again that three persons are one person. That’s just illogical nonsense. Rather it is the claim that the one entity we call God comprises three persons. That is no more illogical than saying that one geometrical figure we call a triangle is comprised of three angles. Three angles in one figure; three persons in one being!

Perhaps the best way to think of this is to say that in God there are three centers of self-consciousness. I am a being with a single center of self-consciousness. God is a being with three centers of self-consciousness. Each of these three persons is equal in glory and divinity; but we call them “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” because of the different roles they place in relation to us. The Father is the person who sends the Son to Earth; the Son is the person who takes a human nature and becomes incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth; the Holy Spirit is the person who stands in Christ’s place until Christ returns.

Although this doctrine may seem strange to Muslims, once it's properly stated, there's nothing rationally objectionable about it. It is a logically consistent doctrine and seems rationally unobjectionable.

In fact, I’d like to finish out my first point by offering an argument for why it's plausible to think that God is a Trinity. To begin with, God is by definition the greatest conceivable being. If you could conceive of anything greater than God, then that would be God! Every Muslim who dies with the cry “Allahu akbar!” on his lips agrees with this point: God is the greatest being conceivable.

Now as the greatest conceivable being, God must be perfect. If there were any imperfection in God, then He would not be the greatest conceivable being. Now a perfect being must be a loving being. For love is a moral perfection; it is better for a person to be loving rather than unloving. God therefore must be a perfectly loving being.

Now it is of the very nature of love to give oneself away. Love reaches out to another person rather than centering wholly in oneself. So if God is perfectly loving by His very nature, He must be giving Himself in love to another. But who is that other? It cannot be any created person, since creation is a result of God’s free will, not a result of His nature. It belongs to God's very essence to love, but it does not belong to His essence to create anything. God is necessarily loving, but He is not necessarily creating. So we can imagine a possible world in which God is perfectly loving and yet no created persons exist. So created persons cannot be the sufficient explanation of whom God loves. Moreover, science tells us that created persons have not always existed. But God is eternally loving. So again created persons alone are insufficient to account for God's being perfectly loving. It therefore follows that the other to whom God’s love is necessarily directed must be internal to God Himself.

In other words, God is not a single, isolated person, as Islam holds; rather God is a plurality of persons, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds. On the Islamic view God is a person who does not give Himself away essentially in love for another; He is focused essentially only on Himself. Hence, He cannot be the most perfect being. But on the Christian view, God is a triad of persons in eternal, self-giving love relationships. Thus, since God is essentially loving, the doctrine of the Trinity is more plausible than any unitarian doctrine of God such as Islam. Why? Because God is by nature a perfect Being of self-giving love.

In summary of my first point, then, we’ve seen that the classic Muslim rejection of the Christian concept of God is based on a drastic misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that once that doctrine is properly understood, it is not only rationally unobjectionable, but quite plausible as well. Therefore, the Christian concept of God is rationally unobjectionable.

That brings us to my second point, that the Muslim concept of God is rationally objectionable. Now in claiming this, I’m not trying to put anybody down or attack someone personally. I’m just saying that it seems to me that the Islamic conception of God has real problems which render it rationally objectionable. Let me share just one of those deficits, namely:

Islam has a morally deficient concept of God.

We've seen that Muslims and Christians agree that God by definition is the greatest conceivable being and that besides being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and so forth, the greatest conceivable being must also be morally perfect. That means that God must be a loving and gracious being. Therefore, God, as the perfect being, must be all-loving.


And this is exactly what the Bible affirms. The Bible says,

God is love, . . . In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His son to be the sacrifice for our sins (I John 4.8, 10).

Or again it says,


God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5.8).

Jesus taught God’s unconditional love for sinners. We see this in his parables about the prodigal son and the lost sheep, in his practice of table fellowship with the immoral and unclean, and in his sayings like those of the Sermon on the Mount. He said, for example,


You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, . . . what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5.43-48)

The love of the Heavenly Father is impartial, universal, and unconditional.

What a contrast with the God of the Quran! What I'm going to tell you now is something that you will never hear in the media or from our public officials, for they dare not say such things. They cannot risk alienating hundreds of millions of Muslims by saying anything critical of Islam. But honesty compels me to say candidly and without rancor that the God of the Qur'an is not the loving God revealed by Jesus. According to the Quran, God does not love sinners. This fact is emphasized repeatedly and consistently like a drumbeat throughout the pages of the Qur'an. Just listen to the following passages:


“God loves not the unbelievers” (III.33)

"God loves not the impious and sinners" (II.277)

“God loves not evildoers” (III. 58)

“God loves not the proud” (IV. 37)

“God loves not transgressors” (V. 88)

“God loves not the prodigal” (VI. 142)

“God loves not the treacherous” (VIII.59)

“God is an enemy to unbelievers” (II. 99)

Over and over again the Qur'an declares that God does not love the very people whom the Bible says God loves so much that He sent His Son to die for them!

Now this may seem paradoxical in light of the Qur'an’s calling God “al-Rahman al-Rahim”--the All-Merciful--until you realize that according to the Qur'an what God’s mercy really cashes out to is that if you believe and do righteous deeds, then God can be counted on to give you what you have earned, plus a bonus. Thus, the Quran promises,


Work and God will surely see your work. (9. 105)

Every soul shall be paid in full for what it has earned. (2. 282)

Those who believe and do deeds of righteousness and perform the prayer and pay the alms--their wage awaits them with the Lord. (2. 278)

According to the Qur'an God’s love is thus reserved only for those who earn it. It says,


To those who believe and do righteousness, God will assign love. (19. 97).

So the Qur'an assures us of God’s love for the God-fearing and the good-doers; but He has no love for sinners and unbelievers. Thus, in the Islamic conception, God is not all-loving. His love is partial and has to be earned. The Muslim God only loves those who first love Him. His love thus rises no higher than the love which Jesus said even tax-collectors and unbelievers exhibit.

Now don’t you think this is an inadequate conception of God? What would you think of a parent who said to his children, "If you measure up to my standards and do as I say, then I will love you"? Some of you have had parents like that, who didn't love you unconditionally, and you know the emotional scars you bear as a result. As the greatest conceivable being, the most perfect being, the source of all goodness and love, God’s love must be unconditional and impartial. Therefore, the Islamic conception of God seems to me to be morally deficient. I therefore cannot rationally accept it.

Undoubtedly, this difference between Jesus’ Heavenly Father and the God of Mohammed is most clearly exhibited in the attitude we're commanded to have toward non-believers. Jesus said that we should love unbelievers, just as God does, even if they are our enemies. Mohammed’s attitude and teaching were quite different. Early on in his career, when he himself was in the persecuted minority, Mohammed had a very positive attitude toward Jews and Christians, whom he called the “People of the Book” because of their adherence to the Bible. He believed that once the Jews understood his message, they would willingly convert to Islam. Passages in the Quran from this early period of Mohammed’s life are quite positive toward Jews and Christians.

But when the Jews did not convert, but opposed Mohammed, he became increasingly embittered against them. As Mohammed acquired political and military strength, the persecuted prophet changed to the ruthless politician. He began to have the Jews in Medina, where his base of operations was, either killed or dispossessed. In the year 627, after an unsuccessful attack on Medina by the Arab army from Mecca, Mohammad rounded up hundreds of Jewish families in Medina. 700 Jewish men were put to the sword, and Mohammad had their wives and children sold into slavery.

Mohammad realized that in order to unify the fractious Arab tribes, outward expansion was necessary. So he turned his eyes toward Syria and Iraq as obvious targets. At this time he lifted all protection from pagans. Unless they submitted to Islam, they were to be exterminated. The ninth chapter of the Quran comes from this period of Mohammad’s life. It states that for four months pagan idolaters shall be left alone unmolested. Then comes this chilling command: “When the sacred months are past, kill the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. [But] If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way . . . . they are your brothers in the Faith” (9.5, 11). Not only pagans, but even Jews and Christians, the once respected People of the Book, now also came under Mohammad’s ban. Unless they submitted, they were likewise to be eliminated. Chapter 9 goes on to command Muslims: “Fight those from among the People of the Book who . . . do not embrace the true Faith until they pay tribute out of their own hand and are utterly subdued” (9.29). This chapter goes on to rebuke in the harshest terms any Muslim who refuses to go forth to fight: God will punish him and replace him with others (9.38-39). Muslims who refuse to fight will be smitten by God, either directly or — ominously—at the hands of faithful Muslims who do fight (9.52) “Wait if you will,” the hesitant are told, “We too are waiting.” But those who go forth in God's holy war are promised either victory or martyrdom (9.52). Those who die in God’s cause are promised a Paradise of sensual delights: green gardens with flowing waters, silk couches, abundant wine, and voluptuous, dark-eyed virgins for their pleasure ( ).

These are the last commands in the Qur’an with respect to unbelievers. Mohammad died shortly thereafter in 632 with plans before him for the attacks on neighboring nations. His successors carried out those attacks. In 633 the armies of Islam took Persia; in 635 Damascus fell; in 638 Jerusalem succumbed; in 640 Egypt was taken, and so on, right across North Africa to the Atlantic Coast.

We in the West with our democratic, liberal values tend to think that every religion surely shares our values. American officials have repeatedly said that we should not refer to the terrorists as “Islamic fundamentalists” because they are murderers, and no major religion advocates murder. I wonder if these officlas have ever read the ninth chapter of the Qur’an. The truth of the matter is Islam is a religion which enjoins violence and which, historically, has been propagated by violence.

Contrary to what you hear tirelessly repeated in the media, the word “Islam” does not mean “peace.” That claim is simply linguistically false. “Islam” is the Arabic word for submission or surrender. That is what Muslims are called upon to do: to surrender everything to God. Thus, contrary to Western ways of thinking, Islam is not a church. It is crucial that we understand this. Islam is a total way of life: everything is to be submitted to God: the government, the economy, social mores, every aspect of society is submitted to God. Islam is thus all-consuming. The Western idea of separation of church and state is meaningless in Islam. For everything is to be submitted to God.

What this means is that it is really the so-called moderate Arab states like Egypt and Turkey, where you have a secular government distinct from Islamic law, in effect a separation of church and state, which are the ones who acting inconsistently with Islam. They have adopted a Western model of governance, a separation of church and state, which is fundamentally incompatible with Islam. And that’s why Islamic fundamentalists hate these moderate Arab regimes and want to overthrow them. The fundamentalists understand more accurately the true nature of Islam.

But of course our public officials dare not say such a thing. We need the support of these moderate Arab states if our war against terrorism is to succeed. Therefore, moderate Muslims must be courted and reassured. And thus we get all these politically correct, revisionist statements in the media that Islam means peace, that Muslims only fight in self-defense not aggression, that Islam condemns violence, and so forth. All of this is politically motivated revisionism which betrays the true character of Islam.

This is not to say that Islam sanctions all of the atrocities perpetrated by group like ISIL. I am not aware of anything in the Qur’an or in Sharia law that would sanction the rape of women or the execution of children in the name of Allah. Nor am I saying that Muslims are violent people. I’m talking about theology, not people. We can be thankful that the vast majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists, but are nominal Muslims, whose lives are far better than their theology. Indeed, they may know very little about Islamic theology. Asking a nominal Muslim what Islam teaches is rather like asking a nominal Catholic or Episcopalian what Christianity teaches!

So I trust you can see how absurd is the claim that the God of Mohammed is the Father of Jesus Christ. The Father of Jesus Christ loves sinners and commands us to love even our enemies, not to mention our neighbor. The God of Mohammad loves only those who love him, and he is an enemy to unbelievers. His followers are commanded to hunt down and kill unbelievers unless and until they submit. The God of the Qur’an is a defamation of the Heavenly Father proclaimed and revealed by Jesus.

To wrap up, then, we've seen, first, that the Christian concept of God as a Trinity is rationally unobjectionable and, second, that the Muslim concept of God is, by contrast, rationally objectionable because the God of Islam is morally deficient and therefore not the greatest conceivable being. As one theologian has rightly exclaimed, “Thank God for God!”
by William Lane Craig

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/concept-of-god-in-islam-and-christianity#ixzz3hyajA8Fy

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