Loving Enemies, and Friends
Background
Over the past weeks I've been writing posts about a book that I've been reading called Everybody Always by Bob Goff.
The basic premise is that someone who is truly striving to follow, and not just agree with Jesus has to make some challenging decisions. Those generally center around loving people who are hard to love.
That has been on my mind as I continue my faith journey, and time in ministry. A book can be helpful to get the juices flowing. Especially the fact that the fingerprints on that book cover, come mainly from the hands of witch doctors that Bob Goff has helped reform.
A great book can lead you to delve deeper into yourself and how you live in the world, but by its very nature is necessarily limited to cover a finite range of ideas. If that book had considered ever way that we can love, and all of the results, it would have had to have been a million pages long.
A Compelling Show of Force
Very early this morning I read an AP News Story (linked here). I'll summarize for you, Israel and Hezbollah, an organization labeled to be terrorists, and sponsored by Iran, in Lebanon are often engaged in warfare on the border of Lebanon and Israel. The attacks on the borders have intensified either as the result of or taking advantage of the internal war in Israel between the government, and Hamas, that has led to the deaths of many women, children, and occasionally Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
As the result of some "intelligence" Hezbollah phased out the use of cellphones because the Israeli Military could track them. They decided to replace their cellphones with pagers. Allegedly the Israeli Military, or intelligence had diverted a shipment of pagers, and tampered with them. Supposedly, it seems to bear true, that they added small explosive devices the size of a pencil eraser, that could be triggered by receiving an error message.
The result was massive chaos as the pagers all began to show an error message, which also assured that many of the targets, presumably Hezbollah agents, would have those pagers in proximity to their bodies when they exploded. This "clever" and targeted attack was seemingly successful, but was blind, or didn't care about the collateral damage, of children, or other drivers present, or neighbors of the targets, who were also harmed or maimed by the attacks.
Love and Christianity
Catholics in America have had a long history of honoring our service members, and at times the military that they serve in, as an extension of love of homeland, patriotism, and our neighbors. This can sometimes lead some Catholic-Christians to support policies and military actions of our own military, government, or allied militaries that are unconscionable. This often becomes an extension of national identity at odds with Christian identity.
Sometimes it's better as a Christian to call out our government, military, or allies for Christian and practical reasons. To question what we find to be amoral or immoral, even executed in self-defense, can be a more humane and patriotic action than going along to show loyalty.
In the next sections, I am going to take some time to show why speaking out against the latest tactic against Hezbollah is the right action to take as Christians, friends of Israel, and just pragmatic human beings.
Love of our Friends
If we allow our friends and allies to do things that are immoral, or at the very least disregard the potential for collateral damage, we are allowing them to go down a terrible path. We expose them to real world consequences (further degradation of their diplomatic standing, the welcome of new and growing enemy response) and spiritual consequences. If you disregard even the humanity of your enemy, it takes a toll.
If you are allowed and supported in the destruction of 100x the civilian or collateral lives as you lost in an attack, you'll likely be creating for yourselves countless new enemies. Think of what bore out from America's wars with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. After what felt like endless wars with those organization, we killed countless innocents along with actual intended targets. That radicalized normal citizens against us, and now those organizations or their offshoots are in greater positions of power in the world, and now have weaponry that we abandoned leaving the theater. Think especially the Islamic State of the Levant.
They, and we, learn nothing if these actions can take place without being questioned, evaluated, or atoned for. Friends who love their friends don't let them go down such a dark path unquestioned.
Practical Risk
Now that this type of attack has been executed, and has shown itself to be practical and efficient, where is the next place that we will see it? Ever hear that quote "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"? or maybe something Jesus said, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword"?
Who in our culture still uses pagers? Well, doctors and emergency responders of course. Imagine what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and our enemies start getting these rigged pagers into the hands of our doctors, surgeons, and first responders. One day the world could be going about its business as usual, then a bunch of error messages start arising. The pagers are hot, and vibrating, and these everyday heroes begin to fuss with them.
All of a sudden, some of the pillars of our society are maimed by these devices. Their children, neighbors, patients, coworkers, and friends also catch the flack of the attack. All of a sudden there is a proliferation of traumatic wounds, and the very people who would respond are all incapacitated with few people to tend to them.
If we aren't willing to see this happen in NYC or Tel Aviv, we should probably not accept that this is occurring in Lebanon. I know that those targeted this time were mostly the enemies of Israel who were presumably Hezbollah, responsible for the deaths of innocents (at least when the right people had the pagers), but keep in mind that Osama Bin Laden trained on Stinger Missiles that we provided him to fight the USSR. Things we put out into the world, tend to come back to us.
Conclusion
To truly love our friends and allies we have to call them to account for their actions out in the world and be ready to accept the fact that when we don't call them out, it can have practical repercussions for our own safety and well-being, as well as theirs.