A Study in Profiling
On Christmas Day 2009 a Nigerian Muslim terrorist
named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate a bomb while
aboard Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit that was in its final
hour. If he had been successful, aircraft debris (including roughly
three hundred souls on board) would have littered the landscape of
Ontario. In spite of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s vacuous
assertion that “the system worked” it is clear that the providential
mercy of God alone was responsible for foiling this latest attempt
at mass murder.
In a recent Twitter post, former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich opined: “We need a new policy of systematically going after
terrorists that involves explicit profiling…for behavior.” Ann
Coulter offered this analysis in her latest column: “Since Muslims
took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every
attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born
Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color.” I
agree with both, and believe profiling for potential terrorists
would be a no-brainer except for political correctness run amuck!
What exactly is profiling? Is it moral? Is it
biblical? According to Merriam-Webster OnLine, profiling is “the act
of suspecting or targeting a person on the basis of observed
characteristics or behavior.” So, if two eyewitnesses concur that
they heard gunshots emanating from a bank, and saw a sixtyish
gray-haired Caucasian male with a Miami Hurricane ball cap exiting
the bank with gun in hand, jumping into a blue Chevy pick-up and
fleeing the scene, would this not eliminate as suspect every female
and non-Caucasian male in town? Would not police be in a position to
fine-tune the manhunt based on the profile provided? The fact is it
would be immoral for police to have this information and then issue
an order not to target men fitting that description!
In addition to being a useful moral exercise,
profiling can be a biblical-spiritual exercise as well. In fact, a
study of scripture reveals that God has done a little profiling of
his own, and may indeed be the author of it. Moreover, profiling can
be both inclusionary and exclusionary in scope depending on the
preferred divine disposition.
One of our Old Testament heroes is
Gideon, son of Joash the Abiezrite (Judges 6-7). For seven long
years the Midianites had ransacked the Israelites and,
metaphorically speaking, made them pound sand. In response to
Gideon’s complaint, the angel of the Lord assured him that salvation
was on the way (6:14), and that his presence would ensure it (6:16).
After a cycle of sacrifice, destruction of the Baal altar,
construction of an altar to the Lord, trumpet blowing, volunteer
army assemblage and two fleeces (6:19-40), Gideon was ready to make
war with the thirty-two thousand men who had responded to his call
(7:1).
I’m quite certain Gideon was far more comfortable
with these odds than he was when first confronted with the prospect
of victory. But in his Lord’s reckoning, the odds were too good
(i.e., good enough for Israel to “vaunt themselves” in
post-victory reflection). So the Lord set up a stage-one profile,
which was essentially an exercise in self-analysis. Those who were
“fearful and afraid” were set at liberty to break camp and go
home. Better than two out of three (twenty-two thousand) took that
liberty and left ten thousand fearless men to wage war (7:2-3).
But fearlessness alone did not satisfy the divine
profile for combatants. The Lord implemented a stage-two profile,
instructing Gideon to set aside every one that lapped water with
his tongue as a dog laps water into one group and those who
bowed on their knees to drink into another group (7:4-7). God
was clearly targeting two different kinds of men based on observable
characteristics. The Lord was the profiler, not Gideon. Only after
profiling was complete did Gideon know that his combat troops would
number three hundred.
The stage-two profile began with ten thousand
fearless men, but unfortunately nine-thousand seven hundred of
them were careless men, whose physical thirst drove them to
take a defenseless posture at water’s edge. Some scholars tell us
that such a readiness to genuflect was indicative of Baal worship.
In any case, God disqualified them…for carelessness at a minimum. In
the profiling God conducted regarding Gideon, stage-one
fearlessness was an inclusionary trait. Stage-two
carelessness, on the other hand, was exclusionary in its scope.
Down through the
centuries to the current age, the fearful and careless are still as
unfit to engage in spiritual combat as are Islamic Jihadists to
board a commercial airliner! The good news, however, is that the
results of divine profiling can change. Fearful men and women can
become fearless with a fresh infilling of the Holy Ghost! And under
his divine influence, the careless believer can become disciplined
and steadfast in his or her spiritual demeanor…and make a difference
for the Lord Jesus in this present world!
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