Riots in Sydney, Part 2

I have had a number of comments on my post Anger and Mercy, about the recent riots in Sydney concerning the blasphemous (to Muslims) YouTube video. I wrote specifcally to Christians about how I believed they ought to react. I can now see that my answer requires a bit more background.

First of all, what’s interesting is that many people have an equally negative impression of Christians in general as they do of Muslims. They quote history about things like the Inquisition, etc, which are all accurate, as far as they go. But such events are not the whole story about Christianity or Christians, by a long shot. So one of my appeals is not to generalise about Muslims or Christians or Liberals or Conservatives because it doesn’t help.

Secondly, many people have an implicit theory about history (of which they are largely unaware) that goes like this: “Christians and Muslims today are the same as they were hundreds of years ago. Religion is the problem and we’d all be better off without it.” I would like to make clear what my theory of history is, for both my Christian and non-Christian readers. One of the points I’m making to Christians is that they need to understand their larger role in history as peace-bringers. I don’t mean to exclude non-Christians from this, of course, but the language I used in my blog about Anger and Mercy was Christian langauge.