The Christian response

Sitting in St Paul's Pro-Cathedral waiting for the service to begin a couple of Sundays ago, I found myself reflecting on the events of the previous week. The violent reaction to the Mohammed cartoons had continued its vitriolic progress around the Muslim world, and I could not help thinking that if we profess to believe in a God who is Love, then how could we not but love our fellow men, however reprehensible we consider their behaviour. Similarly, why do those who proclaim God the all-merciful seem to trumpet death and destruction with such vehemence.

It seems to me that we are all prone to be guilty of restricting God to fit into the miniscule and myopic parameters of our blinkered lives. Surely, if God is as loving and all-merciful as we say that He is, then He does not require our peevish and puny efforts to combat any perceived attacks on the ineffability of His majesty. If divine retribution is necessary, it will certainly occur in God's good time.

Actually, I thought that one of the hymn writers, whose hymn we sang later in the service, hit this particular nail right on the head.

"For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man's mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make His love too narrow,
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He would not own."

Surely the only Christian response to all the death and destruction must be to continue our prayers for religious fanatics and zealots of all persuasions, who persist in spewing out the litany of hatred and venom in the name of a loving and all-merciful God.