The wrong train

When asked why he didn’t join the Deutsche Christen Church group who remained loyal to Hitler in hopes of converting him, Dietrich Bonheoffer replied, “If you board the wrong train, it’s no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”

Somewhere along the line, Western civilization boarded a train called Secularism and is now running on philosophical fumes. L’affaire Charlie Hebdo, already a fading memory, was the revelatory moment. There is a good reason why the slogan “Je Suis Charlie” disappeared overnight, and why not much is heard anymore of the magazine’s noble stand.

When the world was marching in Paris arm-in-arm in honor of it, we didn’t yet know what trash it was. BBC employees were warned in no uncertain terms not to describe the contents of the CH cartoons. So scatological were its depictions of the Christian Trinity (CH is an equal-opportunity maligner, but Christianity was deemed more “equal” than others) that we must apologize to Chaucer, Rabelais, and Ben Franklin for once calling Charlie satire.

Christians have nothing to fear by free speech. Blasphemies don’t injure us, but restrictions do.

Having dropped God off at the last stop, the Secular world finds itself in the awkward position of having no moral grounds for objecting to either Islam or Islam bashing. It turns out that cogito ergo sum is not much of a starting point for ideologies on freedom of speech or the press. Confusion reigns. How are we supposed to feel about all this?

The Paris killers, those they killed, and the Secularists have something profound in common: They have all kicked Christ off the train. It must have been the cruelest cut of all for Charb, Cabu, and Honoré to be dispatched untimely to a virgin-less afterlife by the very people whom they were helping to destroy the church.

This strong bond puts the Secularists in a sticky spot. They want to be on the bandwagon (to vary the train metaphor a bit) for sacrilegious cartoonists’ free speech rights, but they also want to be seen as tolerant of Islam. On the other hand, they share with Muslims (ironically) strict limits to freedom of speech. If devotees of the Prophet will behead you for maligning Muhammad, Secularists will launch jihad over the name of your baseball team.

It is not only the secular left but even the secular conservative who is confused about the First Amendment. National Review said of Charlie, “Paradoxical though it may sound, blasphemous or offensive speech is a God-given right.”

The Christian conservative finds a third way: Blasphemous or offensive speech is not a God-given right—but free speech is. We put up with blasphemous speech, holding our noses, because to outlaw it would result in outlawing Christian speech. Outlaw blasphemers today, and (to invoke Martin Niemoller’s famous anti-Hitler poem) what happens next is that after they come for the Charlies they will come for us. No, more likely before they come for the Charlies they will come for us. In Great Britain Christian “hate speech” is punishable by imprisonment.

It is not as if we can shut down blasphemous speech anyway; carnal men will do what they will do. And what good is a world where you succeed in making men desist from using certain phrases in public but they whisper them behind closed doors?

Christians have nothing to fear by free speech. Blasphemies don’t injure us, but restrictions do. God-maligning speech, try as it might, can do nothing lasting against the truth (2 Corinthians 13:8). We don’t have to worry that they will win: We know what’s coming, and it is interesting that when the Antichrist appears, he will utter blasphemies (Revelation 13:5-6).

Free speech is on the side of the angels because our whole Great Commission is to speak out to the world the gospel that can save them. It is well to remember that our battle is against principalities and powers and rulers in unseen places, and these nefarious ones are the chief proponents of limited speech.

“He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation!’” (Mark 16:15). It is not His desire that any should board the wrong train.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org