Michelle Malkin interviews Daveed Gartenstein-Ross regarding his year inside radical Islam. What sticks out most to me is the fact that Gartenstien-Ross moved from a seeker to an unquestioning automaton. His parents were, in his words "new-age hippie Jews." They had a syncretistic religion in their home where Jesus was in the living room and Buddha was out on the back lawn. They saw truth in multiple faiths and so they validated those faiths, even though those faiths were exclusive one to the other.
Because Gartenstein-Ross's parents didn't stand for anything in particular, they opened up their son to a radical, corrosive religion that actually stood for something. He was attracted to the hard boundaries that Islam offers. I'm reminded of a "hippie" study where it was proposed that a school playground have it's fence removed because children should have the freedom to explore and not have to run into barriers. What happened when the fence was taken down? The children didn't wander off or explore beyond the fence. They actually didn't want to use the playground equipment but stayed near the door. Instead of feeling free to explore, the children felt threatened by not knowing they were safe.
There is something oddly comforting in a set of rules. It grants the power to know things for certain, even if the rules are self-imposed. This is the underlying appeal of fundamentalism, whether it be Christian, Judaic, Islamic, or even vegan. People long to know what the boundaries are because they intuitively reason that there are rules to life. I did "X" and I got hurt, therefore I won't do "X" anymore. They struggle for peace and they find it in the oddest places, like when Gartenstein-Ross found Islam.
My own journey through fundamentalism led me to study a number of different religions in the effort to understand their difficiencies. "We" are right, and "they" are wrong. I was searching out the truth to validate my adopted religion. While I learned much of the truth, I learned that my religion had its little idiosyncracies and, while they didn't invalidate it, it helped me understand that no person can fully understand all of life and the God who created it. No one person or movement has all the answers to everything.
As a side note, the pastor of another church that shared our facility lost his son at a Vacation Bible School session when the tree he was playing in was struck by a bolt of lightning. There was no explanation for it. Why him? Why then? It didn't make sense to me and any answer as to the real reason behind his horrible death was completely unsatisfying. I've had similar experiences since then and the only conclusion I have is that the created order has been broken and the result is that "good" people meet "bad" situations and God works in these situations for our ultimate good. It doesn't take away the pain of the broken system, but it's one that offers hope and a future better than what we face today.
I realize, though, that the God of the Bible has fewer rules than the Christian fundamentalists ascribe to him and far fewer than those who choose to live under the law of Moses in Judaism or under the law of Mohammed in Islam. Jesus said the two greatest commandments were to love God wholeheartedly and to love others more than ourselves. Everything else in the law hangs on either or both of these prima lexi, if I can co-opt the Latin in my own words. Those are the posts and rails by which all of life should be governed. Legalism and fundamentalism may find that these rules are not enough to live by, that much more must be defined to please God and love each other. Strangely enough, Jesus confronted the legalists and fundamentalists often in his ministry. They were called pharisees and saducees. They found that by defining the law down to the minutae, they often could find the loopholes that allowed them to honor the law but dishonor the spirit of the law. This is the poison found in any religion in the world.
The law is unable to change the heart of man. It simply puts up the boundaries for people to know where they stand. More and more people flock to religion only to find that it still doesn't satisfy or change their hearts. So what does?
In nearly everyone's life, they form relationships with others, if only on the surface. Relationships are the most dynamic agents of change. They are catalysts for growth or death, refreshment or draining. What most people never seem to realize is that they can have a relationship with their Creator. It's that relationship that serves as an agent for change in the Christian life. Pushing deeper in that relationship brings more and more growth and refreshment, even if they encounter harder times.
It's this relationship that I believe Gartenstien-Ross was really wanting. The question I have is, will he or has he discovered that relationship, or is he still chasing down the perfect law?
No comments:
Post a Comment