Election 2016 - 9/11 Edition ISIS, Al Qaeda, and War

Election 2016

9/11 Edition

ISIS, Al Qaeda, and War

Monday, September 12, 2016
Jeff Lampl

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'

 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,"

Matthew 5:43-45 (NIV)

“Every war has the heavy burden of showing how it is an act of

 loving one’s neighbors and loving one’s enemies”

Miroslav Wolf, Yale Divinity School

Radical Islam wants to kill us, yet I can’t find any wiggle room around Jesus’ command that Christians love their enemies. 

How then do we love the Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaeda?   Should we just send them cookies and watch them kill us and others while we pray?

The world that presents itself to us is gray rather than black and white and sometimes the best we can do is to choose the lesser of the evils available to us.   Personally, I yearn to support leaders who, if they choose to go to war, do so reluctantly, with regret and with an understanding that killing is an evil, but with the humble admission/prayer,

“Lord forgive me for this sin, this war, that I am about to lead our country into.   It appears to me to be the least of the bad options available.   If there is another option available to me, I want with all my heart to know it.”  

I would love to have leaders who do not gloat over the killing of Osama bin Laden, rather grieve that he was overcome by the demonic powers of evil that had overcome him and led to the deaths and grief and so many other people including his own death.   I want leaders who never use the term “collateral damage”, rather recognize that every life lost is precious to someone including to God.

Finally, though deadly force can be deemed ethically justifiable, even in a Christian ethic (see “Just War Theory”), it will never be the means through which God’s New Creation will be ushered in.   God’s Kingdom on earth will not be achieved by a jobs program, globalization, democracy, socialism, capitalism, secular social justice initiatives . . . or any of the other human efforts to usher in a golden age.   God’s new world will finally come only through Jesus, his love, and yes the world wide church of Jesus Christ, taking up its cross and loving its enemies unto death.

I hope that you take time to watch this 3 minute video which jolted me into the radical nature of Jesus’ call to me and to all of us to love our enemies.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSv4vBcFyvo

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.   But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

 John 12:24 (NIV2011)