Fear in all the wrong places

Several years ago I stopped watching TV news because I hate the fear.  Don't go out at night or you will be raped and murdered!  ISIS!  Ebola!

Fear is everywhere in our culture today, which is remarkable because probably there has never been a more secure time to live.  We're not really in danger of war coming upon us; we have security everywhere we live; and even all the health scares out there usually only come up because people are not as hygenic as they should be.

For all the fears that we could have, are we afraid of the wrong things?  Likely.  So my parents just got back from a trip back east to see my brother and on the way they stopped and saw some old friends.  They woke up the next morning not feeling well, but eventually left.  They arrive back home this week and find out that the people they stayed with died because of carbon monoxide poisoning this week.  Actually one of them is still alive but not expected to live...but you get the point:  this is something serious!  Had my parents stayed with these people for a few more days, this is something that could have actually killed them, something that likely happens in many places.  It's a reminder to me to a)get the furnace checked and b)make sure the carbon monoxide detector is working.

So many people today are going crazy over the fears 'out there'.  Congressmen seek to gain political points by talking them up, newscasters look for ratings by scaring the crap out of people.  'We've got to stop these horrors!', but in the end they forget about the things that are really dangerous.  What of Congress devoted as much as time to making sure every furnace in America was safe rather than criticizing policy about Ebola?  Wouldn't that actually be a more productive use of their powers?

A friend of mine was driving to work yesterday when somebody ran a stop sign and almost killed him.  It could have been much worse: only one fractured vertebrae and a lot of aches and pains.  But a serious wreck nonetheless.  But stuff like this happens all the time...people minding their own business driving to work, when somebody not paying attention causes a major, dangerous wreck.  Where's the outrage?  Why aren't our streets safer?

Carbon monoxide poisonings and car wrecks kill far more people than the Ebola virus in our country.  But one we freak out about, the others we ignore.  Maybe we'd just rather be scared by fake stuff (hello, haunted houses!) than things that are real.  But that's just stupid.

The Double Standard of 'Terrorism'

Last week in the news there was a story from Oklahoma of a man who was angry about being fired.  He walked into the personnel office of his business and decapitated one woman and was in the process of killing another woman when one of the managers came in and shot him.  A horrible story...but what captured the attention of everybody (beyond the beheading...CSI episode alert!) was the fact that he was Muslim, and that he had been trying to talk to people about his Muslim faith in recent months.  Naturally, the question became not whether this was a horrible crime, but whether or not this was TERRORISM.  Whether this was JIHAD.  Whether this was part of the evil holy war that Muslims were waging against us good Christian folks.

Everyday in the news here in our good Christian nation there are stories of bad people doing bad things to bad people.  A man goes in and kills his girlfriend and then turns the gun on himself.  Two school teachers in Louisiana are arrested for having group sex with a 16-year-old student.  A politician is found to have traded political favors for his wife getting a cushy job.  Bad things happen all the time...but how many do we call these people Christian terrorists?  Many bad things are done by good church-going folks, but it's never terrorism when we do it, we think...just bad things done by bad people.  Muslims, we say, are told by their religion to do a terrible thing.  Christians, we say, could never be told by their religion to do a terrible thing.  We overlook the fact that Christians literally 'took the cross' in 1095 when encouraged to go and invade Jerusalem (and many places along the way, Muslim and non-Muslim alike).  We forget that various Christian groups declared war on each other in the centuries after this.

Why is it that we continually call every evil thing Muslims do terrorism (and such a product of the culture of an evil religion), but every evil thing a Christian does to be simply an individual choice?  We set a double standard for these things, and quite honestly it's not fair.  As Christian people we should know better than to engage in hatred and suspicion, of thinking that 'They' are bad unless other wise proven to be good and that 'We' are good unless otherwise bad.  Grace should stop this stupid thinking that find ourselves engaging in.

But here's an exercise to help cleanse you of these things:  Next time you watch a news report of somebody done somebody wrong, ask yourself, are they Christian terrorists?  If nothing is said of their religion, assume that they are.  If 85% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians, surely their Christianity played a part in their evil, right?  Do this enough times and maybe you'll hate Christians too, just like you hate Muslims.  And the culture of fear will have won yet again.