LETTER TO THE EDITOR (In response to Terry Jones anti Sharia protest rally in Dearborn) — I am a Michigan native, though I have not lived there for a long time. Growing up in Western Michigan, I viewed Detroit as the exotic, far-off place where we went to sit in the old hallowed grounds at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, watching Trammell and Whitaker and later viewing Cecil Fielder’s bat with mighty awe. I saw the Detroit area as exotic because it was so big, and, though much of it was in decay, so impressive and cosmopolitan.
While a student at Hillsdale College, I had several Arab-American friends, and know first-hand that not all Islam is of the radical sort. Just as in Christianity, there are nominal Muslims and there are Muslims who take their faith seriously.
“It’s easier to identify some external enemy, and overlook the enemy within. Civilizations fall not by external pressures – but by internal rot.”
Some people fear the rise of radical Islam and the threat of Sharia (Quranic laws). In the deep south (Alabama, Florida, Mississippi…) we hear rumors of honor killings, female genital mutilation and women wearing burqas. We hear stories (some real and some exaggerated) about the death of liberty and the imposition of sharia law.
What dangers lead to the death of liberty? Is creeping Sharia law the greatest danger? It’s easier to identify some external enemy, and overlook the enemy within. Civilizations fall not by external pressures – but by internal rot.
The Christian church bears a large part of the blame. For about the last sixty years, the church has been giving helpful advice — to help people make their lives better. This message has been put forth from all sorts of pulpits in all kinds of churches – whether mainline and liberal or evangelical and conservative.
The evangelical church may tack on a “get saved” message now and again, but, by and large, middle class suburbanites are only hearing “solutions to the problems” that kept them awake at night: marital, finances, career and children.
The Problem of Christless Christianity
Yes, we need help. The type of help we need, however, is not making our old lives better. The help we need is a brand new life. We need to be rescued, not improved. We are the reason things go wrong in our lives. We need the resurrection power of Jesus Christ to transform our lives.
Tragedy happens in some families. But it is not tragedy that makes most people miserable. What causes the angst and agony of our daily existence?. How do we get on the rat-race for bigger houses farther out, with better jobs, with prettier wives, and more-accessorized kids? Some people have found peace and joy in the midst of sickness, tragedy, and poverty — because they understand something we in the church often forget. That “something” is Jesus.
Is Jesus making you happy? My church tells me Jesus can make me happy. The disciples of Jesus were happy even as they were being killed. Yet many “modern Christians” are not happy — because they don’t really want Jesus Christ in their life. They want Christianity without Christ. They want a happy and fulfilled life on their own terms. Sadly, they get neither Christ nor their happiness in the end, just as the man who marries for money gets neither love nor joy.
The church, however, persists in the face of this misery trying to offer people a better life – a self improvement program. The church baptizes affluent American values, and offers a life of comfort with little self-sacrifice or inconvenience.
Bonhoeffer was battling the evils of Nazi Germany, while preaching the good news of Christ. Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” What was he talking about?
We are to called to be loving, sacrificial, humble, selfless, honest, chaste, industrious, thrifty and kind. Yet, we find ourselves unable to do those things. “The Law” is powerless to bring about the result it intends. “The Law of God” tells us to be good, but it has no power to make us good.
“The Islamic world looks at the United States as decadent, slothful and morally rotten – a civilization teetering on the brink, and ripe for the picking. We must agree with them in this.”
This is where Christ comes in. In Colossians, it says that Christ is our life. Christ is our robe of righteousness. Until we see that we ourselves are the problem, we will never see that Christ is the solution. Our old life must die, and the resurrection power of Jesus will give us a new life!
This brings us back to the idea of freedom and tyranny. Whether Sharia law or tyrannical socialism – the nature of tyranny is the same – it is the forced practice of virtue, however skewed its notion of virtue is. How can something be virtuous if I am forced to do it? Externally enforced virtue is no virtue at all. It is not my virtue that makes me pay taxes to support the poor, it is the threat of punishment.
The Islamic world looks at the “Christian” west as self-indulgent, decadent and ripe for the picking. They are right, and their answer is Sharia law – holiness enforced from without.
The American experiment flourished for a long time, and some historians have been searching for the “missing ingredient”. What was the “secret saucet” in the American recipe for freedom and prosperity? What was the motivation for the “Puritan work ethic”? The secret sauce was (and still is) love.
Love for Christ motivated a significant portion of the populace to thrift, industry, charity, moderation, self-sacrifice and worship. Jesus said that those who believe in him will have rivers of living water flowing from within themselves, bringing refreshment and blessing to all around. We have been living off that accumulated capital now for several generations, and its effect is waning. Public morality has collapsed. Legislation and regulation increase in response in an attempt to put the government’s finger in the collapsing dike.
The Islamic world looks at the United States as decadent, slothful and morally rotten – a civilization teetering on the brink, and ripe for the picking. We must agree with them in this. The answer to an encroaching Islam at home and abroad is not Terry Jones protesting in front of a mosque, the death of Al Qaeda leaders, or bombs lobbed into Libya. The answer is a life filled with the love of Jesus; sharing the good news of Jesus resurrection with our neighbors.
Sincerely,
Ken Pierce – Jackson, Mississippi
Related Stories and Links
- Pastor Terry Jones Protesting at Islamic Center Today
- What Happens When We Take Christ Out of Christianity?
- Fear of Sharia or Fear of Losing Political Influence?
- Daddy, I Saw the Mayor Do Something
- Diversity and Peace
- A Christian Response – Comparing Bible and Koran
- The Evolutionary Hermeneutic and Dearborn
A lot of Americans and Canadians have become so insulated from reality that they imagine that America/Canada can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves.. Pause a moment, reflect back. These events are actual events from history.. They really happened!!!
Do you remember?
1. In1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male.
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim males.
3. In 1972 a Pan Am 747 was hijacked and eventually diverted to an Arab country where a fuse was lit on final approach and it was blown up shortly after landing by Muslim males.
4. In 1973 a Pan Am 707 was destroyed in Rome, with 33 people killed, when it was attacked with grenades by Muslim males.
5. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim males.
6. During the 1980’s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim males.
7 In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim males.
8. In 1985, the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered
and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim males.
9. In 1985, TWA flight 8 47 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim males.
10. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim males.
11. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim males.
12. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim males.
13. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take down the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim males.
14. In 2002, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim males.
15. In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by — you guessed it — Muslim males.
No, I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people… Absolutely No Profiling!
They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President’s security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males alone lest they be guilty of profiling.
Have the American People completely lost their Minds, or just their Power of Reason???
The above comment by Bobby Gerber is outrageous!
1. Sirhan Sirhan was a PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN! And he is almost certainly just a patsy, anyway.
2. I don’t know about the identity of the specific hostage-takers/terrorists, but the operation of the Black September Group in Munich ’72 was named after PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN villages razed by the Israeli Jews.
3. There is no record of a Pan Am 747 hijacking in 1972. You must have your facts wrong.
4. Do you know the perpetrators were Muslim just because they were associated with the PLO (which is disproportionately Christian)?
5. So what? They did not take over every Christian embassy. This was a political protest aimed at the secular US government.
6-7. America was involved in a Civil War in Lebanon. You can’t send troops to conduct military operations in another country and call it terrorism when they shoot back.
8. The group that carried out the attack was founded by an Orthodox CHRISTIAN.
10. You are probably right, but do you know who did Pan Am 103 because I don’t? It was not apparently the Libyan Megrahi. If it was the PFLP, it could have been Christians. Maybe you should read up on the situation. That attack was not about religion in any case.
11. The 1993 WTC bombing was seemingly provocateured. An FBI informant, Emad Salem, apparently built the bomb and taped the conversation with his handler – which prevented him from going to jail and possibly curtailed hyping of the attack. You can find all this information for yourself.
13. You don’t really know who did that. The only person brought to trial for it was waterboarded 86 times before confessing to the impossible.
14. Yeah, in Afghanistan (not in the US or Europe), against the very forces the US had FUNDED AND EMPOWERED against the USSR.
So you appear to confuse Arab with Muslim, as you cite many PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS for “Muslim terrorism”. You know why the Palestinian Christians fight? Because their homes have been taken, their churches destroyed, by Israel. That is an ethnic conflict, not a religious one. Israelis profile people racially, leading to demeaning treatment of some of their own Sephardi, without care as to who is Christian or Muslim.
You also appear to mistake killings in war zones by the other side in wars initiated by the United States in those countries with terrorism!!! Apparently, not doing whatever the (elitist, secular-liberal) foreign policy establishment around Washington, DC says is terrorism?!?!?!
With your attitude, you will not only acquiesce as the US is turned into a godless police state only interested in bankrupting itself to fight wars overseas against real or imaginary terrorists, often for the benefit of Israel or multinational corporations, but you will proudly defend this system destroying your children’s future and condemn any sane citizens and Christians as “traitors” and “soft on terrorism”.
What about Lockerbie and the nutty, so called, American (MUSLIM) lieutenant at the pentegon. in I think, 2011. PLEASE!!!
There is only one religion that blows up churches, hindu temples, synagogues, airplanes, daycare centers, buildings full of people working trying to support their families, innocent people whose crime is thet don’t agree with this religion. Their motto is veni vidi vici,( I came I saw I conquered) and guess what! It’s not Christianity! Can you guess what the heritical religion is? I can.:}