Monday Morning Music Ministry

How many terrorist victims were there in the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices this morning? Before you scramble for the latest numbers, the answer is: None.

Cartoonists, writers, and security people were murder victims, not terrorism victims. The distinction is important. The victims of terrorism are citizens of Paris; Christians, Jews, and secularists throughout Paris, France, Europe, and the West; and cartoonists, satirists, thinking people.

Never again, at least for years to come, will average people be able to think skeptically, critically, humorously, even heretically, without looking over our shoulders even in some small way. That is the definition of terrorism, to instill fear and alter our lives.

Charlie Hebdo (Weekly) is a newspaper that is the second incarnation of the comics magazine Charlie Mensuel (Monthly), a magazine named in honor of Charlie Brown. Its original version was satirical but also a reprint vehicle for comic strips, including from the U.S., in the manner of Linus, Tintin, and other character-named European monthlies. In its current version it is aggressively left-wing and had been the object of arson attacks, government censorship, and concomitant success as a humorous, iconoclastic institution.

As a former cartoonist and a publisher and writer who has worked with the European comics industry, I knew two of the cartoonists who were murdered in the Charlie Hebdo offices, Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut. Amiable fellows — more than amiable; like most cartoonists, personally merry and friendly — they were left-wing and perhaps a bit nihilist. They, and their paper, were equal-opportunity intellectual anarchists: all religions received savage treatment. There were far more attacks on Christianity than on Islam; many more personal and insulting depictions of clergy, and of Mary, God, and Jesus.

This is not to excuse or mischaracterize their work; they never asked for nor expected such defense. Wolinski also scripted a series of pornographic comics, so I seldom was in sympathy with any of their work. Properly regarding satire as free speech; that is, written words and drawings are as of spoken words, we remember that James 3:8 says, “The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”

When the Bible tells us that, it is a warning to devout believers, but also a key to discerning the nature of attacks, harmful speech, and even satire. But after millennia of investing in, and living in, democratic cultures, we are also committed to the dictum misattributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Liberals and conservatives are quick to quote Voltaire, but often are absent when push comes to shove. Radio’s Michael Savage was banned from travel to the United Kingdom because he called terrorists “Islamo-Fascists.” Not only did the federal government fail to protest, but fellow conservatives, especially the prominent in media, were relatively silent about his case. The British historian David Irving has told me about his incarceration in solitary confinement for two years in Austria because he entered the country years after he spoke there, questioning not the fact but the numbers of people slaughtered during World War II. No governments and few fellow historians protested the violation of free speech, freedom of opinion, in his case. In countries like Canada, Australia, and Germany it is against the law to voice opinions on this subject; yet the West deplores Muslim objections to criticism of the Prophet.

Nativists, xenophobes, and cultural traditionalists have been rising in Europe in recent years. In Austria and Germany (some would say, predictably) but also in countries like Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark. We see rallies, movements, and laws that are anti-immigrant and, because of the statistics, less religious-oriented than economic, social, and cultural.

In a perfect world, Christians would not mirror the intolerance of Muslim extremists. In a perfect world we would reach the lost, convert them by love, and work toward St. Augustine’s “City of God” wherein few are motivated to commit such acts.

We are called to love, but embracing suicide, even cultural suicide by a thousand accelerating concessions and surrenders, cannot be so described.

Who is the person closest to you in life? Quick!

Sort of a trick question, because we should answer “Jesus,” but many of us think of family, spouses, friends; and great relationships should indeed spring to mind.

But Jesus is the answer to that question… even if people don’t feel like putting Him first on the list. Because He is always there, close to us. Closer than a shadow.

George Beverly Shea once told me a story that stuck with me (I can’t claim credit for such a great story with its deeper lesson!). An old farmer was driving his wife to town in their car. The wife looked across to her husband behind the wheel and said, “You know, when we were courting, we used to sit so close together in the front seat!” He looked over at her, and at the space between them, and asked, “Who moved?”

Of course the meaning is that sometimes we feel not as close to God as we used to. Sometimes the zeal of our young faith subsides; sometimes a crisis in our lives affects the intimacy we once had with God; sometimes doubts make God seem distant to us.

… but our cooling faith, our crises, our doubts do not place God at a distance. He will never leave us nor forsake us. Only we can make ourselves feel distant from Him.

So don’t “move” away from God, and then blame it on Him. Neither need we toss Him the wheel of the car, jump in His lap, or check off boxes on a list. Just invite Him: Abide With Me.

The simple words of this simple hymn are basically all He asks of us. Trust and rely on Jesus, feel His presence. And know what the invitation means: Abide means to dwell (the word is related to “abode”), to stay, to continue, to wait patiently, to accept, to endure, to support, to live… within you.

Who moves apart? Never the Lord!

Here is a moving performance of that simple and mighty hymn by one of the world’s most beautiful voices, Hayley Westenra of New Zealand. If you can listen with earphones, treat yourself.

Click:  Abide With Me