Congratulations, Evangelicals: You lost.

Preface: I lean Left on most issues, and I lean Left BECAUSE of, not in spite of, my Christian faith. I lean Left because of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats; because of the Parable of the Good Samaritan; because of the prophetic injunction to do justly and love mercy; because of the example of a God who became homeless and powerless, and hung out with the homeless and powerless.

BUT: I know that the people who lean Right are, for the most part, decent human beings who are trying to do the right thing, for what they believe are the right reasons. I grew up with conservative Evangelical Christians who voted Republican because they believed it was what God wanted them to do. I know you, Evangelicals, and I know you’re good people. I know that the majority of you are not hateful, not bigots, do not hate women or Muslims or gay people. You give to charity (often more than you can afford), you help each other and your neighbors during hard times (even people you don't like), you do your best to be the love of Jesus to the world.

I think you wanted to send the message that you oppose abortion, you want to affirm your beliefs about the sanctity of marriage, you want America’s values to be more closely aligned with the Christian values you hold. You also wanted to send the message that the economy isn’t working for the middle class, that your taxes are too high and your wages too low, that you think the government is interfering with things it has no business interfering in. And no doubt you wanted to send other messages that the rest of the country hasn't been hearing for the past 8 years.

But that’s not the message your vote sent to many people I know and love.

You could have chosen another candidate to represent you and send the messages you wanted to send.

But you chose Trump.

The message that sent to people I care for, was NOT the message that I think you wanted to send.

The message you sent was that the body of Christ is okay with these things:

·         I know SIX-YEAR-OLDS who are afraid of their families being attacked or deported now. In the name of the “family values” party, and IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST. (“He who offends against one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone be tied around his neck, and he be cast into the sea”.)

·         I know gay couples who are afraid of losing health insurance if their marriages are declared illegal. Because Jesus loves them, as long as they just stop being gay. (“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”)

·         I work with people who have developmental disabilities, and I’m afraid of what will happen to them in a country whose leader openly mocks and belittles them, and says he wants to cut the Social Security programs that keep them alive. (“Whatever you did not do unto the least of these, my bretheren, you did not do unto Me”).

·         I know elderly people who are afraid of what will happen to them if Social Security is gutted. (“You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.”)

·         I know families who will have no health insurance options, if ACA is repealed without being replaced by something better. (“For I was sick, and you decided I didn’t deserve health care because I didn’t have a job that offered insurance.” #ThingsJesusNeverSaid )

·         There are many refugees who are afraid of being sent back to countries whose governments will kill them. (“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”)

·         I know many women who’ve been sexually assaulted and are afraid that sexual predators will now feel emboldened to continue without fear of consequences – after all, if the President sees no problem with grabbing women sexually and just assuming “they’ll let you”, why should anyone else? (The Bible, despite some troubling passages that seem to allow rape under certain circumstances, also has several clear examples of God condoning the killing of men, or even entire tribes, that had participated in rape. It’s a crime God takes so seriously that He has at times allowed wholesale slaughter as a way to avenge it. It is NOT something the Almighty laughs off as “locker-room talk”.)

I know that the above outcomes are not the outcomes that most of you were aiming for when you voted for Trump. I know many of you don’t even like him, and held your noses as you voted for what you felt was the lesser evil. I know many conservatives even voted third-party, believing that might cost the conservatives the election, because you could NOT in good conscience vote for Trump, and I respect you highly for that. I know that most conservatives do not want the outcomes I just described.

But I do hope you’ll try to understand that those who opposed Trump have legitimate reasons to feel angry and afraid, because we know and love people who will DIE if Trump actually keeps his campaign promises.

(Though, to be fair, if he keeps his campaign promises like he keeps his business promises, we probably have nothing to worry about.)

I personally am also angry, as a Christian, that so many Christians sent the message that these things are the things that God WANTS His people to bring about. Again, I know you’re good people trying to do the right thing for the right reason, because I grew up with you. But the rest of America now equates “Christian” with “Person who’s in favor of all the hateful things Trump says (and is cool with unabashed racists on the Cabinet).” The rest of America didn’t get the message that Christians are concerned about protecting unborn children; they got the message that Christians would be perfectly happy to elect the Devil himself, as long as he ran as a Republican.

Do you think the church will be winning any converts now among minorities, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, Muslims, women who’ve been sexually assaulted, or any of the other people Trump (and, people will infer, Trump’s supporters) holds in such contempt? We ought to be concerned with winning people to the love of Christ, not with winning earthly power. Jesus Himself was crucified for DEFYING the conservative religious politicians of His day – the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Sanhedrin and High Priest. But the solid Evangelical support for Trump has convinced millions upon millions that their long-held suspicions are correct – Christians are merely a political faction hostile to them, not the incarnate love of Christ. I already know many people who are saying as of Tuesday that they will never again darken the door of a church. What does it profit Evangelicals, to gain the world but lose those souls?

And I’m afraid of what will happen to Christians when the pendulum swings the other way – AND IT WILL - in 4-8 years when people realize that a trust fund billionaire who overcame four bankruptcies by gaming the system is not in fact interested in changing the system so people like him can pay more taxes, or higher wages to their workers. They’ll see that Trump didn’t help the working class any more than Obama did, and they’ll vote in a bunch of Democrats just to send the message that they want SOME kind of change. Or the change could happen even sooner. Trump’s already made it clear that, like any other sociopath, he will dump people as soon as he’s finished using them (ask Chris Christie, or Trump’s first two wives) - and he’s already gotten everything he needed from Evangelicals. All the people who are now convinced that Christians are no more than pawns of the Republican Party… do you think they will be kind to us when they DO regain control? Do you think they’ll be willing to listen to the concerns of Christians? They will laugh in your faces, when you say you’re concerned about the moral direction of the country, after you voted for someone so utterly amoral. They will laugh in your faces when you call yourselves pro-life, after voting for someone who made it clear he doesn’t care about the lives of the “least of these”. They will laugh in your faces when you speak of family values, after you voted for someone who is fine with sexual assault and adultery. They will laugh in your faces when you claim to follow the Christ who told His followers to turn the other cheek, after voting for someone who can’t remember any Scripture except the phrase “An eye for an eye” (or remember that Jesus was saying NOT to do that). When the pendulum swings Left again, if Evangelicals have not been EXTREMELY vocal in denouncing the evils that the more extreme Trump supporters are gleefully perpetrating, the country will have only one thing to say to Christians: “If the last four years were what your God stands for, then fuck your God and fuck you.”

You won the election, but you lost any remote chance that people who aren’t currently Christians will “know we are Christians by our love” and be drawn to join us. Not for the next four years; not for the next forty years; not EVER, will the people your candidate spat upon forget the choice you made this week.

So, congratulations on carrying the election. But do you remember what our Lord chose, when the Devil offered Him power over all the kingdoms of the world, if only He would bow and submit to evil?

You have made the bargain that our Lord rejected. You made a deal with the Devil to gain earthly power.

I want you to remember this every day for the next four years:

The Devil is a liar, and will not keep his end of the deal.

But he WILL make sure that you pay.

 

© John M. Munzer

Gun control - why the debate isn't getting us anywhere

Well, here we are again.

And you know something? As soon as we'd heard there was a shooting... even before we began scrolling down our Facebook pages, even before Senators began to talk, we all knew EXACTLY what would be said, and what would be done.

Here’s what we knew would be said by both sides:

(insert inflammatory rhetoric here)

And here’s what we knew would be done:

Nothing.

And here, I think, is why nothing is done:

The inflammatory rhetoric.

It’s natural for us to feel strongly about this issue. It strikes at our sense of safety, makes us afraid and angry. And that activates the limbic system - the part of the brain that’s in charge of safety and survival. Thing is, that also DE-activates the cortex – the part of the brain that’s in charge of empathy and rational thought. The limbic system takes over, and the limbic system only knows three tricks: Fight, flight, and freeze.

And when we know that flight or freeze won’t keep us safe, we’re down to one option.

And we can’t fight the killer who shot (insert large number here) innocent people, since he (invariably a “he”, have you noticed? But the subject of toxic cultural expectations of masculinity would require a separate post all to itself…) has already either killed himself or been killed/captured by law enforcement.

But the limbic system is screaming that we NEED to fight to protect ourselves.

So we fight each other about what needs to be done to make future recurrence less likely.

And because the limbic system has shut off the part of our brain that might have empathy for whoever we fight, and might be able to appeal logically to common ground, the fights get REAL ugly, REAL fast.

And here’s the thing:

When we begin a discussion by making the other person feel attacked, we are NOT going to end it by convincing them to agree with us, or compromise with us, or even listen to what we have to say.

 

I wish to God that both sides of the gun control debate would be silent for a week after the shooting, take the time to mourn and to de-escalate, and THEN begin discussing the issue. And I wish both sides would begin the discussion by at least admitting these things:

1.     Neither side are stupid. Both sides certainly have stupid people and trolls, and those tend to be the loudest and to post online the most… but the average gun owner, and the average gun control advocate, are intelligent people, with valid and logical reasons for believing as they do.

2.     Neither side are evil. Again, truly horrible people exist on both sides. And I’m convinced that the politicians involved (on both sides) are simply doing what they know will get their constituents to re-elect them, just like they do on every issue. But most of the voters supporting the politicians – most of the ordinary people on both sides of the debate - are decent human beings, genuinely horrified by each shooting, genuinely wanting to ensure things like this stop happening, genuinely afraid that things like this will NEVER stop happening if the other side gets their way.

3.     Neither side wants people to be hurt or killed. For God’s sake, we’re not Facebook friends with sociopaths, right? And our Facebook friends must have reasonably good taste in friends, since they’re friends with us, right? So our Facebook friends aren’t friends with sociopaths either… right? All the people we’re debating… They’re human beings with families and friends that they love and want to protect, and they are terrified that their families and friends might be the victims of the next shooter. Just like us.

4.     Both sides are passionate about their view because both sides are concerned about safety. Gun owners are convinced that the only way for them to be safe from a shooter is to have the means to shoot first. Gun control advocates are convinced that the only way for them to be safe from a shooter is to make it as difficult as possible for someone to acquire something to shoot with. The common theme is that we feel our safety is threatened, and that we can NOT tolerate a threat to our safety.

5.     Both sides are coming at the issue based on their own valid needs and experiences.

A lot of the people who most want gun control live in cities or suburbs – places where the only possible reason to own a gun would be to shoot a person. We don’t have deer roaming my neighborhood waiting to be turned into venison. We don’t have cougars roaming my neighborhood waiting to get our chickens – or our children. The only threatening creatures we have are human beings; and if they have a gun that they intend to use, they intend to use it on a person. So of course we don’t want the damn things in other people’s hands. Of course we feel unsafe knowing that out of the thousands of people we encounter every day, any one of them might have a deadly weapon and a grudge. And the mass shootings happen in cities – because you can’t commit a mass shooting unless you go someplace where there are masses to shoot.

And a lot of the people who are most opposed to gun control live in rural areas – places where they might need a gun to hunt for food because that’s a cheaper and fresher option than the grocery store; places where they might need it to kill foxes that are stealing chickens, or wolves that are stealing sheep, or bears that would happily eat humans. So of course they feel unsafe without a gun, and are worried that it could be a slippery slope from banning assault rifles to banning all rifles. And they don’t get mass shootings in the country – the mass shooter wants high body counts and lots of media coverage, so they go to the city where they can get those things. Mass shootings just aren’t a danger they face in the country. But cougars are.

 

Then, too, there’s the home defense angle – it looks different in a city than in a rural area. If I look out my window and see a prowler, my best bet is to get away from the windows and call 911. A SWAT team can be there in 5 minutes. Even if I had an assault rifle and was 100% accurate with it, why would I increase the danger by getting in the line of fire when I can call in several well-trained, heavily armed and armored people who will do a much better job of neutralizing the threat? In the country, on the other hand, there might not even be a police department in town. The nearest cop might be over an hour away on the other side of the county. So there, the best bet is to take cover and shoot through the windows. With the biggest gun you can get.

 

See, there’s a cultural divide between these groups of people:

To the average gun control advocate, a man with a gun is a bad guy. He’s a mass shooting about to happen. That’s been our only experience with guns. That’s why we can’t imagine ever wanting them around.

To the average gun rights advocate, a man with a gun is a good guy. He’s going hunting or defending himself from predators (human or otherwise). That’s been their only experience with guns. That’s why they can’t imagine ever being without them.

 

I’m in favor of tight gun control. At the very least, banning the kind of guns that are designed for the sole purpose of killing lots of people. And I feel that way because in my world, the only possible scenario in which I might conceivably need an assault rifle would be a scenario in which someone else is already firing one into a crowd. And by the time I was able to get the thing ready to fire, the shooter would have seen me and shot me, so the gun would DECREASE my safety.

 

Let’s take the Orlando shooting for an example of why “good guys with guns” is not an argument that convinces the anti-gun crowd, particularly those of us who live in heavily populated cities or suburbs. Let’s say I take the advice of my pro-gun friends and I get a 9 mm, I get a concealed carry permit, I practice and practice until I’m deadly accurate with the gun, and I keep it on me everywhere I go. Let’s say that all good guys do this.

So I’m in a club now, and someone opens fire. I’m a good guy with a gun… but right now, the room is dark, noisy, chaotic, and full of people. If I draw now, I’m not gonna have a clear shot at the killer, but the killer will see the glint of metal and aim for me. My gun won’t help me yet.

So I take cover. (Right, I’ve also gotten some training in tactical maneuvering… I’ve never been a cop or a soldier, but let’s say the hundreds of hours I spent playing Contra as a kid have somehow prepared me for this moment, and I somehow know what I’m doing here.) Now I’m in a position where I’m hard to hit, and trying to find the bad guy so I can gun him down.

But … all the other good guys with guns have done the same thing. The room is now full of angry, panicking people who have drawn weapons. How do any of us know which ones are good guys with guns, and which ones are bad guys with guns?

All we know is which guys have guns.

And if they’re firing, I don’t know if they’re firing at the shooter or at victims.

And I still don’t have a clear shot, because they’re behind cover and there’s still panicking people running around trying to find the exits.

So … do I hesitate, holding a gun, until all the other good guys with guns start firing at me because they can’t tell by looking at me that I’m a good guy? Or do I start firing at whoever seems to be firing?

And then, let’s say the police arrive. Now the first officer comes in and bellows “POLICE! EVERYONE DROP YOUR WEAPONS!” But… will we hear him, through the sound of gunfire and screams and dance music? Will we see, through the fog of adrenaline, in a dark room with strobe lights, that this new figure entering the room is a cop? Or will I see someone in body armor holding a big-ass rifle … and remember that the Colorado movie theater shooter was dressed like that… and realize that I have a clear shot at an apparent threat who’s standing outlined in the doorway?

And will the cop be able to look at me and see “good guy with gun, probably couldn’t hear me”? Or will he see “White male suspect, holding firearm in a threatening manner, did not comply with order to drop weapon”?

In the city, “good guys with guns” wouldn’t stop a bloodbath. They’d turn a bloodbath into an even bigger bloodbath.

 

BUT: If I lived in the world of the person who lives an hour or more from the nearest police station… if I knew the time might come when the only thing I could do to protect myself and my loved ones would be to shoot a bear, or shoot a 300-lb felon… I would NEED a gun. I really would.

And I wouldn’t want to be using a little handgun, or a shotgun that would take time to reload if I missed the first shot (or one shot wasn’t enough to kill). I’d want something that would reduce the threat to a red mist on the first hit. And I’d want it to hold enough bullets in the magazine, and fire rapidly enough, to guarantee a hit. And I’d want it to have enough range to hit the felon before he got close enough to return fire.

Does that mean I should be allowed to have an assault rifle? Hell no.

 

But it does mean I can imagine why a sane, decent human being might want one. If I can’t offer empathy for that guy’s need, and offer him something to assure him that he can still keep himself and his loved ones safe, then I’m just not gonna convince him to help me get the laws changed. And if I can’t get that guy to work with me on getting the laws changed, then I’ll be SOL at keeping myself and my loved ones safe.

6.     Both sides are attacking each other because both sides are tired of feeling attacked by each other. We’re tired of being painted as clueless hippies or dumb hicks, tired of being told we’re stupid or evil or everything that’s wrong with America. We’re tired of the straw-man arguments and the memes and the inflammatory rhetoric. We’re tired of people telling us we’re the bad guy. We feel attacked, so we counter-attack, because that’s the only way the limbic system knows how to deal with an attack.

If everyone would at least give each other that much basic respect and decency, and see that the common ground is "We’re concerned about our safety", we MIGHT manage to begin a productive conversation about how we can all BE safer. We MIGHT stop seeing the other side as enemies and start working jointly on solutions. No solution will be perfect, no solution will eliminate all shootings, and no solution will make everyone happy. Chances are, no solution will fully satisfy anyone. But there MUST be a solution that everyone can live with, and that will at least improve our odds of living out our expected threescore and ten. We will NOT find that solution if we keep shouting at each other. We MIGHT find it if we listen respectfully to each other. We will NOT find that solution if we keep posting memes that set up straw-man arguments. We MIGHT find that solution if we all decide to stop being manipulated into stalemate by politicians who profit on polarization, and we all start demanding that they knock off the posturing and start doing real, bipartisan work on laws that make sense for both sides.

Until then, it's gonna keep going exactly as it has been going. Lots of the same old rhetoric on both sides, and lots more mass shootings.

 

© John M. Munzer

What should happen to rapists in prison

TRIGGER WARNING: This post is about rape, and about the things that are wrong with our society that perpetuate rape.


“So the witnesses say they saw you thrusting inside a woman who was unconscious. And you say she gave consent” repeated Officer Jones in a flat voice.

The young man nodded.

“Anything else to add to your statement?”

“Not without an attorney present.”

“I see. Well, you’ve made your phone call, but since your attorney didn’t pick up, I don’t expect to see him tonight, so I’m afraid you’ll be staying with us. I’ll bring you to your cell now and introduce you to your cellmates. They could teach you a few things about rape.”

For the first time, the young man’s confident façade cracked, and he broke out into a cold sweat. “What? You can’t put me in a cell with violent offenders! I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You. Haven’t. Done. Anything. Wrong. She was unconscious. She was disoriented when we did wake her up and ask her if she knew what had happened. She was bleeding from places that shouldn’t be bleeding after consensual sex. She was bruised in places no man should ever bruise a woman. She was shocked to discover that her panties were missing. She began sobbing uncontrollably once we finally could make her understand that witnesses found her lying half naked with a man on top of her, thrusting inside her while she was unconscious. And you haven’t done anything wrong. Tell your cellmates that. They all tell me they haven’t done anything wrong either.”

“A friend of mine attends that school, you know. It could have easily been her at that party tonight” added the officer, almost as an aside.

Almost.

“Your cell is this way. You can walk on your own feet or you can be... escorted there. Which do you prefer?”

The officer’s face, voice, and body language never changed, perfectly level and calm throughout. But the base of the young man’s spine was ringing frantic alarm bells, screaming that underneath that icy calm was a man who was a breath away from committing a calm, passionless, and above all prolonged and methodical murder.

“I’ll walk.”

“Good choice. First one you’ve made tonight, it would seem.”

As they walked down the corridor, the officer continued, in the tone of someone discussing the weather or offering a neighbor advice on how to grow roses, “I suggest you try not to upset Bubba. You’ll know which one he is. Bubba tends to… stand out. It’s just that I have to process the paperwork for your intake in my office, and I can’t hear anything that happens in your cell on the other end of the hall. So try not to upset him, because it’ll be a while before I get a chance to check on you.”

“No! You can’t put me in there. Put me in solitary! I wanna go into solitary!” gasped the young man frantically.

“Oh, solitary is for people who are too dangerous to be in a cell with other inmates. And you’re not a danger to anyone, right? You’ve done nothing wrong, right? That’s what you said”, deadpanned Officer Jones as he unlocked the cell door. Raising his voice, Officer Jones nodded at one of the bigger men in the cell. “Hey, Bubba, this young man appears to be confused about the difference between sex and rape. Perhaps you gentlemen could teach him something about it while I’m gone.”

“Glad to, Officer Jones” leered the giant.

Officer Jones then locked the young man in the cell, turned his back, and strode unhurriedly back down the long, long hallway.

Bubba was everything that fear, and rumor, and T.V., had led the young man to expect in a prison cell. Easily 6 foot 6 and 300 pounds, burly, hairy, sweaty, shaved head and giant arms covered in tattoos. There were other, even bigger inmates in the cell; but even they were visibly giving Bubba as much space as the cell allowed. Bubba turned upon the young man the unblinking stare of a man who would kill, and kill, and kill again, and never stop to think about the consequences.

“Boy”, drawled Bubba, “I’mma fuck you so far up your ass you’re gon’ feel my dick in your mouth. An’ we’re all gon’ take turns, ain’t we, boys? Fair’s fair, gotta share. Would you like that, boy?”

The boy was now pale, shaking, and could feel an unpleasant trickle down his legs.

“I SAID, would you like that, boy?” Bubba’s voice sharpened as he took a step closer.

Frozen with fear, the young man neither spoke nor moved as Bubba took another step, and another.

“Ain’t you got nothin’ to say, boy? A smart college boy like you?” growled Bubba, as he brought his face inches from the young man’s.

“Woo-ee, he’s a purty thing, ain’t he, Bubba? Looks to me like someone who likes it rough!” catcalled one of the other inmates.

“What’sa matter, boy? Too drunk to say anythin’?” continued Bubba. “Or maybe… (here the voice dropped to a whisper as Bubba grinned unpleasantly) maybe too scared to say anythin’?”

Still no move, no sound, came from the young man who was screaming inside.

“Well, then, I guess we’d better not do it. After all, we don’t have your permission to touch you that way”, said Bubba in an entirely different voice, with no menace in it. “If you haven’t explicitly said yes, then the answer is no, and I have no right to put my hands – or indeed, any other body part – on you. Ain’t that right, boys?” Bubba called to his cellmates as he finally broke eye contact and took a step back.

“That’s right, Bubba” chorused the other inmates. “Just cuz he didn’t say no, don’t mean it’s okay”, added one man with a flaming skull tattooed on his face. “An’ just cuz we could force him or scare him into it, that don’t make it right either”, chimed in another with biceps big enough to have their own ZIP code. “And shit, if he’s still drunk, even if he DID say yes, I wouldn’t consider that true consent, not till he’d sobered up enough to make rational decisions”, continued a man with a beard big enough to hide a colony of badgers. “Mind you, he’s a pretty little thing and I’d sure like to ride him. But it ain’t right, not if he don’t say he wants it too”, intoned the biggest man in the room.

Suddenly Bubba was an inch from the young man again.

“THAT’S the difference, boy” hissed Bubba in the boy’s ear, each word snapping like a whip lash. “THAT’S the difference between sex and rape.”

Bubba then stepped back a few paces and sat on his bunk. Gesturing toward another bunk, he quietly said “Sit down, son. There’s obviously some things you need to learn, and you’re going to learn them now if it takes all night” continued Bubba’s new voice - the tone of a teacher patiently spelling out a basic concept to a pupil who should already have understood by now.

“If she didn’t say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If she was too drunk to say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If she was too scared to say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If she was too young to say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

 

If she said yes earlier then said she ain’t sure about it now, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If she’s got a physical or mental disability that makes her unable to say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If you pushed her into it, or tricked her into it, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If for any reason she can’t say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

If she said yes last night, that don’t mean the answer is yes tonight.

If you’re married to her, that don’t mean the answer is yes.

You know what means yes?

If she says yes.

Yes is yes. Anythin’ else is no.

And son, if you kept goin’ when there wasn’t a clear yes, then the answer was no, and you committed rape.

And if you committed rape, son, then you forfeited your humanity.

The moment you decided she wasn’t human like you, with rights and needs like you, someone who deserves a choice just like you… the moment you treated her like a thing to be used, and her body like something you could take just because you wanted it, you denied her humanity. And by denyin’ someone else’s humanity, you forfeit your own.

Son, if she didn’t clearly say yes, then you lost your soul tonight.

I don’t care if you believe in a soul, or sin, or God, or hell, or any of that… if you pushed your 'yes' on her and ignored her 'no', then you lost the part of you that’s really you. And there’s only one way you can get it back.

Confess your guilt. Don’t put the girl through hell tryin’ to prove beyond reasonable doubt to a bunch of strangers what you and she both already know damn well is true. Admit what you did.

Admit that what you did wasn’t a mere mistake, and it wasn’t something that can be blamed on alcohol, or the girl’s short skirt, or your bros eggin’ you on, or anything or anyone but you. What you did was a crime, the one unforgivable sin: treatin’ people like things. Worse in a way than murder - though murder ain’t right either. But at least with murder, the victim’s suffering ends when the crime does. With rape, THE VICTIM’S SUFFERING WILL NEVER END. And you can’t never fix it. But you have a responsibility to do all you can to make it as right as you can.

Beg her, NOT for forgiveness. You have no right to ask her to give you anything, not after what you took from her. But beg her not to allow your crime to define her. Beg her not to stop seeing herself as human just because you failed to see her as human. Beg her never to forget that she deserves to have her rights and boundaries respected. Beg her to get all the help she can to heal from the trauma you inflicted on her. Ask her, if she will accept it, to allow you to pay for any therapy she needs in order to feel some peace an’ safety again. If she won’t accept it from you, then you must NOT push her to take anything from you. Not again. Instead you must pay by donating to a charity that helps women to recover from rape. And that still will not even the score. Nothin’ ever will. But you will spend the rest of your life doing all you can to make things as right as they can be made, because you owe her that.

You owe it to every other woman out there, and every other man out there, to do all you can to teach young men not to do what you did tonight.

Then, only then, will you be human again.

Only then will you have bought back your soul.”

 

There was silence for a full five minutes.

 

Then footsteps echoed down the hall, and Officer Jones returned.

“Young man, it seems another cell just opened up without anyone else in it. I’ll transfer you to that cell. Hope you boys had a nice chat” he finished, with a nod to Bubba.

As they walked to the new cell, the young man finally found his voice, and out of the many questions thronging his brain the topmost one came out of his mouth. “Were all those guys in for rape?”

“Nope. Murder, every one of ‘em. Bubba killed three men with his bare hands, all in the same night.

They’d raped his little girl, you see.

When he first came here, he swore he’d keep on killing every rapist till the place was empty. But once he’d had some time to think, he decided that killing wasn’t right either, and killing didn’t even the score. He decided that just made the score ‘Inhumanity: 2; Humanity: Zero’. And he wanted to make sure no one else went through what his little girl did. He decided there was a better way to teach people not to commit rape.

Now I’ve brought you to this here cell because I can’t bring a pen into the other cell, due to some things those men used to do with sharps before they turned things around. And I thought you might want some time alone to think, and maybe write some things down. No pressure, you don’t have to write if you don’t want to, and you don’t have to go back to Bubba’s cell. Though honest, you’d be as safe there as you will here alone. You’d be safer there asleep in a bunk with Bubba in the next bunk, than most women are walking down the street with their keys and pepper spray in their hands. You would have been safe, even if I’d given Bubba the pen.

I’ve left you a clean pair of pants on the bunk, by the way. People often need one, after meeting Bubba.”

As he was leaving, Officer Jones turned back to say,

“While you’re in here, I want you to consider one question:

Do you have anything you’d like to add to your original statement?”

© John M. Munzer

Memorial Day

“If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin…
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.”*

 – Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, killed in action 1 week before the end of WWI

* "Sweet and becoming it is to die for one's country"

I had a dream one night that I had somehow ended up in the army, and was debating with my fellow soldiers whether I ought to carry a gun. I argued that it would be morally right to protect them by stopping a bullet with my body, if necessary, but not by killing a fellow human being. They responded, “Yes, but who will protect us from the next hundred bullets?” In my dream, I then picked up the gun.

For a long time now, I’ve been uneasy about Memorial Day. It feels like this holiday is the day we all officially admit that we, as a nation and as a species, have given up.

We’ve given up on the possibility that we will ever live without war. We’ve just shrugged and accepted that whenever two tribes have a conflict, “Wholesale Slaughter” will be the go-to option. We’ve just accepted that if we don’t launch the first strike, the other side will, so we’d better get our self-defense in first and hope we strike hard enough that the other side won’t be alive to strike back. If we have any doubts, someone shouts "Nine-Eleven!" (and someone on the other side names an equivalent atrocity perpetrated against them), and we all resign ourselves to having to continue.

We’ve accepted that we have always sent children to go kill and be killed by other children, and that we always will.

We who have never been in combat talk about remembering the dead with honor, because otherwise we would have to remember with shame that WE SENT THEM TO DIE.

We fill the day with barbecues and garage sales and parades if the weather’s nice enough, because we can’t bring ourselves to think about our collective responsibility, about their blood on our hands.

We don’t want to think about the harsh reality that despite the fact every sane, decent human being wants peace, it only takes one sociopath to set off a chain reaction that turns millions of sane, decent human beings into killers or murder victims.

We don’t want to think about how every time we say “Sure, WE don’t want to fight, but THEY started it”… someone on the other side is saying exactly the same thing about us.

We don’t want to think about how, once the fighting has started, as in my dream, we pick up the gun - knowing that it's wrong but unable to think of any other way to defend ourselves and our families and friends.

We don’t want to remember that those who come back from combat alive still had something within them die.

My grandfather, God rest his soul, was one of four men out of a 200-man company that survived a battle in the African desert during World War II. Grandpa told, many times, the story of how he crawled through the desert for three days to Allied lines, with a bullet wound in his chest. How he saw a vision of his long-dead mother telling him to carry on. How he stayed in the hospital long enough to be treated for his bullet wound and malaria, then went AGAIN to Sicily (where he could very well have been exchanging gunfire with family, since his father was an immigrant from southern Italy). He showed us the scars on his chest and back (exit wound bigger than entry wound, he’d pointed out, and also noted how it miraculously managed to strike the one spot in his chest that missed heart, lungs, and other vital organs). He showed us the medals, including his Purple Heart (awarded to soldiers wounded in combat). He told the story just about every time I saw him.

He never, for some reason, told anyone about the horseshoe. My mother and aunt found it in his belongings after he died, carefully wrapped up and labeled as the horseshoe with which he dug in to create cover and hide while he waited for Rommel’s troops to leave.

He never said whether he’d had to hide among the mangled corpses of his buddies.

He never got any counseling or support for PTSD. Probably never even knew that was the name for what he was experiencing.

He did sometimes say that he'd killed Germans with his bare hands.

He never, but never, but never, found the freedom to weep about the fact that as a teenager, HE HAD BEEN FORCED TO KILL OTHER TEENAGERS WITH HIS BARE HANDS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE.

He did spend a LOT of time at the VFW and the American Legion, trying to find silent affirmation from other people who knew what it was like but also didn't have the vocabulary to express the inexpressible wrongness of what they'd been through.

He did spend a LOT of time researching and writing about recipients of the Medal of Honor.

He did watch every movie and read every book he could about World War II, and try and get his children and grandchildren to do likewise.

He did show up at every soldier’s funeral that he could, and put flowers and flags on their graves every Memorial Day.

He did, the last time I saw him, when he could no longer speak and could barely move from Parkinsonian symptoms, point out a history book with a passage that referred to the battle in which he’d been wounded. My grandmother said “For God’s sake, Tony, would you stop talking about the war!” Grandpa’s face eloquently said, in a way words never could, “For God’s sake, Mary, don’t you think I would if I could?”

He did spend his whole life trying to process this horror, and never did seem to find a way to be at peace.

There can be no peace, for those who have lived first-hand through war.

 ALL soldiers are casualties of war.

And THIS… this is what we send our children into.

If we let ourselves truly remember on Memorial Day, we might never forget.

If we let ourselves truly remember, we might understand that we cannot fight for peace. We must do the much harder task of WORKING for peace. And we must do it continually.

If we let ourselves truly remember, we might take a hefty percentage of the money and resources that we currently pour into our military and spend them instead on addressing the things that cause war – poverty, famine, oppression, desperation, both at home and abroad.

If we let ourselves truly remember, we might stop telling the old lie, and begin to deal with the hard Truth.

© John M. Munzer

Be careful what you pray for: A Lenten meditation

Be careful what you pray for; you just might get it.

This year, I gave up alcohol for Lent. It's not like I drink that often anyway - a glass of wine or a beer with dinner once or twice a week. I figured it'd be a small thing to give up, just a little occasional sacrifice to make me just a little more mindful of the sacrifice Christ made for us. Not a big thing, I thought - I wasn't up for a big thing, but was hoping to take Mother Theresa's advice and do little things with love.

My advice to anyone contemplating giving up alcohol for Lent is:

NEVER do that.

I've never in my life been so tempted to drink.

So MANY crappy things happened this Lent. Work-related crises, the deaths of two of my favorite people, injuries, loved ones going through hardship - just so many things that would tempt anyone to drink. And also, so many times we were with groups of people who were having a beer or wine with a nice dinner, and it'd just have been nice to have one with them.

That seems to be how things work, sometimes. When we ask God for a virtue, or commit to God to work on a virtue, it seems that God grants that virtue. The problem is, the only way for human beings to gain a virtue is by being put in situations that FORCE us to have that virtue. Soldiers become courageous by being forced to be courageous in battle. Parents become patient by being forced to be patient through tantrum after sleepless night after tantrum. So when I commit to temperance for Lent, there's really only one way God CAN respond.

I should have known this already. I once made the mistake of praying for humility.

NEVER DO THAT.

The only way for human beings to learn humility, is to have humbling things happen to them. This is one of the few times in my life I ever got a direct and immediate answer to prayer.

The context was a "missionary trip" to Mexico City with my church youth group when I was a senior in high school. For those who didn't grow up Evangelical, the idea was that we would share the Gospel with whoever we came across, starting with skits about God to draw a crowd, followed by a brief sermon. Since we were in, well, Mexico, and most of us spoke little or no Spanish, the skits were mostly mimed to music. We also had a group of us dressed as clowns, to interact with the kids. I was part of that group.

Every evening we'd gather and we'd pray. One of the things I prayed for was humility. The other was to see Jesus in the people we reached out to.

Be VERY careful what you pray for...

On the last day we went out into the city, we went to the garbage dump, where thousands of people live. We helped hand out beans and tortillas, and then we did our skits and sermon. Afterwards, we started playing futbol with some of the kids. The ball went into a ditch, and I went in after it. I think several people shouted at me not to, but I didn't know enough Spanish to understand what they were saying.

Turns out, they were saying "Hey, kid, stay out of the ditch, it's full of sewage!"

Well, of course, being 17, I was too mortified by the fact that I was ankle-deep in sewage to pay much attention to anything else for a while, but I do remember that after I climbed out, one of the little abuelitas got a bucket of water and did the best she could to help me rinse the crap off my shoes (and pants).

I got some good-natured teasing at youth group for the next few months, and the nickname "Sewage Man". At the time, the lesson I felt I was being given was to consider the humility of Christ - for Him to come to earth as a human was, I thought, equivalent to being covered in sewage, since human nature and the human body are inherently dirty and sinful. (This is a common line of thinking in Evangelical Christianity, and explains a lot about the way Evangelicals talk about human behavior in general and sex in particular).

Several years later, when I joined the Episcopal church, we were preparing for Maundy Thursday. "Maundy" being a shortened version of "Mandatum Novum" - "The New Commandment" - "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you... Since I, your teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, so you must wash one another's feet". Our priest pointed out that most religions have sacraments that are similar to the Christian ones: a holy meal like Communion, a holy bathing or cleansing ritual like baptism, a rite for marriage, a rite for burial, even in some religions a rite celebrating the death and rebirth of the god... but alone of all the gods, the Christian God washes feet and calls that sacred. Alone of all the gods, our God comes not to be served but to serve, and commands His followers to do likewise.

To wash feet is to take on the role of Jesus.

And then, as my priest washed my feet that Thursday, and I in turn washed the feet of fellow parishioners... I remembered that abuelita washing sewage off my feet in the garbage dump, and realized the true significance of how God had answered my rash prayer all those years ago.

He had shown up in person, robed in the flesh of an ordinary woman. And I didn't notice, because I thought I was there to be the hands of Christ to her, and was embarrassed at needing her help.

THAT was the moment I finally had a brief flash of real humility.


Be careful what you pray for. You just might get it.




(So Lord: I hope You won't mind that I don't EVER intend to pray for patience. I see a pattern here...)

Beneath the White Helmet

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE VII YET!

People poking fun at Star Wars have asked for decades: Why can’t the Empire’s elite crack troops seem to ever hit what they’re shooting at, when a hillbilly kid who’s never shot a man in his life can just pick up a blaster and kill half a dozen Stormtroopers at the same distance?

And people being slightly more serious point out that the Stormtroopers make ideal bad guys because their uniforms hide their humanity. No faces. They might as well be soulless robots, as far as the good guys are concerned, and no one need have any qualms about blowing up a moon-sized space station full of them. You’ll notice that the only time a Stormtrooper removes his helmet is if he’s a good guy – Han, Luke, Finn. And Kylo Ren removes his helmet at moments when he needs to be humanized.

I’ve wondered for years now: What if the story of the original trilogy was told from a Stormtrooper’s perspective? A guy who joins for the same reason that many Germans joined the Nazi Stormtroopers – to make sure he and his family aren’t among the ones who are wiped out? A basically decent guy who doesn’t want to be there, who sympathizes with the Rebels but can’t join them without jeopardizing his family. A guy who misses ON PURPOSE, lets the Rebels infiltrate the station ON PURPOSE, even lets himself be killed by the Rebels ON PURPOSE, in order to save his family and give the Rebels a chance to make it a better galaxy for his family.

What if he finds himself feeling an ambivalent camaraderie with his platoon? What if he finds that most of the other Stormtroopers are just like him? What if he and the others work out a way between themselves to ensure that the Rebels win? What if, through his efforts, various Imperial soldiers and other employees “accidentally” slowed down progress on the Death Star’s construction, “accidentally” failed to notice that the Rebels were on Hoth till they’d had time to work out an exit strategy, “accidentally” failed to put a grate over that one spot where the torpedoes could destroy the Death Star, and so on? What if he gives some assistance to the Empire’s equivalent of Oskar Schindler, and how would that play out?

What if Obi-Wan’s Jedi mind trick at Mos Eisley in Episode IV (“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for”) was not to overrule the will of the Stormtrooper, but to read his mind and place into it the knowledge that helping these droids would mean helping the Rebels? What if Rey did the same to the Stormtrooper guarding her?

What if the Empire fell, and the First Order will fall, not because of the Force or a few desperate Rebels having an insane amount of luck, but because the true Rebellion was happening inside the forces of the Empire itself? What if the same internal struggle that caused Vader to finally turn on the Emperor was happening in EVERY Imperial soldier?

Finn would fit beautifully into that narrative – he’s a Stormtrooper who decided he wouldn’t kill for the cause of empire. Who’s to say he’s the only one? Why was the planet-sized Starkiller Base so easy to infiltrate and take down – AGAIN? Why did the Stormtroopers not kill off the tiny half-cocked invading force – AGAIN? Why did the good guys escape so easily – AGAIN? Why was the heavily armed and armored, battle-hardened Captain Phasma so quick to comply with these barely armed, unarmored civilians who’d infiltrated a base filled with troops she could easily summon? Why didn't she at least try to shoot them when Han started talking about putting her into a trash compactor?

Maybe there was a vast network of uneasy co-conspirators that lived on after the Emperor’s death. Maybe the children of those Stormtroopers were among the ones drafted to be the current generation of Stormtroopers, and their parents’ rebellious tendencies were passed on. Maybe Finn was one of those kids. Maybe he even had trainers who subtly planted doubts in his mind about whether he ought to conform to the expectations of the First Order. And Captain Phasma, who caved so easily when confronted by a couple scared kids and an old man… maybe she was the one who planted those doubts. Maybe she will turn out to be an unsung hero, a martyr who allowed herself to be tossed into a trash compactor for the sake of the galaxy.

I’m glad that the new movie made a hero out of a Stormtrooper, and humanized Kylo Ren in ways that Vader wasn’t until his death scene. I’d be pleased to see something like my idea show up in Episodes VIII and IX. But even if it doesn’t, I like the moral ambiguity being introduced in the “bad guys”, and wouldn’t be surprised to see some of that come up in the “good guys” too, as the trilogy progresses.