Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Bless the Martyr Kiss the Child.

Is another world possible? I sure hope it is. I am sick and tired of this one. I am tired of war. I have seen it first hand. I was in the second grade. My family had barely settled in our new house in Mazari-sharif. We had lived there about six months. Waking up to gun fire was normal. In Afghanistan people barely need a reason to fire their guns. They do it at weddings, birthdays, parties, and their enemies. To hear it was a every day occurrence. This was different though. There were other sounds in the air. Some I recognized from the movies and some were foreign to me. Or maybe that they were so much more real sounding that they sounded strange. We stayed in the basement for several days. The only bathroom in the house was upstairs and when we needed to use it we crawled across the kitchen floor to get to it. I am not sure now how I felt back then. Most likely scared. Unsure of the future. But thanks to my parents I think I felt safe. We were able to make it out of Afghanistan. We left with the U.N. in a large convoy.
If you look at the history of Afghanistan, you will see that it is full of wars that got them no where. It only brought destruction and death. We here in the U.S. think that our wars are so much more different. Remember we are fighting for "peace." Sounds as logical as drinking yourself sober. We have as Shane Claiborne describes it this "myth of redemptive violence." We have a problem with some one and we use violence to solve it. This is almost the governments foreign policy. When we look at this, how can we be shocked when people shoot up malls, school, churches and YWAM bases? They are taught that when you have a problem with some one what you need to do is declare war on them. Why not? That's what the government does? I am not saying that the government is responsible for all the shootings that we have here. When it comes down to it those people made the decision to pull the triggers and they will have to answer for it. But we live in a culture that does not know where true redemption comes from. It does not come from taking a life, but it comes from laying down a life. Jesus was the perfect example and the source for redemption. He laid His life down, so that we can live. He could have called down an army of angels to wipe the Romans out but He did not. He gladly laid down his life. The problem is that we no longer have martyrs we only have celebrities.

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