Pretty heavy duty stuff in this Psalm. In his sermon today our pastor said that good Christians listen to Christ then act accordingly, and passivity isn't acceptable. Not a revolutionary thought, but then he took it a step further and said Christ would tell us all human life is precious and worthy of redemption. Still nothing new there until he took it to the next step and said Jesus expects us to love the terrorists because like us, they are created in God's image, and asked how many of us are willing to do that. If we follow Christ, we should listen and act on Christ's words concerning our enemies. You could hear a pin drop and this gave me much to think about today. It was the old "love the sinner, hate the sin" type sermon. I am not ready to go there, and not ready to forgive. I am going to have to work on this a lot and I don't want to. Big sigh!
In those instances, McLynnan, maybe we just have to ask God to love those people THROUGH us until we can get to the point where we can freely love them ourselves. There a lot of folks I don't particularly like, or approve of what they do, but I love them as I love any of God's creatures. We don't have to ACCEPT the terrorists or LIKE the terrorists, we just have to understand that God created them and loves them though THEY MAY HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM HIM! At some point, they will have turned away so far that they cannot get back and they will be forever separated from God, and that pains Him. But that's the price of a free will. By our actions, we can turn that will toward Him or away, it is our decision. Just because God loves the terrorists, and we are supposed to love them as fellow children of God, doesn't absolve them of responsibility for their actions, and it does not keep us from doing what we have to do to stop them from hurting more innocent people.