Do they really think we’re this stupid?

I actually used the word “stupid” in a sermon on Sunday, and it kinda got me started.

I see these commercials on the TV all the time for various medicines, each containing long and frightening lists of assorted side effects and dangerous interactions with other drugs. I watched one the other day where the disclaimer was longer than the pitch itself, containing several frightening symptoms, some of which I had assumed were supposed to be cured by the drug. I was left more interested in avoiding the product than in purchasing it.

And then I hear an ad on the radio explaining to me how Martin Van Buren was a much more successful and important President than Franklin Roosevelt.

Must have been asleep during History class the day they taught that.

I couldn’t help but wonder who the advertisers thought they were fooling. And then it occurred to me that they obviously thought they were fooling lots of people, and probably had done research and testing and had prior experience to convince them that lots of people were out there, just waiting to be fooled.

Well, maybe P. T. Barnum was right after all.

God help us all if this is the end of it.

“See,” said Jesus, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

The subtlety here is almost overwhelming, the interplay between wisdom and innocence, between seeking acumen and avoiding worldliness. But in what may the most challenging question of faith, as in all others, grace provides a way.

There is a dangerous anti-intellectualism in the community of faith, an Amish-like tendency to withdrawal, to avoid the world, to shun modern knowledge, technology. There is a powerful anti-science movement afoot among Christians today, an overblown protective reflex which neither disturbs the facts nor strengthens the witness. It is not avoidable – we live in the world and we must function and work in the world. Just as God sent Christ to be fully incarnate in human life, so we too must be completely and wholly formed and purposeful in the place where we are living. Which means we must be wise, smart enough and savvy enough and informed enough to interact with and connect with and speak to and heal the real world, just as it is. Innocent cannot mean absent.

But also wise.

The far other end of failure is the overt surrender of the faithful to the calculations of the world around them. The world runs on power, so we seek power, the world understands violence, so we preach violence, the world hates, we hate even more. When it becomes impossible to distinguish the voice of faith from the voice of the world, then true stupidity is revealed. We have become what we were called to transform. Christlike wisdom speaks prophetically to the world, it understands the depth of brokenness in its simplest form, it is part of sin which makes it desire all the more to be harmless, inoffensive.

For here is the power of Grace, to make us what we are not. In truth we are neither wise nor innocent, no, we are gullible and malicious. But by grace we are shaped in the form of a cross, that most-worldly instrument of torture and death now transformed into a symbol of life and hope. We do know better, even if we often fall short, we are strengthened against temptation even as it entices us.

Perhaps it seems impossible. But that is the very nature of faith. You just have to be stupid enough to trust in it.

The final victim of 9/11 is you

Now the works of the flesh are obvious… enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions … Galatians 5:19-20

Now, nearly nine years later, comes the final victim of the 9/11 attacks.

It is the soul of America.

The phobia over the building of a Mosque in the neighborhood of the former World Trade site (not a Mosque, not at the World Trade Center site, but whatever) exposes the truly terrifying reality – the terrorists have won.

Do not be fooled: the men who hijacked the airplanes and crashed them into the buildings were not trying to invade New York, to gain a beachhead in lower Manhattan for a later, larger invasion. They are not interested in taking over America – they are only interested in destroying it. This appalling act had only one purpose – to cause the greatest amount of harm and loss of life and so provoke the enemy (that would be us and everyone else) to join them in their cosmic fantasy apocalyptic war. They seek to create hatred, conflict and violence because they feed on hatred, conflict and violence.

I guess they are not getting what they want.

Are we really so foolhardy that we should play into their dark desires, to turn our world and lives into a bloody, never-ending holy war? Are our souls so small and bleak as theirs that we would enjoin the battle on their level?

If we destroy the very last good things of our own – our freedom, our peace – won’t they have won?

Perhaps they have.

Please spare me the commentary about the sacredness of the place. I don’t see protests over the strip club within the same distance of the towers as the proposed Cordoba project. What is sacred in lower Manhattan, what is sacred in any place, is the spirit, the soul of the people who occupy it, the hope, the grace that breathes in the words and actions of those who would be faithful to what is right and true.

The work of lifting up community, of neighborliness, of upholding the best practices of any faith, that is sacred. An opportunity to turn our backs on hatred and violence of every kind, that is sacred. A chance to promote relationships which may further the cause of peace, that is sacred.

I am not surprised that most people oppose the building of the Cordoba Center. I am never surprised by ignorance that is susceptible to fear-mongering, by self-promoting leaders who appeal to the least common denominator of the mob, to bigotry and pettiness that conveniently besmirches a whole people for the acts of a few. After all, aren’t all Mormons bigamists, isn’t every Priest a pedophile, aren’t all old people grouchy and all blonds dim-witted?

Friends, our children are watching us. And all of those long lessons about playing nice, sharing toys, getting along, being good company, are going to waste. We are becoming our own worst enemy, we are allowing our lesser demons full play. We must stop, we must stop now, lest we put the terrorists out of work by accomplishing our destruction by ourselves.

I am not so naïve as to think this is easy. Hatred is less complicated than tolerance, anger is less demanding than love. But we belong to and follow a Savior who is not looking for fainthearted disciples or milquetoast missionaries. His words call us to the higher standard …

I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also … I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Matthew 5:39, 44-45

I pray for the world, for our leaders, for us. Now the battle is joined – not with Islam, but with the devil and with ourselves. May the Good God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep and protect us in these important days.