The terrorist label

I'm riding the bus right now, and each time I look up to chew on a tidbit from Moltmann, I see headlines on a newspaper opposite me that remind me of "culture wars." Not of Christians despising non, but of the people we call terrorists against the people we call allies (or self).

One example is the debate raging over prisoner exchanges between Israel and anybody not Israel. Obviously, that war has had a long history. Look back to when the Philistines sent raiding parties into Israel to steal food with impunity. Anybody recognize the etymological link? Now Israel has the upper hand, and they can oppress the Palestinians with impunity. Power legitimates the use of power (speaking from fallen logic). The only thing the oppressed can do to "dialogue" is to carry out what those in power call terrorist acts.

Every people group has carried out terrorist acts at some point. The inhabitants of Ziklag probably wished that David wasn't so darn faithful to YHWH that he wouldn't take over Saul's throne already. David and his 400 men were assigned Ziklag by the Philistine king Achish when they fled from Saul, and they made it their base of operations to do what? Carry out raids. Against the Amalekites among others. When David and his men were preparing to help Achish fight against Israel, the Amalekites sacked Ziklag. Tit for tat.

Do you think the British thought, "Cute protest!" when they heard about the Boston Tea incident? That was no Party to them. That was a clever moniker the eventual victorious historians came up with. Our nation's forebears were terrorists to their oppressors.

Indian raiding parties were terrorists to Custer.

The Melchiorites were terrorists to all the major churches at the time: Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed.

The common thread through all these stories is the self. When we fixate on self, on differentiating our selves from others, and on assimilating and solidifying affinity groups, it's much easier to affix labels to others. When we flatten others to a single dimension in order to attach the easy peel-and-stick label, we dehumanize them. Shallow categories are so much easier than knowing, loving and serving the other. If it stopped at mental dehumanization, that would be simply dishonoring to the Creator. But it moves so easily to the next level: fear and hatred. Once those elements are involved, fear causes us to instill fear in others, particularly if we are a fearful leader. This rhetoric whips us into a patriotic frenzy to kill all the terrorists. We placate ourselves by saying that we need to do it to ensure our safety and "way of life."

Hold on just a second. We're the only ones with a way of life? What is it that the terrorists are so vehemently defending? They fear us and the way we are destroying their way of life. It's so easy to recruit other terrorists by fear-mongering. But clearly, even if the terrorists are trying to defend their way of life of oppressing those near them (and potentially, eventually, us), we must not answer by oppressing them. One day soon, the shoe will be on the other foot, and we'll have to resort to terror (merely in the "we're now on bottom" sense; the stuff we do to them is already classified in their hearts as terrorizing) to defend our way of life.

We can claim that we have the law on our side, and surely we do. The "law" in the biblical sense is an instrument of death to show that whatever fix we come up with is totally inadequate. As long as we continue to claim having the law on our side, we will use death to enforce it. God's work in the world was to bring the law to its logical end in having Jesus executed as a blasphemer according to the current interpretation of Torah, with death and sin pouring out its worst on him. At the vindication of the resurrection, Jesus showed that death had no hold on him. Why do we insist on using a tremendously destructive method that is eventually doomed to utter destruction to make the world tick? Christians must stop supporting death. We've been delivered from that. Even if death stalks us and consumes us, do we not trust the Creator and reCreator to give us our life back in the new creation?

I don't have a martyr complex. I don't want to die. But if it comes to me killing in order to defend my "way of life," I have suddenly chosen the way of death. I refuse to submit to the clutches of death and sin over my heart to defend my body from death. I will trust Jesus to either defend me and keep me around, or I will trust him to resurrect me to a new life in the age to come when I will serve him fully and completely.

I digress. There is no chance that the label "terrorist" is productive. We are all subject to the terrors of death and sin. While there are people who indeed embody terror to the point of being abjectly nonhuman (current example: janjaweed in Darfur), we don't need to categorize them. They still bear the horribly disfigured image of God, and you can bet that God wants to redeem that. (Nazi prison guards, anyone? Have you heard the stories of them seeking forgiveness? Powerful stuff. God works wonders.) Far be it from me to tell God that his work will not be sufficient in a person's life, and therefore I can end it. He has his own timetable and means of accomplishing his work of life and of terminating life. (Those last two words are theologically difficult for me, but I'm too lazy to express them differently. Perhaps Nabal's awful decisions culminated in a natural implosion of his body and spirit, because God withdrew his hand. That may be a better view than active termination.)

I redigress. Let's impose personal bans on labels such as "terrorist," because those will only perpetuate fear. By reverse construction of the biblical sentence, I contend that fear casts out love. If Jesus has called us to love, and "perfect love casts out fear," let's take that path. We will cease to feel terrorized, because we trust in Jesus, and we can go boldly forth to love the world.