Last week, the tragedy at Fort Hood pre-empted the news media’s steady diet of programming on health care reform, troop levels for Afghanistan, and silly celeb updates.  The horrific event has triggered a debate about many issues within our military, but has also begged the question about whether this mass murder was an act of terrorism carried out by an Islamic extremist.  We just don’t know yet and we, obviously, need to be careful about stereotyping and unnecessarily turning a tragedy into an even worse situation.

The news about the mass killings at the Texas Army installation, spurred my thinking about religious sensitivity. When it comes to Muslims’, there are peace loving Muslims who want to be good citizens and there are extremist Muslims who commit mass murder as a badge of religious honor.  Muslim leaders certainly have a responsibility to denounce the violence done in the name of their religion.

I had missionary friends who were among the very last Americans to leave Iran before the Islamic Revolution.  They insisted that the Iranian people were the most gracious people they had ever known and that their many Iranian friends could not believe that they were from “The Great Satan”.

Other missionary friends who made regular clandestine trips into northern Africa explained that most Muslims were like most Christians… very nominal in their faith and performing the outward rituals of piety to keep up appearances ( and perhaps, in their case, to avoid persecution).

I understand the concerns of Muslims who are afraid that a few radicalized murders will cause suspicion to fall upon all American Muslims and I think those who are following Jesus’ teaching will take measures to alleviate their concerns.

This whole religious sensitivity debate has another side, i.e., Christians who get upset when government policy and prevailing culture does support their beliefs.  Yet, in a free society, one would want the government to protect your freedoms, including religious freedom, rather than to support a particular sect.

I have heard all of the arguments about the faith of America’s founding fathers and how we are turning away from it and how the constitution is being wrongly interpreted. There are occasional cases in which Christian religious practices and appropriate freedoms have been threatened.  But whininess about how Christian beliefs have fallen out of favor in the culture and government does not serve the cause of Christ; living out his love and demonstrating his kingdom does!

Jesus spoke about how a rejection of the message about him was not so much a rejection of the messenger, as it was a reject of him. (Luke 10:16).

We would do well to follow the example of our leader and not be so sensitive toward our own issues and focus on being sensitive and loving toward others, especially those who may be fearing repercussions because of a horrible act that an extremist did in the name of their religion.  It not as though there have not been so-called Christian extremists and deranged people who have done horrible things in the name of Christianity.