Amazing isn’t it. The pesident of France issues an interesting edict:
“Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility,” Chirac told his cabinet.”
How do you create sympathy and tolerance in our global community today? Violence over the slightest offense can gain presidential proclamations of guilt on the practitioners of free speech. It will be facinating to see if this condemnation of religious cartoons will be evenly applied. I bet not. Here again is another sign that in our pluralistic culture, even the intolerant receive sympathy, as long as they are not conservative Christians.
But then again, we certainly don’t expect the world to honor Christ or those who follow Him. They didn’t honor Him while He was physically here on earth. The world violently crucified Him. The Muslim outrage and the passive response of many toward the Islamic cartoon violence, while chiding secularists for making fun, is another sign that we cannot expect to create a culture that will honor Christ outside of the gospel. A moral culture is not our answer. The embracing of a violently persecuted, but victorious Savior – Jesus Christ is the means to truly peaceful culture.
See also John Piper’s excellent commentary on the difference between the Muslim Mohammed and the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ.
Hi Bret,
Here at A&M, we had a similar event in which an anonymous student called himself “The Uncartoonist” and proceeded to write insanely funny yet tasteless jabs at Jews, Christians, Muslims, Parking Police, Catholics, etc.
My problem is not with hate speech or unloving speech (whichever you prefer to call it) being legal but with it being done with anonymity. If you are going to call something out, you should have the loins to put your name to it.
At A&M, I simply looked at the regular cartoons and determined who had the same drawing style, called the Houston Chronicle, and voila! the next thing we know the name of the student is published.
If the cartoons continued, I was ready to support them. After all, letters to the editor come in all the time (which have to be signed) and some of them are hateful and stupid…how is that different?
But, the Uncartoonist didn’t continue once he was known. The moral of the story I see: Guess it is more fun to stir up trouble than to engage in real dialogue in which you have to face the music.