An excerpt from a book I'm reading for class:
"Liberal theology, like its nemesis in the evangelical church, is a form of self-exaltation. While evangelicals often champion a gospel of greed and personal empowerment, deeply attractive to the poor and marginal, liberals often speak on behalf of oppressed groups they never meet, advocating utopian and unrealistic schemes to bring about peace and universal love. Neither group has much interest in testing their ideologies against reality.
The lectures I sat through in divinity school about oppression, liberation theology and the just-war theory were safely distant fro the sordid realities we discussed. These discussions were an intellectual shell game, intriguing, even interesting, but finally meaningless without the visceral experience of the world.
The first time I saw a human being die in combat rendered hollow the platitudes about proper and improper uses of violence. I was no longer able to ask the question.
I was traveling north early one morning during the war in El Salvador on the Troncal highway to the Chaletenango province. Outside of the town of Aguilares I came upon several cars that had stopped before an open stretch of pavement. I heard intense bursts of gunfire up ahead, and then all went quiet.
I cautiously went forward by foot. When I neared the opening I saw a young soldier lying in the road with two dull black M-16s on either side of him. A few yards ahead, people were climbing onto an overcrowded bus.
The rebels had stopped the bus to collect "war taxes" when a pickup full of soldiers had sped past. The two groups had fired on each other. One soldier, who lay a few feet from me, had been shot through the back of the head. Another had been wounded. The truck had raced to the nearest army outpost and the rebels had disappeared in the bush. The bus driver, fearful of another clash, was shouting at his passengers to get back on board. The army would probably return soon and more fighting would follow.
I knelt down by the soldier, who could have been no more than 16. He was slowly curling himself into a fetal position. Blood came from his nose and the small bullet wound in the back of his head. A woman at the side of the road was watching in tears.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
She shook her head in the negative. I watched him die, far from his family and friends, an insignificant casualty in a war of "liberation."
What could any "new society," one many liberal Christians back, ever mean to the family of this boy?
Can we really accept that 16-year-old soldiers, press-ganged into the military, are a regrettable sacrifice in the progression toward a new world of the Kingdom of God? I can accept his death as tragic and inevitable, given the social and historical antecedents leading up to the insurrection, but not as necessary. Idols, not God, require sacrifices. In his death I saw through the awful tragedy that is war, the inevitable sadness of it and the glib ways we can speak about experiences that are not our own.
Christian groups played an active role in supporting sides in the violent civil wars. I saw the hypocrisy of liberals and evangelicals in Central America, each of whom chose sides and justified violence in the name of God. Pat Robertson traveled to camps in Honduras to support the contra bands, funded and backed by the United States, who were attacking Nicaragua. Many liberal religious leaders embrace the Sandinista government or the Salvadoran rebels. To bless weapons and soldiers, something I once watched a Catholic bishop do at a military base in Guatemala, is to put faith in the idol of war, in the service of death. It is, perhaps, the most common and destructive form of idolatry, one that has left more religious institutions morally bankrupt.
The scene on the highway is seared in my consciousness. I see the bright, glaring sunlight. I see the boy dying on the road. I hear the rumbling of the diesel bus. I listen to the harried shouts of the driver. God was there, I know now, But not to bless either side. The tears of the sobbing woman were the tears of God.
Idols consume us. Only the small, mundane acts of life, of kindness for neighbors and friends and family, can save us. Mothers and fathers, who have put their own careers on hold, know this power, however hard it is to lose the identity and status that come with work. Those who stop to care for a sick or disabled relative know this. Sacrifice gives us life. It frees us from idols. But we must accept that such sacrifice can be hard and lonely. Sacrifice for others gives life and makes community possible. Sacrifice for our idols leaves us with hollow, empty lives.
Not institution or cause will remember or reward us for the sacrifices we make. There are no shortages of lives wrecked by idols. Those who spend their finals years waiting forlornly for a call from children they never bothered to know because they were too busy building careers, must peer into the empty face of the idol they worshipped. Idols, when they finish with us, discard us. They keep us from God."
p. 48-50, Losing Moses on the Freeway by Chris Hedges
As wealthy, comfortable Americans, we don't need much. We have the luxury of bantering about philosophical ideas, contemplating meaning, allowing our lives to be consumed with life-sucking idols.... idols that distract us from each other and from God. We even have the luxury of figuring out how to take advantage of others for our own good. We have this luxury because we haven't suffered. We have time to discuss silly ideas because we haven't experienced reality. We've lived so cushioned by lies our government and media continually feed us.
I suppose that's why, despite the poverty and despair, I found more life in a 3rd world country than I do in the land of the free. They understand suffering, despair, loss, pain. But they also understand the need for God. The need for love, for life, for relationship, for each other. They recognize that without each other to suffer through the trials with and rejoice in the good times, life means nothing. They don't have the luxury to cast people off for materials, jobs, money, and power.
Those people I met this summer humiliated me and touched me in a powerful way. They understood what so many us take advantage of. They understood the power of love. The remained faithful through trials. They weren't people easily tossed by winds of chaos and destruction. They knew where their center lied....where their hope and faith lied. They choose love.
No comments:
Post a Comment