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Zero Dark Thirty and Zero Sum Gain

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This piece was originally published at Patheos on January 22, 2013.

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How can violence ever bring closure to violence? I considered this question while watching Zero Dark Thirty—the controversial movie on the hunt and killing of Osama Bin Laden. So much of the controversy around the movie centers on factuality and on whether or not it glorifies torture. From the standpoint of acting and cinematography, the movie is a great success. Moreover, regardless of whether or not the movie is accurate, it can prove beneficial for fostering important discussions. Here are two key questions. Should a democratic society such as the United States ever resort to torture to bring an end to mass killings and the perpetrators of horrific evil to justice? Moreover, can violence of any sort ever bring about justice and closure to injustice?

Yesterday we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. How might he have responded to the possible torture and eventual killing of Osama Bin Laden? He spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War and militarism. Would he have spoken out against America’s response to terrorism at the hands of Al Qaida? On a personal level, Dr. King was the victim of violence, but he never retaliated. He also encouraged those in his movement birthed in the church and centered on civil rights not to retaliate against their oppressors. Speaking of the church, how would King have responded to those who would claim that the response of a nation state will and should be different from the church when it is attacked? Tough questions. All of them went through my mind as I watched and pondered Zero Dark Thirty this holiday weekend.

Regardless of our answers to these questions, King’s life of civility and unswerving compassion and love even of his enemies brought justice to bear on torture and violence, exposing the darkness of hate, and bringing it into the light of day. King lived out what was true of his Lord and bore witness to how Jesus’ cross and resurrection absorbs evil and serves as the basis for the eventual eradication of all injustice. As G. B. Caird argued so King and his Lord lived and died, “Evil is defeated only if the injured person absorbs the evil and refuses to allow it to go any further” (G. B. Caird, Principalities and Powers: A Study in Pauline Theology, with a foreword by L. D. Hurst {Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003 [1956]}, p. 98). In view of Jesus’ cross and resurrection, how will we live? Will we live in light of his cross and resurrection, or in view of Zero Dark Thirty?

If we live out Zero Dark Thirty in our lives and eventually destroy all terrorists around the globe, will we bring an end to the terror of hate and unforgiveness that so often rages within? Or will we only mask this internal terror, developing calloused hearts as well as fingers after pulling the trigger over and over again? In the end, will Zero Dark Thirty lead to a zero sum gain?

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How to Sustain Jesus’ Justice Movement, Part 4

Jesus, Adam and Eve

This piece was originally published at Patheos on January 17, 2013.

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“We can’t do this alone.” These were the sentiments of my former student and her husband, who moved from Portland to Minneapolis/St. Paul to be involved in a community focused on addressing poverty while taking the vow of simplicty themselves.

How do you sustain a justice movement? Stay crazy. But it’s hard to stay crazy if you don’t live among beautifully crazy people who share the same values and who will inspire you and hold you accountable.

Hopefully, your accountability partners include some people who have been at it a while. My former student would let you know that you need crazy people who are also very wise. She and her husband knew they needed help. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Their justice movement would only last for a few days, if they didn’t connect with people with shared vision who had been at this work a lot longer than they had. Not those shock jocks and celebrities who talk a good talk, but people who had walked the walk a very long time, who had lived it out and had slugged it out with poverty, bearing wounds of loss and grief, while sharing life with and living among the poor.

You and I cannot do it alone. Whatever the justice initiative that we are aligned with, we need to make sure that we are aligned with other like-minded crazy people. Such people will include those who have been at it a good long while and who will help us put down solid foundations so as to build a house of justice that will withstand the storms of life that would beat us down and cause us to abandon the work.

A lot of people start out well and end poorly. They no longer care for the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger in their distress. Disillusionment is one of the worst forms of poverty. People who end poorly often say that they used to be crazy and embraced the ideals my former student now embodies until they got wise and learned to play it safe. They thought they could do it alone. They should have known better. My former student knows better. She and her husband know that to conquer such foolish talk they must invest in a community that is rich in integrity and wisdom. Only then will they remain beautifully crazy through the years. Stay crazy and stay close to those who’ve gone before you. Finish strong.

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Fight Club

This piece was originally published at Patheos on January 16, 2013.

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Aggressive men wrestlingI watched Fight Club the other night. It took me several tries to sit down and watch it all the way through. It’s not the easiest film to watch, but it is one of those movies that will be difficult to forget any time soon. Moreover, the story so encapsulates the traumatic experiences of a significant number of men in our society; so long after the memories of scenes from the movie have faded, I will have instant recall of lives in pain as violence committed against others rages on in our culture.

I won’t go into it all now, but I do hope to reflect upon the movie further in various ways in future posts. Here are my immediate musings.

A young unnamed man we’ll call “Jack” (played by Edward Norton) can’t come to terms with having been raised without a dad. His dad split when he was a child and set up franchises of bedding wives and producing kids in various places, causing the same relational wounds the size of a man wherever he went.

In the effort to come to terms with his pain and the loss of a childhood and failure to become a man, Jack takes to fighting. He starts a fight club that evolves and grows and goes nationwide. In the movie, men like Jack die and rise again every night as they beat on one another. They can identify and locate their pain as it sears their bloodied and bruised bodies. They are not seeking to medicate their pain or eradicate it, but identify with one another in experiencing the pain of the depression that is their purposeless lives. Such men know hedonism won’t save them; it’s simply the other side of the nihilism that’s closing in to write them off. So they fight; perhaps through chaos comes order. Then again, perhaps not.

As profoundly disturbing as Fight Club is, it speaks to the need for people to share their pain with others. While there are no doubt many significant ways that men can grieve the apparent loss of their manhood rather than pour out violence on spouses and children, among others, coming together to listen to one another grieve serves to heal old wounds. Such safe and authentic spaces do exist, though I am sure they are often hard to find.

I know of one such place. A friend of mine is an African American pastor. Pastor Clifford Chappell helps African American men come to terms with low self-esteem. He calls this work Man-Up. Man-Up includes “Huddles” where men form relationships in small groups in safe places where they can share and release their pain. Pastor Chappell says the pain and trauma these men experience go back in many cases to the slave block, where families were divided and where the white masters became lords over the homes of their African American slaves. Many slave owners made sure to indoctrinate their male slaves that they had no worth or dignity other than what their owners allowed them to have. Man-Up would work for all men, irrespective of color. Why? Male rage today, whether white or black or that of another hue, is often bound up with realizing that our futures have been squandered. We deserve more, but all we will ever get is far less. This self-realization makes us very angry.

Instead of tapping out, let’s tap in as men as we find our humanity in sharing the loss of it with one another. Maybe we can help one another find it again. Don’t internalize and suppress it; you’ll get ulcers, perhaps even commit suicide. Don’t externalize it by beating on others, dehumanizing them, calling other men boys and robbing them of their dignity at the slave block of various forms of seemingly manly competition. Rather, personalize the pain by sharing life with other men, honestly confessing the loss of our innocence and manhood and locating it once again in relationship. Don’t go to therapy and addiction groups where you fake an addiction, like Jack did earlier in the movie. Rather, be honest with your addiction. Don’t rage against it. Real men don’t rage. Real men confess. As unbearable as the disease of lost manhood can be, we will only come to find it in relation to other men and also women and children. Together we can grieve so that together we can someday rejoice in having discovered and shared in our corporate humanity again.

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How to Sustain Jesus’ Justice Movement, Part 3

This piece was originally posted at Patheos on January 14, 2013.

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Jesus, Adam and EveDo you look at those you serve as the objects of your good will and charity or as subjects who shape you—even to the point of becoming your benefactors and friends? In discussing this subject with my colleague Beyth Hogue Greenetz, she said it is a lot more difficult to get burned out on serving people when they are your friends. It may very well have been the case that the same Mother Teresa who saw Jesus in those she served saw herself as the friend of those she served. Maybe this was one of the keys to the vitality of her work over the years.

One of Beyth’s and my ministry partners at New Wine, New Wineskins shared with a group of New Wine leaders of her encounter with a man asking for money at a traffic light. As she sat there in her car, she felt moved to give him some money. She told him “God bless you,” as she gave him the gift. The man smiled and thanked her. Seconds later, he came to the window a second time and said, “I have a box of pastries.  Someone gave it to me, but I cannot finish it all.  Would you like some?” My friend said that her eyes filled with tears, as she remembered the poor widow’s coin offering to God (Luke 21:1-4). All the man had to share was this box of pastries; he wanted to share it because he was thankful. My friend was blessed and thankful for this man whom she had blessed. It is such encounters as these at the traffic signals of life that lead to our own transformation and the sustaining of a justice movement. We meet Jesus in such encounters, as we are blessed by those we bless.

Such encounters at the intersections of life can be destabilizing if we want to stay in control, if we want to be the producers and charitable ambassadors who make everyone consume our good will. At some point, we will likely run out of good will and teeter and fall when we operate from this elevated position and posture. But what happens when we are open to making new friends along the way and are surprised by the blessings we receive from the seemingly least likely of benefactors? Our service becomes a grand adventure, as we experience the richness of the widow in the temple with her two coins and the man at the street corner with his remaining pastries. Our own coffers and cups and pastry boxes will run over as a result of the bounty of God’s relational grace.

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Where Do We Go After Newtown?

This piece was originally published at Patheos on January 11, 2013.

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iStock_000002423703XSmallA tragedy like the mass shooting in an elementary school in an affluent, well-educated community unnerves America. If a tragedy like this had occurred in an impoverished region, it might not have had the same guttural impact. We might expect such mass violence against children to occur in places where education and economic levels are low.

As a society, we put a lot of stock in solving our problems through education and economics. While education and economics play key roles in cultivating communities, they are not sufficient. What is missing? Perhaps even scarier than realizing that such grotesque acts of violence can occur in unthinkable places is that we are not quite sure what to do. The banning of assault rifles, the training of teachers in weapon usage, the installation of more police officers, the reduction in violent movies and video games, the return to traditional values including strengthening of family bonds and religious connections have all been offered as remedies. What if these recommended solutions don’t help us move forward as a society after Newtown?

Could part of the problem be that as Americans we tend to think that by sheer will power and ingenuity and rigorous adherence to various codes along with education of various kinds and economic uplift, we can solve anything? Maybe it will take us realizing that we don’t have solutions, that no community is safe no matter our solutions, before we can come to a point of real resolve. Perhaps then and only then we will come upon a conversion moment. Quick and easy answers are harmful, if we want long-term solutions. Quick and easy answers only last so long. I am not calling for paralysis, but for a sense of perceptive desperation, not unlike what you’ll find at an AA Meeting. We cannot resolve our courtship with violence as a society. We are in need of a higher power, a greater force, divine aid.

Whatever you want to call it, defensive posturing that entails our saying someone else or some other group is to blame will only lead to further violence. We’ll never be able to move through and beyond the tragedy of Newtown if we fail to come to terms with the tragic flaw that resides deep within each of us. What happened there can happen to anyone of us, and inside every one of us. Coming to terms first and foremost with this truth is the first step in moving forward after Newtown.