Monna
Well-Known Member
Sorry i was unavailable to reply until now. So I will choose this hardship. Everyone in your immediate family, other than yourself, is killed in a terrorist attack.
For most people the immediate reaction/temptation would be one or more of the following,
- to feel abhorent shock and think badly of those who lay behind the deed, not just at the moment, but quite possibly allowing hatred and bitterness to grow within;
- to wish to take revenge, in the name of "justice," though this feeling has not been particularly strong when the people killed were not personally known or related to me; this is also a claim to know what true justice is.
- to ask "why did God allow this?" in effect challenging the sovreignty and providence of God, the grace of God, or his ability to know what is right or wrong, just or injust, and neglecting to realise that not one of us deserves even to be alive;
- quite possibly to start identifying other people of the same ethnic group, religion, nationality or ideology as the "terrorists" and think suspiciously of them, taking out your anger and vengeful thinking on them - in thought, word and/or deed.
- quite probably start to feel sorry for yourself and your tremendous loss. Or worse, to feel total panic and fear in the face of the future without your family, concentrating on your own loss and ignoring the (most likely) many others who were also affected by the attack.
Most people would almost certainly not
- actively love the enemy, as Jesus advised us to do, praying for God's blessing on them, and his deliverance of them from the evil in their hearts that caused this deed;
-pray as Jesus did "forgive them - they don't know what they're doing;"
- bless those that through this deed are trying to curse you;
- start a deep search of what has caused these people to commit such desperate deeds, even to the extent of asking to what degree I have contributed directly or indirectly to the circumstances behind their actions.
When we pray the Lord's prayer "forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors," there is a definitely different connotation from "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us." The latter can be thought of as the sins of commission; the former sins of omission - the things we should have done but didn't. Whenever we failed to do something we should have done - and even though we didn't actively do something bad, we have sinned. We have neglected to do what God wanted of us, as explained by Jesus - either in word or deed. So what people almost certainly do not do also rests on an underlying temptation - to ignore the Lord.
On a personal note, I am not writing out of ignorance or according to "theory" and principle, but from personal experience. But then perhaps you are too? I am guilty on all the counts listed above.
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