Friday, May 27, 2011
Guest Post at Covered in the Master's Dust
I'm honored to have been asked to guest post on Ben Gosden's blog. My post-Easter sermon from 2010, "In Good Company," is featured over at Covered in the Master's Dust this week.
Monday, May 09, 2011
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
A week after the initial reaction to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, I am still pondering the different views and responses reported in the media.
I was troubled to hear of Americans celebrating publicly, as it called to mind how extremists in other countries publicly celebrated attacks on our country and our people. The death of another human being, no matter how evil the acts that human perpetrated in life, is not cause for celebration when we remember that all people are created in the image and likeness of God. No question, the life that bin Laden lived in no way reflects my understanding of how God calls us to live, and the image of God in bin Laden was greatly distorted, like a mirror that has warped and grown filthy with neglect, so that the image it reflects bears little resemblance to the original. But still. Jesus taught his followers to love their (our) enemies, and I have a hard time believing that he meant we should kill them.
Yes, I understand the political perspective of reducing violence by eliminating a significant source of messages of hate and a coordinator of terrorist activities. But I don't feel significantly safer than I did two weeks ago. Maybe I am blessed to live in ignorance or denial of the threat I was under that has now been "neutralized." But I keep coming back to how war and the language of war seek to dehumanize the enemy, and end by dehumanizing all of us. Words like "eliminate" and "neutralize," words like "operation" and "target" all serve to distance us from the fact that the U.S. kills people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong.
In all of the political rhetoric, I have been particularly intrigued by the use of the word "justice." President Obama announced that "Justice has been done," and many others have picked up on this theme. But my question is this: What do you mean by justice?
If justice is retribution, vengeance, eye for an eye, then how does killing one person balance out the thousands who died on September 11, and the thousands more (military and civilians) who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? People like to quote "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," but the meaning of this in the Bible is that it is not up to us humans to take revenge; we are to leave that for God. (It is also worth asking whether this truly is the God in whom we believe, or whether the revelation of God in Jesus Christ leads Christians to a different understanding of who God is since this phrase was originally included in Deuteronomy some 2,500 - 3,000 years ago.)
And if justice is something other than retribution, something more like restoration, then how does taking one life make whole all those who have lost life or limb or a loved one? This death does not erase any other, nor does it bring back life as it was before 9/11. For any of us.
As someone who believes that God is both just and merciful, with an emphasis on wanting humans to love one another and care for creation, I do not believe that Osama bin Laden gets off scot-free for having lived a life of hatred and violence. (My thoughts on the afterlife are a whole different post, but I'm not talking an eternity of torture in a lake of fire here, either.) But I also feel that my faith perspective would make it extremely difficult for me to be in a position where I had to decide to end someone's life, not out of my own immediate drive for self-defense, but in a calculated, premeditated way. If God is just, we ought to tremble for all the violence the U.S. government and military has inflicted on others on our behalf, and for the systemic/structural violence our society perpetuates on the poor, on undocumented immigrants, on African Americans and Native Americans and Muslims and LGBT people.
What is justice? Can it coexist with violence? Does a Christian definition of justice require something more than our American political perspective?
May God have mercy on us all.
I was troubled to hear of Americans celebrating publicly, as it called to mind how extremists in other countries publicly celebrated attacks on our country and our people. The death of another human being, no matter how evil the acts that human perpetrated in life, is not cause for celebration when we remember that all people are created in the image and likeness of God. No question, the life that bin Laden lived in no way reflects my understanding of how God calls us to live, and the image of God in bin Laden was greatly distorted, like a mirror that has warped and grown filthy with neglect, so that the image it reflects bears little resemblance to the original. But still. Jesus taught his followers to love their (our) enemies, and I have a hard time believing that he meant we should kill them.
Yes, I understand the political perspective of reducing violence by eliminating a significant source of messages of hate and a coordinator of terrorist activities. But I don't feel significantly safer than I did two weeks ago. Maybe I am blessed to live in ignorance or denial of the threat I was under that has now been "neutralized." But I keep coming back to how war and the language of war seek to dehumanize the enemy, and end by dehumanizing all of us. Words like "eliminate" and "neutralize," words like "operation" and "target" all serve to distance us from the fact that the U.S. kills people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong.
In all of the political rhetoric, I have been particularly intrigued by the use of the word "justice." President Obama announced that "Justice has been done," and many others have picked up on this theme. But my question is this: What do you mean by justice?
If justice is retribution, vengeance, eye for an eye, then how does killing one person balance out the thousands who died on September 11, and the thousands more (military and civilians) who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? People like to quote "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," but the meaning of this in the Bible is that it is not up to us humans to take revenge; we are to leave that for God. (It is also worth asking whether this truly is the God in whom we believe, or whether the revelation of God in Jesus Christ leads Christians to a different understanding of who God is since this phrase was originally included in Deuteronomy some 2,500 - 3,000 years ago.)
And if justice is something other than retribution, something more like restoration, then how does taking one life make whole all those who have lost life or limb or a loved one? This death does not erase any other, nor does it bring back life as it was before 9/11. For any of us.
As someone who believes that God is both just and merciful, with an emphasis on wanting humans to love one another and care for creation, I do not believe that Osama bin Laden gets off scot-free for having lived a life of hatred and violence. (My thoughts on the afterlife are a whole different post, but I'm not talking an eternity of torture in a lake of fire here, either.) But I also feel that my faith perspective would make it extremely difficult for me to be in a position where I had to decide to end someone's life, not out of my own immediate drive for self-defense, but in a calculated, premeditated way. If God is just, we ought to tremble for all the violence the U.S. government and military has inflicted on others on our behalf, and for the systemic/structural violence our society perpetuates on the poor, on undocumented immigrants, on African Americans and Native Americans and Muslims and LGBT people.
What is justice? Can it coexist with violence? Does a Christian definition of justice require something more than our American political perspective?
May God have mercy on us all.
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