Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

November 6, 2009

The Ft. Hood Massacre

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 8:21 pm

The horrible shooting deaths yesterday of 12 Ft. Hood soldiers and one civilian is one of those tragedies that defy description or explanation. May God grant peace to the families of those killed and wounded, many of whom were just days away from deployment abroad.

That includes the family of alleged shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born observant Muslim charged with the shootings. He was shot and is in stable condition, reportedly, at a Killeen, Texas, hospital while authorities try to piece together what went so terrifically wrong with him. At a time when Muslims in our country are harassed by “patriots” and excoriated in the blogosphere by Christians convinced they’re doing the Lord’s work, Hasan’s family in America has the added burden of grieving while under the very real threat of retaliatory violence against them.

A local Christian church elder blogged this morning about “the 800-lb. gorilla in the room no one wants to talk about,” and it’s clear from his track record that he refers to Hasan’s Muslim identity. What would he have us do, once that “gorilla” is acknowledged? Root out all Muslims, or those with “Muslim-sounding names,” from the military? Put all mosques under surveillance? Is it time, in his “libertarian” line of thought, to round ’em up and hold them indefinitely, as was the case with Japanese and Japanese-Americans here during World War II?

How ’bout praying for their destruction? Yeah?

I’m guessing that the answer to at least one of these is a hearty “hell, yeah!” commensurate to the richness of the patriotic blood coursing through his veins. And that response to the unspeakable horror of yesterday’s shootings reveals a manner of thinking that’s incompatible with Christian thought and practice. Make no mistake here. I know that there is in the Islamic world a violent cadre of people enraged at a people — Americans — they see as Satans and enemies. There’s not much hope for rapprochement with people bent on violence, whether Muslims or Christians or atheists or Jews.

But the Christ-follower’s response to the horror of violence and bigotry can never include calls for social violence and bigotry. We owe our very souls to the One we worship, the Prince of Peace whose victory over evil wasn’t established in violence and won’t be consummated through weaponry. Our God, through the prophet Isaiah, rejoices in the eventual reconciliation to him of not only the Israelites, but the Assyrians and the Egyptians — the “Islamo-fascists” and “terrorists” and “enemies” of his people during the prophet’s time. Because I’m not a Calvinist, I can say with confidence and humility that God desires the reconciliation of all humankind to him in Christ Jesus; he desires that the violent and the enraged from all peoples lay down their arms and rest in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Being a faithful Muslim does not require Hasan to don traditional robe and headcovering, stroll into a communal hall on the Army base where he was employed, and blast the bloody hell out of a couple dozen people. Being a United States Army Major doesn’t exempt him from the possibility of choosing great evil or suffering great sickness. We don’t know why he did what he did, but even if, as has been reported, he shouted in Arabic “God is Great!”, he can only — should only — be prosecuted as a murderer, not a murderer-while-Muslim.

My prayers for the dead and wounded soldiers’ continue, as do mine for Hasan’s family and for this sick, evil man himself. A God not able to save even him is not a god worth worshiping.

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