It's hard to look at the world today and not see that killing is the answer to any problem which seems to be bigger than an ingrown toe-nail.  And the bigger the problem, the harder it seems to be to fix - the more likely it is that killing will be justified.

Our world revolves around 11/9/01 - a group of men decided that the best way to hit the western world was the destruction of the symbols of power - two large buildings which focus on the trading of money around the world and a building which has its main aim as the military mind of the most powerful nation to have ever existed in human history.  Why?  Was it poverty? Religion? Madness? A sense of justice beyond the imaginining of any of us?  Whatever their motive, their reason in their mind - it's answer was "Kill."

Too often I hear of people who see that the best way to avoid the consequences of their sexual activity, so as to be able to live life in the manner to which they are accustomed, is to rid themselves of the product of conception.  While this does not describe every abortion, and in some ways tends to trivialise it, I only use the language of those who promote it.  In the end, except for the most naive of people, the answer is "Kill."

At the other end of the scale we again push for those who are no longer useful to our sense of the economic life, those who have been damaged by accident or age, those who cannot tell us how they feel as their minds have worn out - we push for them to have a "good death."  We tell ourselves it is humane, kind and talk about a quality of life - perhaps all we really mean is that we hate to think that we might soil our pants one day.  If we do, if our underwear is urine stained and filled with old age excrement - the answer is "Kill."

A group of angry, idealistic men sit on the edge of their country - pushed by men much more powerful than themselves and given armaments they barely know how to use.  They feel a sense of injustice and are fueled by testosterone and muddled thinking.  Shoot a few rockets into the towns over the border and unleash a monster.  Their answer to their problem is "Kill."  The response from their victim is "Kill, Kill, Kill."

And so many people can find so many reason to justify any of those deaths.  What is sadder even than each of those deaths is the fact people can wave religion, logic, justice, truth, reason and any other banner around claiming some sort of legitimate reason to kill.  If life is sacred then all life is sacred.  If one life is not worth keeping then no life is worth keeping.  For one person to decide that any particular life is not worth keeping is, ultimately, an arbitary decision based upon their fundamentalism, their idealism, their misguided understanding that their thoughts are worth more than life itself.

I follow an angry man - a man who told me to hate my family, who whipped men who tried to make money out of other people's poverty, a man who bought the sword, not peace, a man who even declared his own friend to be Satan - yet he told me to love enemies, to allow a person to hit me on one side and then offer the other and a man who eventually faced his enemy in silent prayer allowing himself to be humiliated, beaten, wrongly accused and eventually killed.  As his followers attempted to kill in "self defence" he told them to put their swords away.  He turned to his persecutors and forgave them, knowing they killed out of ignorance.  I take his anger on board, but I follow what he did and how he resonded to violence.  He did not "Kill" even when others tried to kill him.

I cannot expect a Muslim or a Jew to follow that man, he may have their God, but they do not claim to follow him.  Their desire to kill as an answer to injustice or hatred could well be justified in their minds in their scriptures - but one who follows Jesus should follow Jesus.