This article has been chosen as a Making Sense of These Times
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This should be a must read. Even though I'm not Christian, I recognize that David speaks profound truth of spirit, and galvanizes the anti war position better than anything I've read. This ultimate wake-up figures to be inconceivable to be listened to at this time. However, it becomes very conceivable to me after what may happen next, or next after that. When, God forbid, nuclear war has devasted the whole earth, I can picture us on our knees. Helpless. Where to turn but to love? Or, rather, what to fall into but love, that's deeper than the antagonism which is so understandable now. I can see us finding ourselves in the essence of our humanness, where the monsters are to be pitied and we sound a giant wail with all humans in the chorus.
-Suzanne-

Loving the Terrorists
David Diggs

I consider myself a Christian, at least some of the time. Other times, if I’m honest with myself, I’m not much of a Christian at all. Following Christ just seems too hard. What happened on September 11 has made it feel almost impossible to follow Jesus.

I remember feeling this way back in 1988 when I went to live in Haiti. Before going to Haiti, I had read Jesus’ words in his sermon on the mount, "Give when you are asked to give; and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow." (Matthew 5:42)

Obeying these words cost me little before moving to Haiti. I lived a comfortable middle-class existence surrounded by others who were equally comfortable. Maybe a friend would ask to borrow my car or a neighbor would ask me to water her plants. Obeying Jesus’ words in these circumstances was a breeze.

The instant I arrived in Haiti these words suddenly took on great weight. All around me were people with urgent needs. My white skin marked me; my neighbors and the people I passed on the street knew that I had more money and power than they. So they came and asked for help—a few cents to help them feed their family that day, a few dollars to help them buy medicine for someone ill, a little money to help them buy schoolbooks or pay tuition for a child.

If there had only been three or four people coming to me, it wouldn’t have been so hard. But there were dozens. And the more I gave, the more people came to me with their needs. I was receiving $300 a month to cover all my living expenses. This seemed like a modest stipend to me. But it made me one of the wealthiest people in my new community. How could I obey Jesus and not respond to their needs? But how could I give to everyone who asked? If I really shared freely I might end up broke before the end of the month. Then what would I do?

Deep down I knew the answer to that question, and it frightened me. I knew that if I shared as freely as Christ had commanded, I’d be forced, like my neighbors, to put all my trust in God’s provision and the graciousness of others who happened to have something to share to get me through that day.

Some days I was able to trust God’s promises to provide all I needed. On those days my heart was soft, and I opened myself up to sharing with those in need around me, not just sharing money but also my time and concern. I felt free and light and full of joy. On other days I felt overwhelmed, and I hardened my heart and closed my eyes to my neighbors’ needs. On those days anxiety stole my joy, and God seemed far off.

Three years ago I left Haiti, and now I live in Washington, DC with my wife and baby daughter. I live again in a place where I can easily forget about the needs of the world. These words of Jesus don’t seem so heavy now, and following Christ doesn’t seem so demanding. That was until September 11.

Before going to Haiti I was insulated from the reality of our world’s economic injustice. I knew that thousands around the world were dying of hunger each day, but I had never come face-to-face with their hunger. In the same way, until September 11, I was largely insulated from the extreme hatred some in our world hold for my country and people. Now I go back to Jesus’ words in his sermon on the mount and see again his command to give to whoever asks. I now notice that this hard little passage is surrounded by words I had easily passed over before. Until September 11, these words of Jesus had seemed almost irrelevant.

You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. 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, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:38-45)

Can we read these words now the same way we read them before September 11? I can’t. I see the footage of people jumping from the World Trade Center and then the whole flaming pyre collapsing, burying thousands. I hear the desperation in the voices of those who have lost loved ones, people in my own church and community. The senseless loss. The fear and humiliation. The pain and unspeakable grief. It is too much. Can Jesus really be speaking to us? Can he expect his followers to love and forgive the likes of those who did this to us? What he asks is impossible.

But then I think about many of the early followers of Jesus who somehow found it possible to love and forgive their enemies even while they or their loved ones were being fed to the lions. I read of Stephen, whose lasts words while being stoned to death by religious zealots were, "Lord, do not hold this crime against them." (Acts 7:60)

Among those at Stephen’s stoning was a young religious extremist named Saul. An extraordinary thing happened to Saul. One day while in fanatical pursuit of heretics, he had a blinding encounter with the resurrected Jesus. The experience turned his world upside down. Saul became the Apostle Paul and one of history’s greatest advocates of Jesus. As miraculous as the conversion of this terrorist was, it was even more remarkable that the people he had ruthlessly terrorized forgave him and took him in as one of their own.

With Saul’s conversion, this hunter became the prey. Like those he had once terrorized, he became a victim, paying for his devotion to Christ with regular imprisonments and torture. Like Stephen, he died a martyr. But before his death he wrote these words from prison to encourage fellow Christians who were facing stiff persecution in Rome:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse… Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:15-19)

Paul’s words were not ignored. Read the lives of the Christian martyrs, and you will see a love that seems as fanatical and extreme as the hatred we witnessed on September 11. Where in their hearts did these followers of Jesus find this love for those who hunted them down so ruthlessly? I can only understand their love as an outpouring of the love they found in Christ. At the heart of their faith was the assurance that Christ loved humanity so much that to make peace with us he submitted to the cruelest torture and humiliation we could design. By loving their enemies and returning good for evil, they were serving as vessels of this same radical, redeeming love they saw displayed on the cross of Christ.

How tragic that within a few hundred years the cross became for the world not the symbol of the infinite love of God, but the standard raised before crusaders who marched and murdered to rid the world of the "infidel" Muslims and Jews who "polluted" the Holy Land. Even today, for millions of Muslims and Jews, the cross says nothing of love. Instead it is a symbol of bigoted hatred and aggression, like the burning crosses of the KKK.

Many today are quick to point out that this "jihad" that the terrorists have declared has nothing to do with the true teachings of Islam, that Islam is peace-loving. I’m grateful for this reminder. I just hope someone is telling Muslims around the world that the bombs the U.S. has dropped and may continue to drop on their brothers and sisters have nothing to do with the true teachings of Christ.

Maybe our nation will find another way to respond to this dastardly aggression we’ve suffered. President Bush talks of this being a different kind of war. Maybe the bombers he is sending to Afghanistan are loaded with bread and not bombs. Such a thing was suggested as a serious strategy by none other than a British Major General named David Egerton. This man, who is not known for his pacifist tendencies, suggested in the Daily Telegraph that the smartest response the U.S. could make to the attacks would be to carpet-bomb Afghanistan with food parcels. "This would show the desire to return good for evil."

Like many others, this military man fears that a military response is exactly what our enemies are hoping for, knowing that it will further inflame passions in the region, help them topple pro-Western regimes, and provide them with a whole new wave of suicidal terrorists. Bombing our enemies might satisfy our thirst for vengeance. But killing people who have already shown an unflinching willingness to die for their cause will only make more martyrs and give a whole new generation more to fight and die for.

Martin Luther King could have been speaking to us today when he warned that, "If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." As Judy Keane, whose husband, Richard, was killed in the attack, said, "The World Trade Center [attack] was in retaliation for something else, and that was the retaliation for something else. Are we going to continue this in perpetuity? We have to say at some point, ‘okay, let’s find another way of doing this.’"

Jesus is pointing us to this other way. Of course, there is no guarantee that our love will soften the hearts of the terrorists and end their attacks. Just look at what happened to Paul and Stephen and Christ. The decision to love our enemies should not be made because it is more likely to bring success, but, rather, because it is the only way to be faithful to Christ.

In the same sermon where Jesus told us to love our enemies, he told us to "mourn with those who mourn." I believe that Jesus is mourning with us who have suffered from these attacks. I believe that just as he wept over Jerusalem, he weeps over New York and Washington and our whole nation. At the same time that Jesus mourns with us, though, I believe he mourns with those who consider us their enemy. He mourns with the Palestinian mother whose husband and children were killed by a U.S. supplied rocket and the Afghan father whose baby died from malnutrition. He mourns not only our loss of the 7,000 people in the attacks of September 11, but also the deaths of the roughly 24,000 people around our globe who died from hunger on September 11. Their deaths were not so visible as the deaths at the World Trade Center, but Jesus sees them and mourns with those who loved them no less than he mourns with us.

If we were more like Jesus and able to mourn with those who mourn around the globe, I believe we would lose our taste for war and vengeance and retaliation. We would no longer be able to waste our money on things we don’t really need or allow our government to spend nearly a billion dollars a day on guns, and bombs, and soldiers, while over a billion people worldwide struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day. We would know that, as our former president, General Dwight Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Let us vow to waste no more energy on violence and no more money on arms. Let us allow our hearts to be broken by the things that break the heart of God, whether from terrorism in the U.S. or from hunger in Afghanistan or Haiti or anywhere.

Following Jesus is rarely easy. We’ve been wounded; it is natural to want to fight back. My prayer is that in this time of pain and mourning, we will open ourselves up and allow the limitless love of Christ to flow through us to our enemies. In doing so, we will be opening our wounded hearts to the healing that only God’s love brings. The love we have for our enemies will be a balm to our own hurts.

May God strengthen all of us who seek to follow Christ to put aside our vain trust in swords, and guns, and bombers. May we, instead, put our faith in the One who loves us and our enemies beyond comprehension.

May the fanatical and extreme love displayed on the cross overflow in us, comfort us, and free us to love all who Jesus loves—even our enemies, the terrorists.

http://www.beyondborders.net/love.htm

David Diggs, P.O. Box 42302, Washington, DC 20015 or call 202-686-2088
ddiggs@BeyondBorders.net


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