A War Is Raging. You Don’t Have To Choose Sides.
It’s hard to get people to kill other human beings—unless we can convince them that the enemy is not really human. The history of war shows us over and over the campaigns countries wage to dehumanize their enemies so that it will be possible to kill them without sadness, remorse or shame.
Most of us would say we would never fall prey to that tactic. We would never dehumanize. But because political identification has come to be our sole/soul definer, we have learned how to interject a crafty but. “I would never dehumanize another person, but Hamas and the Palestinians have been brutally subjugated” or, “but Israel has a right to defend itself.” That little caveat allows us to condemn killing when their side does it, but artfully justify it when our side does it. We all do it.
But we don’t have to. In fact, if we seek to walk a spiritual path, we can’t. If we are to become more and more conformed to the image of God, we will have to stop choosing sides. The Old Testament story of Israel is all about the chosen people coming gradually, painfully to understand that their chosenness doesn’t exclude other nations. Unlike us, God, it seems, can love and embrace the opposites! (Read, for example, the book of Jonah.) And the New Testament of course tells the same story all over. Jesus’ critics reserve their worst vitriol for the moments when he declares a gentile more faithful than a Jew. (Read, for example, Matthew 8:10.) God is always saying, “I choose you…and the one you cannot abide. I choose you both.”
Living a spiritual life—that is, a deeply human life—means having our categories of chosenness broken apart. Our old wine skins must burst open with the new wine of universal love—and it is an explosion! It shocks us, challenges every synapse in our lizard brain.
When I find myself making allowances for the death of children as the collateral damage of our good cause, I return to Wendell Berry’s haunting poem, “Questionaire.” Here is the final question:
5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.*
*If you’d like to read the entire “Questionaire,” click here.
Powerful, David. Thanks.
I’m not God-like on this one David as you know. People who commit barbaric acts (rape, mutilation, beheadings, torture, etc see: Hamas) should be treated like barbarians. Did God love Al-Qaeda while they hid behind “oppression” or “imperialism” for murdering innocent people in NYC, DC, PA etc? Should we have marched peacefully to ask them to please stop? Wendell Barry’s poem makes me think of the 9 month old that was taken from his parents and into Hamas tunnels under Gaza “well yes he’s only 9 months old but he’s a JEW so he deserves it!” Again, I’m a mutt (English, Scottish, German etc etc) with no skin in the game except to know that our way of life (not perfect but the best that exists in my opinion) is at risk. I saw “peaceful protesting” for “Palestine” last weekend at Grand Central where protesters were kicking doors and tearing down American flags to wild applause. Under the First Amendment they are free to do as they please with respect to the American flag, and I would’ve loved to have been there to give the guy a little feedback when he was done. What I’m seeing at US colleges under the guise of “Free Palestine” is antisemitism and it makes me sad and angry (in case you couldn’t tell)!
I figured you might have a response, Matt! Thank you.
I’m not here to answer anyone–I don’t have answers. As usual, what I write is mostly to myself. In this case, trying to notice how political ideologies give me a cover for atrocities I would never of course commit on my own–none of us would. But somehow I can justify it. And in the end, governments are just the way people agree to organize their lives, their society, their culture. So my personal views and convictions are necessarily caught up in the social and political–if we deny this, then the people who have given up on politics because “nothing we do matters and big government and corporate entities are what rule the earth”–those people are right. And I can’t let that be true.
I think all Christians–at least those who live in the first world–have to live in the tension between supporting some kind of government that sees to our security and welfare, and being able to stand apart and raise a gospel protest when any government–ours or other’s–engages in actions that do not accord with the mind and heart of Christ. I rarely do that. I mostly go along. I hope to be better.
In this instance, I wanted to face the fact that I am good at condemning atrocities by people I don’t favor–and surprisingly good at somehow justifying the atrocities of my side. I know there’s a realpolitik response to that–but for me, that’s just another political response that spares me from taking some kind of personal responsibility for what it happening.
I think this is what Jesus meant by “take up your cross and follow me.” To try to live his radical way of love is to be torn in two directions and hang there in the middle. just like he did. They offered him some wine and vinegar to dull his senses, but he refused it. There are lots of ways to dull our senses to this crucified world, and I have a feeling that the contemplative life is all about trying somehow to take it all in, look at it full in the face–like Berry does in that amazing poem–and trust that we can hold it, or more to the point, that Christ can hold it within us, for us.
David, much thanks for this message. It is needed. Perhaps it helps us take that little pause between stimulus and response wherein that moment we can choose to respond with reason in the present instead of reacting from past conclusions.
The other day as my groceries were being checked out the person doing the checking said something to the effect, I’ve got to watch what I say, but I can’t believe how so many people are so uninformed about Palestine that they don’t want all those people out of there. I said, “Really?” then became loudly silent. As I pushed my cart out of the store and to my car I quietly wondered how she came to be so empirically adamant about her opinion, her “truth” on this matter.
I had never heard of the poem Questionnaire by Wendell Berry. Thank you for the introduction. Hopefully the message in his poem, like your message in this post, will help someone find the space between stimulus and response wherein they might possibly achieve Christ Vision.
“As usual, what I write is mostly to myself.” Ditto.
Here’s something I recently wrote to myself:
In the illusion of linear time where we seem to have a now, a before and a next there is always an earlier beginning, therefore, there is always more to the story. Being that there is always more to the story, one is never considering, evaluating or interpreting the complete story. Consequently, there is nothing or no one that is ever what it or they seem to be. What we think something is about is never really what it’s about. This is a profound liability of the human condition i.e., we can never see the entirety of the picture. We are only able to perceive and interpret fragments of the whole and it is our interpretations of those fragments that we often erroneously present and accept as being complete and factual. While there are such things as facts in the human experience, typically, we do not operate from facts. Instead, we operate from our interpretations/opinions of the facts. People don’t argue, fight, torture, kill, go to war, etc., over facts but they do all of that and more over their interpretations of the facts. Of course, as we exist in a duality, we also cooperate, collaborate, form agreements and help one another through our interpretations of the facts.
One final thing to add (something to ponder on)…Does judgement follow perception or is it the other way around?
Thanks, Monte—it’s so true that there is always more to the story—more than we know or can know. That ought to engender a little humility and forbearance with others.
I need God’s help. David, your reflection is true of all wars, as you stated. It’s also true of issues within a country, whether it be religion, sexual orientation, or race. It even continues to exist among family members who dispute over lesser matters. We believe ourselves to be “right “.
Montie brought up the chicken or the egg of perception or judgment… Which came first? To me it seems that only God can judge because only God can fully perceive. Not that it stops me from making judgments or making assumptions within my limited understanding. But I must continue to try to remember my limitations and the limitations of those I desire to judge, with God’s help.
If we can pause for a moment, it’s possible for God to interrupt the normal, knee-jerk judgments and choices we make. That’s what prayer is for!