There were a couple of weeks in the
early part of 2015 that I found both confusing and heartbreaking. On February
14-15 a series of shootings took place in Copenhagen. An attack at a Free Speech rally at café
injuring three police officers and killing one person, the shooting of a Jewish
man and a guard at a synagogue and then the shooting of the suspect on the
morning of the 15th left many grieving and anxious. The suspected shooter’s religious ideology
seems to be part though not all of the cause.
Also on Sunday, Jihadists cruelly beheaded 21 Coptic Christians abducted
from Libya last month. On Monday, a
grand jury in North Carolina indicted Craig Hicks with murder charges. Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan
Abu-Salah, young students in the Chapel Hill area, were shot and killed last
Tuesday. The immediate cause of the
shootings appears to have been a parking dispute. However, Hicks had expressed anti-religious
sentiment and the victims were Muslim.
In each of these
cases religion plays a role, but does not account for the whole of people’s
motivations. As people of faith, how do
we respond? Are we so far removed from
the places effected that we have no business inserting ourselves? Is it acceptable for us to be more concerned
with the plight of fellow Christians than we are with people of other
faiths? These questions and so many
other haunt me. I don’t pretend to
understand the complexity of violence and religion. But, as I read the news reports and praying
for the situations, I tried to keep these things in mind:
We are talking about real human beings. The people who have been killed and the
people who killed them have names, personalities, families, and histories. I believe we must be careful not to turn
victims into pawns in our favorite arguments. I have searched for years for
ways to talk about the issues that affect people’s lives without diminishing
people’s lives into issues. I have
failed more often than I have succeeded.
I continue to believe that people’s lives have integrity and we need to
protect that integrity with our speech as much as we protect the lives with our
actions.
Motives are more complicated than we can
sort out. Religion or anti-religious
ideologies are rarely the sole cause for violence. The experiences of scarcity, powerlessness,
victimization, and geo-political realities are just a few of the other
contributing factors that lead to violent actions.
Apathy is not an option nor is misguided, partially informed action. We have learned the lesson time and again
that that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men
should look on and do nothing” (John Stuart Mill in an Address before Students
at St. Andrews). The fuller context of
that quotation emphasizes that actions need to follow careful assessment of the
situations before us. History is also
full of tragic examples where good people did the wrong thing because they
acted without adequate understanding.
For now, I pray
for the strength to stay engaged and not turn away. I pray that God will form me into a person
who seeks reconciliation. Christ died in
order to tear down the dividing wall of hostility may we live in such a way
that Christ’s purposes are manifest in us.
No comments:
Post a Comment