It is becoming increasingly difficult to guard my own heart from being hardened against a people who desperately need Christ. There of course will be much dialogue in the coming days about what happened in Manchester.  The talking heads will all express their condolences to the families that just yesterday afternoon were preparing for a night of entertainment, only to end the evening grieving the lost.

Our government as well as others will convene more meetings as to how best to address the issue at hand…terrorism and hate. There will be some that desire to eradicate this problem through military and police action, and there will be others that want to address the core of the problem instead of dealing only with the symptoms…the ideology.

Unfortunately there will likely be none who are willing to stand up and present an alternative idea that deviates from the standard solutions that have failed time and time again. I agree that military action is sometimes a necessary step in establishing peace. I also know that true peace can only come with a renewing of our minds. We must address the ideology, which is at the core of terrorism. The world however has not a suitable replacement for the ideology that exists within Islam. Surely we could teach the golden rule and expect others to fall in line. The golden rule…”do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. To teach such a simplistic truth without exposing the power behind that truth is to error in the truth.

As a people in general, we are born with the nature that lays claim to our own lives first. In fact the basic tenets of all that is taught within the halls of our educational campuses around the globe; are that we are to adapt and overcome, strengthening ourselves so that when the process of natural selection takes its course it will be our own genetic codes that are reproduced. Let nature take its course, but be sure to position ourselves so as to be chosen as its passenger.

We simply cannot teach the golden rule without emphasizing the executive authority that established the rule to begin with; that being the person of Christ. Rules much like laws carry no weight if they are not enforced and it is Christ himself who enforces the golden rule. Not by some strong armed tactics so often employed by worldly authorities, but instead by changing the heart of a man to submit and bow in subjection to the law giver himself. Yes, we are transformed by Christ and only then can the golden rule be followed and obeyed.

But like I said already, it is getting increasingly difficult to feel compassion for a people whom follow a brand of religion that endorses the carnage we witnessed last night; children dying…parents grieving…a city on lockdown. I am forced then to remember that so many of these religious zealots have not been trained up in righteousness, nor have they heard the truth.  Allah is said to be the great deceiver even within their own teachings, therefore it is imperative that we come to understand that they have truly been deceived. If we are going to address the core of the issue, we need first to pray, and second to go and teach them the truth regardless of the risk it poses to us. Christ hath come that we should know the truth and that the truth would set us free, and when freed by the truth we are free indeed. Free from sin, free from an ideology and a religion that will damn their souls to hell. As Christ hath said himself…”forgive them father for they know not what they do.”