May 11, 2011

On the killing of Bin Laden – Stephen Berg

I had thought to write something astute about the great dance that broke out upon the skull of Bin Laden. I had thought to chastise the Sun and its squalling ROT IN HELL headline. Point out cleverly that unlike the climate of some of its journalism, the conditions of hell were in fact not conducive for composting.
I wanted to expose what I saw as our eroticism of revenge. But then I wondered whether the death of Bin Laden might help heal deep wounds experienced by the families who lost so much.

As many have done, I’ve imagined myself a father, husband, friend, of someone murdered on that horrific day a decade ago. And I am at loss.

By accounts, some are finding a sense of what they call closure, and others consider Bin Laden’s killing a hollow thing, a pyrrhic closure.

And so anything I say from here on must come under the judgement of people who were closest to the tragedy. As it is, I am neither counsellor nor sociologist, I am an expert of nothing much—simply an observer.
What struck me then was not the legitimate desire of justice for the aggrieved, but the fascination that polarized a nation; the great western gallery was suddenly galvanized by the death of one man. There was a surge of nationalism; an instant brotherhood through focused hatred; unification by hostility; coalesced by being on the good, right side.

Then came the voices of past administrations: justice is done, we will be avenged, time is no object. (No mention here that our war on terror has cut down civilian families far surpassing the number of those on 9/11.) Now we are freer and safer and stronger—say the voices—our lives have been returned to us.
There was dancing and chanting in the streets, at state capitals; and at the hallowed centres of Capitol Hill and Ground Zero there was near delirium—all ritual aspects of the sacred mechanism of security and supposed peace through singular reprisal—with the latent lust for ready violence heavy in the air.

It can't be sustained of course. Now a couple weeks later there are reasoned discussions on the symbolic versus the real. Bin Laden: cipher or malevolent genius. His death: harbinger for peace talks or ersatz victory or catalyst for terror?
kc_pubNoImageBut it’s not the event itself—it’s our response to the event that we should consider. And the question we should face is whether we have the self-awareness to see that irrational fanaticisms are not one-sided.

Christianism—that strange brew of nationalism and fundamentalism and resent-driven neoconservatism—and Islamism are twins. They are locked together in an escalation of extremes.

Here, biblical apocalyptic literature begins to make sense. Not as the view of God's end-time wrath dropped on the heads of the unregenerate, but in the anthropological understanding that our own wrath is visited and revisited upon ourselves by unrestrained reciprocal rivalry.

When scapegoats are fed to the fire like sticks—their power to restrain violence ever decreasing—when the pockets and periods without violence steadily shrink, when military technology has become master, and is its own raison d’etre, when government policies feed the machinery of war, and when governments themselves have lost the means to control violence, total war becomes a daily possibility.

Add to this our acceptance of violence as legitimate for sustaining communal life, our complicit silence that feeds the notion that war is normative—that war is simply a prolongation of policy—and talk of peace is thought to be incomprehensible, passé, or a romantic delusion.  And the apocalyptic spectre grows.

Yet even here, hope is not incompatible. We can recover our souls and our sanity. The way of empathy, kindness, and mercy, born out by leaving violence behind, is the narrow way opened to us and modelled in the life of Jesus.

Salvation is given meaning in the denouncement of violence. And not only in obvious violence, but in the low-key violence of commerce, and in our own grasping skirmishes and daily retaliations.
In detachment, in unlearning envy, in relearning desire through eyes unmoved by fear and death, eyes that delight in us, that gently hold us, that invite us out of “us and them”, to “we”, there is hope and peace.
www.growmercy.com

6 comments:

  1. Thoughtful piece, Stephen. We really need stronger theology on how we deal with issues like this. God did use violence to rid the Promised Land of evil people, and Jesus overthrew the tables in the temple. It is not so much that God hates violence but that He watches our hearts. That "I will get even" attitude leaves no room for the justice He calls us to live out. As you say, it is easier to talk when we are not part of tyranny's victim list, yet even when people mistreat us in slighter ways, abiding in Christ makes it possible to not react in retaliation and dance should we win, but trust that vengeance belongs to Him.

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  2. Interesting post which had me thinking after I read it yesterday. Here are some of my reactions, inexpertly expressed and with which you may well argue. Anyway, here goes...

    You say:

    "Christianism—that strange brew of nationalism and fundamentalism and resent-driven neoconservatism—and Islamism are twins. They are locked together in an escalation of extremes."

    Though I wouldn't agree with your description and implied motivations about Christianity or the church, I agree that Christianity and Islam are both extremes (as are many other belief systems). And that is as it should be. We are in a battle against everything that is against Christ and it is a battle to the death. If we aren't a little bit passionate and fanatical about that, maybe we don't understand the reality and gravity of our time on earth.

    Two other thoughts occur to me as I read your post:

    1. Our fight is not primarily against people but against "principalities and power"- Ephesians 6:12. In this setting, it is important that we tease apart our war against ideology from the people who represent it. For me that is where the mercy part of your argument makes sense. And where Elsie's caution about feelings of retaliation comes in. And where we need the "mind of Christ" in humility and forgiveness etc. etc, all adding up to supernatural love. This is the part of me that is offended by the celebrations over OBL's death.

    2. As members of a democratic nation, we have the privilege and responsibility to steward our freedoms. In that sense any setback of regimes that champion repression is, I believe, reason for celebration.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting post which had me thinking after I read it a few days ago. I commented yesterday but my comment was deleted in the blogger shenanigans. Thankfully I saved it so can repeat...

    My reactions, inexpertly expressed and with which you may well argue are...

    You say:

    "Christianism—that strange brew of nationalism and fundamentalism and resent-driven neoconservatism—and Islamism are twins. They are locked together in an escalation of extremes."

    Though I wouldn't agree with your description and implied motivations about Christianity or the church, I agree that Christianity and Islam are both extremes (as are many other belief systems). And that is as it should be. We are in a battle against everything that is against Christ and it is a battle to the death. If we aren't a little bit passionate and fanatical about that, maybe we don't understand the reality and gravity of our time on earth.

    Two other thoughts occur to me as I read your post:

    1. Our fight is not primarily against people but against "principalities and power"- Ephesians 6:12. In this setting, it is important that we tease apart our war against ideology from the people who represent it. For me that is where the mercy part of your argument makes sense. And where Elsie's caution about retaliation comes in. And where we need the "mind of Christ" in humility and forgiveness etc. etc, all adding up to supernatural love. This is the part of me that is offended by the celebrations over OBL's death.

    2. As members of a democratic nation, we have the privilege and responsibility to steward our freedoms. In that sense any setback of regimes that champion repression is, I believe, reason for celebration.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you for your response LC. Absolutely, abiding in Christ should allow us not to retaliate but to respond with active nonviolence. Jesus' own nonviolence was not a passive thing. He actively opposed injustice and tyranny, inspiring the likes of ML King and Daniel Berrigan. We likewise, without physical violence to people, should overturn tables and expose the victimization of the poor and oppressed. (By the way, we do have stronger theology on these issues; see Walter Wink, James Alison, S. Mark Heim et al.) But regarding God's use of violence to purge the promised land through slaughter; this, with all respect, I can't except. The grand arch of scripture gradually introduces us to a God that is wholly other than we are; a God without wrath or violence; a God that desires mercy and not sacrifice. If Christ is the full expression of God then the command of God--just one example--to "utterly destroy the men, women, and the little ones" leaving "none to remain," is unconscionable. There can be no harmonizing Jesus with a Deuteronomy God. The only way this is possible is with a form of Arianism, which separates God the father and Christ beyond any trinitarian understanding. There is, to my light, something else going on in the sweep of scripture; their is a successive revelation from the mythological vengeful God that requires blood sacrifices for appeasement, to the suffering servant, to finally, the utterly peaceful Christ. Scripture, when not read through a dispensational lens but through the lens of the gospel reveals and exposes our own wrath, our complicity in scapegoating or "redemptive" violence, and our use of God in sanctioning our war-making

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you for your response LC. Absolutely, abiding in Christ should allow us not to retaliate but to respond with active nonviolence. Jesus' own nonviolence was not a passive thing. He actively opposed injustice and tyranny, inspiring the likes of ML King and Daniel Berrigan. We likewise, without physical violence to people, should overturn tables and expose the victimization of the poor and oppressed. (By the way, we do have stronger theology on these issues; see Walter Wink, James Alison, S. Mark Heim et al.) But regarding God's use of violence to purge the promised land through slaughter; this, with all respect, I can't except. The grand arch of scripture gradually introduces us to a God that is wholly other than we are; a God without wrath or violence; a God that desires mercy and not sacrifice. If Christ is the full expression of God then the command of God--just one example--to "utterly destroy the men, women, and the little ones" leaving "none to remain," is unconscionable. There can be no harmonizing Jesus with a Deuteronomy God. The only way this is possible is with a form of Arianism, which separates God the father and Christ beyond any trinitarian understanding. There is, to my light, something else going on in the sweep of scripture; their is a successive revelation from the mythological vengeful God that requires blood sacrifices for appeasement, to the suffering servant, to finally, the utterly peaceful Christ. Scripture, when not read through a dispensational lens but through the lens of the gospel reveals and exposes our own wrath, our complicity in scapegoating or "redemptive" violence, and our use of God in sanctioning our war-making.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you very much for your comment and thoughts Violet, hardly inexpert. For me, Christian(ism) is not Christianity. And Islamism is not Islam. Christianism is an ideology--the ideological equivalent of a self-assured self-preservationist in-group, defining itself against of what it's not, i.e. Islam. It has nothing to do with the humility and poverty of spirit of genuine Christianity. And in this light I wholly embrace your first thought. As regards your second thought, I would expand the idea of "stewarding freedom" (a fine notion) to a rigorous critique of the USA and Israel, two regimes that have also championed repression, with Canadian complicity. We are of course Christians before we are citizens, and it is in the confusion of Christianity with nationalism and patriotism (i.e. Christianism) that violence is seen as a legitimate, and too often a first option--something that as best as I can discern from the gospel, Jesus would not sanction. So by "the escalation of extremes" I am not referring to the religious tenets of either Islam or Christianity, I am referring to the escalation of rivalry and violence between the "isms." For example, after 9/11, since George Bush declared war on terrorism--significantly, from a pulpit in Washington's National Cathedral--over 900,000 civilians have been killed Iraq and Afghanistan. Even now, after the killing of Bin Laden, there is no movement for troop withdrawal. The rise of redemptive violence ("peace" by way of war)...continually primed.

    ReplyDelete

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