Someone went on a rampage earlier today at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We don’t know much about the shooter at the time of publication of this brief article, but it appears from photographs that he is older and doesn’t appear to have a high melanin content in his skin. For some, this means that he is a “white Christian terrorist.”
Planned Parenthood of the Rockies has already publicly suggested that the incident was caused by “extremists creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism…”(source link)
Twitter, in particular, is abuzz with blame for Christians and pro-lifers, using the term “terrorism” to describe this act of violence.
Let me be very clear. If what transpired (like the rest of the world, we are eager to hear the facts) is that someone was motivated by strong convictions – even if it was through their misunderstanding or misapplication of Biblical doctrine – regarding murder taking place at that particular clinic decided to bring vigilante violence against the clinic and subsequently murder law enforcement officers and others, it was sinful and wrong.
However, terrorism it is not necessarily.
The FBI defines domestic terrorism…
“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:
- Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
- Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
- Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. (source link)
Vigilante justice is not terrorism. It is sinful and wrong. But people seriously need to start using a different word. Such an action would not rise to the level “terrorism” unless the individual’s goal was to shape public policy or make the public fear at large. If the shooter was trying to keep a larger number of lives from being taken by taking some himself, he was a misguided murderer, but not a terrorist. This is not an excuse for the individual’s actions (as I’ll write a third time, it was sinful and wrong).
In the coming days, should what many suspect turn out to be correct and this individual is affiliated with some branch of Christianity and if he was motivated by his misunderstanding of Biblical teaching, you will see Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal agencies amp up their efforts to put “fundamentalist” Christians on terrorist watch lists and make them particularly susceptible to NSA encroachments on civil liberty. As our president has turned largely a blind eye to threats of Islamic terrorism, energies will be renewed to characterize those of us with Christian convictions as a danger to our society.
By the time you read this article, perhaps news will reveal the entire post is irrelevant and the shooter was an albino Sikh who left his turban at home or something. But if not, brace yourself and watch for the feeding frenzy in the media, the Obama Administration amp up its effort to surveil Christians and pro-abortion allies enact revenge for the brutal beating they’ve taken over the last few months in the press.
We live in interesting times.
[Contributed by JD Hall]
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