I just read that the Taliban in Afghanistan executed a seven year old boy for being a spy. He may have done some that looked spy-like, but he’s no spy. At most he was the agent of an adult; or maybe just a kid looking for a bug, or trailing a kitty cat. He was seven years old—that’s a first or second grader. Bring him to my house and give him hugs, birthday cake, and a puppy dog and he’s got hope and a future.

There is a philosophy in our culture today that says the way you deal with religious thugs–animals really—who did this is to be kind to them. Explain to them that it was wrong. Educate them. Befriend them. Socialize them. Give them therapy. Negotiate. Ask them not to do it again.

That’s weak thinking.

We need to realize what we’ve been given—in this case—the ability to know evil when we see it. The solution to evil isn’t repression, it’s annihilation. Evil in me, or evil in you—kill it before it hurts someone. And when that evil arises to a certain level—you’ll probably know when it’s reached that point, certainly in this case it had—-you literally kill that evil in the same manner that you would a rabid dog attacking a baby—your baby—in its stroller.

The earth needs to be emptied of people who do things like this. It’s the responsibility of good men and women in civilized society to stop evil in its tracks. These people need to be annihilated; to disappear from the face of the planet. To borrow the notion of the soldier who when asked what he did in the military said “I arrange appointments between people and God”—-the date of their judgment needs to be accelerated.

The only thing more enraging than hearing about this, is when I hear weak thinkers put forth the notion of philosophical egalitarianism that says cultures, philosophies, and religions that promote such behavior should be on an equal footing with Judeo-Christian thinking. No rational, thinking person can embrace that philosophy. It’s wrong!

Of course, I am writing this from the comfort and security of a country where it it would have been perfectly OK to have killed this boy a few days before he came from his mother’s womb. So, maybe we aren’t that much different than the Taliban?

Hurts doesn’t it.

Jesus loved and defended children. In one case He said it would be better for a millstone to be hung around their neck than for someone to bring harm to a child. That’s pretty graphic language. Annihilation language.

I’m not advocating terrorizing abortion clinics or physicians in the manner of Scott Roeder who murdered a physician in a church in Kansas a few months back. I’m just expressing my outrage at the Taliban and then observing that a not totally dissimilar behavior is perfectly acceptable in our culture. That seems wrong to me.

Jesus is about life. He’s in the life giving business. Life for babies in America. Life for seven year old boys in Afghanistan. Even life for Taliban soldiers. But when you reject his life and rain death up that life He gives…….that’s where good men and women of strong mind and character must stop evil in its tracks. The law in my country stands wrongly in the way of this matter in America. We need to work to change that. And in the wild, wild, east that is Afghanistan where there’s little law and mostly tribal code, we need to wipe out people who hang little boys.

Wrong thinkers would have us to believe—incorrectly—that the world is a soft, squishy, fuzzy, place of peace, platitudes……..sort of nirvana-esque. ‘Taint necessarily so. The real world is a place of “against.” People against people; systems opposing people; philosophies in conflict with philosophies; ideas at odds with one another……it’s a messy, chaotic, and somewhat dangerous place. Always has been, and always will be.

I go squishy soft when I’m in the presence of a baby, don’t you? Fat babies, sleeping babies, crying babies, laughing babies, slobbery poopy babies……..wow! Who wouldn’t love a baby?

I was reading in the Gospel of Mathew this morning and noticed that the very first thing that happened to baby Jesus was someone tried to kill him—when he was a baby! He hadn’t preached an offensive sermon, violated any religious code of conduct, or challenged authority. The most offensive thing he could have produced up to that moment was a really malodorous diaper. Yet right after his birth, the government marked him for death.

Hmmm.

Soft? Fuzzy? Squishy? Peaceful? NO!

Against.

What I take from that lesson is this: in this world you will have much trouble (Jesus said that). It is a place that is “against” occupied by people who are “against” and any notion of permanent ease and peacefulness this side of Heaven is folly. But I also know that Jesus said “I have overcome the world.” Even in this dangerous place we can live in joy, with happiness and confidence.

I’m going to have a great day. It may or may not  be an easy one, we’ll see. But it’s going to be a good one and I will rest my head on my pillow tonight and sleep soundly knowing that I have done my best to make it better, to make a difference for others, and maximally use the life He’s given to me.

Even in the darkness you can choose to walk in the light.

In speaking about the build up to World War II, General and eventual President Dwight D. Eisenhower said “Rarely have the forces of good and evil been so amassed against one another.” That quote was displayed on the wall in one of the museums. Eisenhower’s clarity caused me think of George Bush. In the aftermath of 911 he spoke clearly about “good and evil” and was castigated for it. It had become politically incorrect to call someone evil. We might hurt their feelings, or incite them to an angry outburst. Seems to me the outburst had already happened and the using the word “evil” was just speaking the truth. Eisenhower said it. He was right. Bush said it. He was right, too.

Evil was behind the Holocaust. Evil was behind 911. Evil caused my fellow classmate Fred Winters to be shot down in the pulpit of his church a few months ago. Evil caused the psychiatrist at Fort Hood to open fire killing 13 people while wounding three dozen this week; and the guy in Florida who opened fire in the office complex this week; and the sexual predator in Ohio in whose home they found 11 dead women; and back home in mid-Missouri where the teenager bludgeoned the nine year old girl to death last week. Evil. It’s the work of Satan. It’s not lack of education, or intellect, or empathy. No, it’s evil. The Bible teaches that Satan is our enemy and that he searches to and fro looking for those whom he may devour. Some get devoured mentally and emotionally; some physically in violence. But its all rooted in Evil.

Ike wasn’t trying to make a statement. He was just calling it like it was. Likewise, regardless of his faults, God Bless George Bush for recognizing Evil and calling it what it was. You and I would do well to examine and know the times, to recognize what’s behind them, and to not hesitate or faint to call Evil by name when we see it.

Today I toured the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I know it happened, yet it seems unreal. It is incomprehensible that humans created in God’s image could unleash such unspeakable horror on fellow human beings. Yet it goes on today.

For me the most moving part of the Museum was the small section about the murder of children who were mentally retarded or handicapped in someway; killed all in the name of “reducing suffering.” But they weren’t suffering. They just couldn’t do algebra. They were ordered killed because they were considered less.

I took my girls aside for a talk. We talked about how God made people in His image, about how they aren’t less because they are different, or even because they ARE mentally or physically less. We talked about how it is our responsibility to take care of them, to watch out for them.

There are two significant things happening in the culture today that seemed to come from the Nazi playbook.

First, the healthcare bill being debated in Congress has a provision for a death panel of some sort—-a team of people who reportedly would have authority to decide who was worthy of additional health care and who was too old, or too sick, or in some way…….less. I don’t pretend to understand all that goes into the healthcare debate, and I certainly believe we need to pay attention to this issue as a country. The system is broken. But I blanche at the thought that a “committee of the enlightened” would be given authority to decide who is worthy of more care, or less care because they are deemed more or less worthy. That is just inherently wrong.

Second, as I stood looking at pictures of naked children moments before they were killed, and at one physician posing over the surgical table holding the dead body of a sacrificed child he was preparing to cut open and explore in the name of science, I couldn’t help but have a gut reaction about the decisions we allow in America today for innocents to be killed. Abortion is simply wrong. Politicians say it should be rare but legal. I think that is doublespeak designed to placate both sides from men and women who either don’t know the truth or are afraid to speak it. It is our responsibility to protect the innocents, including those who haven’t yet drawn a breath. The Bible says that God knows them in their mother’s womb and there He knits them together. John, the cousin of Jesus is reported to have leapt in the womb of his mother at the announcement that Mary was pregnant with the Savior.

I don’t know everything about this issue. There are complexities. There are women who should have never gotten pregnant. There are babies destined to be born into adverse circumstances. But the notion that women can kill their babies because it’s not a convenient time in their life to have a child is just inherently wrong. I know some will say its about a woman’s right to her body,  and I agree that a woman has a right to her body, to keep her knees closed. But her rights end where exercising them deprives that baby of its right to life. God is knitting him in his mother’s womb, and what God has knit together let no man rend asunder.

I know that many of the people lauded so grandly for donating to the Holocaust Museum are also supportive of abortion rights. And, I just don’t get it. It’s wrong. How can an advanced nation like ours memorialize the horror of the Holocaust while simultaneously allowing it in our midst? I just don’t get it. It’s wrong. And I’m clear on that. If you think otherwise, you simple need to change your mind.