Love Your Enemies – What if he’s a Muslim Terrorist?

If we go the way of Islam (which is really only the way of the world dressed up as a religion) then we follow the path of hatred and revenge. We label our enemies, we refuse to think well of them or give them the benefit of the doubt. After we label we demonize. Once we have demonized we can project all evil onto them. Once they have become evil incarnate we can kill them. This is what we see ISIS doing. Shall we do the same? Shall we lower ourselves to the same brutish behavior?

It seems irresistible. And so war. Sometimes war is necessary to fight against evil. So we rise up against a terrible evil and try to destroy it, and as we do, we continue the cycle of bloodshed, violence and death. Even when we take a moral high road, explain how we are good and they are bad, and how our war is just and we are only seeking to eradicate a great evil…even if we do all this and mean it,  still we descend to the killing fields.

Even when we do have right on our side and the war is unavoidable we unleash the dogs of war, and the cycle of death is repeated.

How can it be avoided? Should it be avoided?

There are times when the fight against evil does mean war, but Christian warriors should always go into battle with tears in their eyes. They should wield their weapons hating every moment of it. If they must kill the enemy they should do so with sorrow in their hearts…sorrow at the darkness of the human heart, and sorrow for the horrors of war. That is one way for Christian soldiers to march onward and battle the powers of hell.

The cross of Jesus Christ and the example of the Christian martyrs is the only other way.

I referred in a recent post to the great film The Mission. At the climax of the story two sets of Jesuit missionaries face this same dilemma. Soldiers are coming to forcefully evict them and their people from the idyllic community they have created. Two of them take up arms and lead the natives to fight the advancing army. They end up dying. The third gathers his people and with the cross going on before, march into battle armed not with a rifle, but a monstrance. They too are gunned down, but they die resisting violence. They also die, but they die holding high the Prince of Peace and Lord of Life. They die proclaiming the truth that there is another way.

Those who take up arms do so with the best intentions and with a courageous heart. If they fight a great evil reluctantly but bravely they should not be despised, but praised.

But there is another way.

It is the via crucis. 

It is to submit to the sword, the cross, the rack and the rope. It is a willingness to be killed rather than kill.

The paradox of the cross, and the reason we preach Christ crucified and hold high the crucifix is that we believe after all is said and done, that this is the true path of victory, that the martyr is no coward, and that somehow this kind of love really does conquer all.

The mystery is that, in the end, the way of the martyr overcomes evil and wins more victories than the way of the warrior.

It is the Way of the Lamb, and this strange sign of contradiction is the terrible, burning mystery at the heart of our faith.