The Wonder Working Power of Porno and Democracy..not

(Qualifier for this post;I am sick today. Which I mention so my fan base can pray for me.
And to apologize in advance: I know it's not well written, I am spaced out: but lucid enough to be moved by the topic.)

++"Moral absolutism, which rejects compromise, can be a virtue in extreme situations, but becomes a misfortune when government aspires to it. It is often a mask for hypocrisy, always the means of discriminating against others. … That is why the democrat-skeptic does not trust moral absolutes in politics. He prefers compromise. For him this is not moral relativism. It is an act of faith in compromise as democracy's daily bread."

-Adam Michnik, quoted in "Why Adam Michnik Is Afraid of Theocracy
Confessions of a Democrat-Skeptic, " by Agnieszka Tennant

++"Turn this song into a prayer..Compromise is not a dirty word...Twenty nine people (killed by terrorism( is too many.)" -Bono, See below from 3:15ff




"Why do you Christians put out so many pornographic movies?"

It was a perfectly understandable and appropriate question for an Arab Muslim to ask an American Christian!

My friend was in the waiting room to get a passport, and began chatting with a Muslim.
Once he learned that my friend was a pastor, he felt comfortable enough to tentatively venture, "Can I ask you a question; something I have never understood about Christianity?"

"Sure!," my friend responded; intrigued, unaware that what she would heard next was
"Why do you Christians put out so many pornographic movies?"
!!

In a traditional Muslim mindset/worldview, Church equals state. The government is governed by the dominant religion. That Muslim, from his worldview (and likely encouraged by so many American televangelists proclaiming "The United States is a Christian nation"), correctly and simply syllogized:

"1. America is a Christian nation.

2.It exports porn.

3. This doesn't add up."

A delightful dialogue opened up. This gentleman heard for the first time what we in the US all know (or should) :Not everyone who loves in America is a Christian. And it is not an officially (thank God) Christian nation. And so everything that is exported from America is approved by every Christian living there, nor should every product be construed as a Christian product.

He simply didn't know.

Don't hear what I'm not saying, but..

This is partly why 9/11 happened.



This morning's Wall Street Journal (Doesn't every churchculture vulture and U2 fan worth their salt and blog, daily read the Journal? zzzzzzzzz) summarized a helpful piece from the Boston Globe:

"Forget ‘Democracy,’ Muslim Reformers Want ‘Justice’"
As rallying cries, neither “freedom” nor “democracy” have gained much traction in the Muslim world. But “justice” has, explains Shahan Mufti in the Boston Globe. Traditional staples of Western rhetoric such as “liberty” frequently suffer in translation or else are taken to be insincere. But “justice” (”adl” in Arabic, “insaf” in Persian) has associations with the Koran that can give notions like freedom and fairness a specifically Islamic, home-grown slant. It thus resonates with many people in society who otherwise have little in common politically, says Mr. Mufti, a free-lance journalist based in Pakistan. For the middle class, justice means the ending of bureaucratic corruption. For the economically depressed, it means fighting social imbalances. For the religious, it connotes the fulfillment of God’s will. The most famous example is Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, which has combined a call for social justice with an Islamic ethos. Similarly, the Justice and Development Party of Morocco and the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party in Indonesia have connected their anticorruption programs to their Islamic roots.
link

This needed to be said, and has not been heard. I am afraid Michael Novak's book.
The Universal Hunger for Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations is Not Inevitable,
though insightful on many points, unfortuntately missed the main point.
Let me put it this way: a more accurate thesis for a title would be
"Since the Hunger for Liberty (at least the way Westerners define it) is NOT universal, the clash of civilizations IS Inevitable (unless Westerners really become culturally sensitive)."

President Bush's well-meaning mission to bring Western democracy to the world cannot work, as it is based on a faulty assumption that the entire world wants...deep down...Western style freedom/liberty/democracy. I hope it was one of his speechwriters, and not the man himself, who penned the now famous/infamous line: "the wonder working power of democracy" . Has no one else noticed that this is an obvious allusion to the hymn "Nothing But the Blood," with"democracy" squarely substituted for " the blood of Jesus".
Yikes!

A book closer to the truth, "Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage" ,by British Christian Mac Pierce, reminds that those in the "rest"of the world "have the sensation that everything they hold dear and sacred is being rolled over by an economic and cultural juggernaut that doesn't even know it's doing it . . . and wouldn't understand why what it's destroying is important or of value."

The Booklist review of this book summarizes:

The root cause of non-Western nations' anger toward the West lies not in economics, religion, or foreign policy, church historian and business-studies teacher Pearse says, but in modern Western culture, which traditional societies see as barbarism. Specifically, they see in the West societies that forget ancestors, derogate religion, exalt triviality (sports, entertainment, fashion), endorse sexual shamelessness, deprecate family, and discard honor. Westerners are surprised to be called barbarians, because they associate barbarism almost exclusively with dirt and cruelty. To reduce Western surprise, Pearse probes the beliefs that eventuate in the qualities non-Westerners decry. Those doctrines include modern personal integrity (being "true to oneself"), human rights, progress, impartiality or equality of treatment, "imagined communities" (e.g., nation, class), and industrial efficiency. The practical consequences of these beliefs are social atomization; personal irresponsibility; dehumanizing impersonality; and other wounds to traditional families, communities, and conceptions of the person. Perhaps the West itself is dying of modernism through declining birthrates and increasing dependence on immigration in all Western countries. Westerners ought to become normal again, and Pearse urges revivals of belief and behavior in the West that more closely approximate those of "the Rest." This is no "fundamentalist" altar-call harangue, however, but possibly the best, most intelligent, most humane brief argument that the West, rather than the Rest, needs reform. link

I'll never forget seeing the first photos in the newspaper of Iraqi government leaders, with their Western mentors literally at the table, raising hands to vote, thinking "This is not going to work." If the Arab world had a built-in desire to "vote," maybe....but they don't. And that's not evil...it's just different.

Not to mention...but I will! this blog is not a democracy.I can mention what I want(:....Leonard Sweet's reminder (see "From Catacomb to Basilica: The Dilemma of Oldline Protestantism') that "Majority rules in Scripture is never the rule."
And in this context, I cannot not mention Erwin McManus's hilarious "committee of buzzards."

So often we in the west are accidentally (at best) or eagerly (at worst) ethnocentric. Time for a temple tantrum.

A question to ponder; against a centered-set backdrop, would be "How has God embedded in an Arab or Muslim mindset/worldview their analogous "Peace Child"; their version of the truly universal hunger or the (carefully/prayerfully defined) liberty/freedom/justice that Kingdom of God ushers in through Jesus Christ.

So how intriguing that the Boston Globe suggests that Muslims can "rally" around a cry for justicemore than they are drawn towards Western democracy/empire.

As Christians (not even as Americans ..yet), aren't we supposed to have something to do with justice? Or is that a forbidden "liberal" topic and pursuit?

"The very Kingdom of God is justice..in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:17)

Don't hear what I'm not saying: Support terrorism. Of course not, give me a break.

The rest of that Scripture offers a triad of virtues that constitute the Kingdom; the other two are shalom and joy.

That has nothing to do with murder...or abandoning essentials of the faith....or demonizing democracy.
And Bono is not pop culture antichrist or sloppy universalist to suggest we can coexist, by the way.

Let the talks begin.

They haven't yet.

A few more resources below, especially the first, by the editor of the international version of Newsweek, , and himself of Middle Eastern background (Now there's a radical idea, to actually read some of these "foreigners.")

• The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria
  
• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis
• Christian Jihad: Two Former Muslims Look at the Crusades and Killing in the Name of Christ by Ergun Mehmet Caner
• The Last of the Giants: Lifting the Veil on Islam and the End Times (Paperback) by George Otis
• Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam (Paperback) by Colin Gilbert Chapman
• Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat