Surprised? Why?

On television a few weeks ago, one of the long line of commentators on the news- this one a former field officer in the military - expressed surprise over the dichotomy of two events.  He observed that wild riots and many deaths resulted in Afghanistan from the unintentional burning of some copies of the koran (or Noble Qu'ran, if you want to show deference) by American soldiers, yet a short time later, it was only seemingly mild anger that was shown over the massacre of innocent women and children there by a soldier.

Why would this response to the two events surprise anyone?  Focus on the fact that the first event involved what was seen as an attack on a culture and its holy words.  The second event was merely the loss of sixteen lives out of their burgeoning glut of humans.  And even the word loss may be slightly misused because after all, it was basically the insignificant lives belonging to women and children that were taken - not many of the truly important males of that culture.  So the second event was far more forgivable than the first.

My, oh my!

We in the West look at that dynamic and wonder how those people could be so unfeeling, so dismissive of human life.  But stop and consider all of this as if it had happened in our own land.

All of us (no way I can mean literally all here, sorry to say) were saddened to hear of the massacre of students and faculty on the Virginia Tech campus a few years ago.  A man with a gun simply opened fire and took many human lives.  Now consider this variation on that real event: IF that man had been a foreign soldier, stationed here and providing some service to our own people, his actions would probably have caused a rift in relations between his country and ours, but it is doubtful we would have seen riots in our streets to make a case against that whole foreign nation.  But if that soldier and his troop (working on our soil for whatever imaginary reason) were to unintentionally burn a pile of bibles, you can bet there would be riots.  Here!  Christians are just as worried as are Muslims that people of another culture might show disrespect to their holy words.  And Christians would riot, probably armed for battle, demanding retaliation against those infidels(!) who would destroy sacred books.  That foreign nation and its soldiers would be rejected from our soil in no uncertain terms and quickly!  Probably any isolated individuals who could be determined to have participated in the book desecration would be required to stand trial, assuming they lived through the rioting.

I'm constantly mystified at the presumption by Christians that we are not as war-like as other cultures.  The fact that western Christians don't wear silly head wraps or hide women under heavy fabric - don't fall to the ground five times daily when a prayer trumpet blasts, or partake of a variety of ritualistic oddities we see in other cultures - does not mean Christians are more peace loving or less dangerous to humanity.  Fear, with it's attendant hyper-active belief in sacred mythology, is equally dangerous wherever it resides.