Culture Daze

Tolerance verses Love

2010-09-21T19:12:00.043+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I heard a strange story on the news, which has bugged me ever since. I knew I had to write something about it, but I could not settle on one point of focus. I also could not decide on whether this was an example of western culture or not.

Anyway, this previously unknown pastor of an unknown church in an unknown town, includes in the Sunday service notices that on Saturday, 11th September, there would be a bonfire of the Muslims holy book, the Koran. The more that was explained and the more the story progressed the more confused I became.

What possible reason could anyone have for burning the Koran?

Why would a pastor want to burn any book?

What good would it do, because the bad it would do was so obvious?

Why was it considered a news worthy story?

What was it even considered to be a story?

It was these questions, the latter in particular, which helped me conclude that Western culture was displaying itself yet again. All players in this fell into the gut ideals and beliefs of the West.

Lets start with the media. Why was this a story? Well it was possible to twist it to show that the religions of the world are at war. This is important in a secular society. A society, which seeks to forge it's own path without reference to God's opinion, must show the folly of following God.

If a Christian pastor declares he intends to burn another religion's holy book, that surely means that this religion is only capable of offensive acts. And what of the other side.

How many Bibles were to be burnt in protest? A few effigies of the pastor were burnt and it was threatened to burn a bunch of American flags, but no Bible burning was intended or reported. Now isn't that interesting? To me, that shows the Muslim reaction had clearly identified the root of the Koran burning to be one of a war of cultures, rather than religion. Good for them.

How many of the hundreds of thousands of churches throughout the world had seen fit to commit to a similar burning. None that we seem to be aware of. Perhaps this church is large and actively engaged bringing important causes to the attention of the public. The congregation numbers 50 and is not particularly active in anything. It's website shows two meetings a week. It does not even have a Sunday School (thank goodness).

So what is the story? Well, there isn't one. The pastor claims he was trying to highlight plans for a Muslim centre to be built near Ground Zero. It does not make sense. So why make an international feature of a crazy man?

To create news that is not there and further a secular opinion. Once again it is shown that Christianity cannot rise to the lofty secular ideals of tolerance. But I am afraid that it does not prove anything of the sort. And tolerance is not what Christians have been called to, as I will explain later.

It shows that the media can waste time and money on stories, serve only to confuse, divide and make known the ravings of a man who should quite frankly receive psychiatric help.

As for the pastor himself, he has fallen into a facet of Western culture that is growing. It is here that I have the most difficulty qualifying the part of the culture that disturbs me the most. There seem to be so many contradictions in what he has done that it is difficult to point to one thing and say, that's it, that's the thing right there.

If you have little knowledge of Christian teaching then you might not see just how far this man is from the knowledge of God that he claims. I could forgive you for thinking, this man has a right to freedom of speech. He has this right, even if it offends someone. His religion is opposed to every other, therefore we should expect nothing less than his behaviour.

The problem is that if this man is a Christian, his very life has been bought by the blood of Jesus. He has no rights, other than those given him from God. As a Christian, let alone a pastor he is to love his enemy. Feed them when they are hungry. Repay evil with good. Jesus himself spoke many times about serving and loving. Even if someone demands a shirt, two should freely be given.

A Christian is to behave honourably, with dignity, trying his or her best not to cause offence.

I may be talking out of line here, but this pastor's actions seem to have bitterness, even hatred at their root. These are characteristics, which grieve the Holy Spirit of God. They actually cause God emotional pain.

So although I could forgive a secular media, sadly lacking in good judgement or moral values, I cannot let the pastor off the hook. The man has offended Christian culture as much as Muslim, partly because he has failed to follow Christian teaching, but more so, because he has even failed to follow the lesser watered down teaching of Secularism.

He could not even be tolerant.

God does not command us to be tolerant. He commands us to love. Tolerance is the best a society without God can achieve. It may do for a while, but it does not involve a heart change, just a closing of the mouth and eyes.

Love, however, would charm and shame opponents at the same time. Love would not be concerned about fighting God's battles for Him, but about showing the world His Grace.

No wonder I was in a culture daze for a while.

Ghost Buster

2010-09-06T19:06:00.042+01:00

Most of our culture is in our minds already. Sometimes I have questioned bits of my culture, but most of the time it just sits there in the back or at the base of my mind, dictating the reactions I should have to different occurrences.

One very good example of this is the Western beliefs in and about ghosts. Whilst living in Africa, with my African family, we were once sat down in front of satellite TV and the film Poltergeist came on. I had not seen it for ages and forgotten most of the plot but as we watched the tension built at certain points and I employed my trick of focusing my gaze beyond and to the side of the TV, so that I could look as if I was watching, but not jump, therefore looking brave. I looked back at the wrong point and jumped anyway, but nobody else in the room did.

"Why did that happen?" someone asked me as a table flew across the room of it's own accord.

"It was the poltergeist," I explained.

"Oh!" they all replied. "What is a poltergeist?"

"It's like a strong ghost."

"What is a ghost?"

It dawned on me that I was the only one in the room with any idea of what a ghost was. I also realised that the tension music and shots of not being able to see what was behind some one was only affecting me. No one else in the room had been conditioned to react to these tension builders with fear. Only me.

So I tried to explain what a ghost was.

Remember the wonderful Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore film, Ghost? It had the same effect on my African family. Question after question. What's happening here? Why can she here him but not see him? What is that light trying to take him?

Do you remember Sixth Sense? I actually thought that was quite clever and I did enjoy that film. But my family? No, they were bored pretty quickly. Sorry Bruce.

It made me realise just how much nonsense I had been carrying in my head about the rules and regulations of ghosts.

Where I was in Africa, ghosts do not exist. When someone dies in a bad way, his or her spirit does not remain on earth, floating around a place until revenge or retribution puts that spirit to rest. I can say that categorically, because I was living in Rwanda, where perhaps as many as one million people were killed within 100 days, mostly by the machete.

Rwandans sometimes refer to the genocide as the war, but it was not a war. It was a massacre. The innocent had no escape, save death.

If ever there was a place in the world for wronged souls to stick around until retribution, Rwanda has to be it. With one million souls haunting the population of eight million, somebody must have seen something. And not only somebody, it should have been the centre of tourism for ghost sightseeing. But it was not and still is not.

There are no ghosts in Rwanda. In fact, there are no ghosts in Africa.

But African tradition does affect their culture's beliefs in an afterlife. Rather than ghosts, Africans lean towards the idea of being able to call on the power of the spirits of ancestors.

Wait a minute. Isn't that the same as the ghost idea? Well, no. The power is from the collective spirits of ancestors. But an individual person? No. The spirit of an individual person does not hang around and haunt anyone in Africa.

Then there are demons and the spirits in things, such as trees or volcanoes.

When a volcano erupted and sent a river of lava through the main street of Goma, DRC, the locals pointed to the fact that the tradition of throwing live chickens into the volcano to appease the spirit had been abandoned for some time. An accusing finger was levied at the businessmen of Goma, particularly as the spirit had shown its displeasure by covering their shops in the main street in lava. We do not have many active volcanoes in Europe, therefore, I do not find it surprising that I have not heard of a similar belief in my culture. I guess I would need to ask an Iceland what they traditionally think about volcano spirits to know for sure if volcano spirits are a global belief.

It was only very recently that I discovered that the cool Congolese masks that I had bought, were in fact intended to help the owner to partake of some of the power of the spirit of an ancient tree.

Now trees are something Europe does have a lot of and some of them are a few hundred years old. True enough, there are pagan and new age beliefs in Europe that assign spirits to trees, but we do not wear masks carved out of the bark to draw on the tree's power.

Now isn't that interesting? How can the whole continent of people in Africa not know about ghosts? Are they really that far behind the western world or is the western world?

And how can the whole continent of people in Europe not know of the power they can draw from wearing a mask carved out of an old tree? Particularly, when we have so many trees.

Surely millions of people cannot be that ignorant.

NB. Please do not point to the recent election in the UK as proof that they can be. The argument is too strong and may diminish the point I am trying to make.

Maybe I am being a bit too harsh in forcing a condemnation to rest on the west or elsewhere. Maybe the whole issue of ghosts is little more than a matter of culture.

I have not lived in any cultures other than England and East Africa, but I bet it would be the same in other continent. There would be strong beliefs in paranormal powers and anomalies of which the continent next door would be totally ignorant.

Just a cursory look at some of the cartoons coming out of Japan that my kids watch, show there is a whole spiritual belief system of which I know nothing. My kids often ask me about the links between power cards and digimons and stuff that is not from my culture therefore I do not know about.

I am not saying nothing exists outside of what my eyes can see. Clearly that is not the case. Not one culture comes to mind, which does not show any interest in a supernatural world.

And despite the attempts of some in the West to promote secularism, there is still a strong thirst among us for a belief in something more. To be truly secular, we would have to abandon: horoscopes in daily newspapers; films about the afterlife, vampires, the half dead; Eastern alternative healing techniques; any inclusion of mother nature, cupid or the grim reaper in our language or thinking; and all reliance on the forces of good and bad luck.

You may consider yourself free of all superstitious nonsense. Perhaps you have even put to bed your fears of ghosts. But very few of us have thoroughly sifted the realities from the fantasies of our culture. The use of luck in our language and thinking is one very powerful one, which I would wager is still somewhere in your psyche.

No I cannot claim or prove there is nothing beyond this physical life, but I do want to strongly challenge the Western beliefs concerning ghosts. For me, the lack of evidence of ghosts in Rwanda is enough to bust that one wide open.