A Little Salt, a Dash of Pepper

On this 9/11 afternoon several dozen peace minded members of our community, including some our Muslim neighbors, attended a PowerPoint lecture at the Court Square Theater on "Sharia: the Threat to America," one that turned out to be a numbing two-hour demonization of all things Islam. The spirit of the meeting was almost the opposite of the hour-long vigil many of us had attended on the south side of  the Court House nearby the night before, a time of expressing lament but also of affirming hope and goodwill, of singing and praying together around the theme of "Turning Toward Peace." It was hopeful rather than hateful.

I encouraged like-minded friends to attend today's event to be a prayerful and respectful presence, to add a scattering of God-flavored "salt," we hoped, among the total of perhaps 150-200 people present. Or, as it turned out, maybe a dash of pepper, with a number of insightful questions being raised by some of our friends in the Q & A time--queries and concerns that were met mostly with sarcastic dismissals or further lecturing by the speaker. To be fair, not everyone who differed with him was always as respectful as I had wished, either.

Most of us wore something black as a sign of our mourning both the horrendous loss of life at 9/11/01 and the hatred, suspicion and violence that have followed.

Sponsored by members of the Valley Family Forum, ACT For America, and members of the local Tea Party Patriots, today's event was led by one of the co-authors of the Sharia report, who spent much of his time generalizing, stereotyping and attacking any and all who disagree with him and his worldview, including bashing former President Bush, most of the members of Congress and pretty much the entire Washington establishment.

Not surprisingly, the title of his newest book is to be "Too Stupid to Live," a categorization sure to include most of us.

After a day like this, when we are all reliving the awful events of 9/11, I find it hard to know how to respond. Just more information, someone has said, is the solution only to the extent that ignorance is the problem. And ignorance remains a serious problem for all of us, to be sure, but it's pretty clear that America's problems are much deeper than that, involving the kinds of fear, hatred, and prejudice as old as the human race.

So today I'll simply post something I wrote for our house church newsletter nearly ten years ago, soon after the 9/11/01 disaster:



Ridding the World of Terrorism

Terrorism. We must rid the world of it, we’re told, using every means necessary.

The only problem is, even the deadliest military force in the world isn’t strong enough to root it out. In fact, the more violence we use to destroy our enemies in retaliation, the more of the world’s moderate majority are likely to rally to join fringe elements dedicated to destroying us.  When it comes to winning the hearts and minds of the millions needed to join us in this effort, even nuclear weapons are far too weak and ineffectual, and their use would cause us to be seen as worse than those we seek to punish.

What force, then, is strong enough? Like the terrorists we accuse of ignoring their own Islamic teachings about respect for human life, far too many Christians have disregarded their own scriptures which say, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” We have overlooked passages that tell us to “Be still (means, literally, ‘Stop fighting!’) and know that I am God,” and that “God will make wars cease to the ends of the earth,” and will “break the bow and shatter  the spear; burn the shields with fire.” For too long followers of Jesus have set aside their Master’s commands to love their enemies and to feed them if they are hungry, give them water to drink if they are thirsty. Relying instead of on weapons of massive destruction, we have helped escalate the cycle of violence and genocide that threatens us all.

If we were to actually take the teachings of our faith seriously, we would blanket impoverished countries like Iraq and Afghanistan with prayer, bread, medical supplies and other forms of aid instead of responding with sanctions and with deadly weapons. This kind of incredibly surprising response, coupled with working with other peaceful nations to bring about actual perpetrators to justice, may be the only way to gain the necessary support of the world’s moderate millions in attacking and rooting out terrorism. It would result in far less loss of life and would cost a fraction of what it takes to engage in another war.

Will any other response rid the world of evil doers? 

I don’t think so.
                                                                                                           October 2001

P. S. You may also want to read my August 27 blog on Sharia Mania. And as always, your comments are welcome.

Saying No to War

There were 51,000 Civil War casualties at Gettysburg
alone.

“As disciples of Christ, we do not prepare for war, or participate in war or military service.”
       
This succinct statement taken from Article 22 of my church's "Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective"  sets us apart from all but a small fraction of other Christians around the world, although I am heartened by more and more individuals and denominations, notably Quakers and the Church of the Brethren, supporting this position.  Yet the above was embraced universally by believers in the first and second centuries, and by most Anabaptist-minded (later Mennonite) Christians since the 16th century.

To cite two of many examples, Tertullian, a leader and theologian in the early church expressed this vision when he spoke of the church as a people who “join to beat their swords into plows, and their lances into sickles.”  Origin of Egypt, a contemporary of Tertullian’s said, “Nor do we ‘learn war any more,’ having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, our leader.”  

To them, Jesus spoke the final word from God on issues of war and peace.  War was simply over for Christians, a thing of the past. Menno Simons and other outspoken leaders and martyrs in Anabaptist and other renewal movements simply helped revive this conviction. Menno himself wrote, "True Christians do not know vengeance... their hearts overflow with peace... The regenerate do not go to war, or engage in strife...  they are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares."

Sadly, few followers of Christ over the centuries have maintained such positions, which has resulted in Inquisitions, Crusades, multiple wars among so-called Christian nations in Europe and elsewhere, and Christians defending and participating in every kind of military adventure imaginable, all in the name of God and country, and each case defended as a "just war." And there has been a gradual erosion of anti-war conviction among Mennonites as well, members of a small “peace church” that has maintained for most of 500 years that military membership and church membership are incompatible.

To me, a weakening of any church’s position on this kind of witness represents a crying shame.  Surely there is a need for at least a remnant of people somewhere who consistently teach and demonstrate that Christians, by definition, are people who will not harm or kill under any circumstances, not even in a time of war, not even their enemies (and certainly not their fellow believers) anywhere in the world.

I see this as not about some sectarian “peace position,” but about an “agape position,” about Jesus's followers being a people defined by their passionate love for God above every other love or allegiance, and by a compassionate love for neighbor--friend, foe and foreigner alike. 

And lest we reduce agape to being a mere sentiment, an attitude of niceness, or as simply a benevolent feeling toward others (one that still allows us to engage in their destruction under certain circumstances), the New Testament makes clear that God's kind of unconditional love is defined by its actions, not merely its motives or emotions.  Thus Jesus, in explaining what loving ones neighbor actually means, tells the story of a Samaritan binding up the wounds of his mortal enemy, a Jew.  And Paul, in Romans 13 (the very passage that urges respect, rather than armed resistance, toward even the occupying, crucifying, terrorist Caesars) makes it clear that love will "do no harm to a neighbor." Period.

As Ghandi once observed, Christians seem to be the only ones who believe Jesus and the New Testament are not absolutely clear on these points: Do no harm.  Return good for evil.  Take up the cross, not the sword.  Follow Jesus’s personal example of a completely nonresistant life, who taught, "My kingdom (government) is not like those of this world. If that were so my servants would fight."

If, in our baptism, we receive a missionary commission to evangelize and reconcile God’s enemies to God and to each other, how can we accept a military commission to harm them?  And if we are convinced that in Jesus God’s future kingdom has already been inaugurated, how can we also pledge, under oath, to become a part of an enterprise committed to harming or coercing others “in the national interest”?

Clearly, most decent people, Christian or not, would renounce the following as immoral and unacceptable:

breaking and entering
lying and other forms of deception
physical, psychological, or other forms of torture and abuse
armed robbery
malicious wounding
organized acts of terrorism
using racial or other demeaning slurs
using explosives to destroy people or property
destroying land or other natural resources
stabbing or strangling
forcing people from their homes or communities
committing mass murder

Without question, most believers would speak out against members of churches engaging in such behaviors--and would disapprove of their supporting or belonging to any groups or organizations that do--yet raise no objections when military forces routinely encourage, train and/or command people to do all of the above and more.  Thus we are in danger of accepting, on a mass and organized scale, what we could not accept or allow on any other basis. Unlike legitimate police force, necessary in human societies to maintain order within national boundaries (and intended to preserve life and bring individuals to justice under laws designed to protect individual rights), military forces have a long history of plundering and destroying without benefit of such civilized restraints.

True, we pacifist Christians must repent of the many "beams" of self righteousness, materialism, and cowardly indifference that interfere with our moral vision. Because of these we may not always “see clearly” to lovingly help remove any specks of militarism from another’s eye.

But remove them we must, all of us, lest history write off the church as having been irrelevant and mute in one of the most pressing moral issues of all time.

I like this piece by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself; I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his payroll.
I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.