Finding A Christian Response to Terror

David P. Gushee, Ph.D. - Graves Professor of Moral Leadership & Senior Fellow of the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership

When I got the news Tuesday morning of the terrorist attacks I was editing a chapter for a new textbook in Christian ethics that I am writing with a colleague. The topic of that chapter? A Christian response to violence. It was a stark juxtaposition.

In that chapter, we make the argument that Jesus came, according to all New Testament accounts, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. In Jesus, God was graciously acting to defeat the kingdom of Satan and inaugurate the deliverance of the world. The yearning of Israel, and of the whole world in its way, for salvation from every kind of evil was being met.

Jesus inaugurated God’s reign. He did this not only through his birth, death, and resurrection, but also through his moral teachings and practices. Believers in Jesus Christ are not only people who gladly receive atonement for their sins through Jesus’ sacrificial death, but who also seek to participate in advancing God’s reign through obedience to his teachings and imitation of his life.

The Old Testament hope of the reign of God is characterized by a profound yearning for peace. "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks." From the book of Genesis forward, God is depicted as appalled at the violence that human sin has brought into the world. Jesus taught not a vague hope for future peace, but practical peacemaking steps that if implemented participate in the advance of God’s reign. These include a willingness to identify areas of conflict with other people, to take initiatives of communication, and to be reconciled whenever possible (see Matthew 5:21-26). This is what it really means to "love your enemy" (Mt. 5:43).

Jesus also rejected the way of revolutionary violence against Rome, for which so many in his context yearned. He foresaw that such a path would only lead to devastation, which it did. Not one stone of the beloved Jewish temple, and little of Jerusalem itself, survived the Jewish-Roman War of 66-73 AD.

The shattering events of Tuesday morning were the very embodiment of the senseless violence that so appalls the Creator. No words are adequate to describe the depth of this kind of evil. It was indeed a victory for the kingdom of Satan, the one who delights in inflicting misery and spreading evil among us.

An appropriate Christian response to this terror will certainly include a desire for the capture or punishment of all who were involved. It falls within the appropriate role of government (Romans 13) to deter and punish evil and protect its citizenry.

But if that is the extent of Christian response, it will show that we have learned little from Jesus. A time like this actually offers the sternest possible test of whether we who are Christians believe that Jesus, the One we claim as Lord of our lives, has anything to do with how we respond to events in the real world we live in. It is the most natural thing in the world to hunger for retaliation when we have been wronged. But Jesus said, "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Even the tax collectors do that" (Mt. 5:46). It may be where we start, but can’t be where we end. We must go deeper.

An authentically Christian response imitates Jesus by mourning this assault on the image of God in humanity; entering deeply into the pain of victims and those who loved them and doing all we can to help; crying out to God in lament and intercession for the suffering; pleading with God for the full coming of his kingdom, when his will is done on earth as it is in heaven; leading the nation to consider seriously the possible sources of the kind of rage visited upon us this week; and calming national bloodlust. We must urge sober restraint and a rejection of any indiscriminate retaliation that would bring the loss of even more innocent life and a worsening spiral of violence.