Apologies

I reread my post of last week--re: beautiful disasters, and in light of the distinctly non-beautiful, gut-wrenching, unnecessary and any-other-adjective-that -tries-to-convey-horror disaster that occurred recently, I am so sorry. My problems, my 'disasters', my rants are strictly of the first-world variety. I cannot comprehend the wholesale slaughter of innocents, whether in the air over the Ukraine or in the streets of Gaza and Jerusalem. There is no beauty in the death of a child. There is no rationalization for the killing of teenagers over the proprietorship of a sliver of land.

Who ARE these people? This week I am at Chautauqua, and the celebrant at the Sunday service today spoke about inclusiveness vs. the very human need to 'be right'. The scripture reading was about Jesus' disciples' complaint about non-followers healing the sick and casting out demons in Jesus' name--without being part of the twelve. Jesus gave the hard advice that they should not care; that invoking His name puts these healers and demon-drivers in the right camp, whether they were followers or not; that rejecting people with whom you disagree can be a stumbling block to your own salvation. People come to God in different ways and we need to be aware of the possibility, nay, certainty, that our way is not the only way. Okay. I can buy that.

And yet, I find it hard to accept people who believe so strongly in their own rectitude that they can discount human life. No. Make that: I find it impossible that anyone of any religion can use its principles to justify the sacrifice of anyone, much less the lives of children. I am haunted by a reporter's  description of a three-year-old child in a red t-shirt, flung into a field by a missile attack on a commercial airliner. My granddaughter is three. That child was someone's granddaughter, the light of someone's life, a mischievous face begging for candy or a toy or ice cream. A child who knew nothing of politics or religion. No god could demand her sacrifice. No god that I could recognize, anyway. No 'beautiful disaster' here.

But we are supposed to shut our eyes--pluck them out!--if seeing this and feeling hatred for the perpetrators gets in the way of walking in God's footsteps.. "The opposite of faith is certainty." If that is true, then I must have faith, because I simply don't know how this can possibly work.

O God, help thou my unbelief.