A dose of reality

A moving and provocative article in today’s NYT about Iraqi Christians faced with a quandary that is difficult for any of us to imagine: watch as insurgents target and kill your priests and parishioners, or make regular payments that will protect you, but will also fund the insurgents’ violence elsewhere.

For Iraqi Christians, Money Bought Survival

It's a good reality check for me, as someone who likes to sit at my computer and opine about Christians who are complicit in violence, Christians who choose self-preservation over self-sacrifice, et cetera. Then I read a story like this, and any impulse to judge goes totally out the window. Something about war seems to have the dual effect of simultaneously intensifying the decisions people make and muddying the waters of right and wrong. It's probably that as the stakes rise, the available options get worse and worse.