Culture Friday - Eerie parallels with 9/11

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Friday, August 20th, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

A reign of terror! That’s how those on the ground describe the situation in Afghanistan.

Things have gone from bad to worse from the time the Taliban captured Kabul, the capital, effectively taking control of the government.

EICHER: Since that time those on the ground report the Taliban are hunting unmarried women, tracking down Shiite Hazaras, and jailing and torturing Christians.

Adding to that, those heartbreaking images of Afghans climbing onto U.S. military planes, risking their lives—in some cases, horrifyingly, losing their lives just to try to get out of the country.

If that isn’t a picture of desperation, then nothing will convey it adequately.

BROWN: It’s Culture Friday. I want to welcome John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: We’re really proud of the work of our colleague Mindy Belz. She’s traveled extensively and she’s been our reporter on the ground. She continues to bring clarity and is helping us understand what’s happening in Afghanistan.

And I know you feel the same about her work—making her your go-to this week on your podcast. John, what struck me, as I’m sure it did you, was Mindy’s reporting on national ID cards in Afghanistan, where religious belief is stated. Christians there openly stated on those cards that they are “Christian” and now there’s fear they will pay a high price with the Taliban suddenly in charge of the country.

What a spectacular political failure, and to be fair, a long, bipartisan time in the making! But isn’t it fundamentally a consequence of the failure to understand worldview motivations?

STONESTREET: Partially, certainly. It's just a failure on every single level. But the worldview side is really important because, for example, there's from State Department officials that hope that the Taliban will become a kinder, gentler, Taliban. The problem is, of course, that the Taliban are operating off a game plan that goes back thousands of years, not just 10 or 20 years. We remember some of the radical Islamists talking about doing what they're doing in revenge for the fall of Spain. I mean, that takes you back to the very beginning of this whole conflict between Christendom and Islam. Not to mention all the other chapters of this story.

We just don't have that sort of cultural memory. We certainly don't have that sort of framework to understand a religiously motivated point of reference, which is about history. It's not just about what's happening now. It's not about economics. It's not about geopolitics. It's about a complete understanding of the story of the world.

I tell you though—I was really struck, as you were Myrna, with the story of these pastors. As Mindy shared on our podcast, the growth of the church in Afghanistan has set it to be one of the fastest growing churches in the world. Of course, that doesn't mean it's big. It means it's probably small and just doubling and doubling and doubling. But the decision by these Christians to put Christian as their religion on their national ID cards was one of courage, and it was one of wanting to identify a family legacy.

As a dad, I often think about faith being part of my family legacy to my kids. I think about it being the thing that will give them hope and a grounding in truth, and that will give them courage and maybe even joy. These individuals had to know the risks related to making Christianity a part of their family legacy; it would mean that faith ensures suffering and persecution. And as Mindy shared, that's already happened. The government database is now in the hands of the Taliban who are using it to track down people, to let them know they know what they’re doing as Christians. Now we're just waiting for these awful stories that are trickling out to be confirmed. I think it's another example where Christians here will learn from their brothers and sisters in other parts of the world.

BROWN: On your podcast this week, you talked about the eeriness of what’s happening now compared to what happened 20 years ago on 9/11. I think I feel the same way, but what did you mean by “eeriness”? What about the parallels are eerie to you?

STONESTREET: Well honestly, the most eerie thing having to do with any of this is that President Biden decided to make 9/11 his new deadline for withdrawal. I mean, it's hard to understand what sort of optics he was going for, what sort of party he thought he was going to have from claiming responsibility for a great victory which has instead probably turned into the defining debacle of his presidency. This will go on his record forever. That's the eeriness that I talked about.

And what's going through your mind, how much do you have to miss the actual truth of the story on the ground and not understand the motivations of this group, which we've now had 20 years to get acquainted with, to try to make that your deadline? If one who can think beyond the last 20 years realizes that the date 9/11, at least for the Islamic world, has significance beyond what happened in 2001. For us, the only part of that story is 2001. But that had something to do with this long history, this long struggle of what they see is an inevitable progress of Islam to take over the world. So that's the big part of it.

I just don't know how many times America can fall asleep in light of this worldview. And I get it. I mean, the last several years, there was the status quo. 2,500 troops were enough to work with the Afghan government and provide air support that they needed in order to hold off the Taliban to some degree. But you know, you can kind of see it as like, “oh yeah, the Taliban.” You could hear it across media. You can certainly hear it across dinnertime conversations. It's, “oh, yeah, the Taliban. I forgot about those guys. They're bad dudes, right?” And all of a sudden, yeah.

And then this is what happens in a world that suffers from chronological snobbery, when a worldview drives us to think about what's newer, and what's bigger, and what's better. And we have this ridiculous notion of progress. I mean, the headlines were just too easy, for example, for the Babylon Bee when they were talking about all the military secrets that were uncovered by the Taliban, and they're reading all these books on wokeness that were left. And it's a joke, I get it. But there's something there where—as one blogger put it—we're not a serious people anymore. We're having conversations about ridiculous things. And we're missing this consistent, constant challenge that's in front of us, now for yet another chapter.

EICHER: We’re speaking of difficult, desperate situations and we shouldn’t forget today about Haiti. Another terrible earthquake claiming more than a thousand lives, followed by dangerous tropical weather coming on top of a political assassination—the killing of the president. This is overwhelming to think about, but here again, do we not have worldview issues to consider when we talk about what makes the suffering in Haiti so much worse?

STONESTREET: Well, absolutely. You know, the easy (but inadequate) way to look at the story of Haiti is to say, “good heavens, how unlucky can one nation be?” But the thing is there's a difference between a nation where all of these things come with devastating consequences, and a nation that has the infrastructure and the disaster relief systems in place to be able to navigate these: Where what is an already very calamitous situation doesn't become one that is yet more devastating. But almost everything is devastating for Haiti. And that's because there's already a level of devastation of job insecurity, gang violence, you name it: One after another.

One of the interesting analyses comes from my friend, Darrow Miller, in his book (which is now years old) called “Discipling the Nations”, in which he looks at the difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. If the story of the world is one of natural resources, and that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever, there would not be such a dramatic difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but you can see it from space. You can see it from Google Earth. You can see it from an airplane. It's worldview. It's not just what resources are available, because this is the same island. It's what you do with those resources, and how you understand the value of people. What you think will bring you success and a nation captivated at so many levels by corruption, by voodoo, and just all the worldview challenges that that brings is one where these sorts of disasters are made that much worse.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

EICHER: John, thanks so much.

STONESTREET: Thank you.

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