Two known terrorists were killed
today by police in France. I caught the news by accident this morning as I intended
to turn on music to clean my house by. I didn’t get much cleaning done. Instead
I found myself in tears over the image of these young men arriving today before
the throne of God. I know they were murderers. Terrorists, even—the worst kind
of murderers. I’m sure social media is abuzz with cheers and online chest bumps
that the bad guys got what they deserve. It is a good day for freedom and democracy,
especially if we find out that no hostages lost their lives in the battle. But
my soul tells me it’s a bad day for humanity.
Every one of us will stand
before God and give an account of our lives. Today was the day for Cherif and
Said Kouachi, as well as their hostage-taking associate who was killed in a
separate police raid in Paris. We might think, “Well, good! They deserve
nothing less than eternity in hell.” And I might think that, too, except that I
know I deserve nothing less than eternity in hell. I haven’t murdered anyone,
but even my most righteous deeds are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) when
compared to the holiness of God.
I imagine these two men
standing before God, instantly realizing that they had missed it. There is no
deception in heaven, only perfect clarity. It must have been perfectly clear to
them that they had given their whole lives to a lie, that they had killed for
that lie, that they had died for that lie. They were told they’d find 72 sexually-charged
virgins waiting just for them in paradise if they died a jihadist’s death.
Instead, they found truth and holiness. They found the God who can only be just,
who can give them nothing but what their life’s wages earned for them—death and
eternal separation from the presence of God and all that is good. No one walks
away from that proud. Even the most passionate atheist will make a humble,
sorrowful departure from God as they realize the truth.
I can’t cheer that these men
are dead. I weep for them. I weep for a world that is so deceived. Our fight is
not against flesh and blood. It is against the evil one and his power of
deception. The same “spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:12) that sucked
these men into murdering and dying for an empty lie tries to do the same to me,
to my kids, to everyone around me. And a lot of the time, he is successful.
What can we do? We’ve got to
start with ourselves. We can identify the lies that we’re so easily deceived
by, and we can immerse ourselves in God’s truth, the truth found in His Word. We
can memorize scripture and battle the lies with it. We can refuse to listen to
the voices in our heads that tell us we’re not good enough, smart enough, thin
enough, perfect enough. We can teach our kids that their enemies are not the
people they can see, but the invisible one who seeks to kill, steal, and
destroy their very lives. And on a very practical note, we can pray for our
enemies. I recently heard about a website where you can adopt your very own
terrorist to pray for. Hard to be more Jesus-like than that. God is pulling
people out of darkness and deception every minute of every day. I can think of nothing
cooler than praying a terrorist out of darkness. I’m signing up today.
