Now I don't want to get off on a rant here...

Humble to be an American

I don’t usually pay much attention to stories in the news that I think are absurd. Laura Ingram accurately refers to these dead on a arrival news stories as “shockumentary news”. Whether you are a bride with cold feet or a man that just murdered his wife or “a freak show of ‘Neverland’ pornography”, you don’t deserve the media attention you get. There is too much attention paid to this kind of news and very few people in the media are able to keep themselves from dipping into these kinds of stories.

That being said, I don’t like to draw attention to these kinds of “shockumentary stories” and rarely pay attention to anyone else that does. This is not one of those “however this story…” incidents. This is one of those, “I’m about to draw attention to a story I wouldn’t otherwise dignify with attention” moments.

Donna Glee Williams, the Director of the Holocaust Education Program at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, recently used her free lance writing skills to pen an article, “Yesterday and Today: Nazis and the Righteous Right”.

Here is the conclusion to the article:

And what we notice are a lot of parallels between the Nazi rise to power 80 years ago and the “Christian” right-wing rise to power today. Do we keep our wide-eyed mystification—“How could they have done those things?” —or do we do what Germans failed to do, what we revile them for not doing: Do we recognize the road we’re on, wrestle the steering wheel away from the mad bus-driver, and stop the bus before we get to the last stop, the town of Ultimate Consequences, Pop. 11 Million?

Where could she draw this conclusion from? It seems to boil down to this: nationalism, good geeky science, September 11th and homophobia. Yes that’s it; her four point plan to paint right-wing “Christians” as Nazis. Hardly seems reasonable to think that love of your country, an educational system producing smart people, a national tragedy and unfairly stereotyping people of faith would lead us to the 4th Reich. But that is right where we are, as Donna Glee Williams would have you believe.

Despite the enormous leaps of “faith” that are required to follow this story to its conclusion and agree with Ms. Williams, she does provide us with this small nugget of truth. Unfortunately it’s a parenthetical nugget, “(I’m still waiting for some churchgoing patriot to notice that being born American is a gift of grace and to begin marketing ‘Humble to be an American’ decals.)” That is actually a fantastic idea and taken out of the context as a snide remark, it certainly warrants attention. I believe it is that line alone that made me decide I would actually pay attention this “shockumentaryesque” story.

Ms. Williams certainly doesn’t fail to fall into the same relativist trap of her liberal brothers and sisters. “The core resentment that energizes the swing toward right-wing ‘Christian’ totalitarianism is the confusing, painful panic at seeing The Way and The Truth become one of many ways and many truths.”

The funny thing about that is there is no panic and there is no concern that The Way, The Truth and The Life will disappear. The Word of God is everlasting and the truths found in Scripture and revealed through the Holy Spirit have yet to be brought down to the footstools of liberal thought and they never will be. Jesus Christ has always impacted the culture, whether in persecution or in freedom. This so called “Christian totalitarianism”, is nothing more than the fear of moral relativism being squelched in the hearts of many.

Sharing the message of love, hope and faith brought to us by Jesus Christ with the world, with our country, with our communities, with our friends, with our families, with each other has nothing to do with taking over the world and exterminating people. It has everything to do with following The Way, The Truth and The Life and loving a gracious God. That is truly humbling.

Posted by price at May 4, 2005 01:22 PM | TrackBack