They Left Everything

You may have heard news reports recently about a young man with the name of Douglas McAuthur McCain. He was the first American that we know of who died in Syria fighting for ISIS, the Islamic State. And you wonder, “How in the world did an American end up dying as a jihadi in Syria?”

The Washington Post reports that he was born here in Illinois in 1981, but his family moved to the Minneapolis suburbs when he was young. He grew up a fan of Michael Jordan, “The Simpsons” and Pizza Hut. He joked around a lot. He played pickup basketball a lot. He floated a lot. He attended two different high schools, but didn’t graduate from either one. He started getting into trouble with the law, with 9 misdemeanor convictions. He worked a lot of unskilled jobs.

I watch young adults and often see a moment where their life gels, where they find themselves, a purpose for living, a career goal that will guide, fulfill them and motivate them. It’s clear that Douglas McAuthur McCain was having trouble with that.

We don’t know the whole story, but at about age 23 he converted to Islam and his tweets say he felt it was the best thing that ever happened to him. But he was still floating.

His parents knew that he had travelled to Turkey. And then all of a sudden the news came: he had died in battle, fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It is estimated that at least 100 Americans have made the same journey now. What’s going on?

A lot of study has been done to try to understand why someone would do such a thing. We have it awful good here in America. Hundreds of thousands of people are working really hard to get the privilege of moving into America, thousands risking their lives to sneak in if they can’t get in legally. But Douglas McAuthur McCain just up and left. He was black, which still presents real obstacles in America, especially if you don’t have a high school diploma. But in America he could live in safety and freedom, with good hospitals nearby, educational opportunities if he wanted them. In Syria he was living in the middle of a vicious civil war, he probably had lousy food, a lousy bed and the totalitarian environment of ISIS. He left everything! Why would he do that?

It seems that ISIS attracts bullies, angry people who just want to kill people. They have psychopaths in their midst. But there is no evidence that Douglas McAuthur McCain was a psychopath. It looks to me like he was someone looking in the wrong places to find meaning in life.

And how I wish he had been invited to a vital, living church, where he had found all the challenge and meaning he could have dreamed of.

For some, joining a group like ISIS is one way of filling the need for purpose in your life.

Obviously Douglas McAuthur McCain had been floating for a long time. And we are not designed to float. God put a deep longing for meaning into each one of us. We are on this earth to make a difference. Have you felt the difference in your life between times when you had a challenge and purpose and it maybe it was hard, but it felt good, and then other times when there just didn’t seem to be any point? God calls Bethel church to be a place where people of all ages will find a passion for life in serving God.

Related to that is the longing for success, to be a winner.

When the Seattle Seahawks won the Superbowl last year, I’ll bet they sold a whole lot of caps and jerseys and posters of people wanting to identify with a winner. That doesn’t hurt anything. But ISIS has been an amazing winner lately, conquering city after city, dominating their enemies, and people want to jump on the wagon with a winner. Personally, I don’t like conquering or dominating, but I hope we all have a desire to really accomplish something with our lives, to make a difference, to make things happen. We are created in the image of our creator God. We are here to make things happen. God calls Bethel church to be a place where people of all ages will find that as they follow Jesus together they get involved in our world and make a difference.

The ISIS fighters often carry a deep concern to right the wrongs of this earth.

For them, that’s a deep sense of grievance, feeling that Islam is being persecuted, and, especially, that what they consider to be “true Islam” has been corrupted and suppressed for too long. ISIS fighters have left everything to stand up for what they think is right. And most of the world can recognize that the particular form of Islam that they are fighting for is disgusting, a cancer on the human race. But, again, it’s a good thing to care about the injustices and sufferings of the world and a good thing to dedicate yourself to alleviating the things that are wrong.