(Ir)religiosity

This wink is for you.

(Context here and here)

~bh ><>

The following will be the prologue to my senior paper.

Prologue

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

-President Dwight D.Eisenhower in his
farewell address given January 17 1961.

I still remember exactly what I was doing morning of September 11, 2001. It was fall of my sophomore year in high school and my entire graduating class—of 44 people—had gathered in the cafeteria to order our class rings. We were all in the middle of picking the symbols that would be on our ring when the principal walked in and told us that a commercial airplane and just crashed into the World Trade Center. You could hear a pin drop. The room fell still for what seemed like an eternity and then, as quickly as we had become silent we went right back to our task. The room was re-filled with the excitement and anticipation of finally having a class ring—for in Carnegie, Oklahoma this was a rite of passage. We had completely our freshman year of high school and now we had arrived. First came the class ring, then the letter jacket and the senior spread in the yearbook. We knew the drill and we weren’t about to let some ‘accident’ overshadow our day. Not five minutes later the principal reentered the room and told us that not only was the first plane hijacked by terrorists, but another aircraft had crashed into the other trade center tower and another hijacked plane was heading toward Washington DC. Suddenly the $320.66 I was about to spend on my class ring wasn’t so important.

The remainder of that day was and is still a blur to me. I remember going to class and watching the news replay those planes crashing into the building over, and over. Then the towers finally fell and they played that over, and over. I was 16 in 2001, so I distinctly remember gas prices skyrocketing to feel over six or seven dollars that day. I can remember going to football practice and our coach telling us to go home and pray because of the strange things happening in the world. Like most Americans, I was mostly scared. And like every American living at the time I had never witnessed an attack on our home soil, much less an act of terror. In the weeks and months following that horrific day I, like most Americans I suspect, remained glued to the television trying to see or hear every bit of information we could about the attacks. I remember President Bush declaring a War on Terror and congress voting to give me all the power necessary to carry that war out. Most of all I remember almost every developed nation in the world standing behind the United States as we tried to painfully move forward.

In 2004, I was able participate in another rite of passage for the first time and I exercised my right as an American citizen to vote, not just in any election, but a presidential election. Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have voted the way did. Like many Americans, I found myself caught in the middle of all the debate, all the rhetorical smoke screens and all the ‘layers of the onion.’ Frankly, I’m still quite upset at the federal government for exploiting my emotions after 9/11 and using them to justify a preemptive war against a sovereign nation. The American people were not told the truth; we were led to believe justice would be served while our leaders hatched a grand plan to exercise and secure global American power. My trust in government has been broken—and I’m not sure it will ever be restored.

This essay is the product of my reflection upon our country’s actions following the tragic events that transpired on September 11, 2001. Indeed, we claim to be a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles (though some of us would doubt the truth of that claim and cringe at what others call ‘Christian’). Moreover, this essay is my reflection as an American Christian—no, as a Christian who happens to be an American citizen—who is trying the best he can to follow Jesus despite the circumstances and despite what the governing body of his country might tell him is ‘just.’ How can a follower of The Way build God’s peaceable kingdom in a time of war?

Over the course of the last 3-4 years my studies have, among other things, lead me to believe that Jesus cannot be understood outside of his context. We can’t simply lift the Jesus of the bible out of the narrative of history, place him in 21st century America and expect the truth to jump out at us; to do so renders him impotent. We cannot place Jesus in the cultural vacuum of Western culture and worship him as Lord. To do so, I believe is a sin. Of all the travesties committed in the name of Christianity—of which there are many should one choose to read a summary of church history—perhaps the most despicable is the domestication of Jesus. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the story the children have entered the magical kingdom known as Narnia, and they meet a ferocious lion, Aslan is his name, he is the Christ-figure of the story. Naturally, the children are uneasy and anxious in the presence of such a mighty creature. So, the ask some of the other animals in the kingdom, “Is Aslan—this lion—is he safe?” And the animals answer, “No! He isn’t safe—but he is good.” Likewise, Jesus and his gospel, his good news, his evangellion—a term Jesus took from the Roman imperial lexicon and turned inside out—are not safe, but they are good. Too often in the Western world and in the United State particular we opt to tone down Jesus and his gospel, to make them more safe. As theologian and lecturer Tony Campolo puts it, we “neuter the gospel” in order to make it easier to teach, easier to preach and easier to put into action, pending we ever get that far. And by doing so we’ve created Jesus and his gospel in our image.

Most people are put aback when I tell them that Jesus probably looked more like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden than paintings on display in their churches or in their homes. We tend to forget that here in America, which is tragic because that is part of Jesus’ context. The Jesus of history was first century Palestinian peasant living under the rule of an oppressive empire. An empire that wanted nothing more than to expand its borders and exercise its military might throughout the world. This was the original meaning of “securing our national interests in the area.” And the most astonishing thing about Jesus—or at least what should be the most astonishing thing for United States as the sole superpower in world—is that he subverted and actively resisted the tyrannical rule of the empire. As Walter Wink puts it, “Almost every sentence Jesus uttered was an indictment of the empire and the domination system of his day.”

So—given this fact about Jesus and his gospel, what is a person living in the ‘New Rome’ to do? Furthermore, how should the ‘New Rome’—that claims to be a Christian nation, indeed a nation that follows Jesus and his gospel—conduct itself in the world? These are tough questions, questions of which there are no easy answers. But they must be asked nonetheless. My hope is to provide an efficient framework from which to ask these questions. A starting place from which others and myself can, as the great prophet Micah once stated, “…do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”

~bh ><>