Wednesday, June 15,
2016
What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is
dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.
Isaiah 5:20(NLT)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German
pastor during World War II, knew well the face of evil. Living through a period when the unchecked
power of Adolph Hitler saw the extermination of 6 million Jews, as well as the mercilessly
callous treatment of all human life, including “medical” experiments on
unsuspecting victims, war crimes, and the abuse of power beyond description,
Bonhoeffer understood – it was not an option to be silent! He spoke up when others did not, knowing that
silence in the face of evil is, itself, evil.
Bonhoeffer spoke – but he also acted, joining (on at least one occasion)
with others in an assassination plot to kill Hitler. Eventually Hitler returned the favor,
imprisoning and eventually executing Dietrich Bonhoeffer by hanging.
This past Sunday we awoke to yet
another mass casualty event.
Wow, it is almost clinical and clean, neatly-organized, to use that
phrase. It’s somehow a little easier on
the gut to categorize these terrorist killings as “events” – it makes it a tad
more bearable to not say slaughter out loud.
But it’s still slaughter!
Ideology-aside, the act of
spraying bullets into a crowd, executing indiscriminately and with intent is
not just war; it’s not jihad; it’s not defending your beliefs and/or family –
it is slaughter; it’s evil of the highest magnitude.
Beyond basic civics and history
in high school I never took a political science course, so I know I’m not the
right person to speak authoritatively on how governing bodies in our world
ought to respond to this international wave of guerilla murder and terror. I only know that hatred, spawned by evil
intentions, has been going on since Cain lifted a rock behind Abel’s back.
And the blood still cries out to
God from the ground.
And it makes me sick to think of
the pain 50 families and the human community is struggling with today.
I still cannot wrap my head
around the permission inside Omar Mateen’s head to repeatedly pull the trigger,
snuffing out the God-given lives of those souls early Sunday morning.
I don’t expect to understand it
anytime soon.
I can only lift my eyes to heaven
and repeat:
Lord, in your
mercy;
Christ, in your
mercy;
Hear our prayer, O God; humble
our hearts…and help us to speak against this madness, lest we become silently
evil.
For You Today
I have no neat one-line nugget of counsel for living
the Christian life today. I only offer
my prayer for you that Christ will give you mercy to live courageously, speak
courageously and, with courage, resist the presence and intention of evil in
every form.
Go to VIDEO
[1] Title Image: By Foto de Cristian Bortes ; edição
de Eugenio Hansen, OFS [CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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