Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, September 11, 2007


In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim
at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in
either can rarely be cured by persecution.

- Alexander Hamilton, who on this day, 1789,
was appointed the first Secretary of the
Treasury of the United States of America


I have ever been stunned by the fact that Christianity decided to make the Hebrew Scriptures part of the Holy Writings of the Christian faith. (And equally stunned that we never developed our own set of “Psalms”.) If I had been alive at the time, I would have been a Marcionite. Or, in the 19th century, I would have been a follower of Olive Pell, who composed her own Bible by taking out of it all the passages to which she objected as being unworthy of the God she knew.

From a “spiritual” perspective, I believe that Hamilton is correct. The God of the “Old” (an odious term!) Testament may have been pictured as achieving His ends by “fire and sword”. I simply cannot imagine the God of Jesus Christ would. And, intellectually and rationally, it makes clear sense that persecution, punishment, mistreatment, and ridicule only makes for more determined enemies. That is why we try to make imprisonment for crime not vengeful; we only make more vicious enemies of society.

Today we remember 9/11 - and with deep prayer and sorrow those who perished, their families and friends. We give thanks that they are in the loving hands of God, simply because they are God’s “children”. But in my own heart I also remember all of those, of whatever nationality and culture and religion, who have suffered and died in the aftermath of 9/11, because of the actions of unloving human beings. Christians know that the God we have come to know in Jesus loves every human being equally and unconditionally. God weeps at every act of hate and fear perpetrated by one human being against another.

Has 9/11 taught us anything? I look around and I am not reassured. But I am ever hopeful.

Brian+