wfn.org | Commentary: We must pull back from our excesses

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Oct. 19, 2001  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-71BP{484}

NOTE: A head-and-shoulders photo of Dean Snyder is available. 

A UMNS Commentary
By Dean Snyder*

Being called an infidel is an unsettling experience. It rolls off of Osama
bin Laden's tongue so naturally that I am sure he is not just posturing. It
sure seems he really believes we are infidels.

We would be naove if we were to suppose that he is the only one who holds
this perspective.

If I were able to look at myself through the eyes of a deeply committed
fundamentalist Muslim, I suppose it is true that my life might appear
decadent and ungodly.

I live in a nice home with three bedrooms. Jane and I use only one of them.
We have three TV sets and usually only watch one of them at a time. We have
a refrigerator that serves ice from its door. 

I can hardly watch TV without seeing shows with sexual themes, a lot of
innuendo and very near nudity. As the New York Times has reported,
pornography is a multibillion-dollar industry in America.

Alcohol is freely available practically anywhere. Where I live, there is a
store selling beer and wine on almost every corner. Alcohol consumption is
widely advertised and celebrated. Drugs are illegal but still accessible.

We allow sacrilege in our art galleries and theaters. Many marriages end in
divorce. Children are allowed to run free in malls. Gambling is
state-sponsored and increasingly prevalent. Charging interest on debt is
normative. Making money by charging others interest can make you rich and
powerful rather than an object of shame and scorn. 

Our elections are dominated by money donated by those who expect to benefit
from the election of a particular candidate. Political advantage appears to
be for sale. Those who can afford the best legal counsel get preference in
our courts. The poor are much more likely to be imprisoned and executed than
the affluent. Justice appears to be for sale.

Even the most religious of us do not pray publicly five times a day. In the
United States, serious participation in a religious congregation is
somewhere below 30 percent of the population. Most of us who are religious
devote only an hour a week to worship. It doesn't seem to have much effect
on the way we dress or talk or act. Fasting is a marginal practice. We
hardly ever kneel. Even active church people use God's name casually.

I cannot imagine anything, other than perhaps to save the lives of a handful
of individuals who I love most deeply, that I would be willing to die for. 

When bin Laden calls us infidels, he is not just rejecting Christianity as a
religion. He is also expressing his disgust at the way we live. 

Frankly, my mother would not have totally disagreed.

Have we as a society gone too far? Is the disgust others are expressing
about us totally unwarranted? Are they right to fear what appears to them to
be gross American immorality?

The irony is that the freedoms I value most also protect behavior that many
religious people around the world find degrading and disgusting. 

The same freedom of religion that allows me to worship as a United Methodist
also protects another's right to be irreligious or even sacrilegious. The
same freedom of speech that protects the sermons we preach protects those
who post sexually explicit materials on the Internet. The same freedom of
the press that protects my conference newspaper, UMConnection, from
government censorship also protects Hustler magazine. 

I would not want it to be different. I don't know anyone, for example, who
would support the reenactment of Prohibition. I would oppose additional
limits to free speech or censorship of the press with all my might. 

Yet our lifestyles have become an embarrassment to people of strong
religious faith and strict morality around the world. Some of them are so
fearful of the way we live that apparently they would destroy us to protect
their children from all that we represent in their eyes. 

To regain credibility with religious and moral people around the world, we
need, I suspect, to pull back from some of the excesses we indulge in and
promote as a society. But trying to achieve this by becoming more
puritanical will not work. Puritanism only pushes the temptations that
entice us underground and makes them more powerful and destructive.

We need to rediscover commitments more precious than the pleasures we have
come to enjoy. What do I care enough about that I would be willing to
sacrifice my nice house with a refrigerator that serves ice cubes from its
door to achieve? Why am I sitting home watching my three TVs and drinking
iced Perrier rather than working for justice or writing great literature? 

We have not adequately challenged ourselves to make great contributions to
the pursuit of justice, equality, art and science. We have not allowed
ourselves to be caught up in the passion of serving the poor, outcast and
oppressed. We have replaced the love of biblical and intellectual learning
with easy entertainment.

We need to hear anew Christ's call to take up our crosses and follow him.

# # #

*Snyder is director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Annual
Conference of the United Methodist Church. This originally appeared in the
conference newspaper, UMConnection.

Commentaries provided by United Methodist News Service do not necessarily
represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church.

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