Loving
the Terrorists
By
David Diggs
I
consider myself a Christian, at least some of the time.
Other times, if I’m honest with myself, I’m not
much of a Christian at all. Following Christ just seems
too hard. What happened on September 11 has made it feel
almost impossible to follow Jesus.
I remember feeling this way back in 1988 when I went to
live in Haiti. Before going to Haiti, I had read Jesus’
words in his sermon on the mount, “Give when you are
asked to give; and do not turn your back on one who wants
to borrow.” (Matthew 5:42)
Obeying
these words cost me little before moving to Haiti. I lived
a comfortable middle-class existence surrounded by others
who were equally comfortable. Maybe a friend would ask to
borrow my car or a neighbor would ask me to water her plants.
Obeying Jesus’ words in these circumstances was a breeze.
The
instant I arrived in Haiti these words suddenly took on
great weight. All around me were people with urgent needs.
My white skin marked me; my neighbors and the people I passed
on the street knew that I had more money and power than
they. So they came and asked for help—a few cents to
help them feed their family that day, a few dollars to help
them buy medicine for someone ill, a little money to help
them buy schoolbooks or pay tuition for a child.
If
there had only been three or four people coming to me, it
wouldn’t have been so hard. But there were dozens.
And the more I gave, the more people came to me with their
needs. I was receiving $300 a month to cover all my living
expenses. This seemed like a modest stipend to me. But it
made me one of the wealthiest people in my new community.
How
could I obey Jesus and not respond to their needs? But how
could I give to everyone who asked? If I really shared freely
I might end up broke before the end of the month. Then what
would I do?
Deep
down I knew the answer to that question, and it frightened
me. I knew that if I shared as freely as Christ had commanded,
I’d be forced, like my neighbors, to put all my trust
in God’s provision and the graciousness of others who
happened to have something to share to get me through that
day.
Some
days I was able to trust God’s promises to provide
all I needed. On those days my heart was soft, and I opened
myself up to sharing with those in need around me, not just
sharing money but also my time and concern. I felt free
and light and full of joy. On other days I felt overwhelmed,
and I hardened my heart and closed my eyes to my neighbors’
needs. On those days anxiety stole my joy, and God seemed
far off.
Three years ago I left Haiti, and now I live in Washington,
DC with my wife and baby daughter. I live again in a place
where I can easily forget about the needs of the world.
These words of Jesus don’t seem so heavy now, and following
Christ doesn’t seem so demanding.
That
was until September 11.
Before
going to Haiti I was insulated from the reality of our world’s
economic injustice. I knew that thousands around the world
were dying of hunger each day, but I had never come face-to-face
with their hunger. In the same way, until September 11,
I was largely insulated from the extreme hatred some in
our world hold for my country and people.
Now
I go back to Jesus’ words in his sermon on the mount
and see again his command to give to whoever asks. I now
notice that this hard little passage is surrounded by words
I had easily passed over before. Until September 11, these
words of Jesus had seemed almost irrelevant.
You
have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth
for tooth.” But I tell you, do not resist an evil
person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn
to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you
and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two
miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away
from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard
that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you, that you may be children
of your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:38-45)
Can
we read these words now the same way we read them before
September 11? I can’t. I see the footage of people
jumping from the World Trade Center and then the whole flaming
pyre collapsing, burying thousands. I hear the desperation
in the voices of those who have lost loved ones, people
in my own church and community. The senseless loss. The
fear and humiliation. The pain and unspeakable grief. It
is too much. Can Jesus really be speaking to us? Can he
expect his followers to love and forgive the likes of those
who did this to us? What he asks is impossible.
But
then I think about many of the early followers of Jesus
who somehow found it possible to love and forgive their
enemies even while they or their loved ones were being fed
to the lions. I read of Stephen, whose lasts words while
being stoned to death by religious zealots were, “Lord,
do not hold this crime against them.” (Acts 7:60)
Among
those at Stephen’s stoning was a young religious extremist
named Saul. An extraordinary thing happened to Saul. One
day while in fanatical pursuit of heretics, he had a blinding
encounter with the resurrected Jesus. The experience turned
his world upside down. Saul became the Apostle Paul and
one of history’s greatest advocates of Jesus. As miraculous
as the conversion of this terrorist was, it was even more
remarkable that the people he had ruthlessly terrorized
forgave him and took him in as one of their own.
With
Saul’s conversion, this hunter became the prey. Like
those he had once terrorized, he became a victim, paying
for his devotion to Christ with regular imprisonments and
torture. Like Stephen, he died a martyr. But before his
death he wrote these words from prison to encourage fellow
Christians who were facing stiff persecution in Rome:
Bless
those who persecute you; bless and do not curse…
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what
is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible,
as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s
wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge;
I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If
your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give
him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning
coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:15-19)
Paul’s
words were not ignored. Read the lives of the Christian
martyrs, and you will see a love that seems as fanatical
and extreme as the hatred we witnessed on September 11.
Where
in their hearts did these followers of Jesus find this love
for those who hunted them down so ruthlessly? I can only
understand their love as an outpouring of the love they
found in Christ. At the heart of their faith was the assurance
that Christ loved humanity so much that to make peace with
us he submitted to the cruelest torture and humiliation
we could design. By loving their enemies and returning good
for evil, they were serving as vessels of this same radical,
redeeming love they saw displayed on the cross of Christ.
How
tragic that within a few hundred years the cross became
for the world not the symbol of the infinite love of God,
but the standard raised before crusaders who marched and
murdered to rid the world of the “infidel” Muslims
and Jews who “polluted” the Holy Land. Even today,
for millions of Muslims and Jews, the cross says nothing
of love. Instead it is a symbol of bigoted hatred and aggression,
like the burning crosses of the KKK.
Many
today are quick to point out that this “jihad”
that the terrorists have declared has nothing to do with
the true teachings of Islam, that Islam is peace-loving.
I’m grateful for this reminder. I just hope someone
is telling Muslims around the world that the bombs the U.S.
has dropped and may continue to drop on their brothers and
sisters have nothing to do with the true teachings of Christ.
Maybe
our nation will find another way to respond to this dastardly
aggression we’ve suffered. President Bush talks of
this being a different kind of war. Maybe the bombers he
is sending to Afghanistan are loaded with bread and not
bombs. Such a thing was suggested as a serious strategy
by none other than a British Major General named David Egerton.
This man, who is not known for his pacifist tendencies,
suggested in the Daily Telegraph that the smartest response
the U.S. could make to the attacks would be to carpet-bomb
Afghanistan with food parcels. “This would show the
desire to return good for evil.”
Like
many others, this military man fears that a military response
is exactly what our enemies are hoping for, knowing that
it will further inflame passions in the region, help them
topple pro-Western regimes, and provide them with a whole
new wave of suicidal terrorists. Bombing our enemies might
satisfy our thirst for vengeance. But killing people who
have already shown an unflinching willingness to die for
their cause will only make more martyrs and give a whole
new generation more to fight and die for.
Martin
Luther King could have been speaking to us today when he
warned that, “If you succumb to the temptation of using
violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the
recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and
your chief legacy will be an endless reign of meaningless
chaos.”
As
Judy Keane, whose husband, Richard, was killed in the attack,
said, “The World Trade Center [attack] was in retaliation
for something else, and that was the retaliation for something
else. Are we going to continue this in perpetuity? We have
to say at some point, ‘okay, let’s find another
way of doing this.’”
Jesus
is pointing us to this other way. Of course, there is no
guarantee that our love will soften the hearts of the terrorists
and end their attacks. Just look at what happened to Paul
and Stephen and Christ. The decision to love our enemies
should not be made because it is more likely to bring success,
but, rather, because it is the only way to be faithful to
Christ.
In
the same sermon where Jesus told us to love our enemies,
he told us to “mourn with those who mourn.” I
believe that Jesus is mourning with us who have suffered
from these attacks. I believe that just as he wept over
Jerusalem, he weeps over New York and Washington and our
whole nation.
At
the same time that Jesus mourns with us, though, I believe
he mourns with those who consider us their enemy. He mourns
with the Palestinian mother whose husband and children were
killed by a U.S. supplied rocket and the Afghan father whose
baby died from malnutrition. He mourns not only our loss
of the 7,000 people in the attacks of September 11, but
also the deaths of the roughly 24,000 people around our
globe who died from hunger on September 11. Their deaths
were not so visible as the deaths at the World Trade Center,
but Jesus sees them and mourns with those who loved them
no less than he mourns with us.
If
we were more like Jesus and able to mourn with those who
mourn around the globe, I believe we would lose our taste
for war and vengeance and retaliation. We would no longer
be able to waste our money on things we don’t really
need or allow our government to spend nearly a billion dollars
a day on guns, and bombs, and soldiers, while over a billion
people worldwide struggle to survive on less than a dollar
a day. We would know that, as our former president, General
Dwight Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
who are cold and are not clothed.”
Let
us vow to waste no more energy on violence and no more money
on arms. Let us allow our hearts to be broken by the things
that break the heart of God, whether from terrorism in the
U.S. or from hunger in Afghanistan or Haiti or anywhere.
Following
Jesus is rarely easy. We’ve been wounded; it is natural
to want to fight back. My prayer is that in this time of
pain and mourning, we will open ourselves up and allow the
limitless love of Christ to flow through us to our enemies.
In doing so, we will be opening our wounded hearts to the
healing that only God’s love brings. The love we have
for our enemies will be a balm to our own hurts.
May
God strengthen all of us who seek to follow Christ to put
aside our vain trust in swords, and guns, and bombers. May
we, instead, put our faith in the One who loves us and our
enemies beyond comprehension.
May
the fanatical and extreme love displayed on the cross overflow
in us, comfort us, and free us to love all who Jesus loves—even
our enemies, the terrorists.
…it
was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that
he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one
smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our
offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement
that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. Isaiah
53:4-5
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