This isn’t the way to do this.
I wonder if you can see a common thread in these couple of
stories:
Sri
Lanka blasts were revenge for New Zealand mosque killings: minister
Florida
man arrested for threatening members of US Congress
The thread is the use of violence in the name of religion.
Ever since the Crusades and beyond, there have been acts of
violence conducted “in the name of God,” in one form or another. We don’t like
what somebody believes and we think the only way to deal with it is to silence
them for good.
This isn’t the way to do this.
In both the Old Testament (
Prov
25:21-22
) and the New Testament (
Rom
12:17-21
), believers are commanded to “not be overcome by evil, but to
overcome evil with good.” We don’t need to be doing any avenging on our own.
This should also go beyond any religious differences, as I
mentioned in this blog
nearly
two weeks ago
.
I bring up Westboro Baptist Church, the Topeka, Kansas-based
house of worship who has taken America to task for its tolerance of homosexuals
that founder Fred Phelps left as
his
legacy five years ago
. Perhaps its members should follow instead the
example of another Kansas church. On Resurrection Sunday, Pathway Church of
Wichita announced that it has spent around $2.2 million to pay off
the
medical debts of about 1600 needy persons
in Kansas, no matter if
they were attending that church or not.
That is more in keeping with His Word than any attacks,
verbal or actual, against those who don’t believe in things that we do, or in
trying to retaliate against those who attack us, verbally or actually, for what
we believe in.
That
is the way to do this.
Thanks!
