AI Is A Gateway To The Welfare State
October 6, 2026 |
Keith Giles
None of us will ever forget what we were doing Twenty-five years ago, will we? We all sat and stared at our televisions as we saw the results of an attack on American soil.
Nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. Families were shattered. Children lost parents. Parents lost children. People went to work on an ordinary Tuesday morning and never came home.
We were wounded. Terrified. We wanted someone to pay. It always makes me think of the ancient Hebrew character of Jonah. Not about Jonah and the whale (the story actually says “big fish”- FYI), but of Jonah and his enemies. You see, in the story, when Jonah refused to go to Nineveh to preach, it was for one reason – he wanted Nineveh to pay.
Jonah doesn’t want Nineveh to survive.
He finally admits why he ran away from God’s command in the first place. Jonah knew universal truth and divine godliness consist of traits like: Mercy. Compassion. Slowness to anger. Forgiveness of our enemies. Jonah didn’t want to have to wear the priestly robes of these character traits. He was horrified of the idea that his Hebrew God might just want to forgive the Ninevites – Jonah’s enemy. Or in Jonah’s vision: God was going to let them get away with the terror they had caused Jonah’s people for many years.
And when Jonah came face-to-face with Divine mercy, he became furious and declared he’d rather be dead than to live in the world where “those people” received life and liberty.
When I look at America after September 11, 2001, I see that we faced a choice between two ancient religious stories. We could choose to be Jonah. Or we could choose Jesus – who famously said of his terrorizing enemies, “Father, forgive them…”
We chose Jonah.
We were hurt, so somebody needed to pay. And soon “somebody” became an enormous category of human beings.
People who had absolutely nothing to do with flying airplanes into buildings suddenly found themselves answering for people they’d never met. Mosques were threatened. People were assaulted.
Sikhs were attacked because their attackers apparently weren’t particularly interested in learning the difference between Sikhism and Islam.
Our grief needed an enemy. And fear supplied one. Soon, in revenge for our 3,000 deaths, some 300,000+ innocent Iraqis – a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 – were dead, too.
There’s another story told in biblical tales. Of Jesus being arrested by his enemies to be taken to his death. Fear sets in for Jesus’ friend Peter and he chooses violence against those he sees as his enemies. His testosterone pounding, Peter reaches for a weapon, and cuts off the ear of a man who was with the arresters.
If there were ever a moment when violence could be justified, surely this was it.
And Jesus says “NO!” He commands Peter to put the sword away. He tells him those who live by such violence will also die by it. Then, according to the Christian Gospel of Luke, Jesus does something extraordinary. He heals the man Peter just wounded.
WHAT? That man is the enemy! They are here to do evil! They aren’t of Jesus’ race or religion. But Jesus chooses healing despite being in this worst moment of his life. Hours later, hanging from an execution device while people mock him and soldiers divide his clothing, Luke places another impossible act of mercy on Jesus’ lips:
Forgive them.
And maybe that’s the part of Christianity we’ve never really believed. We like forgiveness after the enemy apologizes and we get access to their resources. We give mercy after we’ve beaten our enemies into surrender. Maybe we show them love if they repent for not being us.
Jesus, on the other hand, offers love while they’re still in the act of killing him. And doesn’t being “Christian” mean one who strives to look like Christ? Jonah could not tolerate a world where his enemies receive forgiveness. Jesus refuses to stop seeing humanity even in his killers.
Twenty-five years later, we’re once again at war in the Middle East. Once again believing our bombs can make us safe. Can make us have peace. But I’m haunted by the introspection we seemed to have missed since 9/11:
Maybe that’s what Jesus understood when he told Peter to put away the sword. Violence doesn’t merely kill. Violence reproduces itself. One wounded person wounds another. One frightened nation frightens another. A dead child becomes another family’s reason for revenge.
And the sword keeps getting passed from hand to hand.
Jonah wanted the cycle to end with the destruction of his enemies. Jesus imagined something much more difficult. The Hatfields-and-McCoys cycle ends only when somebody refuses to swing the sword again.
Not only has America not learned this lesson after twenty-five years, I’m convinced we don’t want to. We believe our violence will always usurp the violence of the other side. After all, God is on our side, right?
Maybe Jonah isn’t an ancient cautionary tale about some angry prophet who lived thousands of years ago. Maybe Jonah is what we become when we’ve been hurt badly enough that mercy starts to feel like injustice. And then we refuse our own healing and, thus, hate the idea of healing for others.
And maybe that’s why the book ends without telling us anything more about Jonah.
God asks Jonah if Jonah does well to hate these people. God demands to know why he shouldn’t care about the people Jonah wants destroyed. One hundred and twenty thousand Ninevites (a city now called Mosul that served as the capitol of the ISIS caliphate).
Jonah never answers. The book ends. That abrupt, silent stop still haunts me. How long do we get to choose be Jonah before our story comes to an abrupt end?
Twenty-five years later, perhaps the question is still hanging there.
Do we really want peace?
Or do we just want our enemies to hurt as much as we do?
