___________________________________________________________EDITORIAL__________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Signs of the Times
The modern world is suffering from a deadly disease, for which we have the only cure.

Some weeks ago the world learned that the militant Muslim government of Afghanistan, the Taliban, was planning to destroy ancient statues of the Buddha. The Taliban said these statues were false gods: an affront to Islam. Western editorial writers replied that they were cultural treasures, which must be preserved. Thus far it was an interesting debate, pitting religious zeal against secular tolerance. But then a new development changed the tenor of the argument.

From Europe and from Japan, the Taliban received generous offers from donors who were prepared to pay enormous sums in order to save the Buddha figures. They would even have the statues moved, at their own expense, so that they could no longer give offense to Afghani Muslims. From the secular perspective these offers were eminently reasonable; how could the Taliban possibly reject them?

The Afghani mullahs, however, saw things differently. In the preceding weeks they had been begging for help from the international world, to ease the famine and disease which were killing hundreds of their countrymen every week. Those pleas had gone unanswered; yet now the same wealthy societies that had spurned the cries of starving children were ready to spend millions of dollars to save graven images. If the statues were valued more highly than human life, the Taliban reasoned, then they were idols, and certainly must be destroyed. 

Blood sacrifices

We might disapprove of the Taliban’s actions, and still appreciate the force of their logic. We who live in modern Western societies, children of the Enlightenment, rarely accuse ourselves of idolatry—and for that very reason we are vulnerable to its temptations. (From hidden faults, defend us, O Lord!) How often have we ascribed a higher value to material objects and creature comforts than to God and his children who are our neighbors? 

One sure indication of idolatry is the impulse toward human sacrifice. Pagan gods are always thirsty for blood. And today such sacrifice is common in the Western world—although of course it is known by other names. We sacrifice the elderly at the altar of medical efficiency; we sacrifice some human embryos at the altar of fertility, and others at the altar of medical research. Even when scientists tell us that fetal tissue cannot be used to cure disease, as had previously been promised, we hear the persistent calls to continue the harvesting, if only for the glory of pure science. 

From time to time I hear alarmed Christians predict that God will punish our society for these grotesque crimes. There is only one problem with those predictions, I reply: they are written in the wrong grammatical tense. We are already suffering for our offenses.

Consider the epidemics of drug addiction and domestic abuse, marital breakdown and sexual perversion, violence and despair that are running rampant through modern society. The Western world is affluent and yet miserable. On his way to Calvary, Jesus spoke of a society so mired in despair that “they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’” How often do we hear exactly such sentiments expressed today, by the most respected institutions of the secular world?

It is no coincidence that a society which has abandoned God’s precepts soon plummets into hopelessness and degradation. As St. Paul explained (Rom 1:18-25), there is a causal connection between idolatry and perversion. God’s laws are not arbitrary; they mark off the path to human happiness. To ignore them is to court disaster in this life as well as the next.

The urgency of truth

I am writing this editorial on Holy Saturday—as the Christian world, which marched up to the edge of the abyss on Good Friday, awaits the explosion of Easter’s glory, which obliterates any tendency toward despair. I am struck (as I am every year) by the fact that most of my neighbors see this as just another ordinary day. Easter, unlike Christmas, does not impinge upon the secular consciousness. So in the midst of an allegedly Christian society, most people experience neither the healing power of the Crucifixion nor the incomparable joy of the Resurrection.

We Christians know that the key to heaven is shaped in the form of a Cross. We sometimes forget that the same key opens the door to true happiness in this life as well. Jesus is the answer to every important human question. And we who call ourselves Christians should accept the responsibility for the “new evangelization” that is the only hope for a troubled world.

How many of our neighbors are like the man Christ encountered beside the pool of Siloam: living for years as cripples, just inches away from the waters that can make them whole? And what a terrible indictment it would be if our neighbors repeated that man’s lament, “I have no man to help me”—when you and I walked past them every day! 

—By Philip F. Lawler