Jan 6, 2010
How Terrorists Stole from the Kingdom of God’s Playbook
Tell me if any of this sounds familiar.
There’s a group in the world today that naturally gravitates to poor countries. They offer hope and answers to the people in this forgotten lands.
Many of the leaders of this group have left behind lucrative careers and significant family wealth, convincing new members that they are genuine and committed to their cause to the end. Should any of their leaders fall, authority is shared by many, enabling them to continue their work and to multiply rapidly.
Let’s review: they work on the margins, they offer hope and answers, they made sacrifices for their beliefs, they share authority, and they multiply through small cells. The people I’m referring to are terrorists/Islamic militants.
In one example of this at work, former CIA agent Michael Scheuer comments, “Unfortunately, in the Islamist military organizations, their leaders are actually on the battlefield. There are people who have given up livelihood such as a surgeon in terms of Zawahiri, a very prominent family in Egypt, the son of a multibillionaire in Osama bin Laden. So, what happens is the person you’re talking to is very attractive by his own system and not very attracted by yours.”
The trouble is that the methods of the terrorists resemble the way of Jesus on several counts. If you’re familiar with the New Testament, it should come to mind that Jesus’ mission revolved around proclaiming good news to the poor, he offered new life and hope, he called his followers to make serious sacrifices by taking up their crosses, he decentralized leadership by calling the greatest to be servants, and his followers spread rapidly through a series of small churches.
Of course there are some exceptions and differences that we could argue over—I’m especially expecting pushback over the leadership point—but for the most part there are some striking similarities that we should not ignore. In a sense, the terrorists are operating in ways similar to the Kingdom of God.
I suppose the question now is how the Kingdom of God, one established by self-sacrificing love, can counter those who are fueled by fear and hate.
