A joke is told about a drunk who was crawling around under a street lamp on his hands and knees. He had been there for some time, and another guy came along and said, “What are you looking for?” The answer was that he was looking for his lost car keys, and so the new guy joined in the search for ten minutes or so. Finally he asked, “Are you sure you dropped them here?” “Oh, no,” the answer came back. “I lost them over there by my car,” and the drunk pointed over toward the darkness where his car was. Exasperated, the other man said, “So what are you looking here for then?” “Oh,” the drunk said, “the light’s better here.”
Now the moral of this lesson, boys and girls, is that you should look for things where you have the greatest likelihood of finding what you are looking for, and you should not waste your time looking where it is most convenient for you to be looking.
The joke is a guaranteed groaner, in part because we don’t think anyone, however drunk, could be that stupid. And yet this very approach is the public and dogmatically-defended policy of these United States. We look for Islamic terrorism where it is convenient for us to look for it, and not where we are likely to find some. We frisk 88-year-old Swedish grandmas at airports . . . and why again? The light’s better there.
Some years ago, a member of our congregation who was in the National Guard, and who later served in Afghanistan, had to get a security clearance. Part of that process included me being interviewed by someone from the FBI. We got to the part of the interview where I was asked how I knew this gentleman. I said that I was his pastor. The man conducting the background check said (in all seriousness), “Oh, I can’t put that down.” I forget what he had to put down instead, but it was something like “spiritual advisor.” Anybody who thinks that the PC climate created by our contemporary word-morphers does not have a counterproductive effect on people is simply kidding himself. At some point, of course, tenacity in pursuing such a misguided approach becomes simply perverse. And in this case, bloody.