Hatred and Fort Hood

By
Fr. Peter-Michael Preble
Turley Publications Guest Columnist

REGION - I have written on this topic before but now we see it on the evening news. We all witnessed the tragic shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. All of us are asking questions like how could a soldier shoot other soldiers? Who knew what and when? There has been much speculation about connections with this or that group and I am sure there are details that we do not know now or will we know in the future. Speculation is what the media, both liberal and conservative, do and we do not need to be involved in that.
The problem is, when someone like this nut at Fort Hood does something like this we immediately jump to conclusions because he has a Muslim sounding name.
I will not make excuses for this person - that is not my job - but we tend to want to hate someone when something like this happens.
We need to make sense out of the entire situation so it is easy to just say, he is a crazy Muslim terrorist. It is only natural for us to want to blame someone or something to make sense out of events such as this. Was this man a terrorist? I would say yes, not because he was a Muslim but because of his actions. He caused terror and that makes him a terrorist.
Now back to hate. The other day a story appeared in the news about a United States Marine Corps Reservist who beat an Orthodox Priest with a tire iron because he thought the man was a Muslim.
Okay, bad enough that one person would beat another person with a tire iron but to use the excuse that the guy was a Muslim is just nonsense. This is what happens when we jump to conclusions that the man who did the shootings at Fort Hood is a Muslim. I would call this Marine a terrorist as well.
Hatred under any banner is bad. Hatred does not come from the God of Love hatred comes from the other guy, the spirit of hate. I understand people are frustrated and I understand the level of hatred but I do not condone it.
We all need to take a step back and remember that Scripture calls us all to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we can remember that then the world would be a much better place.

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble is the Pastor of St. Michael’s Orthodox Christian Church in Southbridge, Massachusetts. Read more of Fr. Peter’s writings on his blog at www.frpeterpreble.com