It's been a New Millennium long enough that most of us are comfortable with it, indeed, it's all that many young adults really know. Here in the US, where I live, one of the universal laws of culture is that no one has a right to say that one way of life--one way of seeing the world--is better than another. We buried the Moral Majority years ago. A while back we decided to stop making anybody feel bad for the things they think or believe. Acceptance and
tolerance are rule of the day. Who am I to tell you that your choices or conclusions about what is right and wrong are inferior to mine?
Look carefully at the picture of Abubakar Shekau. He is the leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. The name means 'western education is sinful." I'm at the front of the line of those who challenge what's wrong with my "Western" culture. Take notes on any given Sunday, and you'll hear me challenge the values, or lack thereof, of my time and place. Don't get the idea, though, that this makes me and Abu--I hope he doesn't mind--equal. We are not. I, following the tradition of two millennia of Christian preaching, seek to engage people in thinking, and feeling. I seek to persuade about what is right and wrong. I ask people to join me in seeking the God of the Bible, and committing our lives to him. Not only do I refrain from physical coercion, I find it repulsive. I condemn it. Abu on the other hand [Warning: What I am about to say is really ugly.] Seeks to make his point this way:
This past Tuesday morning Boko Haram came to the dorm of a boarding school in Yobe state, Nigeria. While the boys slept in the predawn darkness they set their dorm on fire. The door was locked. The terrorists shot and knifed those who attempted to escape through the windows. At the end of their "raid" about forty boys, and teachers were dead, some burned to ashes, others found dead in the bush, where they had bleed to death in their attempt to flee. Look at Abu. He is not ashamed. He is not a man who gave into what he considers baser motives. He is proud of what he has done. He believes that slaughtering school boys in the middle of the night is the right thing to do. Likely, he will sleep well tonight.
Have atrocities been committed in the name of Christ? Without doubt. Painting a cross on a shield does not make the unspeakable right. Are there problems with my "Western" culture, the one Abu hates with such virulence? Again, there is no doubt. I'm not trying to whitewash my way.
What I am challenging you to do is look into Abu's eyes and then tell me that all world-views are equal. That no one has the right to tell anyone else that that they are wrong.
That view is idiocy.
Abu is a fiend.
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment