Willow Branches in Autumn Winds

“Fallen humans tend to identify their own group as righteous and any group that opposes them as evil. If they were not evil, we tend to believe, no conflict would exist. Hence, the only way to end the conflict is to “rid the world of this evil,” as President George W. Bush said after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The “good” (our tribe) must extinguish the “evil” (their tribe), using all means necessary, including violence…The true cause of violence, of course, is not “the enemy” but something much more fundamental, something both we and our enemy have in common. The true cause lies in the fact that our fallen hearts are idolatrous and subject to the fallen powers that influence us.

“So long as people locate their worth, significance, and security in their power, possessions, traditions, reputations, religious behaviors, tribe and nation rather than in a relationship with their Creator, Babylon’s bloody tit-for-tat game is inevitable. Of course, peaceful solutions must still be sought and can, to some degree, be attained with regard to each particular conflict. But as long as humans define their personal and tribal self-interests over and against other people’s competing personal and tribal self-interests, violence is inevitable and wil break out again.

~p. 26, The Myth of a Christian Nation, by Greg Boyd

Has the church in America put our worth, significance and security in our power, traditions, tribe and nation, rather than in our relationship to God?