God's Love and Terrorism

Another thought sprang up while reading The Ragamuffin Gospel. It's a ten year old book, but his thoughts are very poignant in the current world.

He wrote a bit about war, and how easy it is to not love "the enemy" because we make them simply "the other." When they are faceless, less than human, we can justify dropping bombs on them and destroying them, because they aren't made in God's image, and His love doesn't extend to them.

My pastor here at home has remarked to me before than there are three things the Evangelical church in America ought to re-examine in itself, and one of which is its militarism. We're awfully fond of using America's vast military might to exert "God's will" on the world.

I've been a sold-out supporter of the GWOT since its inception. And I still don't think that it's a proper course of action for a nation to simply kowtow to the sadistic demands of the evil men who have attained power in various places throughout the world.

But I think we often forget to love our enemies.

It's such a blindingly simple phrase . . . "Love your enemies." God still loves them. God still wants them to find Him. So many of the radical muslims we're fighting seem beyond our reach, but nobody is beyond God's reach. Nobody.

So, what does this mean? Not that we should seek "understanding" with those who preach our deaths simply for being Christians or Americans. But we should pray for them, and seek to change hearts. God has called for us to be salt and light in this world, and there are some people who desperately need it, and we should be loathe to simply give up on them and label them "the other" . . . "unreachable" . . . "unlovable."