Unexpected Responses to Terrorism in Orlando

On Sunday, June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen opened fire in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding 53. During the course of the evening, Mateen called the police and claimed allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL), making this not only the worst mass shooting in American history, but also the second terrorist attack on U.S. soil in recent times. Yet the effects of this tragedy go beyond a call for compassion for the victims and scrutiny of our national security arrangements; the tone of and assertions in the national conversation surrounding this incident have implications for the very nature of civil, rational discourse and the ability of Christians to partake in such dialogue without suffering unmerited suspicion.

Despite Mateen being Muslim, gay, and a registered Democrat, the media immediately started to blame conservative Christians who oppose same-sex marriage for the terrorist attack. Bizarrely, regardless of Mateen’s explicit allegiance to ISIS, the mainstream media still maintains its confusion over the terrorist’s motivation. All this does is further confirm the irrational double standard in our contemporary culture where the moral agency of Muslims is denied, where the moral responsibility for all sorts of things is imputed to Christians, even if they don’t believe it.

The question now is how Christians are to respond not only to the incident itself, but to the opprobrium that is heaped upon the shoulders of Christians. Although Chick-Fil-A’s restaurants are, by corporate policy, closed on Sundays, and despite the claims of the LGBT community that the company is “anti-gay,” local Chick-Fil-A restaurants in the Orlando area opened their doors and voluntarily brought food to those waiting in line to donate blood for the victims of the terrorist attack. This was not an explicitly “Christian” act, but one which sets a good example for Christians to do the right thing and love our neighbors, even when the world accuses Christians of hate, and to find ways to act with compassion without tacitly consenting to behavior that is believed to be morally wrong. Nevertheless, the larger “Christian” community is still confused as to how one can oppose same-sex marriage (and the practice of homosexuality) while still loving LGBT neighbors; especially among more liberal Christians, the cultural narrative of sexual expressivism and radical individualism and autonomy seems to have trumped all other narratives, including the Biblical one. Meanwhile, Muslims explore what their own faith teaches about the practice of homosexuality and what their response should be. There are those proposing measured secular responses; Christians likewise need to have rational, rather than emotional responses, and demonstrate compassion without compromising Biblical truth. In the wake of this tragedy, people are already raising battle standards over the issues of Christianity, Islam, terrorism, gun-control, LGBT rights, and so on. The Christian needs to think of all these things—and about how our faith informs us on those questions—and then respond with truth and love.

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June 18, 2016 – 9:32 PM | By Jonathan | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

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