Grace Community Christian Church

 

Archived Things Above

900 Years of Hatred (12/1/08)

He doesn't say much, & he doesn't say it loudly, but when this friend of mine speaks, he's usually worth listening to! He came up to me immediately after services on Sunday morning, just itching to tell me about something he'd read that really tied into my message.

I'm in a 5 week series called Storybook Christmas III- where we explore Christmas movies & try to discern the "true" story behind the Hollywood story. I've done this two other times & it's a lot of fun, plus it's a bit different from my normal Sunday morning fare. This week we had looked at the movie, Elf, & how finding his dad changed everything in Buddy's life. The same is true when spiritual orphans discover the heavenly father they've been looking for.

I said, "Jesus had the habit of changing most of the people he came into contact with. Crooked tax-collectors became passionate evangelists, racists became color-blind, the sick were healed, the demon-possessed were exorcized, the sexually impure were given fresh starts, murderers were forgiven." Somewhere in there I mentioned that God makes changes in hearts that legislation or the UN can never make. That's what prompted him to approach me.

"I read a Doonesbury cartoon some time back. It was an American GI in Iraq riding in a Humvee with a Sunni friend. The GI was trying to understand why the Sunnis & the Shias hate each other so much. The Sunni said to him, 'It's because they murdered my brother.' 'Oh,' replied the GI, 'I guess that's understandable. When did that happen?' '900 years ago.'"

As they say, that would be funny if it weren't so true. Not only the Middle East but many other part of the globe are mired in conflicts that go back many, many generations. Kim & I spoke with our Bangladeshi server at a Mexican restaurant on Saturday. The Mumbai massacre had just happened in India, & we were interested in his take on it. "Oh," he said, "the Pakistanis & the Indians hate each other, & it's all over language, nothing else."

Wow. Think of that: huge chunks of earth's population plot how to annihilate other groups because of A) past offenses, & B) communication obstacles. These conflicts become a source of national & cultural identity, honor, & purpose. And the blood will never stop flowing until a spiritual reunification occurs between spiritual orphans & their heavenly father. Tanks, laws & resolutions are simply inadequate to accomplish lasting peace.

And it's not just Sunnis & Shias or Indians & Pakistanis or Irish & British or black & white or Bosnians & Serbs. It's all of us. Like weeds, the seeds of hate & discord &revenge & pride are buried in every human heart, ready to germinate at the slightest provocation. Human nature, left untouched by God's grace, is incapable of producing anything but pain & destruction. From war-torn nations to battle-scarred marriages to bickering church fights- at some point, someone's got to absorb the last blow. Lay down their weapons & walk away. Resolve that enough is enough. And be about the hard work of forgiving & communicating. Of looking ahead, not behind.

Whether 900 years, 90 years, 9 years or even 9 days, that's a message worth listening too.


Jim Dewar --