Today’s Scripture Reading (September
17, 2014): Luke 12
President
Obama has stepped forward to talk about his fight against the Islamic
extremists in Iraq and Syria. His comment is that this cannot be America’s
fight alone. It has to be a coalition of nations willing to take a stand in
defense of human rights. All through the speech I hear echoes of “we will do
things different this time, this will not be like the involvements we have had
in the past.” They are great words – and they are comforting words. Which is
probably why they have been words spoken by every American President in recent
history before the decision to bomb or to send troops or to put soldiers in
harm’s way has been made. The problem that the American President, and the
British Prime Minister, and political leaders all over the world face in
moments like these is that just that – they are political leader’s dependant on
the votes of the people to maintain their position of power. Politicians revel
in words like coalition and consensus. They search hard for the mediating positions
on a subject. The specific problem that President Obama faces is that he
entered Presidential politics with a promise to remove the United States from
the various conflicts in which the nation had found itself entangled. And now,
as the specter of another global problem emerges, similar to the global
problems that forced other Presidents to take military action, Obama seems to
be making the same decision and following the same plan as his predecessors - he
is deciding that military action is needed and appropriate.
It might be
that the problem stems from asking the wrong question. This action of the President
of the United States may not be able to be reduced to a consensus or a
coalition. The question that needs to be is asked is not “will others stand
with me” but rather “is it right?” As much as I understand the political party’s
need to stay in power, this is Barak Obama’s last term, sometimes what is right
must take precedence over a concern for vote and re-election. If the move to
engage ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups is right, then it shouldn’t
matter if there is a coalition or consensus over the issue. And if the move is
wrong, then it will still be wrong no matter how many of our allies are willing
to stand with us.
So Jesus
says that he has not come to bring peace, but division. To be honest these
words rank among the top things that theologians wish that Jesus had never
said. Here we have a leading pacifist – remember, he also said that if someone
strikes you, you should turn the other cheek – admitting that peace is not
among the top things on which he is focussed. In fact, if you should choose to follow
this “Prince of Peace,” you will most likely find yourself at the center of
division. And there is a reason for this. Jesus never advocated either consensus
or coalition. He advocated living according to the will of his father – he advocated
a life that was filled with right decisions and right action (Orthopraxy –
right action – always trumps Orthodoxy – right belief – and ritual in Jesus’
teaching). But if you decide to do what is right, you will find that there are
detractors that will stand against the position you are taking. If you decide
to follow what is right, people will vehemently oppose you.
Sometimes it
might be refreshing to hear a politician get up and speak not of consensus and coalition,
but rather about what is right. To just stand before the nation and say that we
will do this for no other reason than we believe that it is right. We believe
that we have a responsibility to the nations that makes this action necessary.
We desperately hope that other nations will join us, not because they are
coerced but because they too recognize that this is the right thing to do. And
so we embark on this path. My intuition tells me that even if the move is a
blunder, we might be surprised at how many people would stand behind that
approach. Oh, there will be those who will oppose and petition and strike
against the action – right action always brings division. But in the midnight
hours we can be assured that we followed not the actions of someone else, but
what in our heart of hearts we knew to be right.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 13
No comments:
Post a Comment