Letters to the editor

We can’t look at issues
as simply black, white
Now and then you print a letter by a person who sees most belief and behavior in terms of black and white. Such people are locked in a nostalgia that becomes idolatrous.
Religion is a journey of adventure and discovery. A static ideology stops that journey in its tracks. Let me explain that by using the concept of “degrees.” 
Paul says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  He doesn’t say that receiving is void of all blessedness. There are degrees of blessedness. There are degrees of gallantry in receiving a gift and degrees of generosity in giving a gift. 
Likewise, let us acknowledge that there are degrees of sin, degrees of faith, degrees of salvation, degrees of sanctification and degrees of wisdom. 
Wesley foresaw degrees of glory in heaven. Even revelation has its degrees. Not all portions of the Bible have equal value for us.
Beyond that, the Bible as a whole has a degree of relevance constrained by the culture of the person who would read it.
The space that one finds between pure black and pure white is not gray; it is a glowing spectrum.
Lon A. Speer
Missouri City

We shouldn’t consider
all Muslims as enemies
In the Aug. 11 Witness two writers came down on Muslims by implying that they are threatening Christians and Christianity.
Ralph Smith (“Will Islam replace Christianity as dominant U.S. religion?”) asked if the gospel had become domesticated and said that Islam sounded vital to jaded post-Christian listeners.
I would hope he would explain what he feels is vital about the message of Islam. Furthermore, there is nothing domesticated about the gospel. What’s domesticated is the delivery system.
We Methodists seem hell bent on delivering a message as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the first in an envelope dated sometime in the 18th century.
H.K. Rahlfs (“Bringing troops home won’t solve problems”) seems to be saying that Muslims are the enemy.
Terrorists are the enemy. Almost all today’s terrorists are Muslims. But in the past Christians were the terrorists—killing Jews, slaughtering Muslims in the Crusades, burning dissenters at the stake, blowing up African American churches in the South or attacking abortion clinics.
If we say we are in a war against Muslims, then the enemy arrayed against us numbers in the billions. If we are at war against terrorists, then we have reduced the numbers to thousands and have allied ourselves with Muslims as sick of senseless killing as we are.
Russ Marlett
Wimberley

Not all Islamic groups teach hatred of others
Brother H.K. Rahlfs and those who agree with his blanket condemnation of Muslims need to explore and learn (“Bringing troops home won’t solve problems,” Aug. 11). Read Irshad Manji’s The Trouble With Islam, or check her Web site.
Within the Muslim religion there is a group called the Wahhabi. This group runs the schools in Saudi Arabia and many of the madressas in the United States, Europe and across the world.
The Wahhabi teach hatred of Jews, using propaganda lies Adolf Hitler used to inflame Germans, but Wahhabi teach those lies as facts. Wahhabi teach hatred of Christians, of America and of Shia Muslims.
The history of Wahhabi in The Two Faces of Islam by Stephen Schwartz is an interesting and troubling read. Wahhabism is funded by the Saudi royal family with our millions paid to them for oil.
If we stop importing oil from them, we cut the funds for those madressas’ teachings.
John F. Yeaman
Austin