The world is on fire and much of this is due to religious and political indignation. It all seems to have to do with entitlement. Who is entitled to the Holy Lands? Whose religious perspective has a right to set the world’s agenda? Who has the right to decide what is right in America and to set its political and moral agenda? Amidst the many narratives human beings live by, which one will dominate the earth?
The problem with religious and political indignation is that none of us are truly righteous. We all have it inside of us to become like the enemies we hate. In the human heart, hate always breeds and breathes an atmosphere of violence or disdain, even when it is birth in what we are prone to call ‘righteousness’.
As for the followers of Jesus, he urges us leave all vengeance to God. Instead, we are to follow his manner of life- to live a life of love, mercy and forgiveness. I always remind myself that Jesus never asked his followers to use violence in order to remove the evil Roman rulers from the land. Instead, he said: “If you live by the sword, you’ll die by the sword” and “love your enemies; do good to them.”
I read an interesting interview between Krista Tippet and Yossi Klein Halevi. Halevi knows the moslem fundamentalist mindset from the inside. Now an outsider, he has an interesting perspective on his former life. Reffering to the American goal of “hunting down” terrorists, Halevi spoke of how American efforts are doomed to failure, certainly against these current enemies. He said, “You can’t outhate a fundamentalist. They will win.”
And how do they win? In her book, Speaking of Faith, Tippet shares a conversation she once had with military chaplain, Major John Morris. Morris witnessed the awful days of fighting in Fallujah. Standing before the charred bodies of four American contractors hanging from the bridge across the Euphrates, Morris said that fury consumed him, along with the certainty that the people who did this did not deserve to live. “They were animals.” He would be the agent of God, the wrath of God. Then, something happened in Morris’ heart. As the conviction seized him, he understood that he was at an abyss that would render him capable of the very actions he hated. “God help me and have mercy on me,” he prayed. “Save me from becoming a debased, immoral human being, and save my soldiers as well.” One man’s hero is another man’s terrorist.
When hate has taken hold of the human heart, it easily leads us in a direction away from life and distorts our vision of God and his ways. We must never surrender to the power of hate, nor the power of worldly power seeking. If we are to remain true to our calling as followers of Jesus, and, truly ‘humane’, we must surrender instead to the power of love, mercy, and forgiveness. We must ‘do good to our enemies’. That's the only way out of this mess we're in.
