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Since so much of our world is on a wild roller coaster ride, outwardly reacting, only superficially aware of the deeper issues within the soul of a people, a collective tribe whose religion is iconic of their collective identity, we tend to see things differently. We tend to react angrily to someone's powerlessness because we think they are more powerful and thus we feel threatened, but we are only reacting to someone's projected illusion of powerlessness. We are jousting at windmills. We are all very sadly, tragically, confused and lunging at our brothers and sisters in our collective madness.
While love is creative and life-giving, evil is a thief and a liar, always with an agenda of anti-life, anti-creation, anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-beauty and anti-love. Recently when a handful of American servicemen in Afghanistan burned Qurans and other religious items, an even more incendiary reaction was ignited. The wick, already well oiled by decades of unrest, of long terribly debilitating wars that have devastated Arab/Muslim cultures which were already painfully reactionary, was primed and explosive when the holy books were set on fire. Some have said the burning was an accident rather than an intentional act. If that's the case, and I don't know if it is, then any reaction to that mistake needs to be carefully thought out and measured.
Can anyone make any sense out of this insanity? Can anyone ever comprehend the insidiousness of evil to worm a foothold among hurting, broken people?
An intentional and determined strength of character to choose not to be reduced by the heinous things that happen to and around us, is the higher state that all the world's holy books teach their followers as a means to defeat evil. An angry reaction only feeds it more, not less.
When a young, terribly impoverished, feeling unloved, powerless young man in an inner city pulls out a weapon and shoots and kills another person, perhaps for drugs, or money or blood revenge, or any other reason, evil has won. If the (in)justice system sentences that young man to death, the entire community has been reduced by that decision. We are lessened by the doubled loss of life, not made more, not enriched, and evil has won another victory.
Those languishing powerlessly by the consequences of war, poverty, prejudice and injustice, are like that oiled wick. All it takes is a single match to start a wave of world-wide mob reaction to an ignorant, foolish, and cruel religious infraction such as the Quran burning in Afghanistan.
Recently I was talking to a Muslim friend who expressed outrage at the Quran burning. Certainly there are no words of comfort I could offer him except to assure him that he has every right to feel badly, to feel terribly outraged. But, maybe there is another reaction my Muslim friend could choose. I said to him, is not the Quran written in your heart? Is it not a part of your days and nights, your thoughts, your entire world view? Is it really possible that anyone can burn that out of you? He hesitated, waiting to hear where I was going with this.
"Are you not so much more than this external self-definition as a Muslim or an Arab?" I said. He listened.
"Because you follow the teachings of the Quran, can that really separate you from the rest of the human race? Can it? Or, does the Quran help you live a more noble life, a more godly life, one of greater integrity and hope and spiritual sophistication, a life far above the monstrous acts that defame the book that defines and gives you life?
"Does the Quran really need defending? If someone burns the Quran is that really an insult against the Quran, or is it an insult by that ignorant person against his own self, an indication of his own loveless, dark interiority?"
Justice would argue that my friend has the right to be outraged. But, he also has the opportunity to rise above the situation and choose a different reaction. He has the opportunity to not be reduced by anything that happens to him outside himself. He is not defined by anyone or anything outside himself. He is his own person, beautifully made into a loving and peaceful person by the very book that he feels he needs to defend.
If he or anyone chooses to let this evil act reduce him to a level of anger and revenge-seeking, as it has for many Muslims around the world, then evil has won. It will have managed to bring down a whole race of religious people, hurt them even more, stripped away what little power they still had in their reaction. Evil, the anti-life puppetmaster, knew just the strings to pull to enrage them into a global combustion. If they do react that way, as evil would want them, as evil expected, then evil has won. Tragically, they reacted with anger, outrage with a blood thirsty sense of indignation which entitles them to react in a spirit of an eye-for-an-eye. Evil won, but maybe, hopefully, only for a day. You can almost see the devil laughing behind the scenes. They reacted just as he wanted and expected them too.
My friend said to me, "What if that were the Gospel? What if someone burned the Gospel in your face? What would you do? Wouldn't you be outraged?" I had already wondered what I would do if that had happened.
"I would probably cry," I said as I was already crying over his pain and my fear for the entire world as things are worsening more and more every hour.
I know that no one can burn the gospel out of my heart. It is centered in my very being. It is my most sacred Book, but if someone did something like that, it would show me how tragically lost that person was, and that would make me so sad that I would cry.
The situation is challenging all of us to be more than the evil puppet master anticipates. We can trump evil by rising above it and not be reduced by insulting acts such as the recent burning of the Quran.
We are engaged in a war for our entire world these days.It doesn't take a genius to see how incendiary the entire situation is between Syria, Israel and Iran. It's all a bomb ticking. These are the times that need us to grow up, stand up and be the human beings our religious books teach us to be. Those holy books do not need defending. They will be around long after we're all gone. It is our souls that need defending and if we allow anything or anyone to cause us to react and be reduced to someone other than who we want to be, then we have given our power, our spirit, our souls to the evil forces that are ravaging the earth everywhere and in every way today.
This isn't going to be easy for any of us these days. The wars that rage out there are not between Christians, Muslims and Jews. The wars that rage are between those who don't know God's love and those who don't know how else to respond to the pernicious evil that seems to be threatening us all from every direction.
These days require us all to stand strong with as much courage and personal integrity as we can to become the magnificent, brave and powerful human beings all our religions teach us to be. We can choose not to react to any insult. We can choose not to be carved down, body and soul, into monstrous creatures by those who are themselves monstrous creatures seeking to dissolve our souls by attacking our sacred books and religious artifacts.
We must all stand strong and have the courage to NOT react, to not allow our wicks be lit by those evil forces that seek to destroy us. We need to even do more than stand strong. We need to love and love with as much as we can, despite the dark forces' desire to make us angry and unloving. We can choose not to be made unloving, reactionary people. Rather, we can choose to be beautiful people of light who will stay bright and whole and godly despite all the dark forces that storm tempestously around us.
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