A Rather Disturbing Observation

I'm about to engage in a rhetorical maneuver of questionable value, but bear with me.
I'm about to compare ISIS or ISIL, the "so called" Islamic state, with Dispensationalists, otherwise known as those Rapture people.  Here is a brief survey of their commonality:

1. Both believe that they are favored by God and therefore they will be vindicated.
2. Both believe that people who do not agree with them are and should be condemned to destruction.
3. Both have decided to interpret their individual sacred texts, either Koran or Bible, as a sort of choose your own adventure novel, and have come out with an eschatological perspective that is completely at odds with the idea of a loving and merciful God.
4. Both will react violently (either physically or verbally) when you challenge that interpretation.
5. Both are generally discredited by the sensible and rigorous theology of their own larger community.

To be clear now, I am not using this comparison to claim that anyone who goes to see, and perhaps even likes the new Left Behind movie is in any way the moral equivalent of a terrorist who beheads reporters.  What I would like to point out to a whole bunch of people who are currently engaged in painting a large segment of our human family as being delusional and violent because of the actions of a very few of their number.
If you're paying attention, you will notice that the world community of Islam is, in no uncertain terms, letting us know that they feel the same, and perhaps worse about ISIS than we do.  In addition to the persecution of Iraqi Christians, ISIS is persecuting a whole load of Iraqi Muslims as well, and we would do well not to forget that.
Jesus one time said this thing about taking the log out of our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of someone else.  As Christians we have not done a particularly good job of stopping our own faith from being represented by the tin-foil hat crowd, whether it is something like Creation Science or Dispensational theology or whether it is the catastrophic hybridization of triumphal Christianity and American imperialism/exceptionalism.  Our own house is certainly not in order.
The thing is though, we've sort of gotten our beheading/jihad days behind us.  Our most blood thirsty religious fantasies are now movies starring Nicholas Cage, not young angry men in stolen tanks and humvees.
I think Islam as a global religion is trying to get past this phase as well, and as much as I want to say that ISIS is evil, I don't want to extend that judgment to Islam as a whole.  Honestly, I don't know that many Muslims, but the ones I have met have seemed like fairly gentle, rational people.  The Muslim voices that I need to listen to now, to hold back the fear, are the ones who seem to feel the same way about fundamentalists and extremists in their house as I do about the wing-nuts in mine.
If I'm going to be serious about this Jesus thing, I'm going to have to start opening my heart to the suffering of people, and right now, I see a world community that is suffering hatred and derision because of the actions of a relatively few members, who have been driven to desperation by horrible circumstances and even worse theology.
This whole situation really does have the capacity to start an Armageddon-ish scenario, but if we're going to get through it we're going to need to work together in our common humanity.  We're going to need our Muslim brothers and sisters to fix this, and they're probably going to need our help.  Since I don't believe the Rapture is a thing, I know that we're in this together.  Me and mine aren't going to magically disappear before any sort of tribulation starts, so I hope we can get our act together and stop all the hate and fear.
I do believe that one day, "every knee shall bow" and "every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."  Until that happens I'm going to try as hard as I can to love my neighbors, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist and Agnostic, as well as I possibly can .
Because were all in this together.