Terror and the Televangelists
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A few days ago, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were on TV discussing the terrorist attack of last Tuesday. Falwell asserted that the reason this terrible catastrophe has befallen the United States is because we have rejected the Christian image of God, and he specifically blamed the "pagans, liberals, homosexuals and the A.C.L.U.". His assertion was that God allowed this to befall the United States in response to our wantonness. And Robertson agreed.

What would be a most difficult concept for Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson to comprehend is that according to their own Christian theology, God loves the men who flew those planes into the buildings just as much as God loves Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson. According to traditional Christian theology, our behavior as humans, sick as it sometimes is, and loving as it can sometimes be as well, does not dictate God's ability or desire to love us.

It's too bad that they will have such a difficult time with this idea, because it's through this realization that we can begin to find our own ability to understand and forgive the men who flew those planes into the buildings, in spite of our shock and anger at what they've done. We will never love what they did. We will never agree with why they did it, but we can love them as human beings and through that love come to understand that they have been poisoned by a form of insanity that destroyed them just as they destroyed so many others in turn. Few people stop to think that the first victim of any atrocity is the victimizer himself. They can't become these vicious animals without having lost their own humanity, their own freedom, their own desire to live and to love just as they wish to take these gifts from others. It's hard for us to grasp this because we see them as having had a choice, whereas their victims did not. But did they?

The TV show "60 Minutes" went to visit the Islamic Fundimentalist schools in Afghanistan a year or so ago, that were perported to be the incubators for these kinds of suicide bombers. The story they gave was that those men were given up as small children to these fanatical "schools" by parents who could not feed them. Their parents didn't want to give them up, but they knew that the children would soon starve to death, otherwise. Then from the age of about 6, these children are indoctrinated to believe that the west is satan, and that do die in a war against this satan means they will immediately go to heaven where they will be hailed and treated like divine heroes. They know of no other views of existence. They are exposed to no other truth. The people they depend upon for their lives say that this is how it is, and they see nothing that could indicate to them that this is not true. They are trained to be suicidal assassins in the name of their God and they know of nothing else.

It's true that we all have free will, but how useful is that free will when we have no real conception of a choice? These men were raised in a cult of hatred and destruction. Even when they were finally sent out into the world on their mission, it would take time for them to see enough of the real world to begin to question the only beliefs they've known their whole lives. And they weren't completely on their own, either. Even as they flew the planes they still had that cult around them; their "brothers", reinforcing those nihilistic beliefs. How many of us, given that background and circumstance would have behaved any differently?

Falwell and Robertson couldn't think about any of this, however, because their minds didn't move in that direction. They too have been trained and indoctrinated their whole lives to believe that liberals and gays and non Christians are satan's minions, and that all evil in the world must somehow be because of them. They too are part of a cult of hatred. And so they have no choice but to interpret every circumstance as further proof that the evil liberals and homosexuals and pagans are to blame. It's all they know, and all they want to know. And this is what they teach in their special "schools" as well. I suppose it's only natural that Falwell and Robertson would blame the only enemy they've ever conceived of, rather than the religious terrorists who actually did the deed, as they are so much like the terrorists themselves. They're too busy hijacking every event in history, and crashing them into their imagined "pagan" enemies to ask themselves any real questions: or to recognize their own association with the poison of blind hatred that really did cause this tragedy.

Peace,
Dave