Paul Brandeis Raushenbush asks how we deal with the news right now: a commercial airliner shot down in Ukraine, followed in no time at all by Israel's bombing of Gaza — while some Americans mass at the southern border of the country to scream invective at displaced children seeking refuge in our affluent country, and while a group of girls abducted by religio-political terrorists in Nigeria remains missing. His reminder to us as we ponder the dismal news flashing across our computer and television screens now:
But we are not impotent, and this is not "happening to us." We, the human race, are doing this to ourselves. These aren't natural disasters, or "acts of God." It's just us, humans, having completely lost our humanity. We are warring, and hurting, and intentionally or unintentionally killing one another through direct assault or indifference and neglect.
War does not just happen. Bombs just don't happen to fall. Airliners don't just happen to be shot down by military missiles. Young girls don't merely happen to be abducted. Children in need of food, clothing, and safety don't just happen to be screamed at by selfish, red-faced, hate-filled, moronic adults.
We do these things. And the world God has placed in our hands is the kind of world we create for weal or woe, as we make our decisions about how to deal with what has been given into our hands.
