Sri Lanka church attacks
not entirely me
Shipmate
in Hell
Wtf! Why do these things happen?
I just don’t get it.
I just don’t get it.
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My initial reaction, on Easter Sunday of all days!, was a wish for the perpetrators to be slowly cooked alive in the bubbling geothermal pools I am currently visiting. But I think my overwhelming reaction is that of extreme sadness. We humans can be utter arseholes.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48001720
WTF indeed.....
Over 200 killed, plus 450+ wounded, in attacks on churches and hotels..but why both?
:votive:
A confused situation at the moment, but more details might emerge in due course.
What if, at some point during our morning Mass in 'safe' Ukland, mad murderers (for so they must surely be) had burst through our OPEN and WELCOMING door, and slaughtered us?
Presumably a group will claim responsibility for the bombings and we can start to unravel the chain of misery that led up to it.
Yes even so distant it's a sad day and one that must be unimaginable up close.
Glad of the (as usual) worldwide condemnation and hopefully it will be listened too.
My husband has stayed in one of the hotels (the Cinnamon Grand, Colombo) twice post-2016 referendum, on a strengthening-links-with-commonwealth-countries-in-case-we-lose-European-business-post-Brexit basis.
I've no idea how many extra Britons have been to Sri Lanka trying to create a Brexit safety net, but I'm sure my husband hasn't been the only one.
However, given that it was Easter weekend, I suspect most of the hotel guests were holiday makers.
I can’t comprehend it.
Which makes me feel so powerless.
How should we respond to these things?
The York massacre is regarded as a despicable murderous lowpoint of prejudice against the Jews, for the same reason, and undoubtedly done in the name of the Christian God; as well as the bigotry of the ignorant.
I think when bigoted ignorance gets conflated with perverted religious principles, it's important to call out all the elements involved. The Crusades highlighted a perverseness of an application of Christian 'love' for the world that should've been rejected; but so suited the prejudices and political machinations of the times that were in it, were hardly considered unusual let alone wrong.
We really need to disappropriate God for our own particular purposes.
How are they mad? In what clinical sense? We have the privilege to be open and welcoming, that in itself is an insult, competitive, predatory, disrespectful, blasphemous, unclean, dangerous.
Rich, privileged, infidel, unclean, dangerous invaders.
Or Buddhist extremists. Or Tamils. Both of whom have history of attacking innocent people, the former on religious grounds, the latter using suicide bombers.
Prove it. Buddhists have been attacking Muslims in Sri Lanka in the last few months and years. The Tamils were the first to use suicide bombing. In any other location you might be fairly certain of being right but the fact is that we simply don't know right now.
Then post a fucking link rather than gnomic assertions.
Regardless of who carried it out it’s still awful and no reason for us to hate on muslims.
Sorry, Martin, but I really don't see what you're getting at. How is being open and welcoming an insult, for instance?
(I'm not sniping at you BTW - I just need you to unpack your remarks a bit!).
<votive> for the children, and for their family.
But......yet again, the Christian Church (so much maligned, written off, and discarded - like its Lord, only the other day) is there to uphold, pray, and just BE.
<Cathscats> and congregation.
Yes, I do appreciate that the same question could be asked of the Crusaders, those who slaughtered the Cathars, etc. etc.
You're a good person Bishops Finger, nay bother. ISIL were able to remotely groom a man in to driving a truck over men, women and children. I assume that he and they were perfectly sane. What could induce them to do that? Stories. The power of stories. Western thinking and behaviour of any and all kinds is anathema to those that are trapped by such stories. They are utterly, inimically other. We use openness and welcome as a weapon. We seek to change others by being open and welcoming. A thousand years ago our Crusaders ate their co-religionists. They never forget. That is last week. Infidels desecrated the Holy Land of Arabia to attack other Muslims. They support heretics (Shia) and worse (Jews) against true believers. It's an absolute maelstrom of victimhood. They are using religion to sacralise pure fear and hatred of the perceived other. Of the oppressor.
We must not.
We must love our enemies in ways that go completely beyond the soft power thin end of the Western wedge.
As a wonderful French guy said on Hard Talk, give them chocolate.
If (and it's a big 'if') our 'open and welcoming' churches are 'open and welcoming' PRIMARILY to CHANGE people, them you may have a point.
Should we (Christians™, I mean) therefore be less 'open and welcoming'?
Like:
Look at your Christianity! A building burns and the world mourns, grieves, wails, and throws money, but your own people are killed and it's Thoughts and Prayers and Business as Usual.
If Western values have not yet been thrown into stark contrast prior to this (and I still can't believe that people can't see the world clearly) then I fear there will be more of same to come.
The week's events have literally brought me to my knees.
AFF
But.....the faith that is underlined by the existence of buildings like Notre Dame de Paris (which, ultimately, like all churches, is dispensable), is not destroyed by the acts of terrorists (or whatever they may call themselves).
Notre Dame is part of Western secular culture and is familiar from many films and stories. I feel something for its destruction that I do not feel for the death of hundreds of people in a part of the world I know very little about. That you are a Christian and they are Christian gives you a particular connection with them, but Christianity no longer binds people in the way it once did.
My apologies for not making my meaning clear. Put yourself in the mind of the guy in the truck in Nice. I can. Play the role. Less liberal culture is human normal. Still. And always will be until we evolve big time.
We should be wise. We should be penitent. Islam is a socially conservative religion. Broad and deep and beautiful and ghastly. Like all others. But a tad more so. It is the most highly evolved religion to date at accommodating and constraining human nature. As Ash said of the alien, it's perfect.
Appallingly I wept for Notre Dame but not Sri Lanka.
If she was there, she would be dead.
It is very real for me.