There are still more questions than answers about what happened at the Boston Marathon earlier today. I’ve been gathering some links for tomorrow’s open thread, but I couldn’t let this pass without note:
“An insane rebellion against our Creator God is the root cause of this murderous action,” writes [Mars Hill] Pastor David Fairchild in a post shortly after Monday’s explosions.
“We may blame this barbarism on religion, economics, politics, and even mental maladies. Though influential, the underlying sin behind every sin is treason against the One who made us for love and flourishing,” Fairchild writes.
No. No it isn’t. We don’t know if the people who did this are religious fanatics, or if they have some other motive. But no, Fairchild and any other person who wants to throw God’s intent into this needs to just not.
If God is part of the healing, for individuals or communities, great. But you don’t get to shoehorn God into this. Not now. Not ever.
Well expressed, Carl. No matter how sincere in his beliefs Pastor Fairchild may be, exploiting what is clearly a man-made tragedy to promote his religious beliefs with an ill-advised rant is poor judgment, to say the least, and at worst paints him as a tin-eared bible-thumping fanatic. This isn’t about whether you believe in God or not. It’s about being a jackass at a time when pastors should be using their pulpits to offer comfort and healing to their traumatized flocks.
Considering Mark Driscoll’s reputation (in which he and his flock are certainly not unique) for confusing “sin and atonement” with “crime and punishment”, it’s pretty easy to dismiss Fairchild’s statement in this manner.
On the other hand, there’s the Fransciscan approach, which says “We’re all sinners on this bus” and allows that it’s common for evil to beget more evil. Contemplation of violence against one’s neighbor (instead of “loving your neighbor as yourself”) is contagious.
We respond to the advertising that says your life will be better if you spend the kids’ college money on a hot car and go out on the road and show everyone else what a badass you are. Somebody was doing that in our neighborhood a couple of weeks ago with a drink or five under his belt, and mowed down a whole family crossing the street.
Some of us rejoice in running a business that gyps the customers, screws the employees and cheats the tax man–or promotes wanton destruction of natural resources (think of Limbaugh’s “Chainsaw Blues”), starves people on the other side of the world or endangers them here at home.
A rather vocal group right now cite a paragraph in the Constitution as a justification for arming themselves to the teeth and fantasizing about thwarting some hypothetical home intruder by blowing his head off. A few of those will end up some night killing the meter reader or the neighbor kid coming by to sell Girl Scout cookies.
Few of us are immune to our society’s somewhat twisted notion of “competitiveness” which devolves through “keeping up with the Joneses” to “It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how artfully you cheat”.
All of this rubs off on everyone else. A few of us who have a screw or two loose will respond in more problematic fashion. An individual might take some guns and go shoot up a theater or a school. A handful of the same sort of people might set bombs in a subway or at a sporting event. A larger group might hijack some airplanes and fly them into buildings. A nation might launch a war against another for no good reason.
This, folks, is sin. We’re all equipped with the ability to do horrible things. We’re also given a conscience that’s supposed to prevent us from doing so, but it’s up to us to nurture it and pay attention to it when things get tough, and we’re supposed to help each other in that struggle. When we fail…well, that’s what happened in Boston.
What god?
@2 “A few of us who have a screw or two loose”
From my perspective as a rabbit, viewing you humans as an invasive species, I would argue this describes more than a few of you.
@4 Nah. Out of six or seven billion, it’s really not all that many. It’s just that the craziest folks work the hardest at making their presence known.