Some background
In
my first article I pointed out that few people expected the opening
years of the new millennium to turn into an age of terror. We had other
dreams and hopes, having seen the end of the Cold War, but we found
ourselves after 9/11 becoming engaged in a new kind of war, which has many
of the aspects of a holy war. On the one hand this is a holy war aimed at
the United States and other Western nations by a violent form of Islamic
fundamentalism. On the other hand, the war on terror is a holy war waged by
the United States against its enemies on behalf of a grandiose vision of a
new American empire in the 21st century. The ideology of empire is basically
that might makes right, and thus as the only remaining superpower the United
States has a right to impose its will where and how it chooses. The doctrine
of preemption is an arrogant and dangerous extension of the logic of empire.
Its use to justify the invasion of Iraq involved deceptive claims regarding
Iraqi involvement in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and the
result has been greatly to increase the risk of terrorist attacks and
violent retaliations. I do not suggest that we should not defend ourselves
against terrorism, but the defense must be restrained and focused in the
recognition that the use of armed force and violence is always an evil,
hopefully a necessary and lesser evil.
In the first article I offered a
theological critique of the war on terror. The critique is grounded in the
first commandment: "I am the Lord your God, and you shall have no other gods
before me." Other gods are idols--finite things and human agendas that are
hyped into being infinite and holy. War, especially when legitimated by
claims of empire and preemption, is such an idol. It is a totalizing
practice that absorbs everything into itself and legitimates the most
terrible brutality. It is justifiable only as a last resort, not as a
strategic option.
The first commandment, I suggested, needs
to be supplemented by the teaching of Jesus. He envisions a human community
in which there are no ranks and privileges, where the logic of grace
prevails over that of ordinary consequences, where the needs of others take
priority over personal desires, where God's will is done and God's purposes
fulfilled in the form of healing, release from servitude and debt, sharing
of wealth, forgiveness of sin, care of neighbor, love of enemies. Jesus'
radicalization of the commandments relativizes all human pretensions of
virtue and brings about a reversal of values. Here is a text from the Sermon
on the Mount.
Matthew 5:21-24, 33-35, 37-48.
You have heard that it was said to those
of ancient times, "You shall not murder"; and "whoever murders shall be
liable to judgment." But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother
or sister, you will be liable to judgment; . . . and if you say, "You
fool," you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering
your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has
something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go;
first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer
your gift. . . .
Again, you have heard that it was said to
those of ancient times, "You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the
vows you have made to the Lord." But I say to you, Do not swear at all,
either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is
his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. . .
. Let your word be "Yes, Yes" or "No, No"; anything more than this comes
from the evil one.
You have heard that it was said, "An eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist an
evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other
also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak
as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.
Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to
borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, "You
shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children
of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you
love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax
collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,
what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Oh really, we say, what does this have
to do with the realities of terrorism? Are we supposed to turn the other
cheek and invite the terrorists to strike again? Are we supposed to love
them? Jesus' ethic might work in a more perfect world, but ours is a very
imperfect one in which self-defense and preemptive strikes are sometimes
necessary. Yes, true enough; this gospel is too much for us. We cannot live
up to it. But perhaps it provides some guidance. Jesus is condemning anger,
false or profane witness, vengeance, hatred of enemy. Instead of them he
offers reconciliation, truth-telling, non-violence, love of enemy. Isn't
this ultimately the only way to break the cycle of hatred, violence, and
terror?
In light of this radical, impossible
gospel, I propose a middle way by which some of its objectives might be
realized. I shall focus on the themes of truth, courage, justice, love, and
hope. These, I suggest, are theological virtues in an age of terror.
Truth
Jesus is connected with the theme of truth
not only by his advocacy of simple truth-telling and his declaration that
"the truth will make you free" (John 8:32), but because he is the
truth--a favorite theme of the Gospel of John (e.g., 14:6). His gospel
brings truth into the world, whereas by contrast deception and the telling
of lies are the essence of the demonic ("When the devil lies, he speaks
according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies," John
8:44). In other words, evil is rooted in deception, illusion, lies. Idolatry
flourishes in a context of deceit because it is based on a tissue of
fabrications.
Truth has been a casualty in the war on
terror. We know that we were led into war in Iraq on false pretenses, on
hyped intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction and the threat of
terrorism. The President and his counselors decided that they wanted to
overthrow Saddam Hussein almost as soon as they came into office. They
didn't tell us that but made it seem as though they were responding to the
attacks of 9/11. When weapons could not be found, they said that the reason
for invasion was to liberate the Iraqi people from oppression and to
establish a model democracy in the Middle East. But this is not the reason
that was debated by Congress; had it been, the risks and illusions of such
an action would have been discussed, and it is likely that the public would
not have supported a war on these terms. Since then almost everything about
the war has been conducted in as secretive a fashion as possible.
Truth is also at risk in our political
system as a whole, and as a consequence our democracy is at risk. The most
egregious example of lying in the electoral process is the political attack
ad. Barrages of TV attack ads can be viewed as a form of domestic terrorism.
In the last election both sides used them, but the Bush campaign and its
surrogates perfected the form, had greater resources to deploy them, and did
so more viciously. The attack ad lies with facts, real or invented, facts
selectively chosen and taken out of context, for the sole purpose of
distorting the position of the opponent and scaring people into believing
that he is or she is dangerous, incompetent, or dishonest. The ads play on
fear and emotion with psychological sophistication, honed through decades of
deceptive advertising of products. The objective, as Karl Rove frankly
admitted, is to get "our definition" of you the opponent so firmly implanted
in the public mind as to prevent you from dislodging it. We have a right to
appropriate your identity and manipulate it. Apparently most people obtain
their basic political information from these advertisements, and as a
consequence they are remarkably unfamiliar with the candidates' true
positions. It is difficult to see how democracy can survive if the most
affluent and effective liars win elections.
Courage
Jesus enjoins his followers not be anxious
about their lives, not to worry about what they will eat, drink, or wear,
not to be afraid of what tomorrow brings (Matt. 6:25-34). Such anxiety, he
says, is a sign of a lack of faith that God cares for us. Such faith is not
the foolish notion that God is directly in charge of all that happens. Jesus
points rather to natural processes such as the feeding of birds and the
growing of grass, and he suggests that what we humans need to strive for is
the kingdom of God and God's righteousness; then the things that we need
will be given to us. This is a way of saying that our fate is in God's hands
and that our task is to strive for the right without worrying about the
consequences. Life is a fragile and risky thing; we could die tomorrow; let
us live for today knowing that God is with us and sustains us, that our
destiny after death is to be in and with God, not to be annihilated in a
heartless cosmos.
Courage is the opposite of anxiety. It is
useful to have in an age of terror. The primary purpose of terrorists, it
has been said, is not to defeat or even to weaken the enemy militarily but
to gain publicity and to inspire fear, to obtain a psychological victory.
Politicians are adept at playing on such fear, and indeed the politics of
the war on terror has done just that. Obviously the horrendous attacks on
the World Trade Center are frightening, traumatizing events; and we all know
that similar, even worse attacks are possible in the future because there is
no foolproof defense. Indeed, the likelihood of such attacks has been
increased rather than decreased by our actions in Iraq and our failure to
address any of the fundamental causes. Our lives have become less secure.
But on what does our security depend? On the national security state? The
best way to hand the terrorists a posthumous victory would be to become so
obsessed with security as to let our democratic freedoms slip away.
Living in a democracy requires courage--the
courage of openness and freedom, the courage to let a sometimes messy and
contentious way of deciding things prevail, the courage not to strike back
in kind, the courage to live with diversity and disagreement, the courage to
trust in the (often foolish) wisdom of the people. Courage means to act in
the absence of certainty and in the face of enormous challenges. Without it
we could not live for a single day on this earth. Courage requires faith in
an ultimate whence and whither of life, an ultimate mystery of things that
is good and true. This mystery for Christian faith is God, whose nature is
revealed in Christ and the prophets and saints and who is known to be
compassionate and trustworthy. With faith in God we know that truth is
greater than lies, that good is more powerful than evil. With faith in God
the only thing to fear is fear itself. Yet we also know that we are people
of little faith.
Justice
I think of justice and love as forming a
pair of virtues, with justice pointing more to a goal achievable in human
relations and love to the ultimate goal that transcends human possibilities.
Justice is a central theme of the Hebrew Bible, where it is associated with
the idea of judgment. Jesus rarely mentions it specifically, although he
does condemn the Pharisees for neglecting "justice and the love of God"
(Luke 11:42); and we are told that he fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah about a
servant of God who will "proclaim justice to the Gentiles" (Matt. 12:18).
How does Jesus proclaim justice to the Gentiles? Perhaps one of his parables
about the kingdom of God offers a clue: all the privileged citizens of a
town who were invited to a great banquet declined to come, giving excuses,
so the owner of the house sent his servant out into the streets to bring in
the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame (Luke 14:12-24). The parable
reminds us that, according to Luke, the Messiah is one who is anointed to
bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to
the blind, freedom to the oppressed (Luke 4:18:19). These works of justice
have something to do with providing the material conditions for human
wellbeing, and also, it seems, for adjusting inequities between the haves
and the have-nots.
Perhaps in our case the "Gentiles" to whom
justice is due include the Arabic/Islamic world. They are among the
outsiders, the foreigners, the ones not invited to the Western feast. I
believe that the only long-term solution to the problem of terrorism is to
enhance justice throughout the world, including not only the Middle East but
also sub-Saharan Africa where hunger and disease and political chaos are
forming the next fertile breeding ground for terrorism. Terrorist acts are
ultimately an outcry against injustice intensified by religious fanaticism
and hatred. We cannot expect to live in a terror-free world as long as the
world's resources are so inequitably distributed. Islam itself was born in
the social vision of the prophet Muhammad, who denounced false contracts,
usury, and the exploitation of the poor, orphans, and widows. He called all
true believers to join the community of God, a universal community that
transcended tribal bonds and authority. One of the pillars of Islam is
almsgiving, which means that Muslims are bound to attend to the social
welfare of their community by redressing economic inequities. Christians,
Muslims, and Jews could make common cause in the struggle for justice, which
is deeply rooted in their traditions.
For our part this would mean reallocating
the enormous resources we have poured into the war on terror into a peace
initiative that would begin the process of building educational, social,
economic, and political programs to draw the Arabic world out of its
poverty, tyranny, anger, and resentment. Sacrifices would be required in our
own consumption and standard of living that Americans are not likely to be
willing to pay. The challenge is enormous given the complexity of issues and
legacy of hatred.
Perhaps it is too late for such an
initiative. Upon seeing the horrific images of torture, humiliation, and
sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees, Senator Diane Feinstein remarked, "If
somebody wanted to plan a clash of civilizations, this is how they'd do it.
The pictures play into every stereotype of America that Arabs have." In
retaliation, al Qaeda captured and beheaded a number of Western civilians,
posting videos of their executions on a website, thus playing into our
stereotype of Arabs. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into a contest to see
who can produce the most grotesque acts of inhumanity, it is a contest we
will lose and justice will never come. Yet people throughout the world yearn
for it. Against all odds, we must hope that the clash of civilizations might
be overcome in a vision of God's community of justice such as that shared by
Jesus and Muhammad. It will not happen automatically but only if people of
good will on all sides resolve to make it happen.
Love
In order to work, justice requires love,
the ultimate truth-force or soul-force, as Gandhi called it. This is the
love of God--God's love for us as well as our love for God. If God is love,
we have to believe that love is a greater power than hatred, reconciliation
a deeper truth than vengeance, non-violence a more effective strategy than
violence. The world hungers for this soul-force. God is not a transcendent
coercive superpower, says theologian Catherine Keller, but a power of
persuasion, a strange attractor amidst indeterminacy, a wisdom of open ends,
a force of truth, a love infinite in desire, a compassionate suffering, a
transcoding of worldly power. The transcoding means that the love of God
disrupts normal human codes; it demands love of neighbor as well as self,
and, more shockingly, the love of enemies as well as neighbors.
The neighbor described in Jesus' parable of
the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) is not your normal next-door neighbor but
a stranger in need. The victim of the robbery on the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho was abandoned by his fellow-Jews. A foreigner, a Samaritan--a
Palestinian!--took pity on him and cared for him. In this way two persons
who were traditionally at enmity became neighbors to each other. Is it
conceivable that we might someday regard Muslims as our neighbors, and that
they should regard us likewise? Or that Jews and Palestinians would do the
same? The most radical version of Jesus' love commandment is found in the
Sermon on the Mount: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his
sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on
the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:43-48).
What a ridiculous prescription for living
in an age of terror! Yes, I know that we must defend ourselves against
terrorist attacks, strike terrorist cells before they strike us, track their
networks and interrogate their operatives. But if this is all that we do, we
shall be doing it forever, depleting ourselves in the process. To break the
cycle of destruction we must have the courage to love, the wisdom to seek
justice, the clarity to tell the truth. These virtues are practical in their
very radicality.
Hope
One more virtue is needed if the radicality
is indeed to become practical: hope. Paul includes hope along with faith and
love as the greatest of the virtues (1 Cor. 13:13), and he tells us that we
hope for what we do not yet see and must await in patience (Rom. 8:25). Hope
is not something Jesus directly mentions, but it is interesting that the
same prophecy from Isaiah that identifies him as the servant of God who will
proclaim justice to the Gentiles also says that "in his name the Gentiles
will hope" (Matt. 12:21). This can only mean that God's promise of a new day
of justice, given originally to the people of Israel, is now extended to
Christians and Muslims, indeed to all the peoples of earth. Hope empowers us
to act: it gives us a vision of new possibilities, even if we cannot
directly see what they are, and the faith that by God's grace they might
become realities. In the present situation it is very difficult to see what
will bring an end to terrorism and a reconciliation of Arabs and Americans.
We are at a dark moment in history. Patience is needed for a long process.
Let us not abandon hope for the dawn of a new day.
Peter C. Hodgson
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