Friday, August 28, 2009

Geez Louise by Douglas Wilson

So, a friend informs me, Brian McLaren is observing Ramadan this year. I was minding my own business, see, and my friend sent me this link. Check it out your own self here. He sent me the link, I am convinced, to see if I would go off like a bottle rocket, all the while trying to stay out of sin.

No, I do not go off like a bottle rocket. I sit here, solemn and thoughtful, stroking my beard. Hmmm, I muse to myself, thinking down the same lines that Cicero did when he o temporaed o moraed about ancient Roman monkeyshines. What shall the harvest be? I then turn to go back to whatever it was I was doing.

But then I ask myself, am I being selfish? Do I not have peculiar gifts in the arena of fisking? Was I not born for just such occasions? With a sigh, I put aside my casual evening, and go out to my shop to find the nine-pound sledge.

It is not as though McLaren just announced this, leaving us to figure out why. He 'splains it himself.

"Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of fasting for spiritual renewal and purification. It commemorates the month during which Muslims believe Mohammed received the Quran through divine revelation, and it calls Muslims to self-control, sacrificial generosity and solidarity with the poor, diligent reading of the Quran, and intensified prayer."

And all God's people say ohhhh, their voices trailing off at the end. Then their faces bunch up that funny way that faces have. And then a cluster of hands go up, and the looks on some faces indicate that this might turn into a town hall meeting or something.

"This year, I, along with a few Christian friends . . . will be joining Muslim friends in the fast which begins August 21. We are not doing so in order to become Muslims: we are deeply committed Christians. But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them."

That is, deeply committed Christians who believe that what matters is the deeply committed part, and not the object of the commitment. For, as we have just learned, being deeply committed to a diligent reading of false Scriptures, and intensified prayer to a false god, and sacrificial generosity as a means of ginning up some works righteousness around here, is something that deeply committed Christians can "come close" in order to "share." Sharing, that is, in the experience of getting all the fundamentals wrong. It is as though deeply committed adherents of the notion that the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides decided to "come close" to those who thought that it wasn't even close to the sum of the square of the other two sides. But what the heck. What matters is being deeply committed to drawing what you think are triangles on a piece of paper. Is that not what really matters? We have pencils and papers in common. Come on, people. Don't you want to end wars?

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