{"id":2029,"date":"2002-11-24T02:44:25","date_gmt":"2002-11-24T02:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=2029"},"modified":"2002-11-24T02:44:25","modified_gmt":"2002-11-24T02:44:25","slug":"nigerian-riots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/nigerian-riots\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigerian Riots"},"content":{"rendered":"

so the recent riots in nigeria<\/a> got me wondering how people can use the right intentions to do the wrong things. over there, confusion over one journalist’s characterization of Mohammed caused rioting, murders, death and destruction. and all this was done by Muslims and Christians.<\/p>\n

obviously neither Islam nor Christianity teaches its adherents to respond to slander with violence. in fact, Christianity teaches to “turn the other cheek”<\/a>, and let the assailant continue to attack. but perhaps what is going on is something within each person, instead of the religion.<\/p>\n

a pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church<\/a>‘s “Sanctuary”<\/a> service spoke of how we can turn our faith into something awful if we make the mistake of identifying our own self-worth with the accuracy or correctness of our religion<\/a>. instead, we must have confidence in our God, and know that nothing that occurs here can change the facts of God and life.<\/p>\n

without that confidence, we have only pride. and pride cometh before the fall . . . perhaps if more people in nigeria understood that right and wrong are not changed by public opinion; that their God is above slander, then they might not feel the immediate need to defend themselves with violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

so the recent riots in nigeria got me wondering how people can use the right intentions to do the wrong things. over there, confusion over one journalist’s characterization of Mohammed caused rioting, murders, death and destruction. and all this was done by Muslims and Christians. obviously neither Islam nor Christianity teaches its adherents to respond…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-wJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}