I CAN, THEREFORE I WILL

 Cast your mind back to the halcyon days of your childhood, when you were nine or ten years old. One of your siblings, or a pupil in your class, or maybe a neighbour’s child you’re playing with does something to annoy you. You push him, and he pushes you, and then you slap him, and he slaps you, and you throw a stone, and a window shatters. Your mum hears the screeching and wailing and runs to find out who has been murdered, and what do you say?

‘It wasn’t my fault! He started it!’

It was only a childish scuffle of course, but often a pattern develops of not being able or willing to accept responsibility for our actions. The story is as old as Eden itself: ‘It wasn’t me, it was her!’ said Adam. ‘It wasn’t me, it was the snake!’ said Eve

But now focus your attention across the Atlantic to the city of Gainsville in Florida; a city about twice the size of Bangor, ranked as one of the best places to live and play by the international organisation; National Geographic Adventure.

There’s an innocuous looking church in Gainsville about fifty families strong, pastored by a 58 year old ex-hotel manager; Terry Jones, who is basking in an extraordinary degree of notoriety these days. He sits behind a large desk in a spacious office with Braveheart posters on the walls. There’s a big Bible on his desk with a loaded pistol resting on it. As the camera pans around the congregation in his Pentecostal Church you see men with hands and face raised towards heaven, lost in wonder and worship, and they too have pistols strapped to their waist band.

That seems out of place to you and me, but in the land of the free it’s allowed, so Pastor Jones and his men do it.

They don’t like Muslims in the Church of Jones, they despise their Holy Book and so they convene a court hearing and put the Qur’an on trial. ‘If we find it innocent we will issue an apology,’ he says. ‘But if it is guilty it will be punished’ – they’re allowed to do that too in the land of the free.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the inanimate defendant is pronounced guilty and an Internet poll is carried out to help decide the form of punishment, for they’re democratic people in the land of the free, and so the sentence was pronounced; death by burning. They are entitled to do that.

Now let’s move to a mosque in Kandahar after Friday prayers when three militant Mullahs declare; ‘They have burned our Holy Book! The infidel, the Great Satan must feel the heat of our fury!’ and his congregation, with guns strapped to their waistbands goes on the rampage, and ten or twelve people die, because they are Americans – and the Mullahs are satisfied.

And so we have an American preacher from the Home of the Brave and three religious leaders who claim to be following the teachings of their faith looking at each other across a troubled world; ‘It wasn’t my fault! He started it!’ – the age old tension between rights and responsibilities.

When Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God,’ he did not have in mind someone who brokers an uneasy truce or a tense stand-off between twitchy combatants. No, he was saying that a deep inner harmony and a sense of contentment can only belong to those who actively make peace where peace does not easily exist. But it takes courage and humility to make peace.

That’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and the inevitable question is, should we be surprised that Terry Jones and his henchmen are so filled with fear and hatred that they still need their security blanket; a side-arm before they can worship their god? Should we wonder why such people see a pistol and a Bible side by side as the norm?

The accoutrements of strife adorn their office walls and their lives – not much evidence of the influence of the Prince of Peace, is there?