Have you ever wondered why there are so many “bad things” happening in our world? As I get older (face it, folks, we are all getting older at exactly the same rate: one day at a time) I find myself more disturbed by the brutality that is taking place in our world. Now, part of the problem is that we are more connected than any previous period in history. Things that happen on the other side of the world don’t remain unknown on our side of the world until a sail powered ship brings the news in the form of a letter to our side of the planet anymore. Today, we receive news of world events instantaneously through social media and, if you’re looking for a little bigger picture, our news media. We live in a time when we are news voyeurs. Wars, plane crashes, uprisings, civil wars and unrest, natural and man-made disasters; they’re all there instantly, and they’re all there constantly. And we just can’t or won’t look away. There are so many things I don’t understand.
I don’t understand why some people burn tube cars or stations or slice seats to destroy them in subway cars. Nor do I understand why people kidnap whole groups of people and force them into all types of slavery, or hack people to death with machetes, or drive by a neighbourhood spraying bullets indiscriminately, or jump out of a cab to beat up a person wearing a turban, or stab someone in the back because of who they sleep with, or why one country would stay in a state of war with another country over centuries old differences.
I don’t understand how we’ve allowed abortion as a means of birth control, or, as I saw on the news last night, selective abortion when the child growing in the womb isn’t the sex the parents want. For the record, I also don’t understand so-called Christians blowing up abortion clinics or shooting doctors that provide abortion services.
If you’re a Christian, why not ask yourself, once in a while, “What would Jesus do?” If you’re not a Christian, why not just ask yourself, “What’s the right thing; the humane thing; the generous thing to do?”