Being Radical

Violence.  Killing.  Hatred.  Anger. Disillusionment.

This week seems to be filled with emotions following the killing of a soldier in Montreal, the killing of another soldier in Ottawa, the shootings in the Parliament building in Ottawa, the ax wielding man in New York, the killing of students in Marysville, and the killing of two policemen in California.

Some of these young men were attracted to radical Islam.  Radical beliefs expounded by a small group are not accepted by moderates but appear fascinating to alienated young people around the world.

Who are these young people and what is the attraction?  David From, in an article in Macleans (retrieved from http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/david-frum-on-the-allure-of-radical-islam-in-canada/), entitled The Allure of Radical Islam in Canada writes

Couture-Rouleau
photo: CBC website

“If you are alienated, angry, and attracted to violence, radical Islam provides a powerful ideology of justification. If you are lonely and purposeless, it offers redemptive self-sacrifice.

Yet the hunger for meaning is always a part of the human spirit. In a different time, Couture-Rouleau might have vanished into a monastery. In the 21st century, he found a different and deadlier path. The alleged would-be British Columbian bombers might likewise have gravitated to Maoism in the 1960s or Nazism in the 1930s. But those ideologies too have lost their hold on the modern mind, leaving radical Islam as the strongest competitor for the credence of those who seek self-fulfillment through mass destruction.”

The theological language is striking – justification, redemptive, sacrifice, hunger for meaning.  It makes me wonder where the churches and communities are when these young people are searching for something to fill the ache in their souls. 

Does the Christian community provide ‘the camaraderie and sense of purpose’ (Murtaza Hussain, CBC the Fifth Estate, retrieved from https://ca.news.yahoo.com/another-canadian-jihadi-slips-cracks-205929948.html)for which these people are searching? Hussain goes onto say 

"It's something you may get from a gang, but supercharged by the fact that your existential needs are met, too. It offers you a chance to be part of something greater than yourself and a way to expiate your past sins and be part of something that in your own mind seems to be righteous….It's a bit of a do-it-yourself kind of identity that occurs in these people. They learn the religion quickly — in an extremely superficial way.”

A number of years ago I listened to a conversation between a young man and a young lady about the appeal of bars.  The lady asked why the man felt so comfortable going into a bar where he knew no one whereas he had great difficulty going to church.  His comment was enlightening. “In the bar there is no judgement.  Everyone is accepted.  It is not that way in church.” 

Does your church ‘accept everybody’?  Are the churches and communities there for those who are left behind, not only the families of those killed but more so for those of these young people who have so senselessly killed? 

 Let it not be us who are posting negative and insulting messaged on Facebook.  Let our hearts, and our church doors, be radically open to those who suffer, to those who are searching for meaning, to the lonely, purposeless, alienated, and angry.  May the Holy Spirit help us to reflect just a bit of Jesus in our lives so that these people may see radical Christianity as an alternative to radical Islam.