This is a short article from BREAKPOINT and I think that the writer explains the Christian view on recent events. I hope it reaches those who need it.
This shows why Christians are different though being capable of some rather nasty acts. to my usual detractors, save your bluster as I will not respond to anyone who hijacks this thread with personal attacks. I will, however, pray for you!
Rex
The signs this fall are everywhere:
"God bless America."
"Pray for the victims and their families."
"Pray for our leaders."
"God bless our troops."
These are natural admonitions. Easy to say, easy to do. We flock to church services to pray. We ask God to comfort, protect, give wisdom. Our first and continuing cry over the victims in the towers and Pentagon, the victims in the airplanes, the firefighters and police officers, is "Oh, God!"
What is difficult—extremely difficult—is this admonition Jesus Christ gave to his followers: "You have heard that they were told, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But what I tell you is this: Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors . . ." (Matthew 5:43-44).
Wow, Jesus. How can you say that? Are you crazy? Did you see what they did to us? Didn’t you see the people on fire jumping out the windows of the World Trade Center? Don’t you know about the firefighters who died trying to save people?
And that’s not all. He goes on to say, ". . . only so can you be children of your heavenly Father" (Matthew 5:45).
You mean if I don’t love those terrorists I am not a child of God? That can’t be in the Bible. It can’t be.
It is. It is what makes Christianity different. It is what makes followers of Christ different than people like Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Atta and the Taliban. As a matter of fact, it is the only thing that distinguishes us. "If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. Again, if you do good only to those who do good to you, what credit is there in that? Even sinners do as much," Jesus said (Luke 6:32-33).
Loving our enemies has the power to transform us to be like God. To form us into a whole different sort of human being than our enemies. This does not mean we excuse what they did. It does not mean we feel affection or fondness for them. It does not mean trying to think they are really not that bad, because they really are that bad.
C. S. Lewis struggled with this and came to think of it this way: "In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one." In looking at his enemies, Lewis writes, he remembered being taught to "love the sinner, hate the sin," and wondered how he could hate the sin without hating the man.
"But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself," Lewis writes. ". . . Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find I was the sort of man who did those things."
I may not be capable of killing 5,000 people with a jumbo jet, but I am capable of some really cruddy crappy things. Things I am ashamed to speak of. Things I do not like to admit. Things I hate.
And, as Lewis says, Jesus does not require us to reduce the hatred we feel for such cruel and inhuman acts. We are to hate them, "in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is any way possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again."
Last night I found this prayer.
O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember the fruits we have bought, thanks to this suffering—our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this, and when they come to judgement let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.
(Prayer written by an unknown prisoner in Ravensbruck concentration camp and left by the body of a dead child.)
Look at some good things, the fruits, that have come from the horrible events of September 11.
We have discovered our true heroes are the firefighters and rescue workers who live next door, not drug-snorting, bed-hopping celebrities. We have discovered we can pray with our Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim neighbors. We have discovered our reason for living is not to get more stuff than our neighbors, but to love and get to know our neighbors. We have discovered we are capable of giving our hard-earned cash to someone who needs it more than we do. And on and on.
Christians have the opportunity to be transformed. God did not cause this horror: it is the work of evil incarnate. And God’s plan, always at work beneath the surface of human events, is redemption, always to transform evil into good. That’s what he did on the cross. That is the message of the cross.
Let’s not blow it.
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Luanne Austin is religion editor for the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Her weekly column, "Rural Pen," appears there each Friday.