"In Nov., 2004 a brutal murder shocked Holland and the world. On a busy Amsterdam street, in broad daylight, a prominent film maker named Theo van Gogh was shot, stabbed and mutilated in front of dozens of witnesses."
[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/11/60minutes/main679609.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody]Full Story[/url]
Following the rest of the story, you learn that the man was mudered by a 'radical muslim' and that this was probably in response to his involvment in producing a short film that aired there which was critcal of Islam's treatment of women.
One of the things that struck me about this story as I read through parts of it was this comment from a Dutch intellectual, he says:
"people of faith of every kind are welcome, so long as they understand that in Dutch democracy, [b]virtually nothing is sacred[/b]."(emphasis added)
As I read that against the backdrop of this story and the murder that it is about, it all seemed to suggest to me that if "virtually nothing is sacred", then neither is human life. That such is the fruit of the modern relativists "great" moral experiments in societies.
It is not enough to errect an intellectual shelter with words like 'virtually' in order to rescue human life from the deluge of moral relativitism outside. If the foundations are destroyed or they are rotten, then everything that is right will perish along with all that is wrong. You cant have it both.
So, how do we as Christians respond to this?
We know how [b]we do not[/b] respond. We don't respond with violence, or rioting, or threats of doing harm to others. That isn't our way. I believe that most of you here believe that also. But still, what do we do?
I think(and this is thinking of myself especially) is that we consider ourselves first. Our religon is one that can tolerate shame against it because it is something built into our beliefs; not that we embrace or promote shame or shamefull behavior, GOD forbid! But each of us when we have come to Christ have come to Him confessing our own personal shames and sins. And we continue to do so. And we remember the shame and ignominy that Christ endured for us to put our sins away. We have an outlet for sin and for shame. We don't have to cover it up when it is ours or retaliate against it when it is put upon us by others.
Praise God for the Lamb that was slain to take away the sins of the World, of Whom we are all not worthy!
Still, what a terrible insult to suggest that the words of the Bible, the same Bible that contains the story of Christ dying upon the cross for us, that that is "appalling" and more "smutty" than pornography.
When I first read this story I remembered that it is written in the Bible:
"...behold, the word of the LORD is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it."
God have mercy upon us all. His mercy is beyond our comprehension.
