Once upon a time, centuries ago, that mass act of violence known as war was a relatively localized event. Don’t misunderstand—acts of war have never been exclusively the premise of direct combatants. Knights during the Crusades may have met on battlefields to challenge one another, but civilian populations were always at risk, via sacking, slaughtering, and raping, when the fighting ended. Still, the war only extended as far as a particular army’s reach.

Of course, technological advances made the military’s arm extend further and further. Eventually we were fighting world wars, where planes from Nazi Germany could bomb targets in Britain in a matter of hours. Civilians bore heavy, but somewhat unintended, casualties. At least in principle, the innocent were to be protected.

Yet war never leaves civilians out—it never has. Targeting non-combatants, particularly women, has crucial psychological impact for both sides of a conflict. The Vagina Monologues depicts a particularly poignant piece about a Bosnian woman brutally raped by the enemy, an experience that leaves her dead to the joys of life, love, and sexuality. A majority of the world’s refugees from conflict are women and their children. When a bomb falls on a factory in Baghdad, it hits the school nearby, too.

Yesterday’s bombings in London, like the 9/11 attacks and the Madrid bombings a year ago, remind us that war always impacts civilians. People around the world know this, from Sudanese refugees in Kenya to Afghani women. Modern terrorism is perhaps the first time in history that civilians have been the sole targets of attack, but the psychological impact of war on the innocent is as old as humanity itself.

We talk so much about the divisions between us. Humans cannot cross their own socially-constructed barriers to unite around love, kindness, joy, or any of the other attributes that Paul proclaims as fruits of the Spirit of God. The only thing that can unite us, it seems, is the common experience of pain. Whether you’re a survivor of 9/11, a woman fleeing ethnic violence in the Balkans, or a child maimed by a landmine in Cambodia, you know what it is to innocently suffer.

Perhaps this is where the story of Christ’s death and resurrection finds its greatest resonance. We follow an innocent victim of violence, one crucified by an imperial power in a war with religious authorities over the “right” way to believe. Yet this victim rose again in victory over death and the earthly powers that had attempted to subdue him. His message of love survived and grew, and works in the world today.

And we live in this hope, that we shall rise as well.

“God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” --Isaiah 2:4

Kelsey