Wherever There is a Cross

By Carl S. ~

We mourn, knowing of the deaths and massive damage done to innocent people we can relate to; especially those as a result of the “senseless” use of bombs. In spite of those religious spokesmen who insist natural catastrophes are a result of human misbehaving, we realize that they are not personally directed at human beings.

Christian Cross 11 (Photo credit: Waiting For The Word)

Days after the bombings in Boston, a neighbor lady pointed out something “horrible” she learned from the news. “The bombs were placed near children,” she said. As in the fresh memories of the Newtown massacres, children were murdered, which made me think of “positively biblical” as a way to describe them to someone.

After each event, the public fumbles to understand, “Why?” Clergy offer their usual cliché solaces to comfort the grieving, one of them being the famous, “Your children are in heaven.” (Doesn‘t it cross their minds that if this is so, then their murderers ought to be rewarded? Islamic terrorists depend on being rewarded.) Psychologists and law enforcement officers will, every time, try to analyze the minds and motivations of the murderers. From what little information they permit to be leaked out, emerges a picture of individuals who are unable to have empathy with others, or who consider themselves superior to them, to the extent of taking out their anger on the innocent and destroying them with a “clear conscience.” (With perhaps even a “god-given” right to do so?) We might consider whether, in describing a serial killer or bomber, suicide or otherwise, we ourselves can profile a terrorist. And whether there can be a superior role model for terrorists.

Whether in Boston, Newtown, Oklahoma City, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other places where random bombings occur, there is something strangely familiar about them. And that familiarity goes back thousands of years.

It is taken as a given, acceptable without thought, that the killing and torturing of the innocent, especially children, originates with a deity, and that this specific god is justified in using such means to control humans. The divine policy involves killing the innocent. Tales of the role model describe his drowning of millions of children and babies, his destruction of the first-born of Egypt, his commands to slaughter many more, yet his non-prevention of the slaughter of many others after his favorite was born. This role model is also coldly indifferent to the effects on children tragically deprived of parents. One can see from these examples the preference this personality has for killing and damaging innocent children. These stories are supposed to convey moral lessons, but aren't they the same moral lessons of terrorists?

Those who speak of this god portray “him” as merciful, peace-seeking, forgiving, loving, compassionate, and fatherly. Not as the angry, vengeful, wrathful god of former times or any of the other bloodthirsty gods. Perhaps this came about because his “image” was changed by a man said to be his “son.” But, this son also brought the message of eternal torture for those who innocently could not accept his message. And this son, like many innocents before him, also suffered torture and agonizing death, as this new improved “father,” refused to intervene. As the story goes, after his death, the newer “message” became, “God so loved the world that he sacrificed his own son.” Here we go again, still killing the innocent. And what “loving” father kills his own son? Is this a god of life, or, as terrorists have been described, the prime example of a cult of death? Something to think about.

And every time I see a cross, it is a reminder of this killing god.