Blood Cries Out

Blood Cries Out
Genesis 4: 10-13

I write the week after bombings and attacks in Mumbai that killed hundreds of people. “This is our 9/11,” many Indians said. They did not merely mean that these were attacks on a vast and savage scale, carried out with unprecedented sophistication, focusing on an iconic target that is a symbol of the country’s wealth and financial importance, imperiling peace between India and other peoples with whom it needed to develop peaceful relations. They meant that they wanted to see a similar response to the U.S. response to 9/11. A few days after that event, President George W. Bush declared to the U.S. Congress, “Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” In this context, justice means revenge. And Indians want there to be justice. They seem unfazed by the questions that might be asked about how much justice emerged from the decisive action that followed 9/11 in Iraq and in Guantanamo Bay. They are unfazed because their brothers’ and sisters’ blood is crying out from the ground. Spilt blood does that. It overwhelms both logic and justice in the sense that the Old Testament uses the word justice...