THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Say what you want about his theology but no one can deny that Franklin Graham has the one thing that every single minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ had better have, the one thing without which any Christian theology, whatever it is, is worse than worthless. The willingness to tell the truth no matter who might be offended:

Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, called Islam “wicked” and “evil” on Sunday during a televised town hall-style discussion about American’s feelings about the religion.

“They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam,” Graham said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Graham went on to profess his love for “the Muslim people,” but said he has “great difficulty with the religion.”

“Especially with Sharia law and what it does for women – toward women, toward non-believers, the violence that is given in – under Sharia law,” Graham said.

It’s kind of like this. I attend an Episcopal church; we’ll call it Holy Communion. Two of my really close friends there are a happily-married couple named Jim and his wife Paula. Both have very successful careers, a really nice house in Webster Groves and a couple of happy, well-adjusted daughters who regard me as another, particularly goofy, uncle.

Recently I’ve seen a woman named Susan at coffee hour. She’s single, she just started attending Holy Communion and she’s extremely attractive. I’ve asked her on a date a couple of times. She shot me down but she was effortlessly nice about it. They didn’t even feel like rejections, she was that good.

But affairs, as they say, take a sudden turn. Lately, I’ve begun to suspect that something is going on between Jim and Susan. Even someone as dense and as signal-ignorant as I am can see it. The looks the two shoot one another over coffee. The surreptitious swats on the read end Jim gives Susan when Paula is not looking or is not around.

The looks the rest of us give each other when we notice it.

Then there was that night after the Holy Communion Bears softball team upset perennial league powerhouse Seven Holy Founders. None of us Bears wanted that evening to end so we all drove over to a local joint and began crushing pizzas and pitchers of beer.

Paula’s not there since she’s out of town on business. Jim’s kids are at the age when hanging around old people for long periods of time is a chore so they’re off doing something or other.

But Susan’s there. She and Jim sit next to one another all evening. Real close to one another if you know what I mean. We all shoot each these looks that we’ve gotten so good at recently.

Two weeks later, we knock off Pool of Siloam Baptist, giving the Bears the first playoff berth in team history, and decide to celebrate again. Maybe it’s because of all the beer he had in him but while Jim and I are alone in the bathroom draining off some of the pitchers of Bud Select that we’ve been relentlessly pumping into our stomachs all evening, he suddenly blurts out what all of us already knew.

And maybe it’s because of all the beer I had in me but I respond by asking him if he’s out of his effing mind. You’re married, man, I tell him, and you’re married to someone I wouldn’t mind tapping myself if it were not for this whole “adultery is wrong” thing.

Three or four Bears wander in but, more and more agitated, I completely ignore them. Never mind, Paula, although that’s going to be devastating enough when she finds out and she will. What about your kids, man?! Do you seriously want to do that to your kids?!! What the hell’s wrong with you, man?!!

Know who’s going to end up being the bad guy of this situation? Know who’s probably going to lose every friend he has? Quite correct.

Me.

One supposes that usual leftist Christians suspects will pronounce themselves appalled by what Franklin Graham said here. Words like “bigotry” will be indiscriminately tossed around as they usually are when conservative Christians are, well, Christian.

Franklin Graham’s only crime is honesty. All he has done here is to describe the Islamic religion as it is. As I’ve pointed out before, it is useless to listen to western Muslims describe what the Islamic religion is from the vantage point of the West, where Islam is still in the minority.

So, Johnson. Are you claiming the Christianity is perfect in this regard? What about the Inquisition? What about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre? What about all those British Catholics and Protestants burned at the stake? What about all those Huguenots that Louis XIV sent to the galleys?

What about them? The Orthodox haven’t often been in a position to persecute other Christian churches but sadly, both Protestants and Roman Catholics have a great deal of innocent Christian blood on their hands. But here’s the difference.

Protestants and Catholics put away childish things. Protestants and Catholics grew out of it. Protestants and Catholics learned.

Islam has not. What’s worse is that Islam has shown no interest in doing so. Indeed, Islam has not even begun to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it might have gotten a few things wrong.

Don’t bore me with any more bromides about what you claim Islam thinks. As a Missourian, I demand that you show me what the Islamic religion does when the Islamic religion can do anything it wants without let or hinderance. And as Franklin Graham points out and as we have all seen, there is a word for what occurs when the Islamic religion can do anything it wants without let or hinderance.

Hell.