RECENTLY we heard the story of a young Chinese girl who was refused an appearance at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics because her teeth were not straight enough. Many in the West were horrified - though the story was juxtaposed with another about a famous actor being refused a role in Mission Impossible, part four, because he was too old.
We live in a world, both east and west, preoccupied with external appearances. It is hard to get away from Jesus's comment about taking planks out of our own eyes prior to removing a splinter from the eye of another.
Like many of his utterances, it holds as true today as ever.
Some of us are inclined to think people were better in the past, but this is not true. Every age and generation faces its own challenges and problems. In the 17th century we had wars of religion. The 18th gave us wars of commerce and Empire. The 19th fought about nationalist issues and the 20th gave us wars of ideologies. But a spear is a spear regardless of who throws it at you - the context changes but the problem remains the same. War and violence are as ingrained into us today as in all generations before us.
It is at times like these that the role of faith is key. Religion itself is scapegoated in wars. But conversion was never the outcome of any battle - the real cause of war is to be found in its results: the human desire for power, glory and wealth. To the victors the spoils!
Strangely enough, the solutions to war are to be found in religion and the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Faith is the source of value for life. To believe all life comes from God leads us to believe that only God has the right to take it away. Theories of just war exist but most of us do not accept war is ever justifiable, apart from self-defence. States argue for their right to execute their criminals, but many believers reject this too.
We also reject euthanasia, terminations, murder and actions that lead to somebody being killed. And yet, Christians that have had their hands bloodied in most of the violence perpetrated in the past thousand years. We have quite a sizable plank in our eyes.
Josef Stalin remarked that one death was a tragedy and a million deaths was a statistic. We take comfort in reducing the loss of life by quoting big numbers that are beyond normal emotional understanding. It becomes easy to find places that are worse than your own.
We are often grateful that we live where we are and not in such-and-such a place where stabbings are rife. We can mask our own wrongdoing by comparing it with the actions of unfamiliar people. Or we can use propaganda to claim that the nasty Chinese execute more prisoners than the nice Texans do. Good Nato comes in to restore order and bad Russia invades helpless little states.
Hypocrites! First take the beam out of your own eye so you can see clearly enough so as to remove the splinter from your brother's eye. True peace will come only when Christians take these words of Christ seriously.
FMacE