111 Sermon Illustrations on Violence

Rod Matthews, 15, killed a classmate "to know what it was like." He chose an overweight high school freshman (Shaun Ouillette, 14) relatively new to the school because he felt he would not be missed. After luring him into the woods, he hit him in the head 3 times with a baseball bat, then considered cutting off his arms and legs. He had told his friends previously he wanted to kill somebody. He took friends to see the body. Police found the body 3 weeks later, after one of the friends sent them an anonymous letter. Matthews claims he decided to kill someone after seeing the videotape "Faces of Death," which shows animal and human deaths. He has been sentenced to life in prison (youngest person in Mass. prisons). He had a history of emotional problems. He mother thinks the sentence is too stiff.

(Details, picture in article)

Long article on the phenomenon of youth gangs, especially in drug dealing. May be up to 40 Jamaican "posses" with 5,000 members operating in the U.S. Heavily armed, even with automatic weapons. Open assassinations. Jamaican gangs responsible for 800 murders, 350 in 1987 alone. L.A. gangs are the Bloods and the Crips, which have gone national.

Joel Steinberg's abuse of lover, Hedda Nussbaum, and murder of adopted daughter Lisa. Six was 6 when she was beaten to death. Raised an outcry on child abuse. Home was full of drug abuse and systematic beatings.

Steinberg came to Hedda holding Lisa in his arms, limp. "What happened?" "What's the difference what happened? This is your child. Hasn't this gone far enough?" He was referring to Lisa's habit of staring at him. "I knocked her down and she didn't want to get up again. This staring business had gotten to be too much." Steinberg left for lunch. For three hours Lisa lay motionless on the floor, water and undigested food oozing from her mouth. Hedda took her pulse, washed her underwear. She did not call for help, believing Steinberg had healing powers. Lisa died three days later. She could have been saved with prompt help.

(Statistics and personal stories of abuse nationwide on page 58. 100 kids killed in NYC alone each year. 2.1 million reported cases of abuse, 138,000 were sexual in 1986. 1,200 are battered to death each year. Parents who were abused as children are six times more likely to abuse their own children. At least 40% of all abuse case involve alcohol or drugs.)

Nussbaum's abuse is detailed in article. Once he ruptured her spleen, which had to be removed. He broke her knee, her ribs, damaged her vocal cords, hit her with a broomstick, handcuffed her to a chinning bar, beat her with a metal bar, knocked out teeth, was forced to take cold baths. Was also psychologically abused. Because of him she lost her job as an editor of children's books. (He was a criminal lawyer.) He cut her completely off from other people. She attempted to run away but changed her mind each time.

Others noticed the abuse and reported it. It was not followed-up. A list of signs of child abuse is given, as well as where to turn to report suspected abuse. Nussbaum's credibility may be challenged since she is ill psychologically.

America's "Hatfield and McCoy" imagery. "The Godfather" shows the accommodations Christians allow themselves in the name of retribution. Reflected in the affairs of modern nations (N. Ireland, etc.). Culture is fascinated with war. People lash out because of self-preservation.

Eye for eye? Jesus goes beyond this. Jesus lashing out at money-changers has been over-used; more typical is his forgiveness from the cross, rebuking Peter for cutting off ear, etc.

Sometimes it worked, often it did not. Following Jesus is foolish, but it is the way of the cross.

#564

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Protestors are divided over whether to practice civil disobedience. Some see it as permissible because a law allowing the murder of the unborn is unjustice; it is not illegal to break an unjust law. Others say God’s law is higher than man’s law. Some are even advocating violence. The success of the rescue movement justifies it to some.

Controversial research suggests that violence may have a genetic component. Low levels of a certain chemical are associated with increased violence in monkeys, and violence correlates with identical twins raised apart more than fraternal. Same is true of adopted kids born from violent parents. Black scholars and others counter that society likes to scapegoat certain groups by labeling them substandard rather than seeing the influence of environment. There is also the problem that traits associated with violence can also lead to success in business, where aggressiveness is beneficial.

The U.S. has the highest murder rate in the industrialized world, four times as high as second place Scotland.

Violence is an epidemic in America, even among Christians.

Tacoma, Washington, 1987. Daniel Lynam's brother had called the police because he knew something was wrong. When the police arrived, Lynam warned them to stay back because he didn't want to hurt them.

About 10 minutes later the police heard a noise. They went into the comfortable home and discovered that Daniel had taken his life. They also found his wife -- and his 2-year-old daughter -- and his 5-week-old son. All were dead of gunshot wounds. There was no sign of a struggle.

A few hours later they found Daniel Lynam's parents. They were in their 60's, and had been shot while sitting. The same scene unfolded at his in-law's house. In all, eight people were dead.

What do his neighbors remember about Daniel Lynam? According to the newspaper account:

“Neighbors said the Lynams exchanged waves and smiles but generally kept to themselves. An owner of their condominium described Daniel and Linda Lynam as born-again Christians.”

________

The article can be found online at ,

"Eight Die In Multiple Homicide, Suicide," by Jim Klahn, July 13, 1987.

Andrew Carnegie held very decided views about the Old Testament, and once or twice, under provocation, expressed himself very bluntly. In fact, the point of view that Mr. Carnegie took toward the Bible has become very common in our day among the most eminent scholars in the churches. He did feel very strongly on the matter of teaching children certain portions of the Old Testament, which, to his mind, contradicted not only the finest human instincts but the whole spirit of Christ's teaching.

We were once walking together when he suddenly referred to a sensational heading in that day's paper about some preacher's utterances concerning the incident of Jonah: "What in the world has the question as to whether that book is fact or story got to do with the Christian religion?" he exclaimed. "It is this sort of thing that makes sensible people disgusted with the Churches. The first Christians followed Christ and that was all that was ever asked of them. Now we demand that they believe a lot of incidents said to have happened hundreds of years before Christ was born and which have absolutely no relation to him whatever, except that they happened to get bound up in a collection of books with the story of his life. It's just exactly as if I were told that I could not be a believer in Abraham Lincoln unless I believed some miraculous stories about the early settlers of America because the stories happened to be on the same library shelf. The Bible is a wonderful literature of a people who had a genius for religion, but I sometimes think it has been a misfortune that the life of Christ got bound up with the Old Testament. They don't always harmonize."

What disturbed Mr. Carnegie most of all was hinted at in that last sentence. He thought it was a great mistake to teach certain of the narratives of the Old Testament to children for the sake of the ethical lessons. The ethics of parts of the historical books not only did not harmonize with the teachings of the New Testament but they were contrary to them. He used to grow quite indignant on this point and I think the fact that the Sunday Schools were teaching these portions of the Bible somewhat colored his views of the entire Old Testament and perhaps made him unappreciative of its really spiritual revelations. Once he exclaimed to me, as we were discussing this whole question of the worth of the Old Testament (we were walking in Central Park):

"I picked up the Bible just the other day and was reading the

story of the times of Samuel. One king after another comes along

and they are all engaged from year to year in killing -- it is

really slaughter. All sorts of ghastly incidents are related,

and some passages are simply revolting to a mind accustomed to

feel toward humanity as Christ felt, and the thing is that God is

pictured as directing and helping it all. It is God who leads in

the slaughter and He even inspires His children to the most

unmerciful acts. Now, if you want to teach these things to

students in the universities as you familiarize them with the

legends and myths and wars of ancient Rome and Greece, all right,

but do not teach them to boys and girls as heroic deeds, to be

admired and copied, and, for heaven's sake, do not tell them that

the God pictured in some parts of these stories is the God Jesus

Christ shows us in the Sermon on the Mount."

I think I have recorded rather accurately what Mr. Carnegie said, for I was greatly interested in getting his point of view, and he said these things very emphatically. Professor Samuel T. Dutton, who used often to drop into the house at Ninety-first Street Sunday afternoons, for a chat with him, told me that he once said practically these same words to him. When I told Mr. Carnegie that he would find the view which he was expressing even more forcibly put than he was putting it, in the pulpits of many churches, he said:

"I know that; but still they go on teaching it just the same, and

I have heard passages from the Old Testament read in church which

made me blush, so contrary were they to the spirit of

Christianity. I think General Armstrong and David Livingstone

are much better Christians than Joshua or Gideon, and I would

teach their lives in the Sunday Schools. And there ought to be

an edition of the Old Testament prepared for use in church and

home, which would leave out those parts that are not Christian."

As a matter of fact, Mr. Carnegie had a great admiration for those portions of the Bible which deal with pure religion, and was continually quoting it, and had carved upon the walls of his library, over the fireplace, one of its great words: "Let there be light!"

For more than ten years something extraordinary has happened in Santiago Yatiepec, Mexico, a village of 2,000 or so. It once was plagued with a murder rate ten times Mexico's average. The extraordinary event? A feast day without drinking, without fistfights, without guns and machetes.

"People used to fight a lot," said Eufronsina Clemente, offering soft drinks in the courtyard of her brick house. "When they drank mescal, the men would go crazy." It was Yaitepec's women who led the fight to ban mescal, distilled form the fermented heart of the maguey, to ban all alcohol, on the feast day and every day of the year.

About 30,000 Chatino live in southern Oaxaca, spread among some 50 communities. Though Catholics, they have never abandoned their traditional beliefs. But Yaitepec seemed to lose its spiritual bearings in the 1950s. Violence overtook the town as people expanded their subsistence farming to add coffee as a cash crop. As farmers jockeyed for bigger parts of the communal land, alcohol fueled their anger.

(A rigid revenge system heightened the problem: The family of a Chatino murder victim traditionally seeks justice by killing not only the murderer but also an adult male member of the murderer's family. Marina Vasquez told of her husband, Adrian Cruz, shot to death 15 years earlier. "He was drinking with his friends, and they began to discuss things they shouldn't have." Four years later, her 21-year-old son, Eusebio, oldest of 11 children, was shot. "I believe the murderers thought my sons were going to avenge their father's death, but it just wasn't so.")

In 1982 Marian Vasquez, Eufronsina Clemente, and dozens of other angry women resolved to ban alcohol and shut the cantinas. "The mescaleros were even getting the police drunk," said Eufronsina. The largest cantina was owned by the town's presidente. When he refused to close, 200 men and women dragged him from his office and for ten days occupied town hall. The prohibitionists soon rallied virtually the entire town. Now anyone caught drunk or with alcohol faces fines and prison, and other Chatino villages have followed suit.

Against the odds the town became sober and peaceful. The loudest noises are not the clamor of cantina loudspeakers but the taps of hammers building new houses, now that people have a little more money. The former presidente has shut down his liquor business. And Marina Vasquez can rely on her surviving sons to farm the family's plot. "I am happy, because my sons don't drink mescal," she said. "If they go out, it's just for a little while, then they come home to sleep."

There have been no murders linked to alcohol since 1981.

#2877

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Blood-stained pews and flooring, together with the rancid smell of gunpowder and vivid memories of an evening filled with petrifying horror March 10, made the New St. John Baptist Church in Gonzales, Louisiana, an unsuitable place for a memorial service. In fact, church leaders said they will never use their building again.

The pastor and members of neighboring First Baptist Church of Gonzales, a Southern Baptist church a mile away, thus opened their doors and hearts to the National Baptist congregation still in trauma from the carnage that occurred during their Wednesday night Bible study.

A young father, 22, known for his violent anger, had burst into the church near the beginning of the 7 p.m. service. He first shot two bullets straight up, then told everyone to get down as he headed deliberately to the front in search of his estranged wife. He found her on the fourth row.

Within minutes, three people were killed and four others were wounded before the gunman, Shon Miller Sr., was shot and apprehended by police after fleeing the scene and hiding in a shed. He was found holding his gun to his head.

"Daddy!" was the last word 2-year-old Shon Miller Jr. spoke before his father reportedly looked him in the eye and shot him dead as he sat with his mother, Carla Vessel Miller, 24. She too was shot and killed where she sat in the previously peaceful sanctuary in Gonzales, a small town about 60 miles west of New Orleans. Just six months before she had met with her pastor, Clarence Stephens, for counseling at the church with her husband.

Besides killing his wife and son, Miller randomly pointed his 9 mm semi-automatic pistol at others in the church, stopping to reload once. He killed one more and injured four others at the church. Also, before arriving at the church, Miller killed a fourth person, his mother-in-law, Mildred Vessel, 53, execution-style in front of her home while she was sitting in her van.

Vessel had just arrived home after finishing her responsibilities at First Baptist Church, where she had been nursery director for more than 25 years, said FBC pastor Jim Law. Vessel's daughter, who worked with her mother in the nursery, drove directly from First Baptist to New St. John church to attend the Bible study. Miller, who reportedly knew his wife's schedule well, assumed she would go home with her mother before attending church. After shooting his wife's mother, he headed for the church, which is near the house.

The massacre will not soon be forgotten by members of the two churches, Law said, nor by residents of the small town of about 7,000.

"An entire generation of children, including my own three children, was introduced to church life in the loving arms of this dear woman," Law said about Vessel.

More than 1,000 people attended a March 15 memorial service at First Baptist Church, and as many people who could find room to stand attended the dismissal service March 16 before the bodies were buried. No one remembered ever being at such a service with three caskets, holding the bodies of three generations from one family, Law said.

While the event was a monumental tragedy, Law said he saw the memorial service as "a historical event for the community" as "walls have been taken down as we have shared together in this great loss of life. So many people here knew and loved Mildred and Carla."

Many young people came forward to dedicate their lives to Christ during the March 15 service, Law said, noting two gang members laid their jackets on the altar and said, "We don't want this life anymore." A 19-year-old boy was one of the four people killed; he was shot in the head as he sat behind Carla Vessel Miller. Three other teenagers were among the wounded.

"We have a God who is a acquainted with violence. His own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, died a violent death," Law said during the memorial service.

"God is doing a great work in the midst of this tragedy in our community," Law said in a Baptist Press interview March 16.

As of March 16, Miller is being guarded at bedside in New Orleans' Charity Hospital, according to an article in the Times-Picayune daily newspaper. The lower half of his body was paralyzed when a stray bullet struck him during his arrest.

The two men whom Miller had forced at gunpoint to drive him to both his mother-in-law's house and the church were able to get into the church and warn Stephens of what they thought was about to occur. But as Stephens left the sanctuary to call the police, Miller entered the church. Stephens was about to preach on a passage in the third chapter of the Gospel of John, he said in a March 12 Times-Picayune article. "I was going to tell people to be strong in these trying and strange times," he said.

"The safest place in the world I always thought was a church," Gonzales Police Chief Bill Landry said, also in the March 12 issue of the Times-Picayune. "Now that sanctuary has been broken. We'll all be a long time getting over this."

The health of America's families has a direct impact on the level of violent crime. Social scientists, criminologists, and many other observers at long last are coming to recognize the connection between the breakdown of families and various social problems that have plagued American society. It is now a widely accepted premise that children born into single-parent families are much more likely than children born into intact families to fall into poverty and welfare dependency. The link with crime is just as strong.

The government tends to believe crime is caused by material conditions such as poverty. However, after spending $3 trillion since 1965 (welfare has increased 800% over that time in real spending) the number of major felonies per capita today is roughly three times the rate prior to 1960. Senator Phil Gramm rightly observes, "If social spending stopped crime, America would be the safest country in the world." History defies the assumption that deteriorating economic circumstances breed crime and that improving conditions

reduce it. America's crime rate actually rose during the long period of real economic growth in the early 20th century. As the Great Depression set in and incomes dropped, the crime rate also dropped. It rose again between 1965 and 1974 when incomes rose.

Official Washington also believes that race is the second most important cause of crime. The large disparity in crime rates between whites and blacks is often cited as proof. However, a closer look at the data shows that the real variable is not race but family structure. Illegitimacy, not race, is the key factor. It is the absence of marriage and the failure to form and maintain intact families that explains the incidence of crime among whites as well as blacks.

The Life of the Future Violent Criminal.

Stage One: Neglect by parents and abandonment of child in early home life.

Stage Two: The embryonic gang becomes a place for him to belong.

Stage Three: He joins a delinquent gang.

Stage Four: He commits violent crime and the full-fledged criminal gang emerges.

Stage Five: A new child - and a new generation of criminals - is born.

The impact of violent crime.

Violence begets violence. The future violent criminal is likely to have witnessed numerous conflicts between his parents. Fewer than 5 percent of all criminals account for 50 percent of all criminal convictions. Violence is increasing: between 1989 and 1990, the homicide rate in Boston increased by over 40 percent; in Denver by 29%; in Chicago, Dallas, and New Orleans by more than 20%; in Los Angeles by 16%; in New York by 11 percent.

Rebuilding stable families and communities.

Parents should encourage the moral development of their children - moral development that is best accomplished within the context of religious belief and practice.

Four simple principles must be affirmed:

1. Marriage is vital.

2. Parents must love and nurture their children in spiritual as well as physical ways.

3. Children must be taught how to relate to and empathize with others.

4. The backbone of strong neighborhoods and communities is friendship and cooperation among families.

What Christians could learn from Menno Simons and how he rescued the Anabaptist movement.

The story reads a lot like Waco and the Branch Davidians in 1993, only it was the spring of 1534 in the city of Muenster (located in what is today the west-central region of modern Germany). Hundreds of Dutch-speaking Anabaptists -- mainly artisans, peasants, and shopkeepers -- converged on the city. They were united by their common opposition to infant baptism and the sacraments. But they were also driven by a primal fear forged on the anvil of torture and by an eschatalogical conviction that Muenster was to become the New Jerusalem, the site chosen by God for the re-establishment of his kingdom on earth.

In the months that followed, the so-called Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster quickly degenerated into a morass of religious fanaticism and excess. Jan van Leyden -- the David Koresh of the sixteenth century -- appointed himself the king. He instituted a reign of terror that included polygamy (he took for himself no fewer than 12 wives), the elimination of private property, forced baptisms of the city's non-Anabaptist inhabitants, and armed preparations for a glorious final battle in which the elect gathered in Muenster would vanquish the godless.

But in the summer of 1535, the New Jerusalem of Muenster met with a violent demise. Armies of the Catholic Bishop von Waldeck first besieged, then stormed the city, and the sordid affair came to a bloody and violent conclusion.

For most North Americans, Waco-type images are not their first impression of today's Mennonites, the spiritual heirs to the early Anabaptists. Instead, when most of us think of Mennonites, images of their Amish cousins come to mind: a hardworking, honest, and rural people, committed to a quiet sober life of humility, simplicity, service and, above all, to Christian pacifism; they shun politics -- and sometimes each other as a matter of church discipline -- and emerge in the public eye only for massive quilt auctions to support overseas relief work or to clean up after natural disasters.

The contrast between this idealized image of contemporary Mennonites and the Muensterites of the sixteenth century could hardly be more striking. Who intervened to accomplish this amazing turnaround?

The answer is Menno Simons. Out of the ashes of Muenster, a new Anabaptist group emerged, led by Menno Simons (1496-1565), a Catholic priest turned radical reformer. Menno restored stability to a group in which some had broken loose from their theological moorings. His leadership sought to balance the eschatological impulses of a persecuted sect with the model of a disciplined, visible church ruled by the authority of Scripture. To a movement of uneducated artisans, deeply suspicious of trained "school theologians" (Schriftgelehrten), Menno brought a measure of theological sophistication that blended central themes of orthodox Christianity with the distinctive nuances of the radical reformation. Later known as the Mennonites, the group that gathered around his leadership espoused a biblicism shorn of private visions and advocated a sober discipline of its members, which eventually earned them the sobriquet of "the quiet in the land." They explicitly renounced violence and political power. To be sure, well before Menno emerged as a leader, there were other Anabaptist groups who were committed to biblical pacifism.

On the occasion of his five-hundredth birthday, the career and thought of Menno Simons merits renewed consideration. Deeply biblical, thoroughly Christocentric, steeped in the evangelical language of the New Birth and the Great Commission, Menno offers modern evangelicals an inspiring example of leadership that balances zeal and discipline, piety and theological depth, courage and wisdom.

REFORMER ON THE RUN

Menno was born sometime in 1496 in the small Friesen town of Witmarsum in the north of the Netherlands. The son of a farmer, he attended grammar school at a monastery, where he likely learned Latin and gained some acquaintance with the church fathers. At the age of 15, Menno entered a novitiate and five years later became a deacon in the Catholic church.

At the time of his ordination to the priesthood, the Reformation in the Netherlands had found expression primarily in the form of local resistance to the sacraments. Indeed, soon after he began his first assignment as a vicar in his father's native village of Pingjum, Menno himself experienced doubts about the "real presence" of Christ in the sacrament of Communion. Initially, he had ignored these doubts and, by his own account, gave himself over to "playing cards, drinking, and frivolities of all sorts." But in 1531, the martyrdom of Sicke Freeriks Snijder -- "a godfearing, pious hero" in nearby Leeuwarden, beheaded by state authorities for the crime of rebaptism -- prompted Menno to embark on a fresh and systematic reading of the Bible.

"I examined the scriptures diligently," he wrote in his autobiographical Departure from the Papacy, "and pondered them earnestly, but could find no report of infant baptism." Still, he vacillated. Though intrigued by the staunch biblicism of the Anabaptist movement, he nonetheless accepted a promotion as a priest in his home church at Witmarsum in 1531 and continued to carry out the duties of his office for the next three years, all the while struggling with the tension between his understanding of Scripture and received Catholic tradition.

In the end, it was not a new intellectual insight that led Menno to break with the old church, but rather the fanatical excesses of the Anabaptist movement itself. In the spring of 1535, as the horrors of the Muensterite kingdom unfolded, Menno penned his first surviving tract, a polemic against Jan of Leyden, in which he denounced the private visions and impatient violence of the Muensterites and laid the groundwork for a biblical hermeneutic based firmly on the teachings of Christ.

For the next nine months, Menno attempted to preach his new message of evangelical reform from the pulpit of his parish church in Witmarsum. But finally, on January 20, 1536 -- precisely when public sentiment against the Anabaptists had reached a crescendo -- Menno resigned his priestly office, gave up the salary, status, and security of his former identity, and publicly aligned himself with the Anabaptist cause. "Without constraint," he wrote, "I renounced all my worldly reputation, name and fame, my unchristian abominations, my masses, my infant baptism, and my easy life, and I willingly submitted to distress and poverty under the heavy cross of Christ."

Shortly thereafter Obbe Philips, leader of the beleaguered pacifist remnant of Dutch Anabaptism, ordained Menno as an Anabaptist pastor. Immediately Menno set about to rebuild the scattered and dispirited brotherhood. For the next three years, he traveled almost constantly -- preaching, baptizing, instructing new believers in the faith, denouncing the apocalyptic remnants of the Muensterite kingdom -- while simultaneously writing a flurry of apologetic treatises, including The Spiritual Resurrection (1536), Meditation on the Twenty -- Fifth Psalm (1537), The New Birth (1537), Christian Baptism (1539), and his most influential work, Foundation of the Christian Doctrine (1539-40).

By 1542, Dutch authorities in Leeuwarden publicized a reward of 500 guilders for Menno's capture. Remarkably, he eluded arrest for the next two decades. Traveling with his wife, Gertrude, and their three children, Menno lamented in 1544 that he "could not find in all the countries a cabin or hut in which [we] could be put up in safety for a year or even a half a year." Although he successfully eluded arrest, numerous tales circulated of his narrow escapes from the authorities. One oft-repeated, though likely apocryphal, story recounts how Menno was once traveling by stagecoach when a group of armed horsemen, carrying a warrant for Menno's arrest, overtook the carriage. As it happened, Menno was seated outside next to the driver. When the soldiers asked him whether Menno Simons was in the carriage, Menno leaned into the coach and said, "They want to know if a Menno Simons is in there." When the occupants said no, Menno answered his pursuers: "They say he is not in there." The horsemen continued on their way. [see separately at #4003]

Menno preached a gospel of the New Birth, giving prominent attention to distinctive Anabaptist convictions regarding adult baptism, the priesthood of all believers, pacifism, and a rejection of the oath and magisterial offices. During the last period of his life, Menno's writings took on an increasingly polemical character as he defended the Anabaptists from attacks from without (against Reformed theologians such as John a Lasco, Martin Micron, and Adam Pastor) and heresy from within (against fellow Anabaptist David Joris, for example, on the question of prophetic visions). Menno died on January 31, 1561, at the age of 65 in Fresenberg, a haven of refuge in north Germany and site of the press that printed many of his later works.

The followers he left behind -- known as Mennists or Mennonites as early as 1542 -- were not altogether unified. But his legacy as a prolific writer, a theologian, and a polemicist lived on in the broader Anabaptist tradition. A recent bibliography of his published writings runs to 200 entries in Dutch, German, English, and Spanish. On the occasion of his five-hundredth birthday, nearly a million Mennonites, scattered in six continents and over 60 countries around the world, are paying him special honor.

CALLED TO PEACE

Perhaps most radical of all, Menno's writings challenge contemporary evangelicals to rethink the question of Jesus' teachings on peace, and particularly the easy alliance modern Christians have made with the political order.

In our own time, the graphic accounts of bloody massacres and human atrocities committed against each other by the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda have all but disappeared from the headlines these days. Yet, for evangelical Christians, there is an element to the Rwanda story that should haunt our conscience for a long time: 90 percent of Rwanda's people are professed Christians.

To the African church, Rwanda had been a success story. Yet, according to an InterVarsity leader in the region, missionaries preached a gospel about having a right relationship with God but not necessarily right relationships with one other. "This is why we can be 90 percent Christian yet kill in the name of ethnicity," he says.

Preaching a gospel that separates relationship with God from human relations was anathema to Menno Simons. Worse, the haunting specter of Christians killing Christians was completely unthinkable. In his refutation of the violence at Muenster, Menno recognized the profound danger of mixing zealous Christian convictions with the coercive power of the sword.

At the heart of the New Birth, he insisted, was a recognition that God granted us his gift of forgiveness and love while we were still sinners alienated from him -- indeed, while we were yet enemies of God. God's gift of salvation through Christ has world -- transforming power precisely because it offers followers of Jesus a concrete model for love expressed in daily life. Because we have been saved and transformed by grace, we too will embody that same grace -- filled love with all relationships, including -- indeed, especially -- those who might be considered our enemies.

"The Prince of Peace," wrote Menno, "is Jesus Christ. We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be ... a church ... of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace" (Reply to False Accusations).

Living in accordance with this forgiving, gracious peace of God may well entail suffering. In the sixteenth century the cost was social and economic marginalization, torture, and sometimes even death. But such suffering also offers a profound opportunity for witness to the love of God in the midst of a violent, hate-filled culture.

The prospect of suffering rather than retaliating with violence is certainly alien to modern notions of self-esteem; it is also alien to contemporary expressions of North American Christianity, whether on the Right or the Left, that seek to impose their visions of a godly society upon others. Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to the story of the ill-fated Anabaptist kingdom of Muenster.

Christians have always been tempted to take control of history; to seize the levers of temporal power and make history come out "right," to try to align the kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God. To be sure, the temptations of violence today are rarely as blatant or extreme as that of Jan van Leyden -- or even that of Rwanda. But a Christianity that aligns itself with a culture of violence -- from the Left or the Right -- seems to make a mockery of the grace it proclaims as its gift to the nonbelieving world.

Menno would argue that violence of any sort in the name of Christ is blasphemy, which calls for repentance. His writings call upon Christians to resist the seduction of a violent culture (even when that violence is sanctioned by the state). As a whole, evangelicals will probably not be convinced of Menno's arguments for Christian pacifism; but at the very least we should have an uneasy conscience about our too-easy rationalizations.

Regardless of one's understanding of Christian pacifism, in a profound way we are all heirs of Menno. The principles of religious voluntarism and a disestablished church -- principles for which the sixteenth-century Anabaptists paid with their lives -- are now assumed. Even though not a systematic theologian, Menno Simons's vision of reborn Christians living in a disciplined and visible church, and embodying in their daily lives the loving peace of God's grace, still has the power to inspire Christians today. On the five-hundredth anniversary of his birth, evangelicals of all stripes -- including Mennonites -- would do well to blow the dust off Menno's writings and read them afresh.

TIME LINE OF MENNO SIMONS' LIFE

1483 Birth of Martin Luther

1484 Birth of Ulrich Zwingli

1496 Birth of Menno Simons

1509 Birth of John Calvin

1513 Birth of John Knox

1517 Luther's 95 Theses

1521 Diet of Worms (Luther's "Here I stand" speech)

1523-25 Zwingli's reforms in Zurich

1524 *Ordained as priest, assigned to Pingjum parish

1524-25 Peasants' War

1525 Swiss Brethren (Anabaptists) break with Zwingli

1527 Schleitheim Confession (Anabaptist)

1530 Augsburg Confession (Lutheran)

1531 *Called to Witmarsum, his home parish

1531 Zwingli's death in battle

1534-35 "New Jerusalem" established in Muenster

1535 *Menno speaks out against Muensterites

1536 Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (first ed.)

1536 *Left priesthood, joined Anabaptist movement

1536/7? *Marriage to Gertrude

1537? *Ordained as Anabaptist leader

1539 *Christian Baptism

1539-40 *The Foundation of Christian Doctrine

1541 *The True Christian Faith

1542 *Emperor issues edict against Menno

1543 *Left Holland for Germany

1546 Luther's death

1549/1552 Book of Common Prayer (Church of England)

1555 Peace of Augsburg

1561 *Menno's Death

1563 Thirty-Nine Articles (Church of England)

1564 Calvin's death

1566 Second Helvetic Confession (Reformed)

1572 Knox's death

(Menno Simon's life has date followed by a " * ")

John D. Roth is professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College and editor of

the Mennonite Quarterly Review.

Copyright(c) 1996 by Christianity Today, Inc/Christianity Today Magazine.

Oct. 7, 1996, Vol. 40, No. 2, Page 44

ctoc0796sc6TB0446A9i

#4001

[see #4002 for Menno's views on the church and salvation]

*

[...] A startling vision emerges: the divine warrior appears in Servant

flesh. A new meaning of redemptive warfare takes shape, and in Mark's gospel

we see him marching from the hills and seasides of Galilee to his appointed

day of conflict in Jerusalem.

THE CLIMAX: THE VICTIM IS THE VICTOR

[...] The paradox of the divine warrior is that while he fights off every

effort to hijack Israel's destiny -- whether from enemies without or

unfaithfulness within -- he is also bearing the suffering of human history

within himself. The God of battles carries sin and suffering with his own

groans, and finally on the cross draws his sovereign wrath down upon himself.

"Holy war" takes on new meaning in this light. The divine warrior, who

formerly drove the sword of Assyria and Babylon into the heart of Israel and

Judah, is himself pierced by the same sword, now in the hands of Rome.

This cross, staked at the epicenter of a tremor that shakes Jerusalem,

radiates to the ends of the earth. The divine presence that Ezekiel saw

evacuate the temple, borne away on its wheeled chariot, now holds its ground

on Zion, inhabiting the first truly innocent Israelite and Adamic flesh. This

naked and dying form bears the weight of the darkness of this age. His voice

amplifies the lament of the Day of the Lord. When we see the cross we should

hear thunder and the churning of chariot wheels in the air. With the Roman

centurion, whose battle-hardened eyes knew a warrior's death when he saw one,

we too confess that here is the heart of both the judgment and the triumph of

the warrior God. The vengeance of God has marched forth to divine sacrifice;

the love of God has mounted the throne of the cross. The climax of the story

that began with Israel is also the astounding climax of the epic story of

Israel's divine warrior.

THE DENOUEMENT: EXALTED AND RETURNING WARRIOR

When the divine warrior marches, creation withers; when he triumphs, creation

blooms and sings with new life. The Resurrection is the first line of a new

song that will one day enfold the cosmos. When Paul and other New Testament

writers invoke the language of Psalm 110:1 to speak of Christ as "seated at

the right hand of God," with enemies subdued under his feet, the echoes of

victory are all around. The cruel instrument of the Roman war machine -- the

cross -- is transformed into Christ's triumphal vehicle in the procession of

the defeated principalities and powers of this age (Col. 2:14-15). Spiritual

rulers, authorities, and powers are under his feet, both now and in the

future, and the last adversary will be the ancient enemy, death itself

(1 Cor. 15:25-26).

The warrior God, Christ the victor, will return in triumph riding the clouds

of heaven with great power and glory, accompanied by the armies of heaven

(Matt. 24:30-31). Paul speaks of this event in the language of the Old

Testament tradition of the Day of the Lord, spelling wrath and destruction for

the children of darkness and deliverance for the children of light (1 Thess.

5:1-11). In that day the man of lawlessness will be annihilated in a final

herem of the triumphant Lord Jesus (2 Thess. 2:3-12). The sword of divine

justice is in the hands of the one warrior who is qualified to bear it.

But between these two focal points of battle, the cross and the consummation,

the people of God engage in warfare with the powers of this age. Drawing on

the language of Isaiah, who speaks of God putting on armor to work salvation

(Isa. 59:17-18), Paul encourages believers to "put on the whole armor of God"

(Eph. 6:10-17).

Like Israel, the church as the new community of God can be viewed as his holy

army, enabled by his victorious might, and set against an enemy whose power

has been broken. The battle has several dimensions; not least, it is an

intellectual warfare that demolishes arguments and takes every thought

captive for Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5). But what is frequently forgotten is that

the church militant is a church that follows and imitates Jesus. We enter

into the afflictions of the world, mirroring the cosmic reversal ourselves.

Following the victorious Christ, Paul lives the warrior's life under the

emblem of the Cross. And following the example of this heroic apostle, the

soldiers of Christ are counted as "more than conquerors" (Rom. 8:35-37) as

they too experience hardship, persecution, danger, and sword for the sake of

the gospel. In the power of the Spirit, the people of God share in the

tribulation of the creation, boldly anticipating the coming day of redemption

(Rom. 8:18-27).

This is not a warfare of vengeance, of hate speech, or of political force.

(Paul leaves the path of vengeance to the wisdom of God; Rom. 12:19.) It is

a warfare of cruciform love. Persecutors are assaulted with blessing,

bastions of evil overcome with good, and enemies invited to the table for

food and drink (Rom. 12:14-21). Both the random acts of rejection and the

plotted evils of this age are to be met not with vengeance, but with mercy

and love.

A vision of Christian warfare that is truly centered in a theology of the

Cross should never be guilty of triumphalism or cultural arrogance. The

Cross reminds us that we too were enemies whose hostility and offense have

been reconciled through costly battle. As Christians, the Cross continues to

judge our thoughts, actions, and stratagems, probing even our most cherished

ethnic, national, and cultural assumptions, and calling us back to the path

forged by the Captain of our salvation.

"LISTEN.... WAIL.... SEE, THE DAY OF THE LORD COMES, A CRUEL DAY, WITH

WRATH AND FIERCE ANGER." The warrior God shows forth the reality of evil in

the world. Modern sentiments that cringe at this offensive side of God fail

to perceive the startling climax of his wrath in his self-inflicted judgment

on the Cross -- "a cruel day." But there could be no cosmic peace without

cosmic conflict, and no victory without the perfect sacrifice.

The Book of Revelation, the most colorful rebirth of divine warrior imagery

to be found in the New Testament, portrays in bold colors the final warfare

of the Lion who is also the Lamb. True to the plot reversals of the biblical

narrative, it ends with the universal sovereignty of the heavenly king and

retired warrior in his new kingdom, overflowing in shalom.

===============================

-Daniel G. Reid is reference book editor for InterVarsity Press. Tremper

Longman III is professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary. Together

they authored God Is a Warrior (Zondervan).

Copyright(c) 1996 by Christianity Today, Inc/CHRISTIANITY TODAY. October 28,

1996, Vol. 40, No. 12, Page 14; 6TCwh6TC0146A30

[see #4386 for part 1]

#4387

*

Last month, Jesse Jackson made headlines by defending six students who were expelled from a Decatur, Illinois, high school for fighting at a football game. In a spirit of compromise, the school board agreed to send the boys to an "alternative school" for disruptive youth.

Dealing with youth violence is one the hot issues in today's public square. But if we want to change kids' attitudes, we need to do more than send them off into exile.

Interestingly enough, a story about exiled boys may help us understand how to address the root causes of youth violence.

I'm talking about William Golding's brilliant 1954 novel, LORD OF THE FLIES.

The story begins when a planeload of British boys between the ages of six and twelve are marooned on a desert island. At first, they institute a British-style government based on civility and order. But order erodes into savagery when most of the boys secede from the group and commence a wild cycle of hunting, dancing, and feasting. One night, the renegade group murders a boy, and the desert island, which began as a mirror of orderly British society, dissolves into a picture of brutal mayhem.

Golding says the theme of his novel is that the "defects of society" can be traced "to the defects of human nature." At one time, he explains, he held the typical liberal belief "that man was perfectible" - that "all you had to do was to remove certain inequities and provide practical sociological solutions, and man would have a perfect paradise on earth." But World War II shattered Golding's utopianism, and in Lord of the Flies he portrays a more realistic view of human nature-showing that youngsters can be quickly overtaken by the evil within, if adults do not provide moral direction and guidance.

What Golding gives us is a powerful parable of the Christian doctrine of original sin. And today, in places like Decatur or Littleton, we are seeing a Lord of the Flies mentality emerging in all its horror. The Littleton killers were not on a desert island, but they were certainly insulated in a separate culture of violent movies and video games. Their own parents apparently failed to notice that they were building bombs in their bedrooms.

Unfortunately, Americans have created a broad range of institutions that segregate children into a parallel world. Many kids today spend so much time in day care, camps, sports groups, and malls that they bond more closely to their peers than to their parents. The entertainment industry offers teens a parallel culture with their own movies, their own videos, their own music, their own Internet games.

If we hope to prevent kids from falling prey to the chaos depicted in print in Golding's Lord of the Flies -- and at a football stadium in Decatur -- passing new laws or sending troublemakers to different schools is not enough. We have to recommit ourselves to giving children the supervision and moral guidance they so desperately need. This might be a good time for mature adults to reread Golding's classic novel -- and then be sure to give our children the love and discipline that helps keep us all civilized.

___________________________

Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

As is my custom most mornings, I woke up early to walk on the treadmill in hopes of off-setting the extra holiday calories I had consumed while away on vacation. My ten day holiday on the West Coast with my in-laws had been uneventful, peaceful, and very relaxing. I turned on the morning news to discover that Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, had been brutally murdered after a political rally in a small town. Over and over again, the news played footage of Bhutto just minutes before her assassin would fire the bullets that would take her life. Like it or not, my morning routine was upset and unsettled by this horrific news.

But the day was not over. Before my head hit the pillow on Thursday, December 27, 2007, I would also hear of the murder of an entire family -- three generations -- by one of their own not far from where I was vacationing. A daughter accompanied by her boyfriend, feeling cut-off and mistreated by her family, would pay them back for that mistreatment with a death sentence. The family was found dead the day after Christmas. They were most likely murdered on Christmas Eve. Upended, my peaceful and relaxing vacation concluded with the news of violence and unrest after elections in Kenya, my rest and relaxation drowned in a tsunami of violence. Disheartened, I cried to my father-in-law, “I wish people would tire of violence.”

Of course, violence comes as no surprise. Unfortunately, it is as familiar to us and our world as my morning exercise routine. And yet, its occurrence is jarring. Somehow, thankfully, we never get used to it, and its commonplace existence does not dull our senses to it when it happens. The familiar reminder of violence calls us to attention over and over again as a sign and a symbol that something is wrong in this world. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that evil is not just out there, apart from us, but dwells too close within our own hearts. The ancient prophet Jeremiah understood this dark reality when he spoke: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

While I wish Jeremiah’s indictment was for everyone else out there -- the murderous assassin, daughter, or political rivals -- I know too well my own heart’s violence. Just the other day, for example, I became incensed because a car cut me off in traffic. Or, I became infuriated when I was patronized by a colleague. And why would I wish to recount the careless words spoken in anger leveled against my loved ones? Disheartened, I cry to my Father, “Why won’t I tire of violence?”

Jesus, like Jeremiah before him, understood humanity’s violent tendencies. He understood that violence is not something “out there” but something within us. He told his disciples, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts...thefts, murders...deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit...envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23). Jesus didn’t say these words from the cross of violence that took his life, but he very well could have. Indeed, his offering of himself and his death on a cross is the very embodiment of his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount:

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who mistreat you. And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. But love your enemies, and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons and daughters of the Most High; for God is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.(1)

Until I tire of violence, I cannot expect the world to tire of violence. Until I embrace Jesus’s solution to violence, I cannot hope for peace. But since Christ has come near, even the lion and the lamb can hope in transformation.

________

1. Luke 6:27,28,32,33,35,36.

________

Copyright © 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #3510]

Sir Richard Burton, famous explorer of Africa and the Middle East, was made the British consul in Damascus and moved there with his wife Isabel in 1869. They made their home in the Kurdish village of Salahiyyeh and collected a menagerie. Their biographer Edward Rice writes:

The Burtons had stables filled with horses. "I know everything they say, and think, and feel; and they know also what I say to them," said Isabel. Her special forte was rescuing animals and also trying to convert the natives, of whatever religion, to her kind of Roman Catholicism. She had donkeys and a camel, turkeys, bull terriers, pye-dogs (once as many as fifty), lambs, pigeons and goats, a white Persian cat, a pet lamb, chickens, geese, guinea fowl, a panther so tame it would eat from one's hand, and, as Burton remarked, "other notions."

Isabel spent many hours trying to train natural enemies to love each other, but the panther ate the lamb and chased the goats, one of which jumped into the river and drowned; the fowl ate the seeds and flowers in the garden, the cat killed the birds, and the dogs worried the cat, but Isabel noted that the survivors of the menagerie became "a really harmonious family."

In the weeks and months following September 11, not every American supported retaliation against the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. The minority of Americans who have opposed military actions included some radical activists and some people who, while they condemned the attacks, believed violence only begets more violence.

The latter group are pacifists, and I respect their sincerity. Many of them believe they are acting out obedience to the Gospel. The best-known Christian pacifists are Quakers and Anabaptists like the Mennonites and United Brethren, but there are pacifist strains within all Christian traditions.

One pacifist response to September 11 was that of Rev. Joseph Kotva of the First Mennonite Church of Allentown, Pennsylvania. He told the city's newspaper, "We believe all [retaliation] does is escalate the violence. Someone has to have the courage to say that [the violence] stops here."

Rev. Kotva's words illustrate the basic pacifist argument against the use of force. In their worldview, the use of force is antithetical to loving your neighbor as yourself. Love and war are never compatible. And while I respect the conviction of honest pacifists, I believe they're missing an important part of the picture.

A critical principle of just war is "right intentions." Wars that are fought to take what doesn't belong to us or expand our borders or for revenge are unjust wars. But war can be fought with good intentions.

As Darrell Cole, a professor at William & Mary, argued in a recent issue of FIRST THINGS, the failure to fight a just war may be a failure to love. He wrote: "We ... fight just wars because they're acts of charity. [Fighting just wars] ... is something Christians ought to do out of love for God and neighbor ..."

What makes a just war an act of love? It brings justice, restrains evildoers, and promotes the peace and well-being of the community. In the case of the War on Terrorism, our soldiers fight to promote the peace and well-being of the entire world. Ridding the world of terror -- by just means -- is a good and loving act.

This has always been the understanding behind Just War. Thomas Aquinas in the SUMMA THEOLOGICA puts his discussion of just war in his chapter on charity, the love of God and neighbor. Aquinas applauded those who wielded the sword in protection of the community. And, regarding retaliation, Aquinas wrote that "retaliation should be sought out of the love of justice."

John Calvin agreed with Aquinas. He called the soldier an "agent of God's love," and he called soldiering justly a "God-like act." Why? Because "restraining evil out of love for neighbor" is an imitation of God's restraining evil out of love for His creatures.

A world where Christians refused to fight just wars wouldn't be peaceful, and it certainly wouldn't be a more just world. It would be a world where evil would be unchecked by justice and where the strong would be free to prey on the weak.

Fighting just wars when necessary, like the present war on terrorism, takes sin seriously and provides -- strange as it may sound -- a loving response. Remember that when you watch our service men and women on television as they're fighting in Afghanistan in harm's way out of love for neighbor.

For further reading:

"The Theory of Just War -- A Summary," 3 December 2001.

Darrell Cole, "Good Wars," FIRST THINGS, October 2001.

Dana Priest, "In War, Mud Huts and Hard Calls," WASHINGTON POST, 20 February 2002, A1.

"Predator Morality," WALL STREET JOURNAL, 20 February 2002.

Thomas Aquinas, AQUINAS'S SHORTER SUMMA: ST. THOMAS AQUINAS'S OWN CONCISE VERSION OF HIS SUMMA THEOLOGICA (Sophia Inst. PR, 2002).

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

For a year now, the nation has gone through an agonizing soul-searching over Columbine. For some reason, we can't seem to get it out of our minds. But what have we really learned from this tragedy?

Politicians talk about gun control as if it would solve problems like Columbine. But Harris and Klebold planned a cold-blooded murder. Anyone who saw the videos they made before the killings could see that these were angry, murderous kids who would stop at nothing, whether a gun were registered or not.

They were influenced by the darkest aspects of American popular culture -- saturated with the most violent and sadistic images imaginable. Violent lyrics and films filled their minds, and yet the public still continues to patronize the industries that produce it.

Just last weekend the President and Vice President were in Hollywood scooping up millions of dollars in contributions from the very people responsible for spewing this sewage into society. Can't they see the connection? It's time we ostracize those who put this kind of rot into the minds of young people.

But there is good news from Columbine. This tragedy sent a powerful message to the American people -- a wake-up call. Some have called it "the Pearl Harbor of the culture wars." Because suddenly the nation saw two worldviews in stark contrast.

On one side we saw Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, their families and friends, the Christians who rallied behind them, and the incredible church services exalting Jesus. There were groups like Neighbors Who Care, a ministry of Prison Fellowship, that took the lead in the efforts to heal the emotional and spiritual scars.

Neighbors Who Care worked through churches to offer seminars and to minister to victims of crime. Their "Grace for Healing" seminars trained people in how to begin the process of recovery. And the whole community pulled together.

On the other side, we saw the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who said "God is dead." This is the worldview that influenced Harris and Klebold, with their Nazi paraphernalia, their anger and profanity, and their agenda of death and destruction. They had abandoned any view of God or Western civilization, and sold out to a philosophy of evil.

Tragedies like this force people to see what happens when society embraces a secular worldview. It's as if God is saying to us today what he said to the Israelites of old, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life" (Deut. 30:19).

Frankly, I don't think America will ever be the same. Polls show that public attitudes have dramatically changed since Columbine. A vast majority say that we must do more to create respect for traditional values. Youth violence is now the number one issue for many Americans, and people are talking again about restoring our moral values in American society.

We ought to remember Columbine today by renewing our dedication to speak to the secular world, which is hungry and searching for answers. We need to share biblical truth in such a way that they can see what it means to choose, not the way of Harris and Klebold, but the way of Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott. The answer to the modern dilemma of how we should now live is founded on this Christian truth: Choose Life!

___________________

Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

A few years ago, a seven-year-old boy began to play with his three-year-old brother. Imitating a wrestling move he’d seen on television, the seven-year-old slammed his brother to the floor, accidentally killing him.

The three-year-old died because of something his brother had seen on TV. It’s every parent’s nightmare — and yet, every year, it seems, more and more violence is being pumped into our living rooms.

On April 25, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a report on the impact violent television programming has on children. Their research found strong evidence that when kids are exposed to media violence, they become more aggressive — at least in the short term. And as FCC chairman Kevin Martin notes, reputable researchers conclude that exposure to media violence leads to emotional desensitization towards real-life violence — and a higher tendency for violent behavior later in life.

And yet, prime-time TV violence has increased 75 percent in the last nine years. By the time they grow up, children are exposed to thousands of scenes of violence, including hundreds of depictions of torture. It’s relentless bloodbath, 24-7. And this doesn’t even include the video games.

The response by broadcast media and cable companies is to dump the problem into parents’ laps. Get a V-chip, they shrug, or — their old favorite — just turn off the TV.

But the FCC report found that current blocking technologies are insufficient, in part because TV ratings are unreliable. Plus, fewer than half of the TV sets in America are capable of blocking objectionable content.

Broadcasters, cable, and satellite companies could voluntarily choose not to air graphic violence when children are likely to be watching. They could offer a la carte programming choices, which would allow parents to choose family-friendly fare without being forced to buy channels featuring graphic violence.

But if broadcasters, cable, and satellite companies refuse to stop shoving blood, gore, and torture into our children’s faces, Congress must act. It could insist on the return of the prime time “family hour.” And it could require cable and satellite companies to offer programming on a pick-and-choose basis so parents won’t have to worry about channel-surfing kids accidentally seeing graphic violence. Other countries already do this, allowing consumers to protect their kids and save money.

Congress may soon be debating a bill that would take on this problem of TV violence. But what a shame that broadcasters and cable companies don’t care enough about America’s children to do the right thing on their own — now.

We’ve strayed so far from the biblical worldview that a society’s first obligation is to protect our children. We jettisoned this view for radical individualism — a view that says if someone wants something — even television programs that harm children — nobody has the right to stop them, or even restrict the time they can watch it. And if companies want to make money providing it, they say no one should be allowed to restrict them, either. If kids are harmed, if society is harmed — too bad.

We need to call the cable companies and broadcast companies, and our elected representatives, and demand that they address this issue. Children should not have to pay the price — including, tragically, their very lives — so that others can indulge their addiction to violence twenty-four hours a day.

And by the way, if they won’t act, turning off the TV is never bad advice.

________

Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #14123]

Dear Dr. Laura:

One of the most poignant incidents of my life came from teaching fourth grade Sunday School. The fourth grade curriculum covers morality and beliefs relating to appropriate code of conduct and the moral dilemmas that emerge in making decisions. Of course, an integral part of this is learning the Ten Commandments. After we had gone through each of the Commandments over a ten week period, I handed our drawing paper and crayons, asking my students to create a visual picture of one Commandment of their choice. What I wanted to come out of this was discussion concerning why each student drew what they drew and what meaning was depicted. About three quarters of the class created some kind of violent picture -- guns, knives, people being strangled. “Ah ha.” I though, “We’ll have a discussion on why it is so easy to draw violence; we’ll talk about the exposure to violence and what our responsibilities are toward ensuring a less violent community.

So, I gathered my group in a circle and went around, asking each in turn about why so many drew the violent pictures and what the significance was. About half way around the circle, one of students me with the wisdom of her reply She said, “Maybe the reason everyone drew pictures of people dying by someone else’s hand is because it is the only Commandment where you can say you are sorry, but can’t take it back, no matter what.” You can dishonor your parents and apologize, feel remorse for lying, covet another person’s property and have regrets. Although these things do damage to others and hurt us spiritually, none have indelible impact of taking another’s life

A huge amount of attention has been showered on atheist author Richard Dawkins’ best-selling book “The God Delusion.” But when movie- and TV-star (and economist) Ben Stein suggests to Dawkins that he’s been critical of the Old Testament God, Dawkins protests — not that Stein is wrong, but that he’s being too mild. He then reads from this jaw-dropping paragraph of his book:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant

character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty,

unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty

ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist,

infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,

sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Dawkins has a website. Its slogan is “A clear-thinking oasis.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #6262]

Condemned murderer John Taylor, 38, was convicted of killing five New York City Wendy's employees in a 2000 robbery. In January 2003 prosecutors revealed Taylor penned these rap lyrics during his two days on the lam before his arrest. (Taylor's spelling):

so now you know how I go

They got my face on the worlds most wanted show

on chanel five showing live

you'll think I'm famous

I'm airing world wide

I'm a stick up kid so swift you see

in and out like 1 2 3

I said give me the doe you say no, no?

Is it no you said stick some lead to your head

guess what punk now your dead

with all that blood bursting out your Head.

Taylor now says he's sorry for the killings.

______________

New York Daily News, 1/9/03

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #3267]

"We learned in our class that if you believe in peace, you can stay alive," said the eleven-year-old boy. "We learned that you should always find a peaceful way to solve your problems because you should never be violent."

Ironically, the boy lives a stone's throw from the Pentagon, where more than a hundred people, peacefully going about their business, were murdered by terrorists.

I wish peace-loving people could always "stay alive," but they don't. So why do teachers persist in telling kids otherwise?

In his new book, WHY WE FIGHT: MORAL CLARITY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM, my friend, Bill Bennett, writes that teachers like these are seeking to "prevent another generation of young people from learning the proper uses of righteous anger."

The very idea that rage can be righteous has become a foreign concept. And Bennett wants to know why, in the wake of September 11, the country's elites "seem to back away from any hint of righteous anger as if it were some kind of poisonous snake? Why wasn't anger itself considered a moral response to the unprovoked attack on September 11?"

In part, he says, it's because the denigration of righteous wrath is linked to darker goals. By casting a shadow of moral doubt over justified anger secular liberals in the press and academia are "sowing and reinforcing doubt" about America's purposes.

These elites embrace an ideology, rooted in the Vietnam era, that sees America as an imperialistic power intent on imposing its will on others. Moreover, not believing in the Fall, they see all wars as the result of misunderstandings. They believe all violence is wrong and that wars never solve anything. To their way of thinking, America's motives cannot be trusted; our "jingoistic aggression", Bennett writes, can "only be checked by a countercommitment to nonviolence." Instead of getting angry with terrorists or waging another "imperialistic" war, we should blame ourselves -- figure out what we did to make them so mad.

This absurd, anti-American view has so permeated our culture that many citizens hesitated to express anger over the terror attacks.

But the morality of righteous wrath has been accepted throughout history as necessary for justice. "As the ancients recognized," Bennett notes, "anger is a necessary power of the soul, intimately connected with the passion for justice." The demand that we stifle our rage and negotiate with fanatics bent on wiping us out is thus immoral because it's a denial of justice.

And so teaching kids that all violence is wrong is morally bankrupt. "If no distinction is made among kinds of 'peace,'" Bennett warns, "children are deprived of the tools they require to distinguish a just from an unjust peace ([for example,] peace with honor from the peace of the grave.) They are robbed of the oldest and most necessary wisdom of the race, which is that some things are worth fighting and dying for."

We need to teach our kids why social liberals -- including, sometimes, their teachers -- claim that all violence and anger are wrong: It's an expression of hostility toward America itself and an inadequate understanding of sin and the need for justice. And we must make sure that they know why -- in the face of great evil -- getting angry isn't wrong. It's the necessary prologue to justice.

For further reading:

William Bennett, WHY WE FIGHT: MORAL CLARITY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM (Doubleday, 2002).

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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A Presbyterian pastor's answers to issues brought up by the September 11 terrorist attack.

1. HOW CAN YOU TRUST GOD AFTER THIS KIND OF AN EVENT?

The Christian answer to issues of suffering and tragedy always has to do with the Cross. Imagine you are an admirer and companion of Jesus Christ during his ministry. He is such a powerful worker of miracles that disease and hunger are almost banished from the countryside when he is present. He is such a powerful teacher and spiritual guide that thousands of people hear him gladly and get hope. Then suddenly this man who is the one to help the whole country is cruelly, unjustly cut off in the very midst of his life -- at only age 33.

What if you stood at the foot of the cross in front of this apparently senseless act of violence and tragic waste of life, and you said, "I can never, ever trust God again after an event like this!" And what if you went home and completely renounced all belief in God saying, "This proves that God is either a monster or indifferent or he doesn't exist"? If you did that, you would have been missing the greatest act of God's love and redemption in history. But of course no one at that time (and only a few for a good while afterwards) could fathom what had happened.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is the main reason I can trust God after this kind of event. First, the Cross is the best proof that God is not remote from us in our suffering. (See question #3 and #5 below.) Second, the Cross and its aftermath shows us how dangerous it is to judge God on surface appearances. His way is to work strength through weakness and bring resurrection and new power through death.

2. IS THIS A JUDGMENT FROM GOD ON OUR COUNTRY?

I don't think we can infer from prosperity that God is pleased with us, nor can we know from disaster that he is displeased with us. In Romans 1:18ff Paul hints that the worst punishment may be to get the happy life you want! That way you never wake up to your pride, self-righteousness or need for him. On the other hand, Luke 21:16-19 is a remarkable assertion that God's loving protection of his people does not mean exemption for suffering. Jesus says, "They will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish." This is startling to us. We would think that 'not a hair of your head will perish' must mean that we can't be attacked and killed, but that is not so. Jesus is saying that God exercises the most detailed and loving control of our lives ("not a hair"), and that in the broad scope of things every event works out for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28). But our life-plan may still include terrible tragedy, just as did Jesus' life plan. (Why should servants be above their master?) What do we learn from all this?

We learn that we cannot be sure that disasters imply divine judgment nor that prosperity implies divine approval. So how can we know whether God is displeased with America or not? The only way to know that for sure is to consult the Scriptures and its standards.

But this does not mean we cannot 'hear God's voice' in a time of tragedy. We can. Jesus was also asked whether certain corporate and personal tragedies were "judgments" of God. In Luke 13 he was asked if a massacre and (ironically) a falling tower were signs of God's judgment on those killed. His answer was an unequivocal "no", but he added cryptically "you yourselves should repent". That fits with C.S. Lewis' famous statement that "in prosperity God whispers to us, but in adversity he shouts at us." God speaks to us in all troubles. So what is God saying in times of tragedy and suffering? I think the message is different depending on how touched you are by the disaster.

If you have actually lost a loved one, I think you are being called to look to the only God (so to speak) of all the faiths of the world who literally lost a child. Jesus was himself the victim of a hostile, physical attack. I don't think you will really be able to handle the brutality of life either with a) a general God who has not suffered, or with b) a universe without any God in it at all. Both of those options bring no consolation. If there is no God, then even your outrage is trivialized. This is just the way life is. There is no justice. On the other hand, if there is a general God up in the sky, how do we know he cares? But the God and Father of Jesus Christ gives us a new resource that comforts deeply. He proved his commitment to ending our suffering by getting involved in it himself.

If you have not directly lost a loved one, but rather find yourself dazed, shaken, and fearful, God is saying to you: "Wake up to your need for me and wake up to what real security is. No military power or technology or human factor can make you safe. Only in the very center of my will is there any safety. You don't have the human ability to control things. You need me." C.S. Lewis pointed out that times of war or disaster don't really increase the amount of misery and death in the world, but they concentrate it and wake us from our illusion that life is manageable. "If we had foolish hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon. In ordinary times only the wise realize it. Now (in war-time) the stupidest of us knows it." (C.S.Lewis, "Learning in War-Time")

3. HOW DOES VENGEANCE NOT MANIFEST ITSELF IN THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY?

In most people's minds there is a false "either-or" between vengeance and forgiveness. But that is a mistake. Forgiveness is not simply resignation or capitulation to evil.

In vengeance we simply pommel the enemy to hurt them worse than we were hurt. Our motivation is neither the common good nor the upholding of justice and truth per se. We simply want to assuage our own pain by seeing our enemy in worse pain than we were. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not 'letting him off scot free'. Forgiveness is a means of giving up the hate and the desire for personal vengeance so that we can then pursue justice and maybe even reconciliation. I have personally found that I can't really confront a wrong-doer effectively about his or her sin until I've forgiven it. Then I am sometimes able to help the person see their wrong, or at least I am able to wisely pursue justice and restitution. But if I keep my heart full of hate, I never get anything done except fuel the cycle of retaliation. When I aim not to bring a person to see the truth, but rather only to hurt them, I never get anywhere. In other words, forgiveness does not 'let a person off' -- rather it frees my heart to pursue justice and/or reconciliation, depending on the reaction of the wrongdoer.

At the very least, forgiveness prevents me from becoming as evil as the other party. The basic plot-dynamic of The Lord of the Rings revolves around the conundrum of the Great Ring of the Dark Lord. The 'good' people have found his ring, but they can't use his own power against him without becoming just like the one who made it. They can, as it were, defeat the Dark Lord, but only by becoming an evil Dark Lord in his place. Unless we forgive our enemies, our anger could turn us as demonic as it has turned them.

Now that we know what forgiveness is, how can we do it? I don't know how to do that without embracing the message of the cross. The Cross means at least that a) God so hates evil and injustice that he is willing to come suffer himself in order to end it, but b) we are so tainted by evil as well that Jesus had to die so that we could be forgiven. Both of these truths are absolutely essential for forgiveness. Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf puts it perfectly:

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of [the Cross] for long without overcoming this double exclusion....When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is freed to rediscover the torturer's humanity and imitate God's love for that person. And when one knows that the love of God is greater than [my] sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of the justice of God and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. (Volf, The Spacious Heart, p.57)

4. HOW DO BOTH NATION AND INDIVIDUAL COPE WITH GRIEF?

It is interesting to see that the basic process of grief works itself out at both the individual and the corporate level. First comes numbness, shock, and an air of unreality. In the first stage it is necessary to simply express emotions together. We hold hands, cry together, and embrace. It is not a time for moralizing and instructing and looking for lessons. It is a time to "weep with those who weep" (Rom.12:15).

But second comes a stage of anger and/or creeping despair. In this stage there is a persistent need to 'make sense out of all this'. People have to find a way to think about the tragedy so that it does not make the rest of their lives meaningless. Ironically, there seems to be no way for people to deal with grief at this level without having recourse to the basic gospel dynamic of death-leading-to-resurrection. This is the basic approach that the mayor and governor have invoked and used. They say: "Out of the loss of good things will come even greater good things. We will come together as a community as never before. We will be brave as we have not been before. We will find victory through this defeat and strength through our weakness. This 'death' will lead to a resurrected city better than the one before."

I personally believe that this is the right way for NYC to deal with its grief. It must reflect the gospel dynamic of death-into-resurrection at a civic level. Through this New York could become less a place of individualistic achievement and more of a community. Through this Americans could become on the one hand humbler and more sensitive to the injustice and pain in the world and yet more committed to and (rightly) proud of our nation than ever before. In summary, we could become stronger through this weakness, not just in spite of it. That is the basic gospel dynamic.

However, the very deepest and best way to handle grief is to believe and use the gospel itself on the heart. Unlike any other religion, Christianity has at its very heart an act of tragic and unjust suffering and death. It has at its heart a man literally abandoned by God, crying out and unheard, yet this is the way God brings his salvation and hope into the world! How does this help us?

First, when we trust in his death on our behalf, it takes away fear for ourselves. We know that now even death can't harm us. "Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener." George Herbert) This frees us to love and sacrifice for others in such a way that makes the broken world more livable. We don't need to amass power and wealth in order to prove ourselves. Second, when we see how the very best man who ever lived had to suffer, it undermines our own self-pity or bitterness. If God could bring life and good out of the tragedy of the cross, then he can work through other suffering as well. Third, the cross gives us hope for the whole future. The Cross means that God is so committed to ending the suffering and brokenness of the world that he would himself become embroiled in it and pay the ultimate cost! And if we ask: "Why isn't the suffering over yet?" the answer is: "We don't know, but here's the proof that he's committed to it! The cross!" Only Christianity has a God who has suffered, proving his commitment to us in our brokenness. "To our wounds only thy wounds can speak, and no God has wounds but thou alone." (Edward Shillito)

If I have hope like that -- not just for a slightly stronger city, but for a literal new creation -- then I can face anything. In "The Lord of the Rings," one character is facing terrible evil, and suddenly he looks at a star in the sky. "Like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now for a moment his own fate ... ceased to trouble him ... putting away all fear..." Hope is not the same as defiance. Many people will turn to defiance to deal with their grief and pain rather than to hope. Hope comes from a certainty that there is a Judge and a Redeemer. The Cross proves that God is both.

5. SHOULD AMERICA RETALIATE?

Under question #4 we looked at the problem with simple cries for vengeance. But what should America do now? This question moves outside of my area of competence and wisdom. But here are a few observations that should be kept in mind as we move forward.

This is 'post-modern' war, and it is different than anything we have seen before. a) First, there are no rules. (We can kill civilians, children, whatever.) b) Second, it is not nation-on-nation. It is an international network of world terrorism attacking the multi-national corporations of world capitalism. c) Third, it is 'semiotic', aimed not at factories and air bases but at our icons and symbols in order psychologically debilitate and demoralize. d) Fourth, it is deliberately and bitterly ironic. It uses no bombs or guns, but our own technology against us. It is the very picture of Neitzschean ressentiment.

This is a new chapter in history. A knee-jerk 'warfare as usual' reaction will not likely be effective. Instead, I think that what is called for is a deeper change in the way America thinks about itself and the relationship to the rest of the world. When commentators say that the frivolous, me-centered decade of the 90's is officially over, that rings true to me. But I am not able to see what lies ahead. That's beyond my expertise.

6. WHAT ARE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE TO DO?

In The City of God St.Augustine contrasts the "City of Man" (which is the nexus of human systems based on power and pride) and the "City of God" (which is God's Spirit working through the message of the Cross to create new human communities based on love, service, and giving.) Augustine tells Christians to love the human city in which they live but to remember how it is distinct from the coming City. The City of God does not respond to an 'attack' with the firepower of guns but with greater and more sacrificial service in word and deed. And this is the way it 'wins' over the world. The hymn goes: For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heav'nly kingdom comes. Christianity is unique because its central reality is that real influence comes not to those who take but those who give, not to those who rule but those who serve, not to those who accrue power but to those who sacrifice.

This is a tremendous moment for the "City of God" to show Jesus' love in more powerful ways. We should be available to our neighbors and friends spiritually to listen and pray with and for them, not to preach at them. We should also be available to our whole city to meet material needs. Christians should not sit back and wait for the phone to ring -- we should pro-actively fan out through the city and look for ways to help. After all, nobody asked Jesus to give himself for us. He came to us and gave us what we needed.

7. DOESN'T THIS JUST SHOW HOW DANGEROUS IT IS TO BELIEVE TOO STRONGLY THAT YOUR RELIGION IS 'RIGHT'?

It has been widely stated that the terrorist attacks show us that religion is only good for us in moderate amounts. The argument goes something like this: 'This proves that religious fundamentalists of all sorts are a great danger. They believe that God is on their side, and that they therefore have the right to conquer or kill others who don't believe." One writer even said, "It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation" because "in a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there is no room for dissent and no room for theological doubt." (Andrew Sullivan, "This is a Religious War", New York Time Magazine, October 7, 2001) So the question is -- does 'religious fundamentalism' inevitably lead to oppression and even violence?

The right answer is -- it all depends on what your 'Fundamental' is. Let me give you two examples. First there is the Khymer Rouge, a Marxist movement that did not believe in God or any transcendent moral absolutes of any sort. Yet it was one of the most genocidal regimes in history. The second example is the Amish, who are an extremely conservative religious sect. They even refuse to wear modern western dress. They are by modern standards very patriarchal. They believe the Bible very literally and believe it is the absolute truth. If the Amish are such absolutists in their beliefs, why aren't we afraid of Amish terrorists?

The answer has to do with what the Amish "Fundamental" is. It is the same fundamental that all Christians share. Only Christianity (of the major religions) tells us that God came to earth and that when he did, he came not with a sword in his hand but with nails in his hands. He came not to accrue power, not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). And not only that, Jesus Christ did not pay the price of sin and die just for "good" people who were wisely following him, but also for people who were rejecting him and abandoning him. If that is the fundamental at the heart of your faith, at the heart of your self-identity, and at the heart of your relationship with God -- then it will make you (like Jesus) want to 'win' people to God by serving them, not conquering them. "For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heavn'ly kingdom comes." (Ernest W. Shurtleff, "Lead On O King Eternal", 1888).If you believe very strongly in the absolute truth of the gospel of the cross and grace of God, it will only serve to drain you of superiority and self-righteousness.

8. DOESN'T THIS SHOW HOW DANGEROUS IT IS TO THINK YOU HAVE 'THE TRUTH'? WE CAN'T HAVE A FREE SOCIETY UNLESS WE ALL AGREE THAT NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH.

In the aftermath of September 11 many have written along the following lines: "The whole problem comes from the violence that accompanies a belief that you have the truth. The best way to have a free society is to insist that there is no (or that no one knows) 'absolute truth'."

This position is very shortsighted. First, it is intellectually contradictory. "There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but ... it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others]... We have to ask: 'What is the vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims which these different scriptures and religions make?'" (Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society) To say "I don't know which religion is true" is a statement of humility. But if you say, "No one can know which religion has the truth" you are making a very dogmatic assertion which assumes the very superior 'religious knowledge' and certainty you just insisted that no one else had. For example, if you say to religious persons, "you must not insist that others modify their beliefs to bring them more into line with yours", you are asking them to modify their beliefs to bring them more into line with yours. You are doing the very thing you are forbidding. The contradiction is blatant.

Secondly, this approach does not really lead to as much tolerance within society as it often claims. "Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to the religious that they alone, unlike everybody else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind that part of themselves that they may consider most vital." (Stephen L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed)

Our core 'identities' are always moral and quasi-religious. Consider people with a passion for the poor arising out of Marxist convictions. They are basing their lives not on the findings of empirical science, but on a view of human nature and history that they accept through faith. Why then should people with formally religious commitments (like Christianity or Islam) not be allowed to bring their beliefs to bear on public issues?

But thirdly, this approach reduces every conflict to a simple naked struggle for power. Stanley Fish wrote: "There can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations is the true one" and so we should not justify our response to the attacks "invoking the abstract notions of truth and justice" but "instead we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend." ("Condemnation without Absolutes", New York Times, October 15, 2001) What is he saying? He is saying that we should fight not because we are right but because it is advantageous to us to win. Ironically, he is adopting the offensive old Vietnam War slogan "My country -- right or wrong!" That slogan was repugnant because it meant, "I will defend America whether it is crushing and oppressing the poor or not. It doesn't matter whether we are right or wrong. We fight simply to keep power and defend our interests." That is exactly what this erudite and intelligent man is saying.

If there is no way to know the truth or who is right, then there is never such a thing as an unjust or wrong military action. But we all know in our hearts that napalming babies (in Vietnam) is wrong, and that crushing thousands of unarmed unwitting people (in the World Trade Center) is wrong. It is not impractical or uncongenial to our economic and political interests. It is wrong. So if you have a premise ("no one knows the truth") that leads you to a premise which you know isn't true, ("there is no way to tell that the WTC attack was wrong") then why not change the premise?

9. ALL THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME BELIEVE MORE IN GOD, BUT LESS. ISN'T ALL THIS UNJUST SUFFERING EVIDENCE AGAINST THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

The president of American Atheist, the country's oldest organization for nonbelievers in God, said to reporters, "If that [September 11] wasn't a wake up call to a religious nation, I don't know what is. That said to me, 'There is no God.' Where was he, on a coffee break?" ("Atheists Decry Post-Attack Focus on God", Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2001) There are two ways to answer this.

The skeptic says: "If there is a God, he would have stopped such an evil thing from happening." But how does the skeptic know that this event was evil? All of evolution is based on the survival of the fittest. Violence of the stronger and more adaptive organisms over the weaker and less adaptive is utterly natural in this world. Why is it wrong, then, when humans do what the rest of nature is doing? How could you know if our part of the natural world was unnatural or bad? "If God does not exist...there is no longer any possibility of an a priori good existing. It is nowhere written that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now on the plane where there are only human beings. Doestoevksy once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted' ... If God does not exist, we have neither behind us nor before us a luminous realm of values, nor any means of justification of any behavior whatever. (Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism and Humanism") So evil and suffering are major problems for people who believe in God, but they are actually even bigger problems for people who don't believe in God. If there is no God, what is your basis for being outraged at violence and oppression? How can you insist that something utterly natural to this world is somehow unnatural? And if you are sure that the World Trade Center is an evil, doesn't that comprise some evidence for the existence of God?

But there is a second way to respond to the question: "why would a good and powerful God allow evil and suffering?" There is a hidden train of logic deep in this protest. I think it goes like this:

"1. God would have to have a good reason for allowing evil and suffering to keep going on.

2. I can't think or perceive of any good reason.

3. Therefore, there cannot be any."

Of course, when you lay it out like that you can see how fallacious this reasoning is. If you have a God infinite and great enough to be mad at for not preventing evil and suffering, you have to (at the same time) have a God infinite and great enough to have reasons for allowing evil and suffering that we can't discern. (You can't have it both ways).

But how can we know if he has a good reason? [Christ] the god-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity ostensibly abandoned its traditional privilege, lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death. Thus is explained the 'Lama sabachthani' and the frightful doubt of Christ in agony -- (Albert Camus, Essais)

Camus is saying that though we cannot discern the reasons that God might have for allowing evil, we have a remarkable assurance that he does have them. He himself has suffered infinitely with us, for us, on the cross. Surely this proves he is not indifferent to our suffering.

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Jackson Carr, of Lewisville, Texas, was an outgoing, fun-loving first grader with a passion for Hot Wheel cars and riding his bike. Two thousand miles away, in Bellingham, Washington, Michael Busby, age eight, had the same kind of winning personality.

Mikey, as everybody called him, also loved to bike all around his neighborhood. Everywhere he went, he wore an infectious grin and counted everybody a friend.

Today both boys are dead -- viciously murdered in the same week. Police say that Jackson Carr's fifteen-year-old sister stabbed him in the neck while their ten-year-old brother held him down. The sister led authorities to Jackson's muddy grave.

Michael Busby's mutilated body was found in an isolated field near his home. He had been bound with duct tape, strangled, beaten, and slashed repeatedly with a razor blade. But the killer, still not satisfied with torture, finally killed Mikey with a massive injection of insulin.

Police soon arrested a sixteen-year-old neighborhood boy, who confessed, saying that Michael had been "bugging him."

Stunned, grief-stricken residents of Lewisville and Bellingham are asking, How could this happen? How can our decent kids commit these unbelievably heinous crimes?

The problem is that when people encounter this kind of violence, they look in all the wrong places for answers to those questions. One Bellingham minister, for example, accused "the system." "Isn't it clear," he asked, "that [the alleged killer] ... wasn't receiving enough support?" This minister is an example of someone who's lost all sense of an individual's responsibility for his own behavior.

But the minister is not alone. Many continue to insist that violence is caused by some social or economic factors. They believe human nature is innately good. The eighteenth-century French philosopher Condorcet wrote glowingly of "the indefinite perfectibility of the human race." And Karl Marx believed man would create a perfect society once the evil capitalists were destroyed. But crime begins -- and it ends -- in the human heart.

This is a place where the secular worldview and the biblical worldview come into sharp conflict. Biblical worldview includes original sin, the Fall, and human depravity. The human heart is desperately wicked, the Scripture tells us. So when we see kids killing kids, we have to point out the gruesome truth: Sin is in us. Because if a society fails to understand this, it simply perpetuates the horrors.

I think often of theologian R. C. Sproul's statement when he looked around a table of middle-class Christians, "You all are more like Adolf Hitler than you are like Jesus Christ." They were shocked, but of course the statement is true.

Kids killing kids is an indescribable horror, but it's not new. It's simply another consequence of human depravity. When we fail to see this, we find ourselves in an impossible situation: We keep trying to solve the world's problems looking in all the wrong places, instead of looking straight into the human heart. Only a Christian worldview realistically understands human sin and realistically understands that in the Gospel there is an answer: redemption.

For further reading:

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, THE PROBLEM OF EVIL (Tyndale, 1999).

R. C. Sproul, ESSENTIAL TRUTHS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (Tyndale, 1998).

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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