It is ever so much easier to do evil than it is to do good.
Add up the mental and physical effort necessary to qualify for the Boston
Marathon. Add the hours used for practice, the complex planning needed to free up
the day and get to the location, along with the money raised for charity by
sponsoring runners. Don’t forget the thousands of details that go into
organizing an event of this magnitude. Then take one or more people with evil
intent and with a smidgen of the effort, the positive is upended by the
negative. A small number of people destroy the hopes, dreams and toil of tens
of thousands.
My husband frequently invokes the example of setting up a
contest between two groups. One has the task of constructing a building while
the other has the task of destroying an existing edifice. Guess whose job is easier?
The amazing thing is how millions of people don’t throw their hands up in
despair, but continue to work, build and invest in the future. The amazing
thing is how, faced with evil yesterday, so many people ran towards the danger
to help others, rather than racing away to protect themselves.
On the same day as the Boston Marathon bombings, at least 61
people died in multiple bombings across Iraq. On April 7, one person died and
more than 60 were injured when violence broke out after a Coptic funeral march
in Cairo. Bomb and gun attacks in Somalia claimed the lives of at least 10
victims in the past week. All of these attacks were related to Muslim
extremism. That news receives little coverage in American media not only
because the events took place overseas but also because it is not unusual.
Like everyone else, I do not know who perpetrated yesterday’s
attack in Boston. I do know that if there is a Muslim connection, no one will
be shocked. Yet, there are many in positions of power in America today who want
us to be more like other nations and who claim that all cultures are equally
praiseworthy. While contorting themselves in a frenzied desire to paint
evangelical Christians as dangerous (in negation of the idea that all cultures
must be respected), they support or are silent while Saudi Arabian nationals
are granted special entry leniencies at U.S. airports. They encourage textbooks
and teachers to paint Islam in a benign and positive light while promoting traditional
Judeo-Christian values as hate-filled and dangerous. They relentlessly attack
Israel while ignoring egregious Palestinian violence. Whether or not this is
relevant to yesterday’s attack is uncertain. Nonetheless, if only a few
powerful media and political personalities share those views, they have the
ability to damage the lives of millions.
My husband and I add our prayers for comfort and healing for the
victims of this crime against humanity. May God give them
strength during this difficult period.
Everything everyone has posted is the absolute truth, because the basis is of it all comes from Scripture.There is so much confusion because the Truth isn’t seen as P.C.
If hate and intolerence is taught to little ones around the world,WE are obliged to teach our children and granddchildren to bravely do the right thing.
The events in Boston this week shows the good and bad that comes from being taught love or hate.
What is lacking IS Kumbayah. There is great power when people of GOOD will band together.
Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” This passage is still true today. I also have read the Koran, but have also read the book by Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner called “Voices Behind the Veil: The World of Islam Through the Eyes of Women.” Dr. Caner gives a history of Mohammed and his life after his rich wife dies and he is left destitute. He and other disenfranchised men raid Jewish settlements stealing their property, killing the men, raping and torturing the women, and enslaving the children. This is not a man of peace by any stretch of the imagination. To say his words are peaceful are to liken them to the words of Adolph Hitler saying they are peaceful.
Your comments are right on target!
Thank you, Susan. Please continue to build great buildings, and we will build alongside you, regardless of those who tear down!
Amen!!
Susan,
I am thankful to you and your husband. I always find wisdom and comfort in what you write. Blessings to you and thank you.
Lynn c. Perrizo
Once upon a time I was reading the Book of a certain faith. Suddenly I came across passages that were so disturbing that I could read no longer. I moved this book to the back of my collection. In my office, years later, a visitor asked me if I had ever read the Koran. He said to me, “I couldn’t get past the part when M. exhorted his followers to kill the Jews and Christians.” I looked at him and said, “That’s the part that stopped me, too.” A mature person learns that not everybody on earth has to be “just like me.”
Christ never told us to paint others as enemies and kill them, but to love our enemies and pray for them. He also told us “By their fruits shall ye know them,” not by their fine words, but by their deeds, by their modus operandi. But now we are supposed to welcome the serene, peaceful religion of Islam, while the regime in power blacklists Jews, Christians and returning soldiers as potential terrorists. All the while the entire serene and peaceful Middle East is exploding with hellish bombs.
The United States seeks to condemn profiling as politically incorrect, but searches babies and old grandmothers in airports, confiscating kindergarten scissors. Remember Sleeping Beauty, whose father the king burned all the spinning wheels in the kingdom, when he should have been seeking the Wicked Witch. Israeli intelligence has developed a near-foolproof methodology of identifying those most likely to bomb. Perhaps we should listen to them.