Our smug belief that God is on our side...

I read an interesting column today in the ABQ Journal, written Leonard Pitts Jr., a columnist from the Miami Herald. He was responding to the recent Pew Foundation Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life research survey, which surveyed Americans' attitudes on the torture of suspected terrorists. Amazingly (to me at least), the survey found that 62% of people who claim religious affiliation are in favor of using torture as a viable method of interrogation. Mr. Pitts asks the question I have been asking myself. He says:

You'd think people who claim connection to a higher morality would be the ones most likely to take the lonely, principled stand. But you need only look at history to see how seldom that has been the case, how frequently my people -- Christians -- acquiesce to expediency and fail to look beyond the immediate. Never mind that looking beyond the immediate pretty much constitutes a Christian's entire job description.

In the Bible it says, ''Perfect love casts out fear.'' What we see so often in people of faith, though, is an imperfect love that embraces fear, that lets us live contentedly in our moral comfort zones, doing spiritual busywork and clucking pieties, things that let you feel good, but never require you to put anything at risk, take a leap, make that lonely stand.

Again, there are exceptions, but they prove the rule, which is that in our smug belief that God is on our side, we often fail to ask if we are on His.

You can read the whole piece here. It is good food for thought.