Paradoxes of Faith

Are we kidding?  Is this really the headline of today’s news? This makes me sick.   Regardless of the atrocities committed by Hezbollah, how are we hailing anybody’s death? We have to find a place in our morality where we condemn acts of oppression on all sides both from oppressors, as well as victims who them become oppressors.  The Israelites were charged powerfully to never exploit others the way they had been exploited, for thus the Lord YHWH commanded.    Where has our righteousness gone as the people of God when we celebrate the assassination of anybody, even those, created in the image of God, just as we are, who yield themselves to the slavery of sin and shed the blood of others. What has happened to our sense of justice when we favor an exponentially more militarized state over a small, rebellious minority?   Both sides dehumanize the vehicles of the glory of God, human lives.   We need to hail swords being formed into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, cluster bombs being exchanged for communal garden plots, weapons of destruction being transformed into vehicles of cultivation.  Let’s be hailers of peace, of shalom, of cultivation over the destruction of the human life, regardless of how corrupted it has become.  Perhaps then we can learn to love our enemies and regard all others as better than ourselves.