India and Pakistan: Set old hatreds aside

BY JEREMY CARPER

At the end of November, a horrifying series of terrorist attacks took place in Mumbai, India. Nearly 200 innocent people of all nationalities and ethnicities were killed, and the gunmen who carried out the raid are believed to be members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group that runs training camps in Pakistan ("Pakistan on tightrope with militant raid," The Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 2008).

There are unresolved issues about who might be responsible and whether the Indian government was adequately prepared. Inevitably, questions surface. How can our governments be more alert to protect their citizens? How can ordinary people protect themselves? And a final question also presents itself: What can be done to destroy the root cause of such acts of desperate hatred?

Jesus' example is one that I find offers comfort, as well as practical help, to the troubles of this day and age. And there are two encounters, both in the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, that seem especially relevant to the situation in Mumbai. In the beginning of the chapter, a woman guilty of breaking Hebrew law (see Deut. 17:2-7) escaped a brutal death by stoning when Jesus recommended that whichever man in the mob was without sin should throw the first stone. At the end of the chapter, Jesus himself was threatened with a similar death because the people were enraged by his teaching. The Bible says that he "hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by" (John 8:59).

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