Just this far away from Hate
We all know about the "Psalms that Nobody Reads." The ones in which the psalmist rants about how his enemy should be mangled and killed, how the Lord should smack them around, and that there should be no mercy for them.
I know how the psalmist feels. After yet another attack on innocent victims by Chechnyan separatists, I've come as close to actually hating people as I can remember.
It's not enough apparently for them to round up innocent people in a Moscow theatre several years ago. It's not enough to detonate themselves in downtown Moscow killing more innocents. It's not enough to down two planes full of unaware families who thought they were on their ways to vacations or business trips.
No, now these Satan-possessed "people" take over a school full of kids, terrorize them and their mons and dads and teachers, starve them, deprive them of water, and then ultimately kill - at last count - more than 350 of them.
Do I presently care that more than 20 of these non-humans were killed in the ensuing battle. No. Maybe later by God's grace I will. But not now. Now - and this sort of scares me - I wish I had been one with them in my sights. What scares me the most is that I don't think I would have hesitated pulling the trigger.
I can relate to the Pslamist now after these last years of watching brainwashed mindless, soulless terrorists the world over taking innocent life. I know exactly how those writers felt when they called for the righteousness of God to obliterate the evil. Now I have to work on the "love your enemies" part. That will be my greatest challenge as things are definitely not going to get better. God grant me that.
But as for now, if I had a rocketlauncher...
posted by Ritter | 11:28 AM
1 Comments:
You are not wrong in your feelings; and your desire to be one of those behind the cross-hairs isn't wrong. It's a righteous, God-given desire to fight evil. Hatred (for the Christian)does not have to, nor should it, be a part of the execution of justice and/or the bringing order out of chaos, although hatred is obviously a human response to great evil or repeated injustice. Pulling a trigger or aiming your rocket launcher isn't wrong in a fight versus obvious evil such as that of terrorism, any more than it was wrong in WWII against the Hitler, Mussolini, or Hirohito. In a world of sin, evil takes human form and must necessarily and rightly be fought, always spiritually; and sometimes physically. While it is true that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood" (Eph. 6), when evil imbues a society and inflicts itself aggressively against others, as with terrorism, then we'd better get that evil in our cross-hairs, in any form it takes. Sometimes we have to make a stand, and when it comes into the physical realm, it is costly. But it's infintely more costly not to stand, not to fight, to stop evil.
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