Democracy alone insufficent to ensure morality

‘Who would Jesus bomb?”

The simple sign angered me. It was waved by a protester during Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent visit to Spokane.

Within minutes of seeing a picture of that sign in my morning paper, though, my heart had softened. However uninspired, the message points to a truth that some Americans seem to ignore these days: It makes little sense to oppose, or support, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for religious reasons alone.

Need convincing? Consider the plight of Abdul Rahman, whose much-publicized conversion to Christianity nearly got him executed as a heretic in Afghanistan, a Muslim nation.

Outrage in America is justified. The blood of American soldiers still is being shed to free Afghanistan from the callous thumb of radical Islam and give birth to democracy. The same unspeakably high price is being paid in Iraq.

So it is wholly incongruent to see new systems of government forming – under the guise of democracy – that treat Christians as criminals subject to a death sentence.

But our outrage also shows the ignorance of treating Christianity and democracy as twin sisters. In truth, they often are opposed to one another.

American democracy, in its practiced form, guarantees people the right to be moral, immoral or amoral, as they wish, so long as they don’t step on anyone else’s toes.

That’s why the spread of democracy is no cure for the culture clash that threatens to ignite a larger war in the Middle East.

As is proved in Afghanistan, democracy is merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing among people whose hearts remain closed to God’s truth. No government can reform a rebelling human heart.

Our own democracy proves the point. Ironically, America’s moral degradation is precisely what makes democracy, and by association, Christianity, seem so unpalatable among some Eastern cultures.

American democracy is never going to guarantee lasting peace and prosperity in the world.

Real hope for lasting peace is found not in democracy but in people accepting Christ as their savior and embracing his truth. Until then, there always will be intense conflict among the world’s people.

Jesus himself tells us this: “Do not think I came to bring peace on earth, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).

Democracy, when forced upon someone opposed to God’s truth, is a window dressing at best. Just ask Rahman, who is alive today not because his nation finally embraced democracy but because it merely yielded to intense international pressure.

The hard truth is that God longs for us to be on his side. He lovingly and patiently waits for hearts to turn to him.

Sin – rebellion against God – grieves him, whether it takes place in a democracy or some other political environment.

I support our troops fighting in Iraq not because it’s “the Christian thing to do” but because they are rightly fighting to stop radical militants who, given a chance, would kill anyone who refuses to see the world their way. Americans are at the top of that hit list.

Yet I also pray that Bibles, not bombs, gain prominence in Iraq and other Muslim nations that are starved for God’s truth.

As far as man-made institutions go, democracy may well be the best thing going. In fact, it is what gives Americans the right to disagree with and even protest things done by their own government.

But I really wish our country’s war opponents would stick to politics and stop employing their self-centered view of Jesus as a weapon against their own soldiers.

Go ahead and oppose the war in Iraq. In a democracy, that is your right.

Just don’t tell me Jesus is on your side.