The following article, printed in this week's newsletter, generated some passionate reponse (for and against). I invite your response as well (and glad to post if you're interested).
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In the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” the lead character, played by funnyman Bill Murray, wakes up each day to find that it’s February 2nd – again (and again, and again). Every day, more of the same, in a mind-blowing, insanity-producing cycle. In the movie, it’s funny.
But two days ago I listened to the President of the United States give justification for bombing an Arab country. He was addressing a country spiraling in confusion and frustration and its own pain. I had to look at the calendar to check the date. Phrase after phrase, justification after justification, I heard a Republican President assuring the American people that in this case, bombs are ok… in this case, we’re protecting innocent people… in this case, it’s a deranged lunatic we’re protecting from his own people… in this case Presidential powers allow… in this case, the intelligence tells us… in this case, American integrity and compassion and character call us to… Oh, wait, no, that was 2003, this is 2011… this is a Democratic President now, who campaigned against the wars?… But the language was virtually identical. Did you hear it? Am I losing my mind? Or is it just Groundhog Day, all over again?
I’ve given up my paper reading for a short spell and have not followed the recent events in the Middle East and Northern African, even the tragedy in Japan, nearly as closely as I should have. Our morning get-to-school schedule has changed, and I’ve confessed to you that I’ve never been so depressed over reading the news and never so despondent and helpless feeling about the sad state of American politics… so I figured I might give up the Observer for Lent, and then some – and we’ve quit listening to the ridiculous harangues between Fox News and Fox for Liberals. So, maybe it’s just because I’m not as closely in touch with the state of a world that seems to have lost touch, too, that the President’s remarks caught me so off guard – but I was dumbfounded.
Does power really do that to you? To everyone? Does the pressure of politics always force leaders to the same, sad conclusions? As if we have no other choice? Presidents may think we have no choice. Republican leaders and Democratic leaders may arrive at the same conclusion: no other option. But, there is a choice. Always. What is it that so blinds us that so many of us can actually believe the only solution to the world’s problems is more weapons and more violence and more death? Was it Einstein who said that the solution to a problem can never be solved by the same level of thinking that created the problem? And weapons and violence and death got us into this mess.
Walter Brueggemann, one of the world’s foremost Old Testament scholars, says, “The dominant script of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapueutic, technological, consumerist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.” The Bible’s genius, why it may yet save the world, is that it offers a counterscript to this narrative that everyone seems to accept. We need to develop a creative imagination… to see the world in a new light… to imagine new possibilities… to think beyond the same old, same old, same old, same old box….
I don’t expect American Presidents to be theologians. (After all, we don’t elect them to be Pastor of the U.S.) But the Christian voice in this world needs to counter this same old script they offer. Democrats. Republicans. Bush. Obama. Groundhog Day… All over Again.
That’s what Resurrection is all about. There really is the potential for a New Day to dawn in God’s world.
Praying for February 3rd…
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Hey Russ, thanks for the insightful comment. It occurs to me that the church is certainly complicit, by not fostering strategic and transforming initiatives to confront genocidal regimes. Presidents can always make the moral case for militarism when the alternative is passivity. Christian Peacemaker Teams are an example of a group trying to demonstrate other active responses, and it seems to me the church would do well to invest a lot of our discipleship and educational resources to developing real world alternatives, so our Presidents can have more than one tool in their toolbox. Until then, it will be Groundhog Day all over again, or to use a current movie with a closer connection to violence, Source Code.
ReplyDeletethere are so MANY reasons to be disappointed in obama, but this is certainly near the top of the list. like you, i can barely hear the day's bad news. i thought we won.... but clinton was more liberal... and he's (clinton) not.
ReplyDeletethe bottom line is that we're really good at war and it's always been lucrative for us. that's what's so hard to say no to.