(Mohsin Raza) - Militants attacked dozens of Christian homes in Gojra
Eight Christians burnt to death in Pakistan after Koran is ‘defiled’
Forty homes burned. Eight people dead, including four women and a child.
All this because:
“… Muslims accused three Christian youths of burning a copy of the Koran. They denied the allegations, but clerics called for their death.”
Reports say there were no truth to the allegations. If fact, the article stated that
Christians also face intimidation because of discriminatory blasphemy laws, including one that carries the death penalty for defiling the Koran and images of the Prophet Muhammad. The law is often misused to settle personal scores.
If the Koran had been “defiled”, then punish the accused according to the law. But to go on a violent rampage that destroys homes and kills innocents is simply cowardly and downright repugnant.
After I muttered a few choice words, I began to pray for the afflicted people. Then I went to bed. I didn’t want to write while angry.
(Two days later)
My anger remains unabated. My heart cries for justice for the innocents. I still have to pray this thing through.
Stories like this have a way creating lasting images of people and religions that can ultimately hinder OUR relationship with God.
First off, my heart and prayers go out for these courageous martyrs – yes, they are REAL martyrs – who died for no other reason than being a Christian. They knew the Truth, and it killed them. I am confident God will receive them and they will be comforted.
Secondly, we MUST pray for those who did these horrible things. The utter savagery and lawlessness of their actions speaks volumes of the states of their hearts. Their fruit is violence and hatred. Pray for God’s mercy in their lives.
Stories like this have a way creating lasting images of people and religions that can ultimately hinder OUR relationship with God. If we allow ourselves to dwell on the injustices and see only the violence and the hatred, then we miss something vital — something essential:
Those men who did violence…are men. And God wants to be in relationship with them.
I think that’s why God insists that we pray for our enemies. Praying for someone forces us out of our reactions and fears and emotions and moves us into looking towards the needs of our enemies. It forces us to consider that there are obstacles and hindrances that keep them from relationship with God. And it reminds us that we all struggle to know the Truth.
So let’s pray for these men.
- Pray God can break through the lies that confound their thinking.
- Pray they might somehow understand what they did was just ‘wrong’.
- Pray they might repent and turn toward relationship with God.
- Pray they someday might know the Truth.
Me? I’m going to keep praying until I can see the Truth too.
[...] my previous post, Christians Burn in a Fiery Hell, I lamented the senseless attack on Christians in the Pakistani village of Gorja. Here’s a [...]
There is an Indian director, I forget his name — he has a trilogy of movies and one was about the breaking apart of Pakistan and India. He contrasts the beautiful and simple and ordinary daily life with the simmering resentments and savagery.
I visited Turkey once and remember sitting on the roof of the hotel with a group watching a demonstration below. Turkey was a very safe place and has avoided these kinds of things for a long time, now. But one young man who was Turkish and had been a guest worker in Germany looked down with open enjoyment and told us about how everything was going to change now, because you don’t need numbers or power to win, all you have to have is one person willing to walk into parliament with a bomb strapped to him. I’ve had my moments, but I don’t know how you get that angry. It was like that was what most of him was, at least at that moment.
I think maybe part of it is what a double world so many folks live in when they are in Westernized countries with governments and power systems that are so largely autocratic and corrupt — Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, even Egypt is probably there now. It’s like all sorts of things are held out to them, and they can’t grab them. And they think someone else gets them (Christians, whoever) and they can’t. Obviously, millions of people find a way to find peace with this. But some don’t.
It’s scary how one person without a sense of hope for the future can be so destructive. I think, too, that to be that powerful is very attractive to someone who is essentially powerless. It’s like somehow, if I go into parliament and blow state leaders up makes me more powerful.
The saddest part about all of this is that their perspective is so short sighted they miss what’s really important.
Sigh.