New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
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Religion and Revolution in the Modern World
Nacogdoches, Texas
November 29, 1979
Dear Mr. Fain,
I want to commend you for your incisive editorial and news coverage of the Iranian crisis. And may I also commend my fellow citizens for their bi-partisan support of President Carter. As he said in his recent news conference, our patience is a sign not of weakness but of strength.
I must confess that when I first heard about the ascension to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini I had great hopes for the future of the Middle East. He appeared to be a noble spiritual leader exiled by what I had heard was a dictatorial Shah who had committed uncivilized atrocities and highway robbery against the people of his own country.
Khomeini’s rise to prominence coincided with the unprecedented election of a Pope from a communist country. That Khomeini was demonstrating the spiritual strength of a nation on the verge of a communist takeover, and that the new Pope was the most ecumenical, the best educated, the most creative Pope in generations, I saw as a spiritual renaissance the likes of which no one alive today had ever seen. In an age of scientific false prophesy, of unbelief, of massive hunger, civil strife and mental anguish, two great spiritual leaders heralded a new age of love in the east and the west. I began to read about Islam and Buddhism; and with renewed commitment I read the Bible.
Very soon, however, my faith in Khomeini was gone. I understood the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth political law of Islam, but I could see from mere newspaper accounts that all was not well and that Khomeini was apparently a false prophet who, in the name of the holiest laws of his people, was sinking in to despotism.
If that was not enough, the Jonestown tragedy occurred about the same time. I was shocked that an otherwise ordinary American religious leader could gain the unswerving allegiance of over 900 American citizens and lead them like sheep into the very jaws of hell.
Then I began to reflect on the simple truth that those who know no history are doomed to repeat it. The rise to power of tyrants has been done in the name of God since the beginning of time. From the Spanish Inquisition to Hitler’s death camps, even our own beloved Christian Church has been used by what can only be called the Devil himself.
The last time the Shah of Iran came to the United States it was to seek support for his beleaguered reign. He brought with him enough money to pay for round trip air fare and hotel accommodations for Iranians, their families and friends, anywhere in the U.S. who would come to Washington and demonstrate in support of the Shah. I was offere such a junket myself as the friend of an successful Iranian-American businessman.
I mention this because it is necessary for Americans to realize that the unquestionable criminality of Khomeini in no way lessens the culpability of the Shah. I happen to think, however, that civilized nations ought whenever possible to offer asylum to exiled political leaders of any country. In the final analysis the judgment of guilt or innocence of great leaders or ordinary citizens is in the hands of God. It is the responsibility of nations and men to abide by the laws of God whether they be written in scriptures of Judeo-Christianity or those of other world religions. Where conflicts between religions arise as is the case even in Judaism and Christianity, the Golden Rule must be invoked. But the Golden Rule seems to have lost its meaning in a world that is still rushing headlong toward its own destruction.
President Carter stands today like Atlas holding up the Heavens, struggling against astronomical odds to save the honor of his country and dignity of man. The economist Robert Heilbroner, in suggesting the image of Atlas, said that, “if mankind is to rescue life, it must first preserve the very will to live, and thereby rescue the future from the angry condemnation of the present.” The will to live in the image of God is what made this country great. But let us never forget the laws God has given us and let us never allow our own spite or thirst for revenge or lust for power, to obscure our commitment to the Golden Rule.
The horror the future now holds for us is that the terrorism that has become the modus operandi of modern warfare will soon be supplanted by the even more horrifying prospect of nuclear terrorism that looms on the horizon of man’s basest nature. The scenario is already easily imagined: a few dedicated madmen holding millions of people, or perhaps the entire world, hostage, as indeed those few fanatical Iranian students are in some sense doing today.
It is no longer logical to imagine that the escalation of world tension, even to the point of total destruction, is beyond the pale of the human will. We can only renew our dedication to life and love and hope, and place our faith finally in God and in men who fear God.
At the end of the prophetic film, “Apocalypse Now,” the villain Col. Kurtz suggests that the reason the U.S. was not going to win the Vietnam War was because we were too civilized ever to accept terrorism as a part of official policy or personal moral conviction. God forbid that we ever do. And God be with us in what is surely one of the darkest hours in American history.
Larry L. Dill
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