This phrase of mine:
nowhere does God NOT require his children to allow evil to destroy the innocent
should of course have read:
nowhere does God require his children to allow evil to destroy the innocent.
The point being that I believe as a Christian in what Jesus taught, to love our fellow man - and woman and child - but also that this faith also compels us to face down evil and conquer it. Evil is:
- intolerance
- religious persecution
- torture
- rape
- inhumane punishment such as forced amputations and surgical removal of human body parts
- teaching impressionable young children that hatred and murder in the name of any religion is a Holy cause
- mass murder
We may love our brother, and I am in agreement with you about all the MAN-MADE labels - they are not from God - that inhumane man employs to control and subjugate his fellow man.
You wrote:
It's really more a question of which God we are worshipping? If we find ourselves unwittingly worshipping a God of conditions, labels, limits, restrictions, stipulations and controls which divide, separate and enslave then I think it's HIGH TIME that we all recognize we all being unwitting dupes who are really trapped inside these competing insane Wizard of Oz Castles through which spew out the smoke, fire and exhaust fumes that proceed from all these irrational, insane claims that sow seeds of blame and shame all over this world.
In many ways, true, however I do believe that each individual has the right to choose what to believe, so long as that does interfere in any way with the right of others to select their own faith. Around the world today I see Islam forced upon people, in many cases through laws that allow torture and execution. I would not compare this with modern-day formal instituions of the Catholic or Protestant churches, or with the institutions of Judaism. There is quite a gulf between them. Murder is being committed in the name of Islam - not just isolated events, these, but this has become a pattern.
If you are to say that we should not meet murder with legitimate self-defense, then I strongly disagree. If we do not use our God-given talents to slap down evil then we are complicit in all that evil achieves. President Bush was quite right when he called the terrorists and states that support them evil. We shall fight those who are evil and we shall win. You may wish to read the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famously non-violent resistance leader of World War II, in which he posited the assassination of Adolf Hitler as a Christian duty. |
