Interesting Times

A purported ancient Chinese curse says, "May you live in interesting times," and so we do. Important events seem to occur about once a week these days, and over the past week, in my estimation, we have witnessed at least two of them. One happened right here in Charlotte, North Carolina, while the other happened a few days later a world away.

The first of these, which took place last Tuesday, September 5, 2012, at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, concerns the re-inclusion of references to Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to God in the official Democratic Party National Platform. Earlier in the week, the exclusion of these terms had been made public, and the reaction to them from Joe and Jane American was decidedly negative. Thus, the decision was made, evidently by high-ranked party leaders—President Obama himself certainly gave his approval—to return the pro-Israel, pro-God language to the platform. To do that, however, a two-thirds majority of the assembled delegates had to approve the reinstatement.

The matter was brought up in Tuesday's session. The convention chairman, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, brought the change to the floor for a voice vote. The video of this is clear: He did not get the required two-thirds majority. In fact, Villaraigosa had to ask the delegates three different times, and each time it sounds as if the "nay" votes became louder. After the second request, the L.A. mayor was clearly perplexed, and a Democrat party official had to advise him, "You got to let them do what they are going to do," which he took to mean that he was to ignore the crowd and its reaction. He asked for their votes a third time, and then read the scripted response from the teleprompter: "In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds have voted in the affirmative. The motion is adopted, and the platform has been amended as shown on the screen."

While the official platform now retains the mentions of Jerusalem and God, it cannot be denied that the original document purposely left them out, and further, that the sentiment of the convention delegates was at least evenly divided on the matter. Those who shouted, "No!" louder and louder each time were clearly agitated that the approval had been rammed through over their objections. How ironic that the party that proudly bears "democracy" in its name did not abide by democratic principles on this issue but applied the heavy hand of authoritarianism to do its leaders' will. If the parliamentary process had been followed at the convention, God and Jerusalem would not have been part of the party platform.

What is more, some commentators have made a point of drawing a line between the three nay votes on this issue and the apostle Peter's three denials of Christ before His crucifixion, which is found in all four gospel accounts (see Matthew 26:31-35, 69-74; Mark 14:27-31, 66-71; Luke 22:31-34, 56-61; John 13:36:38; 18:17, 25-27). Like Peter, the Democrat Party has a longtime association with Christianity and Christian values and claims to be doing the Lord's work in caring for the poor and powerless in society. However, when its delegates are asked to choose to support mere language about God and Jerusalem—when they must take a stand one way or the other—they, in effect, deny Him.

Since those at the convention were delegates of Democrats all over the nation, the loud denial makes one wonder how closely they represent party members at home. Does at least half of the largest political party in the nation want nothing to do with God? Have America's citizens drifted so far from its religious roots that association with God and Jerusalem are considered a political liability? These are serious questions because of what Paul calls a "faithful saying" in II Timothy 2:11-13, part of which reads, "If we deny Him, He will also deny us" (verse 12). That has truly frightening implications.

The second "interesting event" occurred in Benghazi, Libya, on the eleventh anniversary of the al Qaida attacks on September 11, 2001. Protesters stormed the U.S. Consulate there, and in a night-long, well-planned and well-coordinated attack by professional militants—a violent, anti-Gadhafi group connected with al Qaida—the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with three other embassy staff members. When the killers attacked the U.S. compound, they were heavily armed with anti-aircraft automatic cannon and rocket-propelled grenades.

The news media reported that the attack was in response to a YouTube trailer for a low-budget, anti-Muhammad film, Innocence of Muslims, made by a Christian Egyptian-American filmmaker in the U.S. Many Muslims across the Middle East consider the film blasphemous for its negative depiction of Islam's founder. According to Reuters, the film trailer portrays Muhammad "as a fool, a philanderer and a religious fake," while others add that the movie characterizes him as a pederast, a murderer, and a homosexual. However, as more information surfaces, it appears that the attackers used the protest over the film to carry out a terrorist strike against the United States, if nothing else, to commemorate the 9/11 attack.

It has also been reported that vital intelligence files have gone missing after the attack, including sensitive documents identifying Libyans working with the American government and private information regarding oil contracts. Also missing was information locating the supposedly secret safe house where much of the consular staff had retreated and which itself came under attack later that night.

Worse, the Independent reports:

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and ‘lockdown,' under which movement is severely restricted.

This is being called "a serious and continuing security breach." The Obama administration denies that the information was actionable.

To this point, the U.S. response has been tepid, issuing an apology to Muslims for the insult against Muhammad, condemning the attack, and sending a Marine response team to Libya. Two Navy destroyers armed with Tomahawk missiles have been dispatched to patrol the Libyan coast, and drones have begun flying over the country to search for the perpetrators.

These two events, occurring within days of each other, seem to be signs of the time. It makes one wonder if the two are linked—a quick response from God to show what happens when a people thinks to remove Him from their lives. Will this nation recognize God's warning (see Amos 4:6-13)?

What Is the Pope Up To?

Pope Benedict XVI, the German-born former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is the leader of over a billion Catholics worldwide and presides over a multi-billion dollar empire of land holdings, churches and cathedrals, companies, universities, institutions, hospitals, etc. His representatives, official and otherwise, are in every nation on the globe, influencing policy to the advantage of the Roman Catholic Church. He has hundreds of advisors and assistants, many of whom are among the most learned men on earth. He sits atop an organization that wields power and influence far beyond the confines of tiny Vatican City in Rome.

If he has all this wealth, knowledge, and authority behind him, why did he make such a colossal blunder in his comments at Regensburg University in Germany on September 12? Did he not know that even quoting a fourteenth-century Christian emperor's anti-Islamic remark would ignite protests and perhaps violence as well across the Muslim world?

Without a doubt.

The Pope, who turned 79 in April 2006, has observed the world long enough to be able to predict accurately just how his audiences will react to his ideas. The Vatican, long steeped in both politics and cultural sensitivity, understands the hair-trigger reactions of Islamic fundamentalists to anything even remotely offensive to "the religion of peace" or its prophet, Muhammad—remember that the furor over the Danish cartoons erupted just months ago. If his words, then, were not a thoughtless blunder, what were they designed to do? Why did he intentionally make them? What is the Pope up to?

There are probably at least two answers to these questions. The first is contained in the public response to Muslim demands of the Pope to apologize to the faithful for his "outrageous slander" of Muhammad. In his remarks to invitees to a meeting at his summer residence near Rome on September 25, the Pope regretted that his comments offended Muslims, yet he went on to explain briefly that Christians and Muslims "must learn to work together . . . to guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence."

A reading of his Regensburg speech makes it plain that this was his intention all along. Notice this passage:

The [Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologos II, a Christian] must have known that Sura 2,256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." . . . But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Quran, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, . . . he addresses his interlocutor . . . on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death. . . ."

Here he introduces his real subject, the relationship of reason and faith in religion. Muslim extremists—and frankly most Muslims period—have abandoned reason in their wholehearted devotion to Islam, and the result has been conflict, destruction, and death. On the other side, Western Christianity has rejected faith in favor of rationalism, producing cultural relativism and an essentially godless society. Benedict's speech was designed to steer a course toward the future between the two extremes.

At this point, the second answer to the why of the Pope's intentions comes to the fore. Upon ascending to the pontificate, Benedict dedicated himself to returning Europe to fundamental Christian values in response to increasing secularization. In a May 1996 address titled "Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today," he noted, presaging his papal theme:

Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego.

To counter this creeping narcissism, he recommends Europe's re-Christianization, urging Europeans "to open ourselves to this friendship with God . . . speaking to him as to a friend, the only One who can make the world both good and happy. . ." ("St. Josemaría: God Is Very Much at Work in Our World Today," L'Osservatore Romano, October 9, 2002). In early 2006, this theme still on his mind, he reiterated, "It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians . . ." ("Friendship with God," Zenit News, February 7, 2006).

In this light, his remarks at Regensburg were a rallying cry to Europe to reject the fanatical, violent faith of its burgeoning Muslim minority as well as the sterile, empty secularism of modern society—and to embrace the reasonable, traditional, and beneficial faith of Christianity. By doing so, he sets up himself and the Roman Catholic Church as sound-minded bastions of European solidarity and strength.

Despite the violence his remarks caused, he has calculated that they were worth the turmoil so that he could gauge, not the Muslim reaction, which was predictable, but the European response. He is hoping to see a shift in attitudes toward the Catholic Church and the papacy to defend Christendom from the ongoing Islamic assault. So far—and granted, his remarks still echo across the Continent—he has seen nothing from secular Europe to give him hope.