Church and State

I read a disturbing story this morning about a young girl that ran away from home for fear of her life. The part that disturbed me was that she was scared that her own father was going to kill her because she had converted to Christianity.

The teen was threatened by her father after converting from Islam to Christianity this past summer. After fleeing from her home in Ohio in July, her parents requested that their daughter be forced to leave Florida and return to Ohio. Their wish was granted by a Florida judge this Tuesday.

While I have seen far worse than this occur over far less regarding religion, the thought of killing your own daughter sort of seems more disturbing than anything else. This family came to America for who knows what reason, but I would assume a better way of life, and yet the sheer thought of a child turning her life towards a different religion was enough to set this father off in a rage big enough to end his own daughter's life.

I do not claim to understand Islam, and I have no desire to start a heated debate about the "rights" and "wrongs" involved within each religion, however, I have a hard time believing that "Allah" would justly accept killing your own daughter over her religious freedom.

Many actually think that the mere thought, versus the action itself, is enough to be considered a sinner in most religions. With that being said, if this girl felt threatened enough by her own father to seek refuge with total strangers then I believe that this involved more than just a mere thought.

My thoughts surrounding this case are far beyond the religious aspect. Our society has tried to separate church and government so much so that we cannot prosecute a father, possibly due to his religious affiliation or because he is foreign, and instead we force a threatened daughter to return home and face a very dangerous situation that we cannot possibly understand.

What has our government come to? Let's turn the tables and say that this happened to a Christian converting to Islam in the Middle East. Would the teen be forced to return home to her Christian family? Would the government prosecute the Christian father for threatening the Islamic daughter? That is such a heated topic and loaded question. I will let you ponder and leave you with this:

Many push for the separation of church and state to protect the church from the corrupt state, while others think church should not be forced upon the citizens of the state and therefore must be separate. Perhaps both sides are wrong. Church needs to be governed by the state to protect against corruption and state needs to be governed by the church to protect the citizens.