doing the work of god as our local religion christian bbs group seems moribund i m posting here on one of the sundays just before easter i went to church the sermon was based on a story in the book of joshua the one about joshua sending out spies to the land he was planning to take what i particularly remember because of having heard part of a cbc radio documentary on bosnia was that the rahab the woman who sheltered the spies said that the people were melting in fear what with having heard that cbc radio documentary and knowing that the muslims in bosnia were losing the war i felt uncomfortable after all the serbs are driving non christians out on the other hand ministers do say that the bible is opposed to the values held by our secular society anyhow members of that church are involved in out of country missionary work also the pastor has talked of spiritual warfare and of bringing christ to the nonreligious people of our area the next sunday the sermon was about joshua where the israelites take jericho and then proceed to massacre everybody there except for rahab who had sheltered the spies with those reports about bosnia in my mind i felt uncomfortable about the minister saying that the massacre the one in joshua was right but what really bothered me was that if i was going to try taking christianity seriously i shouldn t be so troubled about the reports of ethnic cleansing in bosnia certainly my sympathies shouldn t be with the moslims considering that the bosnian muslims are descendants of christians who under turkish rule converted to islam could the serbs be doing god s work the example of god s people setting out on bloody wars of conquest has always been troubling in discussions here i personally question whether they were right even at the time but those who believe they were consider that the wars were justified only because they were specifically commanded by god somehow i don t see the serbs behaving like a group that is led by god in this matter clh
