Cluck?

Am I a coward? Or just wise? Or perhaps a combination of the two, with a touch of sensitivity thrown in. (I'm very proud of my sensitivity.)

Whatever. When I posted that last comment about those bloody cartoons, Friday afternoon, I included a couple of links to where you could find them on the web. They're not actually that funny (except maybe the one about the virgins). Then I slept on it. Then on Saturday morning I replaced the links with that bit about "a not too hard web search".

Everything is permissible, St Paul points out ... but not everything is beneficial. (A point that could also be taken on board by American gun nuts who maintain they are allowed to carry guns, so there, and in fact by obsessives everywhere who like to stand on their rights because it says they can, right here.) Publishing those cartoons really wasn't beneficial, and free speech isn't affected by not publishing them, because you can post them on the web and there's not a thing anyone can do about it. The only difference between posting on the web and, as happened, posting them in a newspaper is that in the latter scenario, presumably the artists got paid.

"What if it was Jesus?" - that's a rhetorical question that is (fairly enough) posed by some parties to explain the offence taken in the Muslim world at lampoons of the Prophet. What if someone drew a cartoon of Jesus with a bomb for a turban? My answer would be: (1) I'd point out that he was Jewish, not Arab and (2) I would seek out the reasons for why the artist has come to associate Jesus and bombs in the same breath. Then I would endeavour to correct that point of view by positive example. Admittedly that would be easier nowadays than a few centuries ago, in the glory days of Crusades, the Inquisition et al. (This is the fourteenth century of the Islamic calendar - maybe all religions have to go through these middle ages?)

And then I might settle down again to watch those Family Guy cartoons, or the Life of Brian (which are both really very funny), secure in the knowledge that Jesus, being fully human as well as fully divine, has a fully human sense of humour too.

This Sunday I was at a slightly whackier church than I usually attend, but the preacher made a great point about the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed and probably every other creed. Their theology and doctrine are impeccable, but they say absolutely nothing about lifestyle or ministry. They are very much a product of the days when mission was done at the point of a sword, and as long as you could say the right words, you weren't burnt at the stake. More Shock-and-Awe than Hearts-and-Minds. We can learn from that. So can our rioting friends.

Incidentally, the gentleman lampooned in the cartoons appears briefly in Dante's Inferno, and not favourably. Expect fundamentalist riots in Florence any time soon ... after it actually occurs to one of them to read some literature.