When ISIS released the video of twenty-one Egyptians being beheaded on a Libyan beach, the world blanched once more in shock and horror.   And once more the morally obtuse American government remained silent on two critical points.  The first was that the orange-suited victims were in fact Christians.  And the second was that the perpetrators of their monstrous deaths were in fact radicalized Muslims. 

In the same way, the United States downplayed the fact that it was Islamists who attacked the Danish capital to kill free speech advocates and target Jews.  Just like they refused to identify those slaughtered in Paris as Jews.   The really frightening thing, also unacknowledged, is that ISIS has exploded out of Iraq and Syria and has now expanded its reach into the larger world.  We are potentially facing the advent of a third World War, but the Obama government seems not to recognize what everyone everywhere sees plainly. 

As an American and as a Christian, I am ashamed and alarmed. 

The outraged Egyptians, like the King of Jordan the week before, launched retaliatory air raids against ISIS terrorists.  And in response, Muslim terrorists kidnapped more Egyptian Christians to hold as hostages, and presumably to behead at their leisure.  And burned to death a reported 45 Iraqis locked in cages near Al-Baghdadi, Iraq.  And threatened Rome, the seat of Catholicism.  So we twiddle while Evil multiplies. 

But I still seethe about the President’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast: That we Christians ought not to get up on our high moral horse.  Because Christians three quarters of a millennium ago allegedly committed atrocities against Muslims during the crusades.  And because--prefiguring the burning of the Jordanian pilot--Christians cruelly executed those who were deemed heretics by the inquisition five hundred years ago. 

I must not leave the President’s insult unanswered.  Many have rightly scoffed at the President’s moral equivalence of bad things Christians did in the past with the bloody, in-your-face expressions classic Islam is committing in the present.  I want to raise a question: Why do Christians not burn people to death? Why do we not brutally murder those who refuse to believe as we do? 

The answer comes from the lips of Jesus himself.  “I say to you, Love your enemies, and  pray for those who  persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven….You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:44, 45, 48)  The God that Christians worship and serve cannot be the god that Muslims worship.  We are called to imitate the True and Living God, and to do that to the best of our ability.  True, sometimes Christians have fallen short of that goal, have even miserably failed to achieve it.  But here is the point: The more a Christian imitates Christ, the less hateful and more lovely will his behavior be. 

Allow me to draw an illustration from history.  The Reformation came to England during the reign of Henry VIII.  When Henry’s daughter, Mary, assumed the throne in 1553, she set about to restore England to the Church of Rome.  She executed over 200 people who resisted her, for which she was given the moniker, “Bloody Mary.”  Most prominent among her victims were two English Bishops, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.   Both men were prominent leaders of the Reformation effort within the English church. 

Mary had them arrested, tried, and condemned to death.  On October 16, 1555, Latimer and Ridley were led to the stake in the center of Oxford where they were burned to death.  As he was being tied to the stake, Ridley prayed, "Oh, heavenly Father, I give unto thee most hearty thanks that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee, even unto death. I beseech thee, Lord God, have mercy on this realm of England, and deliver it from all her enemies." 

Ridley died much more slowly and painfully than Latimer. As the flames rose, Latimer encouraged Ridley, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace, in England, as I trust never shall be put out." 

And it never was, although today that candle is guttering badly.  The point of all this is that the more closely a person or a nation conforms to the teaching of Jesus, the more blessed that person or nation becomes.  Where Protestant faith has prevailed in societies and cultures around the world, mercy and love have ascended to characterize that people. 

The problem with which Muslims must grapple is that both the example of their prophet Mohammed, and the so-called holy book he authored, are packed with lines of brutal hatred and violent suppression of their enemies.  The very things that ISIS terrorists manifest so appallingly.  

Pope Francis said in his statement to the world that some of the Coptic Christians as they were dying, cried out, “Help me, Jesus!”  They are the latest in a long line of those who have forfeited their lives for having chosen to follow Christ, the Prince of Peace.  It would benefit the world to understand this.  

Dr. Rick Perrin is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship..  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..