Security’s double-edged sword

The Book of Proverbs 16:25 warns, “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” As I watched the attorney general testify before the House Judiciary Committee, that proverb kept replaying itself in an endless loop in my head.

While I listened to John Ashcroft outline the draconian measures required by law enforcement to combat terror, I couldn’t help but think that the terrorists had already won a major victory. Ashcroft urged the Congress to pass the proposed measures quickly, saying, “The American people do not have the luxury of time.”

The measures sought by the administration are far-reaching indeed. The Justice Department wants to be able to operate in secret – secret court orders, secret wiretaps, secret detentions, secret access to Internet users’ e-mails – secret police.

And despite what all this secrecy means to American civil liberties, one cannot see how we can win the war against terrorism without it.

It is more than just a victory for the terrorists. It’s a victory for the spirit of terrorism, the Evil One that secular America is forced by circumstance to acknowledge after decades of denial. A quarter century ago, I wrote a book entitled “Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth.”

A quarter century later, America sees his face in clouds of smoke, sees his fingerprints all over New York and Washington and has decided to take him on in open combat.

But secular America, embodied in our government, is woefully under-equipped for battle in this realm. It is mind boggling to see how much Satan has accomplished through the terrible tragedies of September 11th.

Consider the various national church services. Efforts to portray “pure Islam” as a “religion of peace” abound. The Koran is the source of “pure Islam,” yet it teaches:

So when the sacred months have passed away, then SLAY THE IDOLATERS wherever you find them, and TAKE THEM CAPTIVES AND BESIEGE THEM AND LIE IN WAIT FOR THEM IN EVERY AMBUSH.

Sura [9.5]

The inter-faith movement that is springing up across America is both good, and bad. Certainly, it has filled churches and many have come to Christ. Just as certainly, it has filled stadiums with people of many religions who reject Jesus Christ as the one way to God – which raises the inescapable question for true Christians, “How do we compromise on the most basic and central teaching of the Lord Jesus Himself?”

Jesus commanded, “I am the way, the truth and the life: No man comes to the Father but by Me.” He is not a way and He is not a truth.

The world will soon consider Christians who take a stand on this foundational truth to be “against unity and world peace” – just as they did in the Roman Coliseum at the beginning of Christianity.

The September 11th attack has begun what appears to be an endless series of dichotomies. Fundamental Islam is bad, while liberal Islam (the kind that doesn’t take “slay the idolaters” [i.e., Christians and Jews] literally), is good.

But what does that say about fundamental Christians who take the Bible as the infallible Word of God vs. the liberal Christians who say the Bible contains the Word of God?

It is a major point. To illustrate this point, this column quotes Scripture, so it contains the Word of God. But the rest is my admittedly fallible opinion. Many liberal “Christian Theologians” believe the Bible is filled with error.

The September 11th attack and its resulting call to religious unity is a two-edged sword. As it cuts one way, many people will come to Christ and eternal life. Swung back the other way, it cuts the ground from under Christianity by forcing America into an ecumenical box of religious unity at the expense of Christianity’s foundational truth.

Politically, our nation is trying to find a way to abolish the Constitution in deed, while acknowledging it in word. The First Amendment guarantee that “Congress will not prohibit the free exercise of religion” will be diluted by every congressional effort to protect America from radical Islamic terrorism. Yet there is no clear alternative. The same two-edged sword that cuts down fundamental Islam will cut down fundamental Christianity on its back swing. It appears that the devil has America on the horns of a dilemma.