Jesus and 9-11

In the Gospels Jesus tell his followers to resolve any disputes with their brothers before going to the temple. In fact, he says that if there is some dispute with your brother you should leave the temple, right things with your brother, and then return. How would that apply to us after 9-11?

According to Jesus, we should have approached Al-Qaida and tried to set things right with them, before we went to the temple to sanctify our war on terror. Of course, that's a tricky way of making the war on terror unnecessary. But, that's just the way Jesus seemed to think. He would say things that seemed simple, but in the doing you discover that he had greater things in mind.

Could we have made contact with Bin Laden and worked things out? Seriously? I don't know the answer to that, because we didn't. What would it mean for US foreign policy to really follow Jesus' advice? If there was some beef we had with another country, we would go to them and resolve the problem before going to the temple. In other words, before going to the temple and righteously declaring our indignation. Has any country ever tried that? If they have, it certainly hasn't made the history books. But, history books aren't chock full of peaceful stories.

What a turning-upside-down world view that would be, to follow Jesus' advice! The ironic thing is that our President claims to be doing God's work in his battle against evil. The loftier you claim your goals and ethics to be, the harder you fall when you come out simply human. That's happening to us now in Iraq with the abuse revelations. It wouldn't have been near as bad, if our President hadn't made our mission such a moral one. So, we're falling off of the high ground, and we haven't hit the bottom yet.

Maybe righting things with our brothers wouldn't have been such a bad thing after all.
- posted by Marcos @ 5:11 PM