We Like Being Caged

CNN has been carrying a story for the last couple of days about a Christian in Afghanistan who was imprisoned and faces death for professing his religious preference. He was holding a Bible in hand at the time he was arrested, and now faces the “opportunity” to renounce his faith. The last story I read on this (of course you can’t find it on CNN.com currently…it does, after all, have to do with Christianity), was that the press was not being permitted to see this gentleman.

People across the world go through this every day. The attend underground churches where they smuggle in a few pages torn from a Bible under risk of death. They’re willing to die for what they believe.

It makes me wonder what we’re willing to do for our freedoms. We have the option of attending a church of our choice on the day of our choice, or no church at all if that is our choice, without risk of the secret police knocking on our doors at night. We are so comfortable in our freedom that we aren’t really willing to stand up for anything anymore.

I find this so obvious in our society today because Christians will barely speak against the discrimination we face in America. It is, after all, okay to be of any religious preference in America except Christianity. We are accused of being the intolerant bigots, and we’ve allowed this perversion of our constitutional freedoms to permeate the highest levels of our government with our silence. I wonder when we will realize that we can’t afford to be silent any longer? Most likely after its too late. It also saddens me that many Christians get on television and say stupid, Falwell-like things about minority groups on television, and gain a reputation for Christians as bigots. We’re supposed to love, but we don’t. Enough of that, though…I already went there in a previous post.

What amuses me is that, as members of various other faiths push to have Christianity eliminated from polite conversation and from any presence at all in our society, they are actually harming themselves, because the of legal precedent that they are assisting in creating to eliminate our freedoms of religious expression. How easily our freedom to worship as we choose and belong to the faith that we choose might be taken away.

Sound impossible? Well, so did the ability of the government to spy on American citizens until a few months ago.

We just keep giving it away.

3 Comments

  1. Hey 🙂

    First off, I was relieved to hear the was released. That one had me worried. Second, I find your passion about this to be refreshing. I have been finding more an more journals/blogs where I have felt at home and comfortable speaking about religion, faith, Christianity. Yours is among one of my favorites. Thank you for that.

  2. In some ways I agree with you Dave, but with the “spying” thing I can’t. If only because every president for the last 40 years or so has done the same thing.

  3. But the Constitution guarantees us a right to privacy. So when “every President for the last 40 years” has done this, they have abused their power.

    Now that we know about it, it would be the height of stupidity to allow it to continue.

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