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.

Midway on Saturday

You can tell, if you have the time and inclination to watch, you can tell just about everything that everyone’s feeling in an airport.

The ones ambling along, smiling, window-shopping the crappy stores with obscenely priced tchotchkes they have no intention to buy – these are the ones who are getting a welcome break, probably seeing someone they love when they arrive.

The speed-walking, harried, hungry yuppies, sprinting with fashionably long coats flapping behind – they don’t travel for pleasure, even during vacations. They RUN from plane to plane, RUN to the hotel, RUN to the tourist traps, RUN to check their e-mail and make sure they haven’t been laid off in the last hour, RUN back to the hotel, RUN to the planes again – and in their running, never escaped their pursuing worries for a moment.

Some neither sprint nor stroll, but slump. Are they simply jet-lagged? Are they traveling to leave some dreadful burden behind, or to take one on? Has there been a funeral, a break-up, a layoff, some crushing news? Or are they former runners, now too tired to run anymore?

Flight! The dream of humanity for as long as there have been humans. To arise like the gods, rise above the hard, gritty, unforgiving earth and miraculously be elsewhere, someplace warmer or cooler or brighter or bigger or greener or safer or just plain new. To have adventures (but no real dangers), taste the food and breathe the air of elsewhere, to stay as long as it suits us, then leave to carry the tale back, or onward. To mingle, at Midway on Saturday, with a sea of strangers, gaze on the infinite variety that is us, consider new possibilities, feel the exhilarating power of knowing I can go anywhere, and pretend that means I can do anything.

Flight! Whether we fly from something, or fly to something, we are forever longing to fly. Our simian ancestors could tell us why – they knew that the higher you go, the fewer predators can reach you, and the more unspoiled food you can find. But for us, there’s something else, something uniquely human – nothing pragmatic like the apes’ drive to be higher up, but simply wanting to experience something new, to add to ourselves a little bit.

Perhaps that’s what worries me most about those traveling business people. They’re partaking in a miracle, and they don’t even know it. All the kids know it – their faces are plastered against the window, wonder and joy and terror all blended in what our wiser ancestors called holy fear. But when the wondrous becomes commonplace, even burdensome – what then? A piece of our humanity is dulled, when we fly too often. And so many other things in the life of a business traveler can dull his humanity, that it’s profoundly sad to see this, too, fall away.

 

© John M. Munzer

Little Drummer Boy

Come, they told me.

Well, I had to come. All my life, I’d had to come and go when those in authority commanded. When I’d finally escaped my master – never mind how – and joined this caravan, I knew I’d have to go along with whatever I was told. At least these people didn’t beat me, and made sure I had enough to eat – far better than an unwanted orphan could expect from most adults. Still, I never knew if that would change… so for now if they said jump I would jump. I could at least play for their entertainment, play my drum. My drum. My one thing that made me useful and my one solace. My drum, the only way I’d ever been allowed to express my needs, my desires, my feelings, my hurt and abandonment.

Our finest gifts we bring, to lay before our King.

Gifts. What would it be like to receive a gift? What would it be like to have parents who love you and want you, and even strangers who are so glad you exist that they would make a long and dangerous journey to give you something? What would it be like to be given something, and nothing expected in return? Who was this child, and why did he inspire this in people?

I have no gift to bring.

The wise men probably had valuable things – they were dressed in simple traveling clothes to make themselves less tempting to thieves, but I’d seen a glimpse of their packs, and they had the purple clothes that only rich people can afford. To my surprise, I wasn’t jealous. Good for the baby. A baby ought to have a beautiful birthday present to make him smile. I never had, but this child should. But what could I give him?

And when the first wise man dropped to one knee and held out his gold to the Child:

The baby glanced at it briefly, as if the shine and luster were old news to him. He seemed as unimpressed as if he had spent an eternity in a place of such unimaginable splendor that gold was worthless, fit only for such menial functions as paving the streets.

And when the second wise man dropped to one knee and held out his frankincense to the Child:

The baby again seemed unimpressed, as if incense had been offered to him for as long as human beings had known that there was something greater than themselves, and that they ought to offer something beautiful and unique to it as tribute.

And when the third wise man dropped to one knee and held out his myrrh to the Child:

The baby took one sniff and looked somber beyond his years, as if he knew that myrrh is used to anoint the dead. He wept, not as babies weep, but with the solemn, silent tears of a man who knows what he weeps for.

It was wrong, it was wrong, it was wrong, the baby should not be given things that make him weep, no child so young and helpless should be made to weep as I have wept.

Shall I play for you?

The words came unbidden, and I immediately felt ashamed. Why would a crying baby want to hear me banging out pa-rum-pa-pum-pum? But…

Mary nodded.

And maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to me that the animals themselves, the stable itself, the world itself, set me a tempo, the very rocks crying out that he should be given all we could give. So…

I played my drum for him.

I played my best for Him.

 

 

I played Him my love and my pain, for they were all I had to offer.

 

 

And as I played, I seemed to be taken elsewhere. I seemed to see the child grown into a man. I saw him with the long, unkempt hair of a man who lives wherever he can – hair like mine. I saw him alone, like me. I saw him unwanted like me, I saw him in pain like me. I saw when the king finally was crowned – but the crown was wrong, the spikes turned inward against Him. I saw when He was finally raised up for the nation to see, His kingly title posted above Him – but it was wrong. I saw a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief like me, forsaken and abandoned like me. For me.

And I heard His voice, and He embraced me, saying:

 

 

Child, I give you My love and My pain, for they are all I have to offer.

 

 

And I was back in the stable, sobbing as I dropped to one knee and held out the drum to Him.

 

Then he smiled at me. Me and my drum.

 

 

 

© John M. Munzer

When faith becomes an idol

Note to people who didn't grow up as Evangelical Christians:

You probably won't get this blog post if you read it. No more than someone outside your family would get why your folks have been fighting for three generations over What Aunt Jane Said To Cousin Jimmy. Church is like a family - both the wonderful things and the dysfunctional things that happen in families, and often difficult for people to understand if they weren't raised in it. But you're welcome to read on anyway - maybe it'll help you understand some things about Evangelical Christianity.

To those who did grow up Evangelical:
For the love of all that is holy, let's start being the kind of family that Our Father wants us to be.

Over the past few days, I've seen posts about a tenured professor at Wheaton College (my alma mater) who is facing disciplinary action and placed on administrative leave. This professor (Dr. Larycia Hawkins) has been wearing a hijab during Advent in solidarity with Muslims who have been treated... well, everyone knows how Muslims are being treated right now in the USA. That wasn't what triggered the disciplinary action... Dr. Hawkins' statement on Facebook describing why she's doing it included a single sentence to which the College authorities object:

“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she wrote in a Facebook post on December 10. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”

To someone who wasn't raised in the Evangelical Christian sub-culture, and didn't attend Wheaton College, this must be baffling. Why would anyone object to that statement at all, let alone object strongly enough to suspend a long-term employee in good standing simply for making the statement?  And how does a Christian college decide that a statement quoting the POPE is so un-Christian that the person making the statement can no longer be allowed to teach young Christians?

Those who know a bit about Islam must also be baffled. After all, my understanding (based on what I learned in a history class at Wheaton, mind you) is that Muslims believe that they worship the same God that Christians do - they just believe we're doing it wrong because we don't believe that Mohammed is His greatest prophet. Muslims even believe in Jesus (though they don't believe he was God, they do believe he was sent from God, and the Q'uran even refers to him as the Messiah.) Muslims refer to Christians and Jews as "People of the Book" - meaning the Bible, which Muslims also take to be Scripture. And most Muslims believe that good Christians and Jews will be saved. The basic sense is "Well, their theology is incorrect, but if they're doing the best they can to follow God given the information they have, that matters more to God than their theology". Which is pretty much what most Christians believe about Muslims.

But Evangelical Christianity isn't "most Christians". It's a very specific sub-culture, with a very specific view of what it means to be a Christian.

I grew up in that sub-culture, lived and breathed it, loved God and my church with such zeal that I nearly decided to become a pastor, and went to Wheaton with that possibility in mind. I only decided against it because I felt I wasn't a good enough Christian to be a leader of Christians. And the thing that made me decide I wasn't a good enough Christian was that I didn't feel I believed enough. If I really believed in God, I'd never have any doubts about His goodness, I'd know with rock-hard certainty what His will for my life is, I'd be seeing miracles happen - because if I had even the faith of a mustard seed, I should be moving mountains. No mountains moving = no faith.

See, that's the focus in Evangelical Christianity. Christianity, to them, is primarily about faith, and faith is primarily about belief. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall straighten thy paths. Sola Fide. If ye have faith as this mustard seed. O ye of little faith, why did ye not believe?

So right belief is all-important to Evangelicals. Teachers are held to a higher standard than anyone else, according to Scripture, so teaching right belief is even more important than having it. On that point, the actions of Wheaton College leadership here are the only way they know to be consistent with their beliefs. They don't object to the professor donning the hijab, and Wheaton actively opposes the insanity coming from other Evangelicals about arming yourselves to stop the Muslims... but they can't condone someone at their college teaching something that they believe to be untrue about God.

I think they really do believe they're doing the right thing. (Even if they don't notice how their actions might be getting influenced by the current cultural pressures to be anti-Muslim; or notice the fact that these same old conservative white dudes said pretty similar things about the commonalities between Christianity and Islam a few years ago but are now prepared to fire a liberal black woman for saying them...) I still think they really believe they're doing the right thing for the right reasons.

The insidious thing that happens to the Evangelical way of thinking is this: We are saved by faith. Faith means belief. That means we have to believe the right things in order to go to Heaven. And that means we must give unswerving intellectual assent to correct doctrine. People who don't believe that Jesus is God will not be saved. People who don't believe the Scriptures will not be saved. (And that, to an Evangelical, often comes to mean that people must agree that every word of Scripture was dictated directly by God to the writers, and that every word is meant to be taken as literally true, and that every word must be interpreted in the specific way that Evangelicals interpret it... otherwise they aren't really saved.) And at the end of that line of thinking, people come out feeling "God doesn't want me unless I think the right things about Him."

I grew up in a church that believed Catholics were going to Hell because they ask the saints to pray for them (when Scripture says there is no mediator between God and man but Jesus). I grew up in a church that believed other branches of Evangelical Christians were going to Hell because they believe incorrectly about whether the bread and wine at Communion are literally the body and blood of Christ, or only symbolically, or somewhere in between (those who partake unworthily of the bread and wine eat and drink damnation unto themselves). I grew up in a church where your Christianity was in doubt if you answered questions correctly on a biology test, because that meant agreeing with evolution (God made the world in exactly seven 24-hour days, thank you very much, no symbolism could possibly have been intended in a story that is immediately followed by a story about a talking snake and fruit trees that bring knowledge or eternal life). There are different branches of THE SAME EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN DENOMINATION that would consider each other excommunicate, except that's a suspiciously Catholic-sounding word so they just consider each other "not really Christians" because they believe different things about whether Jesus will come to reign for a millennium before or after the Rapture. Or, Heaven forbid, disagree about whether there will BE a Rapture.

When faith itself becomes an idol, this is what happens to something that began with "God showed up in person to tell us He loves us and wants us to love each other."

When faith itself becomes an idol, people enter the frame of mind that creates Inquisitions and Jihads to make sure everyone is worshipping God the right way. After all, it's for the good of their souls.

One of the ironic things about Wheaton's stance is this: Wheaton College as an institution LOVES C.S. Lewis - they've got a little museum dedicated to him, Tolkien, and a couple of other Christian authors, and they even have The Wardrobe from Lewis' house. (I tried to get in once, just on the off chance. No luck, and no fauns.) And yet they wouldn't let old Jack teach there these days, because several times in his writings Lewis implies that people who follow other religions can be saved, that even if they believe wrong things about God or have never heard the name of Jesus they can still be saved through Jesus. In The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia), a man whose race and religion were clearly meant to be analogous to a Middle Eastern Muslim is accepted into Heaven by Aslan, even though just minutes earlier he'd been killing the people of Aslan in the name of his god Tash. Aslan does clarify that Tash is not the same as Aslan... but that good deeds done in the service of Tash, are taken in credit as service to Aslan (while evil deeds done in the name of Aslan really serve Tash). What the prince believes about Aslan doesn't matter to Aslan... how the prince behaves towards other human beings is what matters.

It's even more ironic to see a black woman suspended for showing solidarity with a mistreated minority - at an institution that was initially founded for the purpose of being a stop on the Underground Railroad. In those days, most mainstream Christians believed that Scripture supported slavery - after all, Saint Paul commanded slaves to obey their masters. But the founders of Wheaton knew that it was more Christ-like to set the captives free, than to go with the literal interpretation of Scripture that allowed people to continue shutting out those who were marginalized.

It's also frustrating to see that Evangelicals - who REALLY, REALLY love Jesus - if you know them as I know them, you know that is beyond question - seem to consistently forget that Jesus Himself considered our actions towards others to be far more important than our theology. When someone asks Jesus what it takes to inherit eternal life, Jesus fires back with a question: "You know the Law, what does it say?" The heckler says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself". Jesus says "Do this and you shall live". The heckler then, to justify himself, says "Who is my neighbor?"... and Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. The people whose theology was correct - the priest, the Levite - fall short. The Samaritan - the person whose beliefs are wrong, whose ethnicity is wrong, whose language is wrong, who the Jews dislike even more than the Romans - that guy puts his own safety and his own money on the line to obey the two great commandments. That's the guy Jesus holds up as an example - "Go thou and do likewise."

Again, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus says the nations shall be judged by how we treated the people who are hurting and marginalized: "For I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink, sick and you ministered unto me, in prison and you visited me." He never says "For I expected you to affirm the Nicene Creed, and to clearly articulate the difference between the Christian Trinity and the Muslim view of monotheism." The final exam for admission into God's Kingdom is not a theology test; it's a practical exam.

In fact, over and over throughout Scripture, Jesus does not appear to be very interested in our beliefs about God. He seems to only be really interested in our behavior towards people. Particularly towards those who are hurting, or outcast, or otherwise marginalized. The woman caught in adultery heard no harsh words from Jesus, but the upright religious people prepared to condemn her were warned off for their own sins. The money-changers in the Temple - doing a legitimate business, with the blessing of the priests, to allow the faithful to perform the sacrifices demanded in Scripture, all consistent with orthodox belief - are the only people that Mr. Blessed-Are-The-Peacemakers ever PHYSICALLY ATTACKED (because they were ripping people off in the holy place). The Pharisees and Sadducees - all good, well-meaning religious leaders who spent a lifetime of study to make sure they understood Scripture correctly - had Jesus killed because He wouldn't stop calling them out for their failure to act on their beliefs. Jesus was killed by the guardians of religious orthodoxy, for sending the message that behavior matters more than belief, and people matter more than principles.

Evangelicals often ask "What would Jesus do?" The answers I kept finding in Scripture were what led me to not be able to buy into the Evangelical way of thinking about God anymore.

I have no animosity towards Evangelicals, mind you. They love Him with a fiery intensity that I admire and miss. I think of the countless hours I spent praying with Evangelicals, hearing them weep because they felt they'd failed Him, hearing them beg Him "Lord, increase our faith", "Lord, cast out our doubts", "Lord, give us boldness to reach the lost so they may know your love for them", "Lord, forgive us our sins, give us strength to do better" ... they love Him with absolute sincerity and commitment.

But: they are convinced that He demands correct belief as a condition of salvation - and don't seem to realize that means they believe in a God who demands that we think in exactly the right way, as a condition of His love. Yet the Bible speaks of faith not as adhering to dogma, but as a pattern of behavior that naturally springs from following Jesus: "Faith without works is dead. Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works."

Faith is a vital part of following Jesus. It is not an idol to be placed ahead of obeying His commandments about how we treat other people, particularly those who are already being mistreated.

We were warned to beware of idols, because idols mean exalting our image and idea of God above God Himself. And because the first thing an idol demands is human sacrifice.

I hope that Wheaton College reconsiders sacrificing the witness of a professor who's trying to live out the love of Christ to hurting people. Make an official statement disagreeing with her theology if you like, but also give her credit for trying to heal a division, trying to embody peace and love and unity with a group that our society is pushing us to treat as enemies... because THAT is what matters to God far more than having letter-perfect theology.

Let us not place our faith in idols, not even the idol of faith itself.

Let us place our faith instead in the God who calls us to reach out to those who are different, even to enemies, and to bring peace where there was strife.

This is how it starts...

It does not start with the atrocity itself.

The process that ends in committing atrocities, begins with de-humanizing people.

It begins with thinking in terms of "those people".

"Those Muslims, what the hell is wrong with those people, what kind of god do they believe in that would condone something like this?"

"Those refugees, what the hell is wrong with those people, why don't they stay and fight ISIS instead of coming here?"

"Those conservatives, what the hell is wrong with those people, don't they care about all the innocent people trying to escape from the insane shit ISIS is doing to their countries?"

"Those liberals, what the hell is wrong with those people, don't they know it's dangerous - and impossible - to let everyone enter the country that wants to? Don't they care about our safety?"

"Those Americans, what the hell is wrong with those people, don't they care that they're killing far more civilians than terrorists here?"

"Those Christians, what the hell is wrong with those people, what kind of god do they believe in that would condone something like this?"

"Those people. To hell with those people."

And here's the thing about "those people":


Pretty quickly, we stop thinking of them as people.


And something that isn't a person can't have valid concerns, or needs that matter as much as ours.

Something that isn't a person can't love or be loved, or have people of their own.

Something that isn't a person can't have any common interest to which we might appeal.

Something that isn't a person can be treated as harshly as necessary to protect "our people".

Something that isn't a person can be attacked and destroyed with a clear conscience - even MUST be destroyed if it's a possible threat to "our people".


Something that isn't a person, and yet is human-shaped, is a monster.


And we've seen enough monster movies to know that the only possible response to a monster is to destroy it. Stake it through the heart, smash the head with a blunt instrument, set it on fire - quickly, before it starts killing real people. Our people.

In fact, better barricade ourselves in with our people and fire at everything human-shaped that approaches the door, in case it MIGHT be a monster.

Better still, let's go destroy the monsters in their nest, before they get a chance to come for us and our people.

And we'd better just assume that all of "those people" are monsters and therefore must be destroyed. Just to be safe.

And once we're at that point, we're willing to do anything, willing to destroy even ourselves, in our zeal to destroy "those people". After all, it's now necessary, even noble, to die in the effort to protect "our people" from "those people".


Allahu Akbar!

For God and country!


It starts with forgetting that "those people" are ALSO "our people".

Even when some of those people have done unforgivable things that must not be allowed to continue.

Even when many of those people are saying horrible things they have no right to say.

Even when many of those people have started to think of our people as if we're the monsters.


My people - all people - even if you think of me as "those people":

It starts here.

Do we have the courage to stop it here?

© John M. Munzer