Does God Love the Taliban? How a Young Doctor Found the Answer!
“The Most High . . . is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Lk. 6:35)
Whenever I teach missiology, I tell the following story to distinguish between churches that do missions out of missio Dei (mission of God: His tender heart for the nations) and those that do them as annual programs. While 52 Americans were held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 15 months from 1979-1981, many churches were praying for their release. One Sunday, the pastor of a church known for its missionary work asked the congregants to raise their hands if they were praying for the Americans; almost everyone did. When asked whether they were praying for the Iranian captors, hardly anyone raised their hands. The pastor then quipped, “I thought this was a mission-minded church; I guess not.”
In 2009, while I was teaching somewhere in Mexico, the Taliban kidnapped more than twenty Koreans who were in Afghanistan on a short-term mission trip. They were later released, except for the two who were killed. So in the class, I mentioned how missio Dei reaches out even to these terrorists. But as I was at home praying for the quick release of those kidnapped, I found myself refusing to pray for the Taliban—I deeply resented them for their actions against those who came to help. It was so much easier teaching about Missio Dei than to live it: but finally, in tears, I prayed for the Taliban.
Nevertheless, twelve years after that spiritual breakthrough, I find myself struggling, yet again, whether to pray for the Taliban in view of the reports of horrible things they are doing to Afghan people after American troops withdrew, seemingly haphazardly, from Afghanistan.
Many years ago I read in a book by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese woman who, after surviving Islamic terror, became an international journalist, a vivid display of Missio Dei. Her mother, after being badly injured during a shelling, was somehow taken to a hospital in Israel, which was more than an hour away from home. Gabriel was moved at the sight of the Israeli doctors, the very people whom she was taught to hate, tending her mother assiduously; but she was shocked to see the same doctors “providing lifesaving medical services to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen who had been injured in the process of trying to kill Israelis.” She writes, “For the first time in my life . . . I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments”—that’s Missio Dei.
So, what must go through the mind of a doctor who treats the enemy combatant? A while back, I met a young doctor, a committed believer, who actually lived through all this. Dr. Peter, an Air Force physician, was plucked out of his young family and was placed right in the middle of a war zone in Afghanistan in 2010. It was going to be six months of non-stop work in the trauma hospital, tending wounded soldiers, some of whom had lost all their limbs. It was gruesome, exhausting and a lonesome time in Peter’s life, but what made his job excruciatingly difficult was having to treat the very Taliban who had, just hours before, maimed and killed our troops. These were people, if they could, who wouldn’t have hesitated in killing the tending doctor instantly.
Peter was all too human. He writes, “I looked at them with disdain. I was face to face with the Bible mandate to ‘love your enemies.’ It was a struggle between what I knew was the right thing to do and my heart that harbored hatred for them. If it were left up to me I wouldn’t have administered any life saving medications. . . . I begrudgingly did my duty, but my heart was elsewhere.” And soon Peter fell into the deep abyss, feeling “like such a failure.” He says, “I thought I was a good Christian [because] I kept a lot of the ‘rules’ of Christianity in my life; however, God showed me the deception in my heart.” It was at that moment Peter recognized something else: “I was no different than the enemy I hated. I was an enemy of God once,” like what the Taliban are to the American soldiers. The only difference: While Peter knew and believed that “the precious blood of Christ saved [him] . . . to be a child of God,” the Taliban perhaps haven’t heard this good news. Slowly, this powerful reminder began to change his attitude towards the Taliban patients because, as he puts it, “Only when I saw the love of God in my own life and the sacrifice He made that I could see them differently.”
While Peter was sharing this with me, I knew that his story has to be told because it so forcefully captures God’s heart, for he concludes, “It was unfathomable that his heart breaks for those whom I hated.” Yes, “For God so loved the Taliban that he gave his one and only Son.” In that light, let’s be more forgiving and merciful towards those who may not be very lovable right now.
Whenever I teach missiology, I tell the following story to distinguish between churches that do missions out of missio Dei (mission of God: His tender heart for the nations) and those that do them as annual programs. While 52 Americans were held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 15 months from 1979-1981, many churches were praying for their release. One Sunday, the pastor of a church known for its missionary work asked the congregants to raise their hands if they were praying for the Americans; almost everyone did. When asked whether they were praying for the Iranian captors, hardly anyone raised their hands. The pastor then quipped, “I thought this was a mission-minded church; I guess not.”
In 2009, while I was teaching somewhere in Mexico, the Taliban kidnapped more than twenty Koreans who were in Afghanistan on a short-term mission trip. They were later released, except for the two who were killed. So in the class, I mentioned how missio Dei reaches out even to these terrorists. But as I was at home praying for the quick release of those kidnapped, I found myself refusing to pray for the Taliban—I deeply resented them for their actions against those who came to help. It was so much easier teaching about Missio Dei than to live it: but finally, in tears, I prayed for the Taliban.
Nevertheless, twelve years after that spiritual breakthrough, I find myself struggling, yet again, whether to pray for the Taliban in view of the reports of horrible things they are doing to Afghan people after American troops withdrew, seemingly haphazardly, from Afghanistan.
Many years ago I read in a book by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese woman who, after surviving Islamic terror, became an international journalist, a vivid display of Missio Dei. Her mother, after being badly injured during a shelling, was somehow taken to a hospital in Israel, which was more than an hour away from home. Gabriel was moved at the sight of the Israeli doctors, the very people whom she was taught to hate, tending her mother assiduously; but she was shocked to see the same doctors “providing lifesaving medical services to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen who had been injured in the process of trying to kill Israelis.” She writes, “For the first time in my life . . . I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments”—that’s Missio Dei.
So, what must go through the mind of a doctor who treats the enemy combatant? A while back, I met a young doctor, a committed believer, who actually lived through all this. Dr. Peter, an Air Force physician, was plucked out of his young family and was placed right in the middle of a war zone in Afghanistan in 2010. It was going to be six months of non-stop work in the trauma hospital, tending wounded soldiers, some of whom had lost all their limbs. It was gruesome, exhausting and a lonesome time in Peter’s life, but what made his job excruciatingly difficult was having to treat the very Taliban who had, just hours before, maimed and killed our troops. These were people, if they could, who wouldn’t have hesitated in killing the tending doctor instantly.
Peter was all too human. He writes, “I looked at them with disdain. I was face to face with the Bible mandate to ‘love your enemies.’ It was a struggle between what I knew was the right thing to do and my heart that harbored hatred for them. If it were left up to me I wouldn’t have administered any life saving medications. . . . I begrudgingly did my duty, but my heart was elsewhere.” And soon Peter fell into the deep abyss, feeling “like such a failure.” He says, “I thought I was a good Christian [because] I kept a lot of the ‘rules’ of Christianity in my life; however, God showed me the deception in my heart.” It was at that moment Peter recognized something else: “I was no different than the enemy I hated. I was an enemy of God once,” like what the Taliban are to the American soldiers. The only difference: While Peter knew and believed that “the precious blood of Christ saved [him] . . . to be a child of God,” the Taliban perhaps haven’t heard this good news. Slowly, this powerful reminder began to change his attitude towards the Taliban patients because, as he puts it, “Only when I saw the love of God in my own life and the sacrifice He made that I could see them differently.”
While Peter was sharing this with me, I knew that his story has to be told because it so forcefully captures God’s heart, for he concludes, “It was unfathomable that his heart breaks for those whom I hated.” Yes, “For God so loved the Taliban that he gave his one and only Son.” In that light, let’s be more forgiving and merciful towards those who may not be very lovable right now.
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