Holy Books, Fire, and Tolerance

Just about a month has passed since I reverently burned my old Bible.  Today, that simple action feels a bit different, particularly in the light of the rioting and killings under way yet again in Afghanistan over the inadvertent burning of some Korans.

The official response of the United States military and the U.S. government has been one of apology, repeatedly affirming the need for us to be culturally sensitive and formally stating a respect for the faith and culture of the Afghan people.   I understand this, and I understand the strategic dynamics that make such statements necessary.

But though I'm progressive, perhaps because I'm progressive, I have a great deal of difficulty finding respect for Afghan culture, and particularly for the form of faith that is manifested in the rioting and killing we've seen.  Yes, I know, some would say it's all our fault that things in Afghanistan are the way they are today.  No one likes an occupier.  There's some truth in that.  I also know that people who struggle in hopeless poverty and under societal oppression often are a tick more...volatile.

And I have no difficulty respecting Islam, with its virtues of charity, mercy and hospitality.  There are plenty of gracious, kind, and peaceful Muslims in this world who find foundation for their graciousness in their faith.

Still and all, I struggle with the idea that the sociocultural and theocratic dynamics of Afghanistan merit acceptance.  There are Afghans who are perfectly decent people, but the culture itself just isn't a positive thing.    It is a train wreck, a mess, oppressive, corrupt, violent, and willfully ignorant.   So I have sensitivity, sure, but in the way you are "sensitive" to that volatile neighbor who likes to get drunk and sit in his front yard with a shotgun, or the way you're "sensitive" to the presence of a nearby piece of unexploded ordnance.

But how can I bring myself to respect a culture that would...if I were Muslim and had burned an old Koran as a respectful way of disposing of it...drag me into the streets and beat me to death?  Or threaten me with violence for associating with someone who had accidentally burned a Koran?  When I burned that Bible and put the video up on YouTube as background for a blog post, I got a tiny speck of fundamentalist trollery on the video...but that's what you'd expect.   It is a far cry from feeling like your life is in danger.  But ours is, for the time being, still a free and open society.

Within the boundaries of my own faith, I have tremendous difficulty with those who take our sacred narratives and turn them into idols.  I see the rigidity of literalism and the idolatrous worship of texts as antithetical to faith, and particularly antithetical to the faith taught by Jesus and spread by Paul.   "..For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life," as the Apostle might say.

If tolerance and acceptance of the other are central values, it is hard to see where to connect with a culture in which those values are essentially rejected.

Osama Bin Jones

Listening to the fading echoes of Koran-burnin' hum in our cybernetic collective unconscious, I'm wondering what the takeaway is going to be from the whole event. Mostly, folks who jabber for a living seem to have come to the same conclusion I reached. It's as if the Rufinol finally wore off, and we all suddenly came to, and are wondering why in the Sam Hill we were all standing around in our underwear talking about this tiny little butt-hair on the body of Christ.

I can think, to be honest, of three reasons.

First, it was controversial. We Amurricans love controversy. Will he or won't he! Ooooh! And we especially likes us some crazy. And we need something to talk about to get the eyeballs on our blog, so as a culture, we spend an inordinate amount of time consumed by the thoughts and actions of our village idiots. If there's a guy standing in the village square shouting incoherently, we don't ignore him or trank him. We all gather around to listen and egg him on. We are, after all, a nation that seems to have an insatiable appetite for the stunted, self-centered souls and faux dysfunctional drama that populates most reality television. Couple that hunger for the extreeeeme with our constant-on media and tendency for things to go self-generatingly viral, and hey-presto, you've got yourself an "issue" with legs. That we are talking about it because we're talking about it may be a tautology, but that's the way new media works.

Second, it was nonetheless a teachable moment. Yeah, I know, it was heinously overblown, but it tapped down into some interesting conversations that had nothing to do with the specifics of this trivial case. Last week, as I drove my kids and the missus to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah services, the entire drive was consumed with talk of this event, used as a case study for the balance between free speech and civic responsibility in our society. It's not often you can get kids engaged like that, but for twenty minutes, our car was full of ruminations on the boundaries of human liberty. It was kinda cool.

Third, and this one is a wee stretch, I found myself so savoring the irony of this event that I wondered, fleetingly, if the Lord's hand might be in this. In my experience, God has this funny habit of kicking our behinds in the most optimal and creatively appropriate ways when we forget ourselves. American Christians have, of late, been willing to believe some pretty impressively narsty things about Muslims. Because of the events of 9/11, and the actions of a few psychopaths, many folks are quite happy to buy into the idea that Islam is inherently monstrous, and Muslims are all potential Al Quaeda fifth columnists.

And suddenly, here's a Christian who seemed willing to act on his own to do something we really, really didn't want him to do. No sane observer can look at this guy and say that he's a meaningful representative of Christianity. He had no real connections to any other Christian group, and came across as a totally loose cannon both interpersonally and in his approach to the faith. He was perfectly willing to consider actions that violate the central ethical teaching of Jesus about our attitude towards our neighbors.

"He doesn't speak or act for us," we all shouted.

I wonder if we realize how familiar those words are to American Muslims.

Burning the Qur'an

Tomorrow, that inescapable sunbaked walrus-moustached pastor from Florida either will or won't burn a whole bunch of Qur'ans. I marvel at this whole event, for a variety of different reasons. This odd person does, of course, have the absolute right to do what he's doing. We're a free people, and part of that freedom means...outside of threatening direct physical harm...that we can engage in pointless, stupid, and offensive symbolic actions. As much as I find him reprehensible, I can't see how he could be prevented...or should be prevented...from doing what he may or may not do.

Yet listening to this guy talk, I marvel at the ability of humans who claim to follow Jesus to completely fail to grasp the rather basic moral tenets of Christian faith. Yeah, you can be prophetic, and you can fight the power. But under no circumstances are you ever to be intentionally obnoxious to those you don't like, particularly those who are outside of the church. Giving offense for the purpose of giving offense is a violation of the central ethical tenet of Jesus people. It's a non-trivial oversight, and yet another reminder of the value of attending a church where the pastor has to be seriously vetted somewhere, somehow. What he's doing might fly as an American right, but wouldn't pass muster in any significant American Christian movement. In our every-church-an-island non-denominational world, we forget that having those connections helps damp down free-range wackjobs like this.

But more than that, I marvel at the amount of attention this is getting.

It's...well...mindboggling. This pastor leads a church that is smaller than mine, and honey, that's saying something. The group of human beings he speaks for would fit on a single Metrobus with room to spare. Yet this has surfaced in news cycle after news cycle. There are about 150 million self-identified American Christians, give or take. Of those 150 million Jesus-following human beings, this guy represents around fifty. That's, what, 0.00003%?

If the American Body of Christ was a human body, this guy speaks for one barely visible hair protruding from a tiny zit on our left butt-cheek. Really. I've done the calculations. If you figure on a single human hair weighing 0.25 milligrams, and assume a 68 kilo human, well...the proportions work. His actions are functionally meaningless.

And yet, for some reason, this is an international incident. The Vatican has made pronouncements. Christian leaders of every persuasion and the White House have made appeals, most of which have been focused on Insuring The Safety of Our Troops.(tm) As if the Taliban will somehow stop blowing things up or pitching out their delusional and falsely hateful vision of America if this one nutmonkey doesn't do something.

And the ego of this guy, preaching his strange angry stuff to a tiny angry flock! It was probably oddly swelled anyway. That comes when you're isolated from every other church around you, as they appear to have been. But now? Gads. He thinks he's a leader, an opinion maker, a meaningful voice in the national dialogue, the Joe the Plumber of American Christianity.

Why are we choosing to follow this? Across the vast and complex cornucopia of human drama on a planet brimming over with billions of souls, is this really a Top Ten Issue?

Whatever happens tomorrow can hardly be said to matter at all. More Qur'ans will be damaged or destroyed in random house fires. Moderate Muslims and even some highly conservative ones will recognize the utter irrelevance of the Dove World House of Angry Pancakes. The folks who irrationally and mindlessly hate America will not hate us any more or any less.

Strange, strange times.