Saturday September 21st, 2013
Today was a day for Kenya and all who love her. The anticipated unimaginable has happened, but on a scale and with a brazenness that has taken our breath away.
As heavily armed gunmen, suspected to be acting on behalf of Al Shabab, blasted their way through the beautifully-appointed Westgate Mall on its busiest day and hour, they left in their wake dead and wounded bodies. And a sense of sheer terror, which is, of course, their objective.
I was reminded today of that unforgettable one just over twelve years ago. A similarly vibrant blue governed the sky above. People were getting on with their day, making plans and fulfilling those already made. I was working in my office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, glued to the reports on CNN.
Just before the second plane hit the World Trade Center and our evacuation began, I called my Dad. He is an Egyptian-born Christian whose PhD dissertation at Emory in the early 1980‘s explored the inner workings of the Jihad that had claimed President Sadat’s life and would, he confidently predicted, claim many more lives in the future. He raised us to expect terrorism. Accordingly, my fifth grade 4-H project was entitled “What is Al-Jihad?” and included a quite graphic paper mache diorama of a hijacked plane in cross section.
Shortly before the towers collapsed on September 11,2001, our conversation ran something along the lines of, “so it’s finally happened.”
And so it has finally happened again in Nairobi. Though the bombing of the US Embassy here fifteen years ago involved a different target and tactics, the mandate was the same as it is in all terrorist acts: to impress terror.
I was sent by a friend a reminder from the book of Ephesians: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12).
In debates on the causes of terrorism, one inevitably must grapple with the complexities of social and political injustice and Machiavellian-influenced choice rubrics. A theory of the spiritual origins of terrorisms is not exactly the stuff of peer-reviewed journals or popular media reports. Yet I find it both convincing and reassuring.
Convincing in that attacks like the one on Westgate are really a playing out of an unseen spiritual battle, one in which there is a clear difference between physical agents of evil and agents of good. I know some will disagree and may even crack “axis of evil” jokes, but contrast in your mind the image of masked assailants mercilessly shooting at close range children and a heavily pregnant woman, with the image of heretofore strangers risking their own lives to help others flee to safety. After hearing stories of the attack and ensuing rescue mission and viewing the images below, I don’t require a huge infusion of faith to be convinced by a spiritual theory of terrorism. Can YOU think of a starker contrast between good and evil?
The real comfort I seek is a sense of cohesive purpose to the string of evil episodes akin to this that plague our mortal lives here on earth. I suspect I will have to wait quite some time for confirmation of that kind of comfort, but if Ephesians and the chronicles that contain it are correct, it does exist.
It exists, in fact, as the very antithesis of the terror our enemies desire to sow: in the form of an assurance that the spiritual war being waged, manifest on this Earth in senseless tragedies like the Westgate siege, is overseen by a benevolent Captain who will lead and win the final battle for the side of Good. I am reminded of Tirian’s words in The Last Battle: “But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan.”
In the meantime, might I suggest something quite radical? Our greatest weapon against terror is not better security or withdrawing from policies that agitate our enemies, crucial as it is to respond. The greatest weapon in our arsenal is prayer. Prayer that intercedes on behalf of those grieving and suffering; prayer that asks God to be true to His nature in bringing good out of what was intended for evil; and, most frighteningly of all, prayer for our enemies - the very ones who have chosen evil and destruction over good and restoration.
This last objective makes me think I can go no further with this argument, yet Jesus urged us to do the very thing, just as He did it Himself in his last moments on the cross. What would our world look like if all those who believed in the power of prayer actually prayed for our enemies to be transformed?
For the sake of all those killed and wounded today, I’d like to know.
