Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Two high school dropouts from Oswego County, N.Y., won't be able to spend Christmas with their families this year -- and perhaps for a long time to come. William John Reeves and Joshua Centrone, both 18, are behind bars awaiting indictment for arson. By their own admission they have burned down a Sikh sanctuary. They said they did so to avenge the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a crime with which the Sikhs have had absolutely nothing to do. Advertisement Theirs is a monotheistic faith born in India 500 years ago. It celebrates Christmas with the rest of us because it teaches that all religions are good and true. The story could end right here: A couple of drunken kids behaving like morons, period. Now let them pay for what they have done -- like Johnny Walker, the Californian Taliban, who took up arms against his own people. Right? Advertisement Perhaps, but not so fast! There is more to this story. It reveals to us two facts: First, the two teenagers, both presumably baptized, knew nothing about their own faith. Christ -- the aspect of God through whom all things were made (John 1:3) and thus the very agent of creation -- did not become flesh in a manger 2,000 years ago to have his followers cause harm to others. This William and Joshua didn't know. Nobody told them that nowhere in the New Testament do we find a footnote to Christ's command, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 19:19), saying it was restricted to Christians. Second, however, these kids knew nothing about other religions either. They couldn't even tell a Sikh from a Muslim, and they could not tell one kind of Muslim from another, peace-loving neighbor from Osama bin Laden. They just saw beards, considered themselves avengers like those on television and thought: burn! Perhaps one is making too much of this; after all, the ignorant will always be with us, won't they? But then we read in poll after poll that only a small minority of young Americans, while stating a belief in God, affirmed basic religious verities, such as the existence of absolute moral values. Advertisement And we read how dismally uninformed young Americans -- and Europeans for that matter -- are in religious matters. This begs the question: Who is responsible? Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition, a Jewish and Christian coalition, is right in pointing to parents who adopted the fuzzy worldview of the 1960s. Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, correctly blames seminaries for training ministers without emphasis on scriptural teaching. But if we are in the business of blaming, why leave out the media, the secular educational system, certain think tanks and interest groups who for decades have dismissed the need for religion and religious knowledge? When this columnist was a high school student in post-Nazi Germany, the religious beliefs that drove cultures past and present were an essential part of the curriculum. In 9th grade, an introductory course in ancient sacred Scriptures of India was taught, including lessons in Sanskrit. One year later we were made to read the entire Koran and write term papers about it. Parallel to that, of course, we were meticulously instructed in our own faith, which was Christian -- Catholic or Protestant. In retrospect, this made a lot of sense. It followed the ancient insight, "homo naturaliter religiosus" (man is by nature religious). Advertisement Immanuel Kant, the German Enlightenment philosopher remarked that metaphysics were always part of everybody's makeup, once natural reason had expanded to speculation. With some resignation, he added, "And it will be that way forever." Religious yearning, therefore, is impossible to eradicate. The 19th-century critics of religion likened it to an incurable disease. In truth, it is just as much part of human nature as hunger, thirst and sexual desire. Since this is so, how can we talk in school reasonably about India without explaining Hinduism, Buddhism -- and Sikhism in detail? How can we discuss Arabia without reference to Islam in all its facets? How can we marvel at Europe's cathedrals, Gregorian chants and Bach cantatas without exploring the faith that prompted our forebears to produce these masterpieces? Postmodern talking heads prattle incessantly about the need for multiculturalism but then ignore the very force that drives culture -- any culture. That force is faith. As Christianity commemorates God's incarnation next week, it is well to explain to children precisely what is being celebrated here. It is not an event that gives us license to slash and burn what is holy to others. It is, rather, an act of unimaginable love with which the Creator has answered the deep yearning of all humanity, a yearning modern and postmodern "thinkers" have inexplicably ignored for too long. Advertisement It was Saint Augustine who famously summed up this longing some 1,600 years ago: "Restless is our heart until it comes to rest in Thee."
