The essential problem with the West is that there is nothing that we would die for anymore.
To most people living in the post Christian hedonistic West the notion of giving up all that we "possess" to witness that the Son of God became Man to save us from our sins is silly and foolish.
The recent "conversion" of the kidnapped Fox News reporters is a depressing defeat for the West and Christianity. A recent article by Mark Steyn addresses the importance of their recent conversions to Islam.
"If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade.{emphasis added} In his new book The Conservative Soul, attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one, Time magazine's gay Tory Andrew Sullivan enthuses, "By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live -- now, which is the only time that matters." That's almost a literal restatement of Faust's bargain with the devil:
"When to the moment I shall say
'Linger awhile! so fair thou art!'
Then mayst thou fetter me straightway
Then to the abyss will I depart!"
"In other words, if Faust becomes so enthralled by "the moment" that he wants to live in it forever, the devil will have him for all eternity. In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. .... It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead."
How can we expect to win a war against an overly zealous radical Islam if we have lost all our zeal for Christian truth? One by one Christian nations have capitulated their values in the name of "tolerance". The "tolerance" even borders on the ridiculous bending so far backward they are begging for their kick in the pants.