When a country is rebellious, it has many rulers, but a ruler with discernment and knowledge maintains order. – Proverbs 28:2

Today's Scripture Reading (November 25, 2022): Proverbs 28

An ancient Arabic curse says, "May God make your sheiks many." The idea seems to be that with many sheiks, the people and direction of the community become paralyzed as they are pulled in many directions by their various leaders. And this confusion of many Sheiks is the very condition that led to the rise of Muhammad and the Islamic faith. According to tradition, Muhammad looked at the Abrahamic religions and saw they were united. The Jews were unified by the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, and the Christians by the Christian Testament. But when Muhammad looked at his people and saw tribes who were continually at war with each other, with each small tribe being led by a regional leader. They were a people with many sheiks. He called the Jews and Christians "People of the Book," and he wanted his people also to be "People of the Book," a people whose leaders were united in one direction by the word of God. 

So, Muhammad began to pray to the God of the Jews and the Christians that he would send a Book to his people, the very people who Muhammad believed were also the descendants of Abraham through the patriarch's oldest son. According to the legend, this is the origin story of the Qu'ran. Slowly, God began to give a book to Muhammad, and the Prophet made sure that these visions from God were written down, hoping to unite a deeply divided people. But healing always starts by being unified by one purpose and one set of principles.

Today, I live in a deeply divided culture as the political left and right scream insults at each other. We often seem convinced that the other side is demonic or less than human. We are so sure we are right, and the other is wrong, that we have stopped listening to each other. We live in a culture that exists inside that ancient Arabic curse; God has given us many sheiks.

In many ways, it is the way that our culture was designed. The way that the fathers of our democratic practices developed our culture was that we would elect representatives to lead us but to get anything done, they would have to make compromises. Those compromises would ensure that our governments never strayed too far in either political direction. The government that got things done would remain a politically central government. Compromises would have to be made, but no one had to move far to achieve a unifying purpose for the nation. Growing up, I looked that the major political parties, and there just wasn't much difference between them. The Liberal and Democratic parties tended to be a little left of center, while the Conservative and Republican parties tended to be a little right of center.

That is no longer the truth. The political parties have moved so far to the extremes, right or left, that I don't believe they still speak for the people. Today, there seems to be a greater distance between the center-right and the extreme right and center-left and the extreme left than there used to be between the left and right parties. And we are suffering because of it. We have many rulers and no central purpose. We have violent rhetoric leading us to violent action. It is a curse that both the Bible and ancient Arabic traditions have predicted, and there will be no healing unless we can find our way back to at least a single principle that is important to us all.

If we can't get there, we are living in the final days of our culture. Rome is falling, even if we can't see it.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Proverbs 29