Suicide Bombers

 

Suicide Bombers

     Strip away the honor and laugh?  Point fingers and cry foul?  Perhaps those rendered have more to teach than shouts to the air with hears covered.  What we do not understand can we try to pierce with knowledge?

     Cultural differences only are the surface.  Ice bergs passing in the night.  A drifting pass, they are silent as long they don’t collide.  What is evident above the surface of time is supported by traditions and events solidified by reoccurrences steeped to engrain.  “Japanese Zero’s!  Eleven o’clock high!”  A cry from the deck would send chills down the spine of the sailor caught off guard on a sleepy, Sunday morning.  Suddenly, hundreds of years of values were to be shoved down the throat of the U.S. Navy asleep from Saturday night’s hangover.

     What were we thinking?  Maybe it’s more what we weren’t.  Those pilots embarked from their Motherland with wind in their wings.  A tearful sendoff?  Maybe.  But more in the salute of honor given from the very top.  They had enough fuel to get to their target and that was it.  They knew it.  They flew to their death.  Premeditated certainly.  They gave all and they knew it before hand.

     A suicide mission?  Suicide is cowardly.  Scornful disdain the Emperor would have at this.  These men carried the name of Japan proudly on their canopies.  To give all that the ones back home may live free is the most one could ask.

     Black and white?  Wives and mothers on the coast saw the U.S. as the enemy.  They understood the only right way was to defend their land at all cost.  Caught under the chasm of misleading information without a swinging bridge to get them to the big picture, Japanese common folk swallowed the nationalistic theme.  To die before dishonor fueled the pot hot as the leaders stroked the majority into a pointed spear.  An initial jab to the iron sided America entered her into a war catching the U.S. on a two fronted skirmish in which she had to fight as a dog in a match.

     Happy to die?  An honor to lay down?  Isn’t that what Jesus did?

^{Colossians 2:15 “}And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

     A wimpy Jesus begging for mercy on a cross, I don’t see.  Tattoos up and down His arm running in carved blood testifying why He was here is more the picture.  His adorned body laid out in grand display for all to read.  He regretted not and He pushed through to glory.  Leaving all behind that all may be free.

     Suicide bomber?  Well, when you meet Jesus, you can ask Him what it was like.  In the end, He even left the sanity one gets when you know the home crowd is rooting for you.  Hey, ask Him whose name He had written alongside His canopy.  You may be surprised it wasn’t His.  He did all to the Father’s glory.