Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’

It’s not quite My Lai but it is a nightmare nonetheless. An American soldier, reportedly suffering  a mental breakdown, has killed Afghan civilians as they lay sleeping.

When Lt. Calley and his men lined up a village of women and children and executed them at point-blank range, nobody claimed the Great Satan was involved. The Vietnamese understood Lt. Calley to be a basket case. Not that they dismissed what he did. No. That happened when he and the others involved were tried in  a military court at Ft. Benning, Georgia — the military base in my hometown.

I grew up under the cloud of Lt. Calley, ashamed and silent, keenly aware of the public debate about Vietnam, and as I heard hundreds of time throughout my life — what a shame my father died in such a wasteful war.

Just as now, thousands of children whose fathers and mothers have died in Congress’s wrongly-conceived War on Terror will wake to the news that a U. S. Serviceman has gone apeshit and murdered families in their own homes.

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Pastor Terry Jones has General David Petraeus worried. Jones, and his congregants at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida intend to hold an old-fashioned book burning. The bonfire is intended to commemorate those who lost their lives in the attack on 9-11, and, most importantly, to ignite a faith in Jesus among Muslims.

This is not the first time fire has been used as a tool by combatants in the Lord’s Army. Petraeus, who’s got no beef with Jesus, is rightly concerned about Jones’s plans to burn copies of the Koran as a means ministering the true message of Christ.

Petraeus said Monday that if Jones and his posse follow through with their plans to host a burning of the Holy Word of Islam, they could incite acts of violence toward U.S. Troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban will use such a demonstration for propaganda purposes, Petraeus predicted.

“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” he warned. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”

But Jones remains resolute – he isn’t budging. “We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats.”

It’s a good old-fashioned case of tit-for-tat. We refuse to be controlled and dominated by the fears and threats of radical Islamics; instead, we’ll be controlled and manipulated by the fears and threats of our own choosing, thank you very much.  “Islam is of the devil”  t-shirts can be purchased on the church’s website, along with a book Jones penned himself titled with the same catchy phrase.

To his credit, Jones insists that he loves Muslims – he just takes issue with their religion. It is Jones’s sincerest hope that burning the Koran will hopefully persuade those Muslims he loves to see that the Koran is a “book of lies and that the only true salvation is in Jesus.”

Yeah, buddy, because acting the fool and ticking people off has always been an effective evangelical tool. Dove World Outreach considers itself a New Testament Church, which is odd, considering: Where exactly is it in the Scriptures that Jesus urged his followers to intimidate and demean others?

But lest you discount Jones as another backwoods Southern preacher, you should know that he is fully aware that his methodology isn’t going to be to everyone’s liking. In fact, Jones expects that burning the Koran will rile some folks up. Petraeus may very well be right — those offended by Jones’s actions may come looking for a fight.

“Islam has proven itself to be a violent religion and Mohammed promoted violence in the Koran,” Jones said.

Granted, all this posturing can be a tad confusing. It’s downright discombobulating, trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys when the good guys are the ones carrying the gasoline can. You kind of expect it to be the other way around, don’t you?

A good rule of thumb to remember is that the good guys carrying the torch always claim that Jesus has got their back.

God does not love America.

If that offends you, you have a problem.

God does not love Israel.

Israel as a nation is a construct of the Truman Administration and some legal wrangling within the United Nations.

I know we have been taught — truly indoctrinated — to think otherwise. I get it. It’s a hard truth to realize that as a nation God is no more devoted to us than he is to Afghanistan or Iraq, Iran or North Korea.  It’s like learning that your mama loves your brother as much as she loves you. It’s disappointing to not be the favorite.

But when it comes to nation-building, God does not play favorites.

I understand how we got to this place — the place where we believe that we are God’s BFF.

We packed up our wooden trunks, left Granny and the chickens behind, because it was obvious to us, if not to our neighbors, that Europe was morally and religiously corrupt. We were going to be a better people than they were. We were going to go all out for God. We were going to worship him in a way that was denied us in Europe. We were going to create the pure society. We’d teach the world what being sold out to God really looked like. Oh. Yeah, we’d teach the world to sing, too.

So across the seas we came, puking and dying along the way. That’s how we roll. Us Americans. We’ll die for anything. It’s the living for something we struggle with.

We came with the intent of establishing the first true faith-based community of like-minded believers. No matter that in our pursuit of being God’s BFF, we had to slaughter folks and steal territory. For you, God, anything.

But, shocking as it may seem now, establishing a pure society is hard to do when you’re working with people. Especially people who aren’t all that like-minded. It was an awful choice to make but in our blinded pursuit of being God’s BFF, we were willing to hang our own, unless they conformed.

That’s the toll exacted of a nation-building people. We have to be willing to turn on our own if we ever want to prove our worthiness as God’s BFF.

But the thing we keep missing, over and over and over again, is that God never asked us to prove our worthiness to him.

He sent Jesus for that purpose.

God is not into nation-building.

God does not love America.

In fact, scriptures are replete with story after story of man being asked repeatedly to pledge allegiance to someone other than God and those who were considered God’s BFF were the ones who resolutely refused to.

God is a jealous God. We know that.

If our allegiance to a personality or to the message of another flawed human being is such that we take offense at any criticism of that personality or that message , then, Huston, we got a problem.

God said: You shall not have any gods before me. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

God does not love America.

He loves the people of America. The people of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, China, all of Europe and South America. Every unknown tribe of every unknown nation. God loves them all. “For God so loved the WORLD, that he gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life.”

It’s not about us.  

We are not God’s BFF, folks.

God does not love America.