Thought for Today
Isaiah 11:6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox . . . 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Three things are on my mind this morning. First is the shooting at Brown University. Second is the shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydny, Australia. Third is an email I received reminding several of us that Tuesday, December 16th is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
Brown University is only a relatively short drive south from our home. Greta and I have visited Providence, Rhode Island, stayed there overnight, eaten in restaurants there. Our children have friends there; our grandchildren know students at Brown. “There have been 17 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an Education Week analysis. There have been 238 such shootings since 2018. There were 39 school shootings with injuries or deaths last year. There were 38 in 2023, 51 in 2022, 35 in 2021, 10 in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.” (www.edweek.org) What number of school shootings per year would you find acceptable? Is zero a number?
Greta and I have walked across Bondi Beach. Our son-in-law is from Australia. We visited his parents years ago and they took us to Sydney. The beach is a beautiful setting, one of several beaches in Sydney. Our granddaughters are both dual citizens of the U.S.A. and Australia. Even more disturbing for me than our personal connection with that locale is the fact that this shooting was apparently an act of antisemitism. Was the Holocaust not enough? Antisemitism is usually ‘justified’ based on the Jews having killed Jesus. Lost in the fog of accusations is the fact that Jesus was Jewish and that all of the judges and soldiers involved in the Crucifixion were Roman. Jews under Roman occupation could not impose or enforce any form of capital punishment. Crucifixion was a Roman element of terrorism and brutal execution designed to inflict the maximum amount of suffering and pain. Jews, when able to do so, used stoning as a means of capital punishment.
All weekend and still today, I am focused on trying to understand when violence, especially mass violence perpetrated on strangers, especially children, became a common form of acting out our frustrations. Why would such a vile act ever even enter someone’s mind? Similarly, when did mass murder of those faithfully practicing one religion become an acceptable act of worship for another religion?
The word violence appears 51-65 times in the Bible. The story of Cain and Abel appears in the very first book of the Bible. Is violence, and especially mass violence an inherent aspect of what it means to be human? Are wars, terrorist acts and person-on-person violence inevitable?
Is violence always wrong? I’m sure the tea merchants in Boston viewed that Tea Party as an act of violence. Tomorrow many of the church bells in the North Shore communities of Boston will ring their bells to ‘celebrate’ that act of violence that proved so important in our national struggle for independence.
As a Christian, I concur with the understanding of the prophet Isaiah about God’s intent for God’s creation. Isaiah realized that God wanted Creation to literally be a Garden of Eden. An idyllic, peaceful kingdom where all of God’s creatures could live peaceably. Yet, I have read about nature’s food chain. I have watched television shows about predators and prey. I have even watched that sort of violence revealed in the field I see outside our sunroom window. I do not have any better explanation for the violence in nature than the authors of Genesis present us in the stories of the Fall.
I do know, however, that unless human society comes up with some solution for all the acts of violence we see daily, we will all eventually succumb to a tidal wave of violence that will consume us.
Imagine a world where everyone read, understood and practiced the words of another prophet, “Micah 6:8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We just need to work to make it so.
Stay safe, do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with the God we trust,
Pastor Ray