Tuesday, November 17, 2015

How should we respond to terrorism?

If you have been so kind and forbearing as to have been a long time reader of this blog, you know that the human being who has been the most influential in guiding my Christian faith over these last ten years is Ann Voskamp of the blog entitled A Holy Experience. As ISIS and other sources of evil have grown and developed power over the last year, I have found it harder to click on Ann's blog. I know from reading it that Ann does not share my right-of-center political leanings. She quotes often from sources I rarely read, since they are left-of-center (Huffington Post, New York Times). But I also know Ann is steeped in knowledge of the Bible, the book that brings us the story of Jesus Christ. It is that source of truth that unites Ann and I in common belief.

Ann asks today at A Holy Experience,
How can we find a collective response to terrorism that doesn’t horrifically kill civilians on foreign soil, that doesn’t radicalize another generation, that doesn’t trap us all in a relentless cycle of violence and blood and desecration of the image of God in each other? Force may be needed, but, please God, what else?

Sure, go ahead and trace the dollar trail, lean hard politically and legally on those funding ISIS even indirectly. Freeze their bank accounts deeper than the North Pole in the midst of a January blizzard. Go ahead and globally gather overwhelming diplomatic and legal pressure on every single government that is complicit by their silence, because their oligarchies want to stay in power.

But whatever we do, what will prevent desperate people attracted to the ideology of ISIS from joining their forces and the forces of evil? Who has answers? Humanity, by God, needs answers in the midst of all this insanity.

We need to do more than vent hashtag outrage, do more than change our Facebook profile pictures — because this current climate doesn’t need comfortable social media slackivists — it needs committed and humble and risk-taking real activists.

I’ve sat on the dirt in Iraq and I’ve looked into the wild eyes of young Yezidi girls, fleeing from ISIS, the violence of ISIS bullets that tore up their father’s faces burned into their memories. That’s the beginning of what ISIS want, suggests,

Harleen Gambhir, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, interviewed by the New York Times:

“The goal,” Ms. Gambhir said, “is that through these regional affiliates and through efforts to create chaos in the wider world, the organization will be able to expand, and perhaps incite a global apocalyptic war.”

This isn’t Diablo III and a gory video game flashing up massacres on the screen. Nobody is playing games here. There is a global entity who has killed 400 people, screaming little children and kind people who had coffee that morning, thought about what they were having for dinner, and kissed someone they loved and didn’t linger long enough —- 400 regular folk killed around the globe since the 1st of October by ISIS —- an entity whose goal in blowing apart husbands and wives and our belly laughing children? Is to perhaps incite a global apocalyptic war.

The goal is — to bait us into fear and fighting and war. The goal is lure the world into a bloody armageddon, to snap shut the trap that has us all in this cycle of steal, kill and destroy.

This isn’t Diablo III and a gory video game flashing up massacres on the screen. Nobody is playing games here. There is a global entity who has killed 400 people, screaming little children and kind people who had coffee that morning, thought about what they were having for dinner, and kissed someone they loved and didn’t linger long enough —- 400 regular folk killed around the globe since the 1st of October by ISIS —- an entity whose goal in blowing apart husbands and wives and our belly laughing children? Is to perhaps incite a global apocalyptic war.

The goal is — to bait us into fear and fighting and war. The goal is lure the world into a bloody armageddon, to snap shut the trap that has us all in this cycle of steal, kill and destroy.

When I get to G20 in Chicago O’Ohare, there’s one beautiful woman already there at the gate.

She’s swaying her baby to sleep in her arms. The world’s on fire on all the screens around her and this mama’s hushing all the fear and worries away in her little girl fighting sleep and dreams. She’s wearing a black abaya. I gently smile and nod toward her little one in arms. The mama smiles shyly, framed in her black hijab, strokes the sweat damp curls off her little girl’s face.

The world may be burning down and taking up arms and somehow, someway, right here, we all can do something to link arms. Let the world do what it needs to do —- but in the midst of a dozen burning screens and flashing sirens and deafening calls of attack —- a Muslim mama at G20 smiles over at a grinning, nodding farm hick and there’s a perfect love that casts out all fear, there’s an immoveable truth about we are a people of Love, not fear, and there’s not attack of the enemy that can make the people of the Cross cower in fear and hate and close their doors to Love.

...The way we fight acts of war is with acts of kindness.

(Doesn’t He tell us to not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good, because He knows that being ignited by hate is like holding a flame in your own hand and wondering why you feel burned.

Do not try this at home or in the privacy of your own soul.

Doesn’t He tell us “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” Deuteronomy 10:19.

Doesn’t Jesus Himself say, “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.

When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.

This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty.

If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.

Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” Jesus, Matthew 5)

The way we fight terrorists —- is by being giftivists.

The Giftivists are activists who believe that radical acts of giving can change the world.

What has ever changed the world more than this: For God so love the world, that He gave.

It’s the Giftivists who believe that every human being is a gift, made in the image of God, the Great Giver — and to destroy or dehumanize the gift of a human being to is to desecrate God. It’s the Giftivists are the activists who believe that scarcity is a myth and abundance is the Truth because your Father is the God of the universe and He made enough for every soul’s need — but not for anyone’s greed.

It’s the Giftivists (who are) the activists who believe that radical acts of generosity counter radical acts of inhumanity.

Humanity is at its best when giving —-because when we give, we are most like God.

But in a world stripped of grace, cynics can laugh at these things, can mock these things, can swiftly and mercilessly deem the Giftivists as losers, and forgivers as weak, can let Fear devour all things Christ within them, because in an ungenerous and unforgiving culture its too easy to fall for the ruse that giving and forgiving isn’t actually the greatest of His ways in the world.

...Giftivists break bonds of retaliating destruction by forging deeply connective bonds of reciprocating love.

Giftivists break vicious cycles of violence with virtuous cycles of benevolence.

God is the ultimate Giftivist, the ultimate Giver and Forgiver, and we are Giftivists as we follow Him, but ultimately, we are Givers and Gifters and Giftivists because the Greatest Giver Himself is in us and working through us.

...For all of history, there’ve been elements trying to burn hope down — but ashes are never the last line of any of God’s stories.

...After Paris, the calendar says it, that Advent cusps, that now the days will get shorter and the night will get longer and longer and longer, till it seems like the night’s invading the day —- and then Grace with skin will invade everything. Then the Greatest Gift will be born and we will remember another world and Home and our true names and how there is nothing ever to fear.

Then we will see again how the smallest, most fragile gift can save the world.
Read more and view the photographs that accompany Ann's post here.

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