Memorial Day: Look Forward As Well

For the past couple of years, I’ve been a bit conflicted about Memorial Day as a national holiday. Every year, millions of Americans take the day off and enjoy being able to do so. This is not, by any means, a bad thing. We should be reminded of those things that we take for granted; having a job, taking time off from that job, being able to travel on the highway without significant fear of being roadblocked and robbed at gunpoint. Our country, however flawed it might by, affords us certain privileges that we all too often forget.

So, my conflict does not come from questions of whether or not we should enjoy our freedom. What is not to enjoy? As well, in keeping with the holiday, remembering those who have died for our freedom is not a bad thing.

My conflict concerning memorial day comes mostly from what we have made out of it in recent years. It has become a sort of military pride celebration in which we not only remember those who have died in the past, but we glorify (perhaps even deify) the wars that killed them. Memorial Day is a day for celebrating freedom as well as for remembering who we have to thank for it. However, as we celebrate, perhaps we should also look to the future and think of ways to prevent more from dying.

Glorifying the military might of the United States can be a dangerous thing. Yes, we have fought wars in the past that have been for the greater good, and we have done so with the greatest intentions. However, we forget that, while we continue to enjoy freedom, our wars have transformed functioning nations into ruined police states. We do not fight wars on our own turf, and thus it may be difficult to remember that we are elsewhere taking freedom away from persons who deserve it as much as we do.

So, on this Memorial Day, let us indeed remember those who have died and let us continue to support those who volunteer for service, but let us also try and imagine a world characterized by peace rather than by war. Let us imagine a world where armies become unnecessary, or at least a world in which they are bored and can find absolutely nothing to do. On this Memorial Day, let us remember those who have fallen, but let us work towards a world in which others will not.

Spe Salvi

I just finished reading the Pope’s new encyclical, Spe Salvi and, even as a lifelong protestant, I have to say that I’m quite impressed. In this letter, Benedict XVI (henceforth B16) boldly handles the difficult subject of Christian hope with impressive sharpness and enviable grace. This blog post will not come anywhere near doing it justice.

In the first page, B16 strongly asserts that hope is not simply a part of living a life in God. On the contrary, he claims, “To come to know God – the true God – means to receive hope” (§3). Hope, in his mind, is the center of Christian faith and it is from our hope that all else springs. He then goes on to elaborate on what he means by hope. Is this hope in the present? Hope in the future? His answer is that it is a little of both. Christian hope does involve a looking forward towards things to come, but it also involves a vision of the future in the present. “Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future” (§7)

Basically, the hope that we have for the future should not simply be confined to the future as something that we cannot grasp now. We hope that social injustice will be brought to an end and that suffering and death will be defeated, but this hope must (at least in part) materialize in the present if it is truly good news.

How do we learn and obtain this hope? His answer is threefold. First and foremost, prayer is essential. It is a communication between us and God, “something very personal, an encounter…” (§34) As well, he cites “action and suffering” as essential for the learning of hope. Action is understood as the ways that “we…strive to realize our lesser and greater hopes” (§35). Suffering, “like action…is a part of our human existence. Suffering stems partly from our finitude, and partly from the mass of sin which has accumulated over the course of history” (§36). Lastly, judgement is essential to our learning of hope. Our vision of God’s judgement, while sometimes terrifying, must be seen as “the decisive image of hope…an image that evokes responsibility” (§44).

There are, of course, some difficulties inherent in his arguments; however, the difficulties do not necessarily arise from him per se. Rather, these difficulties are naturally connected to the subject matter that he addresses. Namely, the topic of suffering…the age-old question of theodicy. If God is good, and all that God created is good, then why do we suffer? These are difficult questions with no sufficient answers.

I’m slightly concerned with the way that B16 addresses the issue of suffering as a means to learning hope. He is politically correct in his acknowledgment that we, as Christians, should work to alleviate suffering; however, he is less than optimistic that this can be accomplished this side of the eschaton. By naming suffering as one of the means by which we learn to hope, he implies quite powerfully that it is not going anywhere anytime soon. As well, this statement attempts to answer the theodicy question by saying something along the lines of “God allows suffering to bring about a greater good.” A classic view, but one that I ultimately find unconvincing and problematic.

I do not believe there to be a good answer to the theodicy problem, but I find the use of suffering as a means to a greater good to be dangerous. For starters, it legitimizes and romanticizes the suffering of millions (perhaps billions) of persons around the world. While I do not think that B16 is saying that God causes these persons to suffer or that we shouldn’t do anything about it, his conclusion does help to at least maintain the status quo.

As Christians, I think that we must be more optimistic about the possibility of social justice. Rather than say, “That is something that God will work out in the end,” we need to work harder for it in the present.  There are those like Reinhold Niebuhr who maintain that humanity is simply too corrupt, and others who hold that it is all God’s business and that all will eventually be well. True, our faith proclaims a hope that Christ will come soon, but the reality of the world begs us to take our present situation with more seriousness.

Reading in Communion

There are not many books on my shelves that I would refer to as ‘required reading’ for Christians. Granted, there are a few possibilities; Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard, Fred Craddock’s commentary on Luke, Faith Seeking Understanding by Daniel Migliore, and perhaps The Corinthian Body by Dale Martin. It is not often that I find myself wanting to add to a list such as this, already meager and, dare I say, ‘questionable’ in most eyes. However, today I finished a book that I think should be at the top of any Christian’s list, especially those who are involved in any sort of decision making or are curious about ethics.

Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life is a fascinating read by Stephen E. Fowl and L. Gregory Jones. It addresses many of the issues surrounding contemporary Christian ethics, but it is not just useful for those in the field. On the contrary, this book is useful and powerful for anyone who reads their Bible with any regularity. As well, it is especially apt for those who have stopped reading their Bible because they have become disenchanted with attempting to ‘apply it.’

During my last year or so in seminary, I became introduced to and intrigued with the field of Christian ethics. My first ethics class, taught by Dr. Timothy Jackson, was a truly eye-opening experience. I found myself in agreement with the majority of Dr. Jackson’s conclusions, which were arrived at from his reading of the New Testament’s presentation of agape, or self-giving love. However, while I agreed with his conclusions, as a Biblical Studies guy I did not agree whole heartedly with the way he used the New Testament to reach them. Something about it just seemed to ‘easy’ for comfort. Since that class, I have been searching for a better way and have read close to 20 books claiming to base their ethics off of the New Testament. None of them really satisfied my search, until I found this book by Fowl & Jones.

The main premise of the book is that the reading of scripture should always be done communally. Similar to the point that Stanley Hauerwas makes in his Unleashing the Scriptures, they argue that the text of the Bible can only be rightly interpreted in the context of the community. Pragmatically, of course, this does not mean that one should only read the Bible when there is a group of people around, although they may agree that this is a good place to start.

As well, Fowl and Jones insist that only a properly formed character is central for a responsible interpretation of the text. The character that is required is produced largely by the work of the Holy Spirit, as well as through the practice of witness and conversation. It is incorrect to thing that those will character will always interpret faithfully, and it is possible that someone without a well-formed character will interpret faithfully. Their point is that ‘the character of interpreters and Scriptural interpretation are bound up with one another” (85).

Scripture, they argue, must always be read ‘over against’ the community that is attempting to interpret it. In this way, they consider the Bible to be a sort of outsider that calls our practices into questions and leads us to live and function differently in the world. Hearing and being in conversation with ‘the outsiders’ is absolutely essential to a right understanding and interpretation of Scripture. Their specific example deals with the homosexual community, which has been alienated by the church for some time. The current situation with the homosexual communities is, as they write, a sinful one. “Our desire to see the body of Christ united must lead us to act in ways that will rectify the situation. Only then can a community hope to arrive at a faithful reading and performance of Scripture” (116). In short, the church can not rightly interpret the message of the Gospel if they are characterized by alienation rather than reconciliation.

The book concludes with a chapter on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was arrested and executed by the Nazis for helping the Jews and for plotting to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer, they claim, was a living example of what it meant to live and embody the message of Scripture. He continually struggled with his pacifistic beliefs as well as what he thought was his Christian responsibility, a responsibility that was calling him to the possibility of violence against evil. Up until the time of his hanging, he was deeply involved in a dialogue with the Biblical texts, and was constantly open to new interpretations and ‘readings’ of himself. Bonhoeffer, as he himself wrote of someone else in an unfinished novel, ‘paid for the Word of God with his life and taught it with his death.’

Niebuhr

I just finished Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr, who has been one of my favorite theologians for quite some time. I have read this work before, and every time I finish it, I think two things. First, I wonder if things really are as bleak as he paints them. Second, I wonder why anyone, including myself, continues to read him.

Niebuhr’s argument throughout the book is that persons are capable of being moral which, for Niebuhr, involves the seeking of social justice. Although they are capable of such an action, they will shy away from it, overshadowed by their selfishness. Nations, in effect, are created in this same spirit of selfishness and thus serve only to amplify it. Through introspection, which religion provides, individuals may return to a point where they are willing and able to seek social justice, but they can only accomplish it on a small scale, within their own communities.

Niebuhr also claims that, if any real change is to occur, the working classes may have to resort to violent coercion against the “privileged classes.” This is where Niebuhr and I part ways, because I believe violence to be contrary to the Gospel of Christ, which also demands that we strive for social justice. Now, Niebuhr is not necessarily endorsing violence as a means to an end, but he is acknowledging it as an option.

So again, I ask myself, why do I continue to read him and why do I consider him one of my favorite Christian thinkers. Well, for starters, I see Niebuhr as a Christian ethicist who is actually trying to be practical. So often, Christian ethics operates apart from society, taking place exclusively as dialogue in the ivory towers of academia. While this has its place, Christendom is in dire need of an ethics that will actually speak to our social situation, rather than just talk around it or impose upon it a set of requirements that it can’t possibly fulfill. Niebuhr is not optimistic about the future of society, namely because he feels that we, as individuals, are too corrupted by selfishness to ever bring about a just society. But, he does feel that social justice can be accomplished on a small scale, within Christian communities, and it is with this point that I definitely agree.

I would also take Niebuhr a step further by arguing that the larger society may very well be influenced, albeit slowly, by a true quest for social justice that takes place within smaller communities. Of course, this cannot happen overnight, but very few things can. As well, it requires action from persons across the social spectrum, from the lowest point to the highest. It can’t and won’t happen passively.