Let's be honest -- the "War on Terror" is seen as a conflict with "Radical Islam" or "Islamofascism" as the President likes to call it. Now, knee-deep in our fifth year in Iraq and even longer in Afghanistan, with no end in sight, the question that stands before us is simple: If radical Islam is the problem how do we deal with it?
The Administration's answer is military muscle, but that doesn't seem to be working -- though many lives have been expended in a war that's gone on longer than WWII and looks to be heading quickly into Vietnam territory.
There might be a better answer, one that might ratchet down the rhetoric and find a place of common ground. It won't be easy and it surely doesn't fit with our idea that we've got the power so let's use it.
Chuck Gutenson of Asbury Seminary has written what I think is a well thought out post at
God's Politics. He suggests that we as Christians, by putting our trust in the Military, ultimately betray a lack of trust in the Gospel to transform minds, hearts, and the world itself.
Finally, we Christians have to ask ourselves the extent to which willingness to embrace a military response to “radical Islam” is little more than a failure of confidence in the gospel. We seem far more willing to put confidence in our own cleverness and in our economic and military might than in the power of the Spirit. Is it remarkable how little we trust in the power of the gospel to transform the hearts and lives of those who are “other” to us. The point here is not that all will be converted to Christianity, but rather that the ability of truly evil men to recruit others can be substantially reduced. In fact, to put more trust in the power of the gospel than in our own cleverness would be to recognize that nothing has more potential for success than interacting with “others” in ways that imitates the life of Jesus. This is the longer term promise of the gospel, a thing we Christians have lost sight of and have become increasingly unwilling to even try.
Check it out! And then come back and give your thoughts. How should we respond?
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