Are we too soft on terrorism
This morning I had a look at Twitter and Facebook, and was struck yet again by the depressing world we live in.
On Twitter I saw this:
Criticise the wrongs of
#islam and of#Islamism. Softness has led to a frenzy of beheading. Appeasement is a disastrous policy. End it. (from Atma Singh @PoliticoVoice)
But who is it addressed to? Who must do the criticising?
Is it addressed to the government of the USA in its self-appointed role as the world’s policeman?
But is the USA qualified to be the world’s policeman when it allows things like this?
Georgia officials refuse to pay medical bills of toddler hurt in SWAT raid:
Officials in Habersham County, Georgia, have said they will not pay the medical bills of a toddler seriously injured when a flash grenade exploded in his face during a SWAT raid in May, local media has reported.
The child, Bounkham Phonesavanh, then 19 months old, was struck with the weapon when the county’s SWAT police conducted a so-called “no-knock” raid on a home in the early hours of May 28, throwing a flash grenade into the baby’s crib. The devices – also known as flash bangs and stun grenades – are often deployed in raids and protests to temporarily disorient suspects.
It seems that if the USA acts as the world’s policeman, all we will have is a world-wide police state.
Has softness really led to a “frenzy of beheading”?
Perhaps the same “softness” that has led to children being bombed from drones, the same “softness” that led to the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson? The same softness that led to the Marikana Massacre? The same softness that has led to the killing of over 2000 people in the Ukraine civil war in the last couple of months, and an almost equal number in Gaza during the same period?
Exactly who is it who is being too soft?
Just who is “appeasing” whom?
No, the problem is not too much softness and too much appeasement.
The problem is not enough softness and not enough appeasement.
It seems that the leaders of the governments of the world major in antagonism rather than appeasement.
And then this appeared in the Progressive Orthodox Christianity group on Facebook:
Tackling the PROBLEM OF EVIL: why would a good God allows evil?
http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/the-problem-of-evil-revisited-by-lothars-son/
What are your own thoughts on this topic?
And after reading all this stuff, I think that is yet another evasion.
We love to discuss questions about why a good God would allow evil, because by doing so we can block our ears to God’s question to us, of why we do.
Why do we allow people to be beheaded, or children to be maimed by police who then refuse to pay their medical bills?
There’s an Anglican hymn that goes like this:
New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;
through sleep and darkness safely brought,
restored to life, and power, and thought.
And fifty years ago Paul Dehn published a parody, which is just as true today:
New every morning is the love
with which our ministers approve
devices new and up to date
for fostering the same old hate.
No, the problem is not that we are too soft; it is that we are too hard-hearted.
The most vexing question is not why a good God would allow evil, but why we do.
