GETTING EVEN

[June 9, 2015]

My remote seldom switches to CNN, and if it does it’s only in passing. I watch it only when it presents something I truly find interesting. Just exactly like what that fabled cable news network featured last Sunday, May 07, in its "GPS" segment, when it featured about the emerging warriors, no, not the Golden State’s, but the ones belonging to ISIS movement.

The show merited my full attention when their resource person, a colored but well-respected woman, testified about the savagery those ISIS men did and do to all innocent civilians. But when she spoke about every pretty young female of every village they would overrun, I stopped watching it as her story sent shivers down my spine, giving me some goosebumps.

You try to have a very young and lovely princess for a daughter with you to whom you spend daily your most precious moments, especially now that she works with you too when you report for duty at least five days a week, then you'll know what I mean.

I could easily imagine through her detailed account in spontaneous narration of every scene when ISIS would hold public auction of those female captives right up the stage, chained and naked. If you’d only let your emotion and carnal self grip completely your mind and spirit, you’d never think twice about training in the Middle East for bomb-making and suicide-bombing: against the ISIS.

It makes you wonder, if this sort of human creatures so vocal and passionate about their so-called faith, the reason their acolytes and fanatics do those things as they would allege, then it's easy to assume what attributes their deity does really possess, for one interprets that whoever that god is, then rape, murder and mayhem are what he’d encourage.

And the rest of the world will conclude that such kind of deity is totally unlike the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. He’s the same God of every believer today and tomorrow, dwelling in the hearts of men and not in any building, tent or cove.

He Who is "gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy" (Ps.103:8). The Beginning and the End Who inhabits eternity (Rev.22:13; Isa.57:15).

His main character, uniquely separating Him from any other god, is that He is the Lord of many chances for our God is love (I Jn. 4:8). If other gods teach their loyal minions and followers that killing their enemy gives them satisfaction and glory, our God doesn’t, as He teaches us instead to be humble, to be sensitive for everybody and to even love our enemy (Jn. 5:44).

As Jesus Christ Himself reminded the people in His preaching that even the publicans were also good to those who were good to them (Jn 5:46). That is why loving an enemy is the core of Christian teaching for only through this way that we can show our difference.

Hence, if someone wronged you, deliberately broke your heart and caused you terrible hurt and unbearable pain, don't take revenge, "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord," (Rom.12:19) but rather take it to God in prayer to pray for him.