~ With ex Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic about to face a war crimes trial in The Hague, one former British commander returns to the scenes of atrocities he witnessed in Bosnia and talks to the victims who’ve been left behind. Bob Stewart’s journey is emotional and it reveals how people are struggling with the daily reality of living beside neighbours who
20 years ago were bitter enemies. Bob Stewart also talks to former Dutch soldiers who were helpless to stop the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Narrator, Bob Stewart.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2012-03-18/3888316

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+14&version=NIV

Reading it, it is God who tells Moses what to do, and God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and God who decides the Egyptians’ fate.
It is also God who told Pharaoh to let his people go…did Pharaoh listen?

Did Pharaoh set himself up against the God of the Universe? And who exactly was he expecting to come out on top here?

I am assuming it is the same God who tells us to love our enemies.

But what if our enemies do not return the favour, has God, or we no right to defend ourselves?
Was this murder or self defense?
Was this an act of God or dumb Egyptians having no clue to not ride between two walls of water?
And considering that the whole universe bashes itself INTO existence through fire and explosion, why are we surprised that those forces are within the human story too?

God did a work in Jesus. Maybe it is since Jesus that we are able to be free to forgive , free to die ourselves before we defend ourselves against those who would destroy us. For most people I would say that that was a big ask, and we need to be very careful about prescribing someone giving up their own life as the preferred course of action.

But maybe we need to stop and think…Wow. This God described in the Moses story does not fit into my idea of what God should be…hmmm maybe I need to review my idea of God.

You see, we say “God is Love” and we have an idea of what Love looks like and then when God does something that does not fit with our idea of love we go ” Well I don’t know about that.. Eww “, What if we flipped it…what if we said…well God is Love…maybe despite my repulsion I need to still trust this God who thinks drowning Egyptians is an act of love. After all it IS God and what do I know? ( I am asking questions here, I am not saying this is my own exact view , but it is the question I am asking myself ).

We are in a culture in which only the very poor get to fight wars and face enemies of the “blow your face off” kind. In Canada ( at least, American and Australian Boomers got to go to Vietnam ) The young have not had to face the terror of war for 3 generations (or of terrorism, or of persecution or of mass murder from a dictator for longer than that). Perhaps to those in our world that face those horrors every day there is a comfort in a God who will stick up for the persecuted and fleeing in definitive and not so politically correct ways.

My question is, what can we do about it? We could simply and quietly replace our hymn books and stop singing songs that reinforce a notion of ourselves as being God’ favoured peoples and of others who don’t share our Christian beliefs as being God’s enemies and our own enemies. That would be one way, I guess.

Another way would be to approach the problem head on … and wrestle with the problem. To me, if we simply ,quietly drop the hymn book from common usage then we are not being given the opportunity to apologize, to acknowledge loudly and publicly that we the church have done some terrible things in the name of God … we cannot lament and atone for what we have done … and our shame gets hidden under the carpet, a part of history we would rather forget. This does not seem healthy to me, for ourselves or our people and communities who are still living, and who are still wrestling with the harm we have caused.

I don’t want to see the song or the words “And all of Pharaoh’s army did the dead man’s float.” quietly dropped … I want to see another equally robust and energetic verse added that allows us the opportunity to recognize our role in history, to atone and encourages us to love all of God’s people.

I don’t want to see our Anglican hymn books quietly and shamefully confiscated from the pews. I want to be reminded each time I open our hymn book, a sharp and stark reminder,, a word of caution, that this book contains words that have done and have the potential to continue to cause terrible hurt and that my words do have the potential to hurt people. I don’t want to use words that glibly label a person as the enemy, a lesser person, simply because we happen to have a slightly different view of God. Words can cause awful suffering. I want to be reminded of this each time I open our hymn book … at least for a while …

If this school you mention is the one I think it is, I was feeling sorry the other day that it is Mary’s last year there and I will miss all the love and joy that flows around that school.