Is this what the [bleep] is going on?

  • I made a com­ment yes­ter­day that I don’t under­stand what kind of reli­gion could allow these Mus­lim riots. But think­ing it through, I real­ize that if I don’t under­stand the reli­gion, I can at least under­stand the con­text a lit­tle. And if I play devil’s advo­cate with myself, I would have to admit that the way Mus­lims act reminds me a lot of the peo­ple in the Old Tes­ta­ment. West­ern soci­eties are in the Church age (whether they want to be or not); Mus­lim soci­eties are still liv­ing under the Abra­hamic covenant, with a cou­ple later bells and whis­tles added.

    I wouldn’t mind peo­ple talk­ing about a cul­ture clash if that wasn’t usu­ally a pre­am­ble to moral rel­a­tivism. (“We send diplo­mats; they send sui­cide bombers. It’s a small world after all.”) I think that’s the kind of “under­stand­ing” that the Mus­lims might actu­ally be right in attempt­ing to dodge. The clash seems to me to be one of an entire soci­ety that doesn’t want to be dragged into the mod­ern world. They want their desert god, and they don’t want the soul­less­ness of indus­trial soci­ety. Bet­ter a hier­ar­chi­cal theoc­racy than to just be another coun­try where every­one is about the same and noth­ing means much. Bet­ter to believe in causes worth dying for than to believe that there is no such thing. Bet­ter to eat roasted rat than McDonald’s. Or so I imag­ine. And if I imag­ine it this way, I can sym­pa­thize. Which is help­ful, though I don’t put as much of a store on it.

    The prob­lem for them (assum­ing for a minute that that idea is cor­rect) is that they don’t know what they’re up against. The forces that pulled West­ern­ers into this exis­tence are myr­iad, but IMHO resis­tance is futile. I don’t think that’s a good thing — in fact, I think it’s prob­a­bly one of the things that keeps me invested in the Church, since the only way out is to tran­scend human soci­ety entirely — but in any case, I gave up a long time ago on blam­ing lib­er­als, Big Gov­ern­ment, Big Busi­ness or any other imag­ined sec­tor for the swift down­ward slide. Nobody’s dri­ving this bus, but there’s no stop­ping it.

    But blow­ing things up and try­ing to throw your weight around is ulti­mately self-destructive. You can’t elim­i­nate the avarice and mate­ri­al­ism that will bring the Mus­lim world to heel at the prospect of West­ern goods, ser­vices and false gods any more than any­one else could. Or any more than we can claw our way back out, now that we’ve real­ized that almost every­one is ulti­mately dis­sat­is­fied and that this mod­ern life is suck­ing the life out of our bod­ies. I only know of one force that’s strong enough and true enough to do it, and until that Light dawns, there’s nothing.


    Related posts:

    1. What the [bleep] is going on?!
    2. No room at the inn. Or the megachurch.
    3. Gosh. Can’t they take a joke?
    4. Lon­don attacks
    5. Car­toon rage, cont.

    February 10th, 2006 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Jim N. 02.10.2006

    No track­backs?! :) Ah well, I posted my fee­ble thoughts on my site.

  • Grace

    Had to check back with Greg what track­backs even are. I’m so clue­less. And I remem­ber now that when we were build­ing the site, I said I couldn’t see the point. But it wouldn’t be too hard to acti­vate it, he says. I’ll have to think about it.

    As far as all this “deep thought,” since I’m just spit­balling (as the guys say), I’ll be inter­ested in check­ing out your thoughts.

  • Greg

    I really think this is one of your bet­ter posts — thought-provoking stuff!

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