Pope Francis asks us to pray for victims of "intolerable cruelty" and "to act to alleviate the suffering" caused by acts of terror and violence. Reverend Jim Wallis says that ISIS is evil by any standards and asks how the faith community can respond. He claims that only political and economic solutions will work and that we must understand and address "the roots of terror to build a strategy to defeat it..." Professor of Theology Elizabeth Johnson in Quest for the Living God says "the divine offer of love is always and everywhere present, being more powerful than the mystery of human guilt" (41). These are reasonable and loving Christian suggestions of how we might respond to the horror and guilt we all feel about the current spate of violence and intolerance most dramatically exemplified in the actions of ISIS. They are rational, devout Christian responses to irrational behaviors and misguided religious zeal, but they are long-term solutions to the immediacy of the terror of today. We need to decide what we can do now.

Our religious leaders argue eloquently for justice and charity, reflection, prayer, and study. We all hope and pray that good will overcome evil. We work for social justice, peace. We demonstrate, march, sing, give money, time, and food. Some of us go to the scene and work. We agonize over the hatred and blind zealotry of the terrorists. But how can we match them?