Jerry blogged about how the Muslim world is so upset about a cartoon portraying Mohammad in a Danish newspaper. They believe that creating images of Mohammad will lead to idolatry, so therefore you shouldn’t do it. Jerry expressed dismay with how the Muslim world governments are responding to the crisis and expecting western governments to control their press. Crazy.

What struck me in this whole thing is how it relates to the Christian world. We, as Christians, are often dismayed and saddened with the lack of morality in the world. The thing that surprises me is how so many Christians think that non-Christians should behave as Christians. They are offended and outraged when a movie that opposes Christian values does well at the box office. They don’t understand when laws protecting abortion are the law of the land. Why does this surprise us? Why would we expect people outside of our faith to act as if they were in it.

When we do this, we are acting just like the Muslims in this story. They are expecting non-muslims to act muslim. This seems utterly ridiculous to us. Are we more attracted to the muslim faith because of this??? No! I think the same is true of non-Christians. They aren’t attracted to Christianity because of our strong public stands on morality. They are attracted because of the love and grace of Christ. It seems like we should spend more time loving our neighbor rather than making sure everyone understands what we think is right and wrong.

As I watched the images of Palestinians on CNN, with machine guns in hand, lashing out against the west, I couldn’t help but think this is what non-Christians see when they see Christians lashing out against movies, tv or the government.