Hajj pilgrim at prayer in al-Haram Mosque in Mecca. Photo by Ali Mansuri.

On September 11, 2001, I walked out of my classroom at Mesa Community College and saw a group of people huddled around a television. The TV was about 15 feet away from me. Little did I know that those 15 feet would be the first steps on my journey to becoming a peacemaker. You can read about it here.

I wish I could say that I was level- headed; that I patiently waited for the facts to unfold, and that I didn’t jump to quick conclusions. But, that wasn’t the case. I began ranting about revenge, expressing a syncretistic faith that was strange mix of nationalism and Christian clichés.

Fortunately, God used the loving rebuke of good friends to lead me to repent of my unloving attitudes and embrace this peacemaking journey. This journey has landed me in the homes of Saudis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and more.  Some people are afraid of these places. My only fear is that I will get cavities from all of the sugary tea I drink.

As sweet as the tea is, I’ve developed even sweeter friendships with many Muslims. True, we have theological disagreements. They want me to become a Muslim and I want them to follow Jesus. However, our mutual respect for each other has created a good context for fruitful dialogue.

I would encourage you to choose the road of gospel-centered peacemaking, but if you would rather be bitter and afraid, I’ve sarcastically compiled a list of five things you can do to cultivate a crippling and irrational fear of Muslims. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.

1. Read lots of “End Times” Fiction

That’s right. Fill your bookshelves with Left Behind books and your walls with strange “End Times” charts. The more newspaper clippings you can add to your chart, the better. Start making predictions about when the rapture will happen, speculating about the anti-Christ, and stocking your cupboards with canned foods (for the tribulation, of course). Soon enough, you will be very afraid.

2. Shape your worldview around email forwards from your crazy Uncle Howard

You may not have an Uncle Howard, but everyone has that distant relative or friend from high school whose goal in life is to forward the latest conspiracy theory to the masses. If you read the Bible or listen to wise people, they will lead you to a loving, nuanced, view of the world and God’s redemptive plans. Therefore, if you really want to fear Muslims, let your worldview be shaped by the crazy emails that talk about Obama’s secret Muslim agenda or how France will soon be the next Islamic Republic. Just be sure to forward the email to 10 friends, or else…

3. Love Politics More Than God

Gotta be honest, I’m politically fickle. I bounce back and forth from center-right to center-left like a ping-pong ball.  I’m not the best guy to take advice from, but I do know that Scripture teaches that government is a good thing, but not the ultimate thing. If you are going to cultivate crippling fear in your life, then you need to make politics your “everything”. You need to view your political ideology as your savior and your favorite news pundits as your prophets. Soon enough, your daily devotions will be 30 minutes of the oh-so-edifying political talk radio. Your life will certainly lack joy, but you will have plenty of fear to fill in the gap.

4. Don’t befriend Muslims

If you want to be afraid of Muslims, then I wouldn’t recommend becoming friends with them. Muslims typically make great friends and this might confuse your black and white categories. Befriending them might result in humanizing them or even appreciating them. That would truly thwart your plans to fear them.

5. Selectively Read Your Bible

The Bible is filled with pesky commands about loving your neighbors, being a peacemaker, not being filled with fear, welcoming foreigners into the land, and thinking about issues with wisdom. So, if you want to continue in your fear of Muslims, then you will want to avoid these Scriptures. The problem is, the Bible is filled with them. The only way to maintain your status as a Muslim-fearer, will be to either not read your Bible at all (just get audio sermons from you crazy uncle Howard) or limit your reading to isolated verses that are out of context and obscure passages that are highly debated.

The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. Frankly, I think the reverse is true as well: Perfect fear casts out love.  Fear and love are like oil and water, like peanut butter and guacamole, like the Los Angeles Clippers and winning. They just don’t go together. In this interconnected world, we face an important choice. Will we pimped by the proponents of fear or gripped by the love of God in Christ?

But all that is changing now.

In the past few years, I have been told that I was a “relational infant” and needed to grow up when it came to relationships. The problem has not been that I don’t care, I just don’t know how to show it. That is, until the social media boom in the last few years.

If “Relationship Me” is a young Forest Gump, than Twitter, Facebook, and text messaging are my leg braces. They are the gutter bumpers to my bowling game and the Wikipedia to my term paper. Social media and communication technology have taught me and assisted me in becoming a better friend.

My problem was part my own sinful self-centeredness mixed with my undiagnosed ADD and a broken internal speech filter. Basically, I never made time to keep in touch with many of my friends because I was waiting for them to contact me. When they did contact me, I had a hard time staying focused while they answered the “So, what have you been up to?”question and when they finally finished I couldn’t help but offer my 2 cents on what they needed to do to change their life. I know, I would have hated me too.

I have a paranoid fear that soon, social media and personal communication technology will come to a screeching halt. I have no evidence of this, but I would not be surprised if an electromagnetic pulse bomb (aka “The Pinch” from Ocean’s 11) or a massive attack from Chinese hackers knocked out the things we take for granted every day. In light of this, I want to record the lessons I have learned so that I can still be a good friend in the Dark Ages to come. (I am printing off a hard copy after I publish this.)

A little RSS goes a long way

Perhaps the greatest invention to come from the Web 2.0 boom is the syndicated feed, aka RSS. This technology has made keeping up with my ALL friends and acquaintances a matter of browsing for a few minutes. Facebook is great at this, giving me a birds-eye view of my friends postings immediately when I log in… they call it “The Feed.” The down side is that apps such as Farmville and Mafia Wars now pollute my feed and confirm what I sort of knew before, many of my friends are losers and therefore I am too.

RSS has taught me a valuable lesson about relationships, sometimes just knowing what is going on with your buddies is enough to keep the relationship fresh and nothing says “We’re still friends,” the way that “thumbs up, I like this!” does. Basically, its friendship streamlined and made simple.

If you can’t say it 140 characters, don’t say it at all

Remember that broken filter problem I had? I got a new one called “Twitter and text.” Twitter is essentially a feed much like RSS but it feels more real time and simple than Facebook or Google Reader. For a guy like me who has struggled to think before he talks, Twitter has helped me learn brevity in my reply to friends. Furthermore, there is a sense of commitment that comes after spending time editing, tweaking and trying to shrtn wrds 2 ft n ur post. Twitter forced me think before clicking “Tweet this.” If it was possible to save drafts of all your unpublished Tweets, my drafts folder would look like a virtual stockpile of relational weapons of mass destruction.

Thinking in terms of 140 characters or less has made a poorer speller but a better thinker. The times I have gone over that limit while texting have been very bad, resulting follow up phone calls (did you know that phones can do that?) and even impromptu rendezvous to clear things up. Thanks to Twitter and text, I am learning the value of being slow to speak and thinking when I do open my mouth (or, um, fingers).

I am sure there are many lessons out there that I and others have learned about relationships from social media, but in the spirit of practicing what I preach, I want to keep this short and ask what you think? Try to keep it brief and be sure to make yourself a hard-copy before the Chinese attack.