What Next, Kill God?

A French Panel says no more head scarves in school. No large crosses, not yarmulkes, skullcaps, nothing overtly proseltyizing other people. Nothing that will scream "I AM MUSLIM!" or "I AM CHRISTIAN!" or "I AM A JEHOVAH's WITNESS!" At the same time, they suggest more flexibility in allowing people days off for their religious holidays and suggest that schools start teaching Arabic and Arab history. Once again, I am baffled and amazed by the ability of the French to take a delicate and difficult situation and make it even worse.

I spent two years as a missionary for my church in France. Every day, I walked the streets of towns like Angouleme, Bordeaux and Mont de Marsan, talking to people about religion. I knocked on their doors, talked to them in the streets, entered their mosques and cathedrals and shared what I believed at the time to be the God's Honest Truth. I didn't try and shove it down their throats. I tried in all honesty and sincerety to truly respect their beliefs and share mine in an open and generous way in a hope to make their lives better. Literally THOUSANDS of conversations and countless hours later, I think I have a pretty decent grasp as to what an average cross-section of French people think about religion.

The truth is most French people don't give a damn about religion. It doesn't enter into their thinking. They view it with distrust and arrogant amusement. "Why should I look outside myself for answers? Who are these people that are so weak they must look to a higher power to find meaning for their lives? I have everything I need right here. I have my mind, my reason, my health and I am in a developed nation. I have a job, a home, maybe a family. I need no religion." The comfort and ease of their secular nation has lulled them into a false sense of security and acted as its own opiate for the masses.

It was not always thus. Throughout the Middle Ages and on through the Enlightenment, religion played an integral role in the French Psyche. Even before their was France, there was Catholic France, the heart of Christendom. "Paris vaut bien une messe," Henry IV said as he took the crown and converted from Protestentism to Catholicism. The Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV's wars with Holland and Spain, the massacre of the Cathares, the revoking of the Edict of Nantes (I've been to Nantes several times by the way, beautiful city), religion was the prime moving force (if not the excuse for the prime moving force) for almost all political and social action in France.

That all changed with the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, Robespierre, Danton and all those "enlightened" men who understood that even if God was real, he had no place in the lives of his children. We have reason, they said, and religion has killed too many in the past to be worth anything. So let's kill all who believe in religion, they continued, bring down deface and rape the Catholic Church and create a new nation devoid of any religious taint.

It didn't work. For the next 115 years, the French wrestled with their supposed secular Utopia and the inherent need for people to worship their creator. You can take the Catholic Church out of France, but you can't take the Catholics out of France.

Until the 20th Century, when the last vestiges of true religion were swept out of the French maintstreem and great catastrophes like WWI disabused most men and women of the idea of a merciful God. And as the century moved on, the peace and comfort of an indulgent government and a flat refusal to accept God on his terms has led a once-great nation to forsake the true enlightenment of religious inspiration and embrace a sterile secularism that I forsee destroying all of Western Europe.

But wait. Now France is face to face with another culture that doesn't see the world quite as they do. With 7 percent of their country now Muslims (the largest population in Western Europe it is interesting to note), the French are forced to look religion straight in the face whether they like it or not. "You may not believe in God, but we certainly do, and he is going to be a part of our lives and yours whether you're ready for him or not," the newcomers say. And under the pockmarked and shredded banner of tolerance, France wrestles with the clash of civilizations that is only a microcosm of what is gripping the rest of the world.

And this panel's recommendation is the best all of France's great leaders can come up with?

I am impressed with the suggestions for different holidays, for teaching Arabic in Schools and for a further understanding between the cultures. Separate meals for Jews and Muslims who wish to observe their religions. Great. But banning religious attire?

If this took place in the United States, I think we would see a backlash of epic proportions. Freedom of Religion does not mean destroying religion. It does not mean you have to be free from religion unless that's what you choose.

But where does my right to worship or not to worship end and Muhammed's start or Binyamin's start or Joe or Frank or Lisa?

Article : "It said that organized groups were testing the secular state by demands on public services in the name of religion and pressuring Muslims to identify first with their faith and then with their French citizenship."

That is a problem. That is a problem France is struggling with, England is struggling with, America is struggling with. All of the World is struggling with. All religions demand something of both individuals and society, and that will spill over to your neighbor no matter how discreet and tactful you are. And lets face it, there are few world religions that don't look to convert others, sometimes by the sword.

Are we incompatible? Are we essentially and eventually going to kill each other? THERE IS NO GETTING AROUND the fact we look at each other as the damned. Is Godless secularism the only answer to peace?

The only answer I have is to the last question: NO. There is a way through this and it keeps God in the equation. The only answer I do have is that God is real. How you worship Him is your deal. You try and kill him, you lose what makes you human. As for moving beyond that, I'm open to suggestions. And France, you might want to try again.