The story of that anti-Islam “film” that is the subject of a lot of anger in the Middle East is weird. The purported filmmaker is, at best, a pseudonym. It might just be some poorly spliced clips jammed together to piss people off. It was posted on Youtube and nobody seemed to notice until:
Spreading the word about the film were two men, an Egyptian-born Christian activist in Washington, D.C., named Morris Sadek and his friend Terry Jones, pastor of a church in Florida who made headlines last year when he burned a Quran. Terry Jones says he hasn’t seen the full two-hour film but he liked what he saw in the preview.
Now, it appears, that al Qaeda used protests as a smoke screen for an attack on the Libyan embassy.
For all guys like Jones and organizations like al Qaeda probably actually hate each other, they certainly have common ground. Leaders of Christian and Muslim extremists alike have a joint interest in having their followers angry at one another. It makes the leaders strong.
My initial reaction to the Benghazi attack: revenge! But I have committed myself to a way of the heart that dares to break the deadly cycle of violence by loving our enemies. Anger must yield to truth-seeking, understanding, wisdom, forgiveness and a resolve to seek just ends by just means. That is strength to lead.
Lot of similarity between Terry Jones’ Koran burning, and Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ”. Both actions meant to shock and draw attention, though Jones didn’t have an NEA grant.
I’m still wrestling how a statement condeming those who, despite their distaste for the content of the film, recognize the American constitutional value of free speech. turns out to be an “apology fior our values”.
Don,
I believe that wrestling is a good analogy. We are watching Romney in a WWE-like context, blathering and chest-pounding.
You are also watching a trailing candidate and his candidacy begin to implode.
Maybe so…….it’s just unfortunate that such a wrestling match, which once upon a time was subject to the rule that when it came to foreign policy, political differences ended at our waters’ edge, now seem part of a daily international broadcast.
Agreed.
Terry Jones and his ilk, and evangelical and Calvinist Protestants in general, are not Christian. They completely miss the point too much to be considered “Christian” in any meaningful sense of the word.
I’ll bite on this one. I agree with you regarding Terry Jones and his ilk, and the yahoo from Kansas. But to lump all evangelical and Calvinist Protestants in with them, and to call them “not Christian” is pretty broad. Too broad. And, thank goodness for our freedom of speech which lets you and me make such statements. But, as an evangelical protestant, I would ask you to please not lump me in with Jones or any other nut who claims to speak for the Christian masses. Thank you.
Does salvation come from good works or from faith alone? If your answer is the latter, you completely miss the point and are therefore not a Christian.
I believe that salvation is a gift that comes from God’s grace. It does not “come from” my faith, though that is how I lay hold of it. Now, if I have faith, it should bear fruit and you should be able to see my faith through what I do. But the good works earn me nothing.
With that being said, I do think that I am still missing your point.
My lack of belief ultimately doesn’t depend on the faith/works issue; so I’m kind of just a spectator here. But, it always seemed odd to have a Creator that created humans predestined to go to hell. It also seemed perverse to me to make salvation contingent on belief in an entity that apparently went out of its way to avoid objectively observable demonstrations of its existence.
Doug, I get that. And I won’t try to convince you otherwise. I don’t think that God created humans predestined to go to hell. And I do believe that there are observable demonstrations of God’s existence. However, I do acknowledge that those demonstrations are not objectively verifiable. And the time and space contraints here limit a full-blown discussion of what I believe about the Bible’s teachings on salvation, predestiny, etc. Anyway, it’s what I believe. It’s not what you believe. And that’s OK.
And I should also say: thanks for providing a forum for this and the other good discussions that go on here (and the not-so-good ones, too).
The BBC World View radio program has had many segments about seperating legitimate protests in the Islamic world and the militant religous groups that are using it to recruit, undermine governments and gain political power.
People dealt with the horror of 9-11 in different ways. I fell back on the lessons of non-violence and peaceful conflict resolution from the religion I was raised in and later rejected. And I wrote a poem to encapsulate my thoughts about such events and actors. I am glad the death toll was small in the Benghazi incident. But the danger remains.
September 11, 2001*
The Skyscrapers that proclaimed the strength of Collective Man fell
brittle
in an all disaffirming flame.
Collapse upon collapse.
The call to an abject evil
transmitted relentless and unencrypted.
Cascades of scrolling names and passport photos.
Dense and defenceless.
The unmentionable odor of death offends the September night.
And all contentment is negated.
*Suggested by “September 1, 1939”, by W.H. Auden.
******************************************************************************
*******************************************************************************
October 11, 2001*
Black birds of prey fly atop the night.
Their tiny red eyes flash death,
Quick. Remote. From centuries away.
Screen shots, grainy and grey.
Bulllet-point lessons from a digital demi-god.
Infinite justice above,
Instant martyrdom below.
(Oblivious, as always, to the gaunt faces of ambivalent subsistence.)
Flinty eyes peer across hardened lands and shifting sands.
Recast again a base metal mythology into an idol, brittle, hollow, but
Dazzling when the believer’s stare fades to blank.
Fan smoldering enmities to ignite the browsing rabble.
And howl again that old lie:
Rejoice in the dust of the Dead.
Partake freely of the Old Ways.
(We don’t trust you with the booty of the present. We fear what you will want in the future.)
Smoke still obscures the Shining City on the Hill.
The chasm remains, the deadly dust will not settle.
The Worst. The railers and the wailers.
The worst. Fat-jowled pharisees pound the pulpit and caw on the cable channel:
“(g)od, punish us back to piety.”
The Only Slightly Better. The clue less, the talking dead heads,
the pandering pundits ask: “Why Us?”
And the tenured class, spinning infinite loops of self-cancelling logic say:
“Who can say? Better Them, better Us?”
But what of We? We!
We who must be the affirming points of light.
We who must flash out wherever we exchange our messages.
We who must stand in the Centre and bring Them and Us
back together. And hold it, as We.
The earnest work must begin.
Ignorant armies must stand down.
Clashes by night must be deliberated in the light of day.
We must all live together
or die.
Die, Us and Them, in a bang, or a whimper.
Die in the old and damned lies,
Or live together in the Transcendent Truth.
And never to hear again that most apostate of prayers:
The innocent shall do the penance.
Our god shall be loved alone.