Even if Hades Freezes Over Obama Terminology on Terror Will Not Change
Many in the media were perplexed recently by President Obama's absence from the march in Paris in opposition to the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine. They have raised questions about the administration's reluctance to label jihadists as terrorist or to identify them as "Islamic extremists." Why is anyone surprised? This administration will never recognize the Islamic connection to terrorism, because the existence of religious terrorism belies multiculturalism. Multiculturalism represents an attitude about proper responses to religious, ethnic, political, linguistic and social diversity among populations. Multiculturalism embraces differences and makes personal, social and legal accommodations for differences even when those differences are destructive to existing culture. It sees culture as pluralistic and forgoes any efforts at expecting one group to assimilate into a larger culture. It is contrary to the traditional American view of epluribus unum, or the idea of melting pot.
The Democratic party policy and much of our public education system has for thirty years embraced multiculturalism. Any one who is required to take diversity training in your workplace or school needs to understand they are being taught a political and economic philosophy. Diversity education is the promulgation of a world view. It goes way beyond helping people of diverse cultures work together more effectively. It is a philosophy of life and politics labeled multiculturalism. It is an "ism," like any other "ism," which attempts to supplant your values with approved ones. Multiculturalism eschews the ideal that America is made of divergent people groups who have intertwined their ways of living together to forge a unique cultural identity. It is more concerned with allowing people to preserve their culture of origin, in what proponents often refer to as a mosaic, than with the transformation of the American experience. The expectation that uniquely American values should be embraced or that groups of non-North American or non-European immigrants would support American ideals is perceived as intolerance. Multiculturalism teaches that expecting one group of people to embrace the language, ideals and values of another is racist. Treating one set of values as predominant over another is hateful. However, when one espouses multiculturalism as the acceptable way of living, aren't it's advocates, making their views superior? Multiculturalism is simply a euphemism for humanism!
Multiculturalism fails because it is intolerance disguised as sophistication. Multiculturalism strives to allow each population group to preserve their own identity, members of other groups are to show respect and appreciation for cultural differences. Yet at the same time cultural and ethic differences are not supposed to be mentioned or identified in speech, actions or preferences. How can you respect something or embrace it, if you can't identify it, or distinguish how it is different from other systems? Multiculturalism determines by its own criteria that one set of values or opinions are morally, spiritually and ethically neutral; therefore, all competing thought or speech is inferior, offensive and should be censored. By this argument multiculturalism itself becomes the dominant world view and it's advocates are superior. You can talk about how the legacy of slavery has effected black men. You can discuss the number of black men that are shot by white police officers each year. Woe to those who would even mention the high rate of incarceration of young black men. Mention the established connection between out of wedlock babies born to poverty and violence in the ghetto and you are seen as intolerant or hateful. When principally illegals cross the Southern US border schools are expected to accommodate the cultural differences no matter how diverse the families-of-origins are from the community. Schools are to acknowledge the symbols, customs and holidays of the communities they serve, but are considered intolerant if their 2d grade choir sings "O' Christmas Tree," which likely represents the values of the majority population. Multiculturalism has failed to unite the country or to end racism, because it practices the very intolerance it claims to decry.
The tensions evident in the West between traditional Western culture and Islamic fundamentalism makes evident the failure of multiculturalism. There is more religious intolerance and polarization of races and ethnic groups in American than there has been in two generations. The greater the emphasis on tolerance and diversity, the more isolated and separated ethnic groups become. The recent shooting of teenagers Michael Brown and Trevon Martin show that as races become more polarized they begin to react with suspicion towards other races, leading to a victimization mentality and a return to segregation. Far from bringing races together multiculturalism has become a euphemism for prejudice
At least since the era of Woodrow Wilson all democrats and many Republicans have lived under the illusion that civil and reasonable speech and actions will always be reciprocated with equal civility and understanding. Unfortunately, two World Wars, two failed international mediating agencies, a century of genocides and war proves otherwise. It is time to realize that some groups will never peacefully co-exist. The reason why President Obama refuses to label the Fort Hood shooting, the beheading of a U.S. Citizen in Oklahoma, the beheading of journalist, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Benghazi attack, the shooting in Paris as Islamic terrorism is the label belies multiculturalism. The mere use of those two words in the same sentence repudiates 100 years of the democratic parties foreign policies, especially as it has culminated in the administration of Barak Obama. Some groups simply cannot co-exist. Their world views are so different that they inevitably collide.The phrase "Islamic terrorism" or "Islamic extremism" labels a group of people, in this case, some Muslims in a way that decries the multicultural model. Such a label is inconsistent with the idea of an "Arab Spring," or Obama's policy of traveling to Islamic states to validate their values and existence. Combining the word "Islamic and terrorism or extremism" defines a reality that is in opposition to the approved world view. It defines one group of people's belief system and values as incompatible with Western society.
The fact is Islam and Judaism/Christianity are incompatible. Although all three groups claim to worship Abraham's God, their view of God, their view of life, their view of people, their view of morality, ethics and social relationship are diametrically opposed. For Muslims, and Jews or Christians to occupy the same space one group has to be paramount over the other. To prevent one group from oppressing the other boundaries have to be set lines have to drawn about what is acceptable behavior. While showing forbearance to Islam, we allow them to have their mosques, and their dress, but Sharia law and many Koranic teachings are contrary to the Bible, which forms the social and legal foundation of Western law and infrastructure.
Hearing and understanding diverse world views while showing forbearance to them, in no way requires approval or acceptance of either. If competing cultures have equal standing, each will view the other's culture as at worse evil or at best in competition. Tension or terrorism will always exist between Western Culture and Islamic. Multiculturalism will not change that tension. Each group will see it's responsibility to defend against evil directed toward the practices of the other. Anyone who says,"Islam is a religion of peace," does not understand Islam. Islam is a religion of "submission." Peace comes to those who submit to the will of the Prophet anyone else is an infidel worthy of death. When the President refuses to acknowledge the existence of "Islamic terrorism" he is in denial about the fundamental differences between a society based on Sharia, and either biblically based or secular government. Islamics don't seek peace primarily. Jihad seeks submission and is willing to sacrifice peace if necessary to bring others into submission. To recognize the existence of "Islamic terrorism" admits the failure of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism is innocuous until people who call themselves Christians embrace it, because to do so requires more that just recognizing Islam, it requires adherence to it. Some Muslims will seek to use violence as the means to submission, and others may seek only to use persuasion. So while not all Islam pursues violence, no Islamists pursues coexistence on an equal basis. Mohamed did not come as "Prince of Peace," Jesus did. Jihad bring all peoples to voluntary or involuntary submission to Mohamed views by any means necessary. Jihad is not about peace. Those who speciously see multiculturalism as an offshoot of a Christian world view deny its failure. In the democratic party some of these ideas originated with President Woodrow Wilson, himself the son of a Presbyterian minister, and president of a Presbyterian College, who asserted that his views were Christian. Though Barak Obama is an avid secularist many Christians, and some so-called evangelicals, such as Joel Osteen, have embraced the idea that Bible teaches that all religions have equal value and are equal paths to truth. And that the way of dealing with someone who is different than you is to show tolerance, which means to approve and embrace their values, even when they repudiate yours. The recent invitation to Muslim clerics to pray in the national Cathedral is a syncretistic combining of religious practices in the name of tolerance. While the Bible teaches that all people have dignity and should be respected, and compels Christians to show forbearance to non-believers, syncretism is a violation of the 2d commandment and multiculturalism is fundamentally dichotomous to the Bible.
The Bible teaches that God Himself divided the cultures (Genesis 11:1-9) and then from those cultures designated the Jews as his favorite (Genesis 12:1-3; 15: 17-21; Exodus 19:6; 2 Samuel 7; Amos 9:11 & 12), meaning that they were the people through whom God was going to bring his rule, salvation and peace to the world. No other nation has ever been in that position, and no other culture is or ever will be. Far from giving Jews or Christian the right to oppress or expand the kingdom by force this favored treatment is to be a means of bringing God's mercy, love and justice to the lives of all people. Here is one examples out of hundreds where God commands Israel to use it's favored status to bring justice and liberty rather than tyranny:
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”(Psalm 82:3-4 ESV)
So Israel is called upon to protect the rights and care for need of the poor and the oppressed.
Liberation and protection of the individual, though, is different from assimilation into Jewish nation and culture. The Jewish law (Genesis - Deuteronomy) includes civil law. The codes and principle for national order and rules for citizenship. National leaders are charged by God to bring order and structure to society. Managing immigration is part of that responsibility. To preserve the culture and identity of the nation God had established immigration principles into the Israel's laws. There were difference between legal and illegal aliens; legals and illegals were treated differently under the Old Testament Law, even a legal aliens did not have the full right of a citizenship. When the Jews left Egypt there were some non-Jews, aliens who left with them, and were assimilated into Jewish culture (Exodus 12:38; Numbers 11:4; Jos 8:35) and some who were never assimilated. Aliens were required to obey many laws specifically directed at them (Lev 12:19;17:10,15; 18:26; 20:2; 24:16) and were restricted in what they could do. For some who obeyed the law theirs was a path way to citizenship, but they had to adopt the values and ideals of the Jewish people.
But not all aliens were allowed to assimilate. There were some ethnic groups that were not allowed to immigrate and were denied citizenship for up to 10 generations (Exodus 12:48; 34: 15- 16 Deuteronomy 7:1-4; 23:3); some people groups were designated eternal enemies. God commanded their annihilation (Deut 14:21) of the Caananites. Under the command of God the Jews destroyed every Canaanite man, woman and child (Joshua 6:21) The scripture often speaks of God judging the enemies of Israel based on how they treated Israel (Obidiah 11). After the Jews returned from Exile Ezra commanded those who had intermarried with some aliens to divorce them and disperse them (Ezra 10). So the embracing of beliefs of other cultures equally and the toleration of all differences was contrary to the Old Testament civil law, but that's the Old Testament, didn't Jesus bring a new order?
Jesus clearly said that part of His Messianic mission was to bring liberty and justice to the impoverished and the oppressed (Luke 4:18), therefore, part of the mission of the church is to provide aid and comfort to poor, sick and foreigners among us. However, Jesus mission in no way abrogated or nullified the Old Testament Law (Matthew 5:17). The New Testament recognizes national and cultural distinctions (Acts 17:26, Romans 13) and their government as a means of accomplishing God's purposes. The way Jesus responds to ethnic difference seems to be instructive.
In John Chapter 4 Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman. The Samaritan's were an ethnic group that practiced a false syncretistic religion that combined elements of Judaism with paganism. Due to Solomon's duplicitous worship of other gods the prophet Ahijah predicted that after he died his Kingdom would divide with 2 tribes remaining loyal to Solomon's son Rehoboam and 10 that would follow his servant Jeroboam. Jeroboam was promised that if he exclusively followed Jehovah he would become heir of the covenant blessings (1 King 11:26-40). Following the division of the nation Jeroboam, failing to believe what God had promised him, became convinced that if he turned back to God the people would turn back to Rehoboam and reunite. He built a counterfeit altar to God and combined the worship of Jehovah with evil pagan worship rites in an attempt to turn the Jews from Jehovah (1 Kings 12:25-33). God brought judgment on these 10 Northern tribes of Israel. They were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. A small population that had been deported in 722 BC from the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, were brought back by Shalmaneser, intermarried with the Gentiles, and re-established the counterfeit worship of Jeroboam on Mt Gerizim where Abraham is thought to have offered Issac. The Samaritans were a disenfranchised religious minority in the first century.
While respecting the woman and being willing to engage her Jesus highlights their cultural differences:
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:7-10 ESV)
He claims that His cultural perspective is the one that God blesses (John 4:11-14). When she inquires about His beliefs, He immediately expresses disapproval of hers, calling her sins and insisting her behavior is improper. He calls her to embrace the gospel. "The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.' Jesus said to her, 'Go, call your husband, and come here.' The woman answered him, 'I have no husband.' Jesus said to her, ' You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.' " (John 4:15-18 ESV). He clearly defines a gospel requiring people to recognize certain behaviors and beliefs as wrong.
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:19-22 ESV)
In reacting with this woman rather than embracing her beliefs and values Jesus highlighted his own and called on her to embrace His gospel. Hardly an example of what multiculturalism calls tolerance or respecting diversity.
Some may argue that the Samaritan woman may not be a good example of cross cultural interaction as her people were related to the Jews, they shared much in common with the Jew. How did Jesus react to someone whose culture was thoroughly diverse? His encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (in modern term Syrian) goes completely counter to multiculturalism
The Democratic party policy and much of our public education system has for thirty years embraced multiculturalism. Any one who is required to take diversity training in your workplace or school needs to understand they are being taught a political and economic philosophy. Diversity education is the promulgation of a world view. It goes way beyond helping people of diverse cultures work together more effectively. It is a philosophy of life and politics labeled multiculturalism. It is an "ism," like any other "ism," which attempts to supplant your values with approved ones. Multiculturalism eschews the ideal that America is made of divergent people groups who have intertwined their ways of living together to forge a unique cultural identity. It is more concerned with allowing people to preserve their culture of origin, in what proponents often refer to as a mosaic, than with the transformation of the American experience. The expectation that uniquely American values should be embraced or that groups of non-North American or non-European immigrants would support American ideals is perceived as intolerance. Multiculturalism teaches that expecting one group of people to embrace the language, ideals and values of another is racist. Treating one set of values as predominant over another is hateful. However, when one espouses multiculturalism as the acceptable way of living, aren't it's advocates, making their views superior? Multiculturalism is simply a euphemism for humanism!
Multiculturalism fails because it is intolerance disguised as sophistication. Multiculturalism strives to allow each population group to preserve their own identity, members of other groups are to show respect and appreciation for cultural differences. Yet at the same time cultural and ethic differences are not supposed to be mentioned or identified in speech, actions or preferences. How can you respect something or embrace it, if you can't identify it, or distinguish how it is different from other systems? Multiculturalism determines by its own criteria that one set of values or opinions are morally, spiritually and ethically neutral; therefore, all competing thought or speech is inferior, offensive and should be censored. By this argument multiculturalism itself becomes the dominant world view and it's advocates are superior. You can talk about how the legacy of slavery has effected black men. You can discuss the number of black men that are shot by white police officers each year. Woe to those who would even mention the high rate of incarceration of young black men. Mention the established connection between out of wedlock babies born to poverty and violence in the ghetto and you are seen as intolerant or hateful. When principally illegals cross the Southern US border schools are expected to accommodate the cultural differences no matter how diverse the families-of-origins are from the community. Schools are to acknowledge the symbols, customs and holidays of the communities they serve, but are considered intolerant if their 2d grade choir sings "O' Christmas Tree," which likely represents the values of the majority population. Multiculturalism has failed to unite the country or to end racism, because it practices the very intolerance it claims to decry.
The tensions evident in the West between traditional Western culture and Islamic fundamentalism makes evident the failure of multiculturalism. There is more religious intolerance and polarization of races and ethnic groups in American than there has been in two generations. The greater the emphasis on tolerance and diversity, the more isolated and separated ethnic groups become. The recent shooting of teenagers Michael Brown and Trevon Martin show that as races become more polarized they begin to react with suspicion towards other races, leading to a victimization mentality and a return to segregation. Far from bringing races together multiculturalism has become a euphemism for prejudice
At least since the era of Woodrow Wilson all democrats and many Republicans have lived under the illusion that civil and reasonable speech and actions will always be reciprocated with equal civility and understanding. Unfortunately, two World Wars, two failed international mediating agencies, a century of genocides and war proves otherwise. It is time to realize that some groups will never peacefully co-exist. The reason why President Obama refuses to label the Fort Hood shooting, the beheading of a U.S. Citizen in Oklahoma, the beheading of journalist, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Benghazi attack, the shooting in Paris as Islamic terrorism is the label belies multiculturalism. The mere use of those two words in the same sentence repudiates 100 years of the democratic parties foreign policies, especially as it has culminated in the administration of Barak Obama. Some groups simply cannot co-exist. Their world views are so different that they inevitably collide.The phrase "Islamic terrorism" or "Islamic extremism" labels a group of people, in this case, some Muslims in a way that decries the multicultural model. Such a label is inconsistent with the idea of an "Arab Spring," or Obama's policy of traveling to Islamic states to validate their values and existence. Combining the word "Islamic and terrorism or extremism" defines a reality that is in opposition to the approved world view. It defines one group of people's belief system and values as incompatible with Western society.
The fact is Islam and Judaism/Christianity are incompatible. Although all three groups claim to worship Abraham's God, their view of God, their view of life, their view of people, their view of morality, ethics and social relationship are diametrically opposed. For Muslims, and Jews or Christians to occupy the same space one group has to be paramount over the other. To prevent one group from oppressing the other boundaries have to be set lines have to drawn about what is acceptable behavior. While showing forbearance to Islam, we allow them to have their mosques, and their dress, but Sharia law and many Koranic teachings are contrary to the Bible, which forms the social and legal foundation of Western law and infrastructure.
Hearing and understanding diverse world views while showing forbearance to them, in no way requires approval or acceptance of either. If competing cultures have equal standing, each will view the other's culture as at worse evil or at best in competition. Tension or terrorism will always exist between Western Culture and Islamic. Multiculturalism will not change that tension. Each group will see it's responsibility to defend against evil directed toward the practices of the other. Anyone who says,"Islam is a religion of peace," does not understand Islam. Islam is a religion of "submission." Peace comes to those who submit to the will of the Prophet anyone else is an infidel worthy of death. When the President refuses to acknowledge the existence of "Islamic terrorism" he is in denial about the fundamental differences between a society based on Sharia, and either biblically based or secular government. Islamics don't seek peace primarily. Jihad seeks submission and is willing to sacrifice peace if necessary to bring others into submission. To recognize the existence of "Islamic terrorism" admits the failure of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism is innocuous until people who call themselves Christians embrace it, because to do so requires more that just recognizing Islam, it requires adherence to it. Some Muslims will seek to use violence as the means to submission, and others may seek only to use persuasion. So while not all Islam pursues violence, no Islamists pursues coexistence on an equal basis. Mohamed did not come as "Prince of Peace," Jesus did. Jihad bring all peoples to voluntary or involuntary submission to Mohamed views by any means necessary. Jihad is not about peace. Those who speciously see multiculturalism as an offshoot of a Christian world view deny its failure. In the democratic party some of these ideas originated with President Woodrow Wilson, himself the son of a Presbyterian minister, and president of a Presbyterian College, who asserted that his views were Christian. Though Barak Obama is an avid secularist many Christians, and some so-called evangelicals, such as Joel Osteen, have embraced the idea that Bible teaches that all religions have equal value and are equal paths to truth. And that the way of dealing with someone who is different than you is to show tolerance, which means to approve and embrace their values, even when they repudiate yours. The recent invitation to Muslim clerics to pray in the national Cathedral is a syncretistic combining of religious practices in the name of tolerance. While the Bible teaches that all people have dignity and should be respected, and compels Christians to show forbearance to non-believers, syncretism is a violation of the 2d commandment and multiculturalism is fundamentally dichotomous to the Bible.
The Bible teaches that God Himself divided the cultures (Genesis 11:1-9) and then from those cultures designated the Jews as his favorite (Genesis 12:1-3; 15: 17-21; Exodus 19:6; 2 Samuel 7; Amos 9:11 & 12), meaning that they were the people through whom God was going to bring his rule, salvation and peace to the world. No other nation has ever been in that position, and no other culture is or ever will be. Far from giving Jews or Christian the right to oppress or expand the kingdom by force this favored treatment is to be a means of bringing God's mercy, love and justice to the lives of all people. Here is one examples out of hundreds where God commands Israel to use it's favored status to bring justice and liberty rather than tyranny:
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”(Psalm 82:3-4 ESV)
So Israel is called upon to protect the rights and care for need of the poor and the oppressed.
Liberation and protection of the individual, though, is different from assimilation into Jewish nation and culture. The Jewish law (Genesis - Deuteronomy) includes civil law. The codes and principle for national order and rules for citizenship. National leaders are charged by God to bring order and structure to society. Managing immigration is part of that responsibility. To preserve the culture and identity of the nation God had established immigration principles into the Israel's laws. There were difference between legal and illegal aliens; legals and illegals were treated differently under the Old Testament Law, even a legal aliens did not have the full right of a citizenship. When the Jews left Egypt there were some non-Jews, aliens who left with them, and were assimilated into Jewish culture (Exodus 12:38; Numbers 11:4; Jos 8:35) and some who were never assimilated. Aliens were required to obey many laws specifically directed at them (Lev 12:19;17:10,15; 18:26; 20:2; 24:16) and were restricted in what they could do. For some who obeyed the law theirs was a path way to citizenship, but they had to adopt the values and ideals of the Jewish people.
But not all aliens were allowed to assimilate. There were some ethnic groups that were not allowed to immigrate and were denied citizenship for up to 10 generations (Exodus 12:48; 34: 15- 16 Deuteronomy 7:1-4; 23:3); some people groups were designated eternal enemies. God commanded their annihilation (Deut 14:21) of the Caananites. Under the command of God the Jews destroyed every Canaanite man, woman and child (Joshua 6:21) The scripture often speaks of God judging the enemies of Israel based on how they treated Israel (Obidiah 11). After the Jews returned from Exile Ezra commanded those who had intermarried with some aliens to divorce them and disperse them (Ezra 10). So the embracing of beliefs of other cultures equally and the toleration of all differences was contrary to the Old Testament civil law, but that's the Old Testament, didn't Jesus bring a new order?
Jesus clearly said that part of His Messianic mission was to bring liberty and justice to the impoverished and the oppressed (Luke 4:18), therefore, part of the mission of the church is to provide aid and comfort to poor, sick and foreigners among us. However, Jesus mission in no way abrogated or nullified the Old Testament Law (Matthew 5:17). The New Testament recognizes national and cultural distinctions (Acts 17:26, Romans 13) and their government as a means of accomplishing God's purposes. The way Jesus responds to ethnic difference seems to be instructive.
In John Chapter 4 Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman. The Samaritan's were an ethnic group that practiced a false syncretistic religion that combined elements of Judaism with paganism. Due to Solomon's duplicitous worship of other gods the prophet Ahijah predicted that after he died his Kingdom would divide with 2 tribes remaining loyal to Solomon's son Rehoboam and 10 that would follow his servant Jeroboam. Jeroboam was promised that if he exclusively followed Jehovah he would become heir of the covenant blessings (1 King 11:26-40). Following the division of the nation Jeroboam, failing to believe what God had promised him, became convinced that if he turned back to God the people would turn back to Rehoboam and reunite. He built a counterfeit altar to God and combined the worship of Jehovah with evil pagan worship rites in an attempt to turn the Jews from Jehovah (1 Kings 12:25-33). God brought judgment on these 10 Northern tribes of Israel. They were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. A small population that had been deported in 722 BC from the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, were brought back by Shalmaneser, intermarried with the Gentiles, and re-established the counterfeit worship of Jeroboam on Mt Gerizim where Abraham is thought to have offered Issac. The Samaritans were a disenfranchised religious minority in the first century.
While respecting the woman and being willing to engage her Jesus highlights their cultural differences:
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:7-10 ESV)
He claims that His cultural perspective is the one that God blesses (John 4:11-14). When she inquires about His beliefs, He immediately expresses disapproval of hers, calling her sins and insisting her behavior is improper. He calls her to embrace the gospel. "The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.' Jesus said to her, 'Go, call your husband, and come here.' The woman answered him, 'I have no husband.' Jesus said to her, ' You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.' " (John 4:15-18 ESV). He clearly defines a gospel requiring people to recognize certain behaviors and beliefs as wrong.
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:19-22 ESV)
In reacting with this woman rather than embracing her beliefs and values Jesus highlighted his own and called on her to embrace His gospel. Hardly an example of what multiculturalism calls tolerance or respecting diversity.
Some may argue that the Samaritan woman may not be a good example of cross cultural interaction as her people were related to the Jews, they shared much in common with the Jew. How did Jesus react to someone whose culture was thoroughly diverse? His encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (in modern term Syrian) goes completely counter to multiculturalism
"And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, ,Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.' But she answered him, 'Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.' And he said to her, 'For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.' And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. (Mark 7:24-30 ESV)"
A Syrophecian was a Gentile of modern day Syria. Her people were common enemies of Israel. When she came to him and asked him to exorcise her demon-possessed daughter he said, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.'' He says "the children," that is, the Jews the children of Israel were more deserving of healing than were Gentiles. God favored them. Further he calls her ethnic group "dogs." Dogs were undomesticated wild scavengers and general nuisances in 1st century. Calling someone or a race of people "dogs" was a demeaning racial slur, equivalent to using the "n-word"today. Rather than being conciliatory or embracing her diversity Jesus spoke in harsh terms denouncing her way of life, behaviors, values and status. In multicultural parlance this would have been hate speech. Had Jesus been a 21st century NBA team owner he would have been forced to divest himself of his team.
The concept of multiculturalism and its teaching of tolerance and diversity appears contrary to both the way the scripture teaches we should relate to differences and the way Jesus himself did. To argue that multiculturalism is in any way Biblical is ludicrous. Multiculturalism fails because it fails to recognize that not all cultures value human life, some are oppressive or destructive, some are essentially evil. It is appropriate for nations and political systems to reject lifestyles and systems that oppress and destroy or are deemed morally wrong. Embracing those values will not subsume them. Failing to define good and evil will never result in the triumph of good and right, no matter how much the multiculturalism believes to the contrary.
Obama's unwillingness to define terrorism for what it is and to recognize its connection to Islam is the reason his foreign policy is failing. We must not expect Obama to change, because to do so requires him to repudiate his lifelong world view, and the principles of multiculturalism his party has advocated for a century. This late in his administration with so much at stake don't look for Obama to start using new terminology. That would require him to do something he is incapable of doing. "He would have to admit that he, and his party are not only wrong, but that they have been wrong for over 100 years." I don't expect that to happen even when hell freezes over.
The concept of multiculturalism and its teaching of tolerance and diversity appears contrary to both the way the scripture teaches we should relate to differences and the way Jesus himself did. To argue that multiculturalism is in any way Biblical is ludicrous. Multiculturalism fails because it fails to recognize that not all cultures value human life, some are oppressive or destructive, some are essentially evil. It is appropriate for nations and political systems to reject lifestyles and systems that oppress and destroy or are deemed morally wrong. Embracing those values will not subsume them. Failing to define good and evil will never result in the triumph of good and right, no matter how much the multiculturalism believes to the contrary.
Obama's unwillingness to define terrorism for what it is and to recognize its connection to Islam is the reason his foreign policy is failing. We must not expect Obama to change, because to do so requires him to repudiate his lifelong world view, and the principles of multiculturalism his party has advocated for a century. This late in his administration with so much at stake don't look for Obama to start using new terminology. That would require him to do something he is incapable of doing. "He would have to admit that he, and his party are not only wrong, but that they have been wrong for over 100 years." I don't expect that to happen even when hell freezes over.
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