Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

A Modest Proposal Lite by Wayne Northey

In Western civilization, logic and ethics are usually mutually exclusive, while ideology and ethics are invariably bedfellows. Take Michael Ignatieff for instance, a great Canadian intellectual and current Liberal Party leadership hopeful. He salutes the United States as Empire-Lite (title of one of his books), and applauds its Nation-Building Lite program that encircles the globe.  Mr. Ignatieff is doubtless a logical thinker. His views on violence however, typical of centuries-long dominant Western ethical tradition religious and secular, are profoundly illogical. 

Prove it you say?  Like taking candy from a baby!  Article 3 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is said to be succinct distillation of an essential self-evident right accorded by Western civilized society to all humanity.  It reads: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”  Mr. Ignatieff would argue that Canadian law upholds that universal right for every Canadian without fail.  Hence, no violent act by police that deliberately takes innocent civilian life on Canadian soil is to be countenanced.  Ever!   Not even just this once.  One might say: no universal right lite!

You see?  I’ve just proved it – or did you miss it?  Mr. Ignatieff is not ethically logical, rather imperially ideological.  He is in fact, contrary to the Declaration’s Article 3, committed to the most damnable mythology/ideology the West has known: the myth of redemptive violence, which is anti-Western-civilization (in theory) to the core (and originated in the pre-Christian Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish.) One could call Mr. Ignatieff’s mythical view redemptive violence lite.

While Mr. Ignatieff would categorically reject all Canadian police action that calculatedly destroyed innocent civilian lives to achieve its objectives, he fairly genuflects to the U.S. Empire Terror Military Complex that deliberately, knowingly, methodically destroys civilians the world over.  He uses quaint American spelling to designate “lite” such “inhuman barbarism” against civilians (President Roosevelt in 1939).  He seemingly does not intend us ever to think of the mutilated bodies of innocent civilians “lit up” (another kind of “lite”) at hundreds of U.S. Army check-points in Iraq; of thousands more killed through “shock and awe”; and myriad lesser bombing sorties against civilians by U.S. Empire whenever wherever, etc., etc., etc. The U.S. for decades has cornered the world’s bull market on development, distribution, and deployment of a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction: biological, chemical, conventional and nuclear.  Nothing remotely WMD lite about that Empire!  On the contrary.  A Google lite search immediately establishes this unconscionable ethical obscenity against humanity.

In Canada slaughter of innocent civilians would of course be condemned to the highest level by Mr. Ignatieff.  In Iraq or Afghanistan (or… one could fill the rest of the page with U.S. Empire nation-building lite targets around the globe the last 60 years), a diametrically opposite picture emerges.  For Mr. Ignatieff, so ethically illogical to the core, that is all chocked up to collateral damage lite (like 120,000 instant collateral-damage-lite victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Article 3 and all civilized ethics are jettisoned – all ethical logic in fact be damned! Mr. Ignatieff would call it “Might makes right lite”.  And he would indeed be right. It could also be dubbed “Might makes right ethical logic lite”, for in fact it is lacking in all ethical logic known (in theory!) to the best of civilized humanity.

Turns out Mr. Ignatieff is not such a smart man after all. He in fact is profoundly illogical. Sadly though, he is in almost universal ethical company in the West, and that for centuries.  Which is precisely why Mahatma Gandhi answered Sir Winston Churchill’s question, “What do you think of Western civilization?” with, “I think it would be a good idea.”

There is perhaps only one effective stopper to the ubiquitous/iniquitous myth of collateral damage lite.  It is a modest contribution to the great ethical non-debate about this heinous Western slaughter-house lite mythology.  Every time Allied bombers or military personnel of any kind know there is likely to be “collateral damage” inflicted in planned offensive action (like every time “smart” bombs are dropped, missiles launched, WMD’s deployed), the highest ranking commander at the battlefront must parachute in to the forefront of whatever target a personal loved one before saying, “Fire!”.  Or not give the command.  Just one loved one will do.  Perhaps Mr. Ignatieff for starters could offer up one of his own?

Think of it as a modest proposal lite.

Christians: Don't You Just Love to Hate Them?

I’m glad in our apoplectic politically correct world it’s still open season on Christians.  Jews, Aboriginals, Blacks, etc. – not a chance!  But Christians!

Problem is – I am one.  But not one of those! (Bruce *censored*burn).  Fact is, I applaud the open season.  I say it’s well-deserved after centuries of abuse when we called the shots in the West and knew it.  Further, I am so on-side with Evangelical-bashing (at least of the Evangelical kind currently dominant to the south.)  Problem is again – I am one (to the north). 

BIGGER problem is, I actually believe calling oneself Christian means (taking a stab at though doing it poorly) taking Jesus seriously.  Evangelicals don’t.  Open secret.  Vast majority of Christians to the south don’t.  Appallingly blatant.  Like George for instance, whose “favourite philosopher” (he actually said that without choking!) is Jesus Christ.  Or Tony and Stephen.  All Evangelicals.  All national leaders.  All so blind-sighted by wanton violence they wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he sat right beside them at a G8 summit or in a church pew.  (He does, actually, Evangelicals believe: stranger yet we believe he even lives inside us.) 

There is something peculiarly perverse about the vast majority of English-speaking Evangelicals who openly reject the teachings of Jesus on what one Bible teacher (Walter Wink) calls the Myth of Redemptive Violence, and another (Richard Hays) names consequently massive unfaithfulness. 

Jesus taught: Love your enemies.  Evangelicals teach: Destroy your enemies.  The juxtaposition is that starkly blatant.  Name whom you will: Billy Graham; Franklin Graham; Chuck Colson; Richard Land; James Dobson; Pat Robertson... The list goes on ad nauseum.  And these are among the moderates…

Noted historian Sean Wilentz presented in Rolling Stone, April 21, 2006 the reasons George W. Bush is already judged by the majority of American historians as the worst President in U.S. history.  Yet vast majority Evangelical opinion in the U.S., including that of British Prime Minister Blair and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Harper, is jarringly out of step with that assessment.

Worse for other Evangelical and Christian believers the world over, vast majority U.S. Evangelical affirmation of Jesus as “Lord, Lord” including that by afore-mentioned Prime Ministers, turns out to be one massive religious contradiction of same, what the Bible refers to as “taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

So I say (while of course (!) loving my enemies), in President Bush’s immortal words, to all Evangelical-bashers out there: “Bring ‘em on!” 

And with Tiny Tim I add, “God bless us, everyone!” 

Kingergarten Again by Wayne Northey

If I could be in Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Blair’s press corps, I’d ask just one question!  It is one simple question:  Just what about Articles 2, 3 and 30 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights do you not understand?: Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. Please, another minute…? Ø     “Everyone” means, well, everyone.  No one is to be excluded. Ø     “entitled to” means, well, entitled to.   No refusal to anyone for any reason.  Even Osama can’t be wanted “dead or alive” (contrary to lawless Texan cowboy ways).  Sorry. Ø     “to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration,” means, well, to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration.  There’s a whole whack of ‘em.  Gotta be impressed by those high-minded 1948 signers in the wake of the “inhuman barbarism” (President Roosevelt’s phrase) of Allied bombers killing masses of innocent civilians in Germany and Japan, and of the ultimate “barbarous weapon” (Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff Leahy’s phrase) dropped on each of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands more: even if Mr. Churchill dubbed the Allied attacks “moral bombing”! Ø     “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” means, well, without distinction of any kind, such as race [Iraqi for instance], colour [non-white for instance], sex [non-heterosexual for instance], language [non-English, more, non-American for instance], religion [non-Christian for instance], political or other opinion [anti-U.S. Empire for instance], national or social origin [non-Caucasian U.S./Commonwealth citizen for instance], property [where there’s crude, dude!], birth or other status [no “black site” Geneva Conventions prisoner torture exemptions for instance].  No nepotism or patriotism here – or prejudice or greed! – when it comes to people not born from your mom’s, your clan’s, your yellow rose’s, your nation’s, womb. Ø     “Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” means, well (okay: this repetition is getting a tad tedious), Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.  No one can be considered outside the circle of inclusion – and that would not be Mr. Bush’s Iron Triangle of big business, Bush senior’s ancien régime, and Texan political operatives swaying/controlling the President.   No more “The White Man’s Burden’s” “savage wars of peace”– with due respect to British Empire laureate (and a Mr. Blair favourite) Rudyard Kipling. Ø     “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” means, well, Everyone [see meaning for this above] has the right to life, liberty and security of person.   No collateral damage allowed, and one totally cleans up the mess afterwards. Like you little Georgie and Anthony were urged to in kindergarten, where at life’s outset you were taught all you really need to know to be, well, in a word, kinder in the primordial Garden. (Remember your “greatest Philosopher”, Mr. Bush?: “Let the little Kinder come to me, and do not bomb them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”)  No more raining incendiary bombs over the enemy to impose the customs of civilization or democracy the way your 19th-century forebears imagined it. No one to ever get sick or hurt or killed from temper tantrum residue like depleted uranium (half-life 4.5 billion years, rendering victims half- eventually fully, dead) or pretty unexploded cluster bomblets (up to 30% dud rate) you might share with aliens/others/Kinder. Ø     “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.” means, well (at last!), Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.  No pre-emptive strikes; no nuclear bunker-busters; no air strikes at all! – since they always destroy far more civilians’ and others’ right to life (though nothing in the Declaration about soldiers’ exemptions). No, O God!, no Orwellian doublespeak political bullshitting!  Then again, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, evidently words for you, like life outside U.S. of A. and British sway, are cheap and so are declarations.  Forget the above!  My simple question is: Why don’t you just enroll in kindergarten again?

Violence Renounced

Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies and Peacemaking, Edited by Willard M. Swartley, Telford, PA: Pandora Press, 2000, 343 pages.

By Wayne Northey

“René Girard is, in my opinion, the most significant theorist of violence in the twentieth century (p. 72).”    So claims Charles Bellinger in a profound volume entitled The Genealogy of Violence. Such accolades abound in the academic and increasingly Christian theological worlds.  Not only has Girard generated an impressive list of publications himself, his work has elicited a vast array of secondary literature, in particular in the social sciences, literature, and theology.  Since 1990 an annual gathering called “Colloquium on Violence and Religion” attracts academics and activists internationally. A society publishes The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, and an award-winning journal, Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture is published in response to Girard’s work.  Recently a five-part Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Ideas radio series produced by David Cayley (praised by Girard and repeatedly aired) made Girard’s thought accessible to a worldwide audience. 

It is no surprise then that an historic peace church tradition, the Mennonites, would hold a conference (in June, 1994) to interact with René Girard’s thought. As Bellinger writes in the volume quoted above: “I argue that [Girard presupposes] the paradigm for the interpretation of Christian history which forms the basis of Anabaptist thought.  This paradigm holds that an ethically disastrous ‘fall’ of Christian integrity took place during the age of Constantine.  Christianity’s apparent triumph over the world was in fact a defeat, from this point of view (p. 98).”  This book is volume four in “Studies in Peace and Scripture Series” sponsored by the Institute of Mennonite   Studies. Many years ago, Jacques Ellul suggested that no theologian would take Girard seriously due to his nonsacrificial reading of the biblical texts.  On the contrary!  This volume pulsates with just such dynamic interaction with Girard.

There is a Foreword, a Series Editors’ Preface, an Editor’s Preface, and an Introduction (by the Editor), before one gets to the two main parts, each made up of seven essays.  Part I is entitled “First Reading: Girard for Biblical Study and Theology”, and Part II, “Second Reading: Girardian Theory, Biblical and Critical Analyses, and Theological Critique”.  While one can become impatient with preliminaries, each of these is well worth reading.  And frankly, the “Introduction” is so well done by the book’s Editor, it is a stand-alone as the best succinct book review available. Nonetheless, I shall persevere…

As Swartley indicates in the Introduction, “… Girard beckons us to see that Scripture is the only literature in the world that exposes the violence perpetrated by humans, sides with the victim, and thus calls humans to renounce violence in the name of the One who forged for us another way to live and die (p. 26).”  “The first seven [essays] lay a foundation for the reader to understand Girard’s theories and how they interact with biblical study and basic theological doctrines, especially the atonement (p. 21).” 

Chapter Two begins: “There is a paradox in human religious experience.  On the one hand, religion is a main (perhaps the main) dynamic in death-dealing violence in the world.  On the other hand, religious faith also often provides the main basis for the fruitful rejection of violence (p. 49).”  One can hear John Lennon’s plaintive sentiment in “Imagine”: “And no religion too…” to appreciate the pathos behind a desire to rid the world of religiously motivated violence, Christian for sure, and otherwise.  Yet the univocal voice of the New Testament is nonviolent. And though religion therein is depicted as violent to the core, and thus rejected, so is “empire”.  “The empire, ultimately, is violent.  The empire is the force that nailed Jesus to the cross (16:4 – 7; 18:24). John presents evil not as the threat of anarchy but as the system of order.  This system of order institutionalizes violence as the foundation of its way of being (p. 62).”  Lennon could as legitimately have sung, “And no government too…” to capture the tragedy of state-sanctioned violence blessed, since the fourth-century legalization of Christianity by Roman Emperor Constantine, by majority Christendom including Western democracies which have as readily slaughtered their tens of thousands as have all totalitarian régimes past and present. “The empire (or all other states, including democratic ones) asks at times for loyalty that buttresses power politics and treats with violence any who threaten the peace and tranquility of the status quo (p. 65).”

Two helpful essays reappraise the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua.  Then the Book of Hebrews is discussed, a book Girard initially thought failed to delegitimize scapegoating as revealed in Christ.  The writer, Michael Hardin, observes helpfully: “This self-critical nature of the Bible is perhaps its most important asset – in that the religious culture that produced writings to justify violence also canonized writings that critique violence (p. 103).”  Acknowledging Girard’s earlier difficulty with Hebrews, Hardin says: “In contrast, our contention is that Hebrews subverts the sacrificial process, albeit under cover of sacrificial language (p. 103).”  He helpfully demonstrates his thesis, concluding: “Our observations have sought to show that this letter, while using the language of sacrifice, rejects all connections between violence and the sacred.  Instead, Hebrews offers a new paradigm of what real self-giving (human and divine) is all about (p. 116).”

Chapter Seven presents “An Incarnational Theory of Mimetic Participation” in understanding the atonement.  It is both critique and affirmation of elements of Girard’s rejection in particular of satisfaction and penal readings of the atonement.  Robin Collins depicts Girard’s reading as “essentially a highly original version of the moral influence theory… (p. 133).”  The essay raises some helpful alternative considerations, interacts suggestively with other religious traditions, in particular Buddhism, yet does not deliver adequately an alternative.  Perhaps the author would find helpful and corroborating J. Denny Weaver’s recent (2001) The Nonviolent Atonement, in its affirmation of a “narrative Christus Victor” understanding of atonement.

James Williams, author of Chapter Nine, “King as Servant, Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations”, is both a Hebrew and a Greek scholar, and noted Girardian researcher.  In the essay before us, he explains: “My thesis is that the New Testament Gospels witness to and represent a transformation of sacral kingship (p. 179).” He concludes: “This revising of sacrificial language is a gospel transformation of the meaning of kingship and sacrifice.  It renders the ‘king’ as no longer the supreme differentiator through violence… Rather, he now is the differentiator through servanthood, through giving one-self rather than sacrificing – or letting others be sacrificed – in war and ritual (p. 194).” And: “My reading of the New Testament, to this point, leads me to the conclusion that in most of the instances where clear, heavily freighted sacrificial language is used, the sacrificial meaning is transformed.  This consistency could only be so because the New Testament has a real transformative center, the innocent victim, Son of man, Son of God, whose actuality cannot be swallowed up either in historicism or intertextuality (p. 195).”

As “Professor Emeritus” of Religion at Syracuse University, a secular setting, Williams makes some telling remarks about the extensive scapegoating of biblical texts and religion in secular academic (and other) contexts.  These connect to the immediately foregoing quote: “In intellectual culture there is a powerful stream of thought that attacks all models of authority, and this means that Christianity and the Bible are the primary objects of intellectual hostility…  It is an irony of history that the very source that first disclosed the viewpoint and plight of the victim is pilloried in the name of various forms of criticism…  My code word for this ideology is ‘multiculturalism.’  (Another code term is ‘political correctness,’…)

“However, it is in the Western world that the affirmation of ‘otherness,’ especially as known through the victim, has emerged.  And its roots sink deeply into the Bible as transmitted in the Jewish and Christian traditions…  the standpoint of the victim is our unique and chief biblical inheritance.  It can be appropriated creatively and ethically only if the inner dynamic of the biblical texts and traditions is understood and appreciated.  The Bible is the first and main source for women’s rights, racial justice, and any kind of moral transformation.  The Bible is also the only creative basis for interrogating the tradition and the biblical texts.  Why sell this birthright for a stew of multiculturalism? (pp. 195 & 196).”  In light of this plaintive plea for acknowledgement of the uniquely transformative power of the biblical text, Williams writes: “The paradigm periscope, Mark 10:35 – 45 [“Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all (verse 43).”], is crucial because it witnesses to the Servant Son of man as the transformative center of the movement of faith and theology into ethics and practice.  It witnesses also to the movement of ethics and practice into belief and understanding (p. 196).”

Sandor Goodhart, a Jewish Girardian and biblical scholar, supplies a creative rereading of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, in particular chapters 52 and 53.  Along the way he notes, contrary to much popular Christian scholarly opinion, “The criticism Jesus makes [of ‘the Jews’] is an internal Jewish affair…  It is with the tradition of prophetic criticism that Jesus speaks, not as repudiation of Judaism, nor of ‘the Jews’ – of which he is one (p. 204).  Goodhart posits the tensions between Jews and Christians ultimately as “something of a family quarrel.” He adds: “But considering Judaism and Christianity as part of a family – and not as a set of independent perspectives – we also open the potential for reconciliation and consequently for hope (p. 216).”  Though he acknowledges this is a long way in the future!

Chapter Eleven, “Discipleship and Imitation of Jesus/Suffering Servant: Mimesis of New Creation” by the Editor is a compelling call to imitation of Christ. “… what is necessary is a double transformation: that by transcendent provision we are given an object for mimesis whose very nature and action does not lead to rivalry when imitated, and that through the empowerment of this One our human desire(s) be transformed so that we will desire to imitate the nonrivalrous, nonviolent Person.

“In this chapter I seek to show that major strands of NT teaching are directed specifically to just this reality: transformation of desire that enables a positive, nonacquisitive mimesis. This study seeks to show how foundational and ubiquitous this idea is in the New Testament (pp. 218 & 219).”  The author accomplishes his task well!  Along the way, he challenges Luther’s view that any sense of imitation of Christ smacks of works-righteousness. On the contrary, failure to imitate Christ is part of the ethical malaise of an ahistorical satisfaction and penal substitution Atonement that reintroduces the violence renounced by Jesus, and leaves Christians ethically unchallenged about living out this rejection of violence in favour of love of neighbour/enemy modelled by Jesus!  As Bellinger states in the work cited above, “To a great extent, the history of Christianity is the history of the resistance of immature ‘Christians’ to the possibility that they could actually become followers [imitators] of Christ (p. 111).  Swartley concludes his study:  “A mimesis pattern lies at the heart of NT thought.  Any theology or ethics of the NT should make this point foundational, but few do…  Further, the pervasive NT teaching on ‘love of enemy’ and ‘nonretaliation against evil’ is the outworking of this new mimesis in an ethic for conflictual relations.  To pursue these themes adequately requires another paper (p. 239).” The author then points to earlier presentations in the “Studies” series of which this book is volume four.

Jim Fodor’s Chapter Twelve, “Christian Discipleship as Participative Imitation: Theological Reflections on Girardian Themes”, complements Swartley’s contribution, which he indicates.  He says: “By developing some of Swartley’s ideas in a more wide-ranging and intentionally theological manner, I hope to set the notion of imitation and discipleship in a Trinitarian framework that will encourage a distinctively Christian appreciation of Girard’s insights regarding mimesis and imitative desire (p. 248).” Along the way, Fodor critiques Girard’s lack of theological development of biblical themes, especially the Trinity and the Cross/Resurrection.  He does not fault Girard for his primary anthropological reading of the New Testament, rather delineates modifications and supplementations necessary to affirm Girard theologically. He concludes: “Christians may, no doubt, find in Girard an important ally…  In these matters, however, the ore always comes mixed with clay… (p. 266).” Fodor’s is a sobering biblical challenge and corrective to aspects of Girardian thought.

Chapter Thirteen by Rebecca Adams, “Loving Mimesis and Girard’s ‘Scapegoat of the Text’: A Creative Reassessment of Mimetic Desire” proposes “that we examine the Girardian theory [of mimetic desire] itself as a metanarrative to see how it performs according to its own insights about violence (p. 278).”  A central critique of Girard’s thought is its failure to construe positive mimetic desire. Adams believes that in fact, therefore, positive mimesis is scapegoated by Girard, a fact he fails to acknowledge.  Her development of this theme becomes very technical, and presupposes an intimate knowledge of Girardian theory not present in most readers of this review.  Adams proposes that with her corrective to Girard’s scapegoating of positive mimetic desire that Girard’s “mimetic theory becomes much more convincing as a general theory, one on which we might build a common ethic, understanding of human beings, and practice of peacemaking (p. 298).”  She spells out several compelling ramifications of her reassessment.  She concludes: “From a reassessed Girardian point of view, the implication is that to imitate (follow in the way of) love in the way I have described is to ‘imitate Christ.’  To participate in an intersubjective dynamic of loving creativity with others through mimetic desire is to imitate, image, or reflect God.  I do not believe it is essential to have the Judeo-Christian Scriptures to understand, or more importantly, to participate in this truth.  However, I do believe Christianity does have a unique claim regarding the gospel revelation from a Girardian point of view, a claim which has been made by no other religious tradition or human system of thought: that is that Jesus is the full, historical incarnation of this love which is both fully human and fully divine, and this love is stronger than any system of death which tries to contain it (p. 302).”

Finally, Chapter Fourteen, entitled “Violence Renounced” is a response by René Girard.  In it, he revisits “the main subject of the symposium, which is also my one field of competence, the ‘mimetic theory.’ (p. 308).”  Regrettably, he does not interact with the more critical assessments immediately prior to his own chapter.  He asserts however the independently (of religious faith) verifiable nature of the truth of mimetic desire.  “The biblical revelation (exposure) of mythology is no ‘mystical’ insight.  It rests on commonsensical observations.  It requires no religious commitment to be understood…  Far from being an ethnocentric prejudice in favour of our own religion, the Judeo-Christian claim to unique truthfulness, almost universally reviled and ridiculed these days, is objectively, verifiably true (p. 313).”  And again: “The traditional problems that divide Christian believers among themselves and even Christians from Jews pale into insignificance, it seems to me, compared to the intellectual and spiritual revolution that the palpable proof of the Judeo-Christian truthfulness entails. The mimetic theory turns the supposedly ‘scientific’ basis for religious scepticism into its very opposite.  It does not demonstrate the religious truth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which cannot be done, as we all know, but it does the next best thing: it demonstrates its anthropological truth (pp. 314 & 315).” 

In response, I am influenced in the direction of Bellinger’s critique, in the volume cited already a few times: “In my opinion, Girard ought to drop the pretense of adhering to the methodological atheism of social science, which has decreed that religious postulates are unacceptable foundations for understanding human behaviour… [that is] the forced agnosticism of the Enlightenment paradigm (p. 88).” Furthermore, as Fodor’s essay points out, the claim of “scientific” verifiability “is nothing more than a certain ability or explanatory power that enables one to account for all the data (p. 259).”  But if this is what is meant, then it is not so objectively verifiable after all.  And of course, in fact, Girard’s theories are disputed.  It is more accurate to say that Girard’s claims are “true” in the context of a certain community of dialogue (à la Michael Polanyi) to which he belongs.  To which Bellinger says: “He ought to write straightforwardly as a Christian apologist and argue that a theological mode of knowing is required for real insight into human behaviour (p. 88).”

One could wish, given their subsequent publications, that J. Denny Weaver on Atonement, and Charles Bellinger on originary violence theories in general, had been brought into the discussion in this volume. Their books, both alluded to in this review, significantly contribute to the issues raised in this volume. Nonetheless, the entire collection of essays is eminently worthwhile reading.  Not one fails to deliver at least minimally.  And many advance the discussion significantly of peacemaking in a violent world.

The Executed God

Book Review of the executed god: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, Mark Lewis Taylor, Fortress Press, 2001, 208 pp.

By Wayne Northey

“Is it a contradiction that Christians pray and adore their imprisoned and executed God while supporting or tolerating the execution and imprisonment of so many today?...  Is there a contradiction when in 2001 a new U.S president, George W. Bush, confesses Christian belief, attends church, and seeks the blessings of Christian leaders, while proudly announcing his support of executions, overseeing more than 150 of them during his term as governor of Texas (pp. xi and xii)?”

The burden of the book is to present an affirmative answer.

“Lockdown America” refers to the current in excess of two millions in prison, an almost fourfold increase since 1980, fully seventy percent of whom are people of colour.  There has never been such a reliance on prisons by any other nation in world history. Connected is the expression, “prison industrial complex”, taken over from the familiar “military industrial complex”, referring to the interdependence of entities combining to create a “theatrics of terror” of those targeted for incarceration and execution. “Terrorism” by any other name... 

The author writes with amazing prescience in light of September 11, 2001: “The fusion of our nation’s punishment regime at home with a military regime abroad was dramatically signaled in 2001 by the rise of George W. Bush from chief executioner among U.S. governors to chief executive commanding the U.S. military forces that guard transnational business interests (p. xvi).” It seems that since September 11 the former gubernatorial chief executioner has simply extended his life and death mandate to the entire planet. 

The sentence after the last quote reads: “This is empire nearly as real and as vicious as that of Rome (p. xvi).”  The organizing principle of “lockdown America” and of “bombs away world” (my expression) according to the author is empire.  “The United States, contrary to many of its citizens’ expectations is not an anti-imperial force.  To the contrary, it is the key and privileged player in supporting the imperial ways of transnational, global empire that services primarily the wealthier nations and the elites in poorer countries (p. xv).”  He calls this Pax Americana (“the imposed ordered peace of America (p. xvi).”)

Taylor writes further: “The overall argument of this book is that remembering the executed Jesus and enacting what I will call his way of the cross, are crucial for mobilizing effective resistance to lockdown America today and to the Christendoms that are complicit with it (p. xiii).”  And again: “We might dare to hope that ... Christians [will] embrace the Jesus whose life and death challenged, in his time, the Pax Romana (the imposed ordered peace of Rome) (p. xvi).”

Part One establishes the reality of Lockdown America as a domestic form of mass terrorism he dubs “The Theatrics of Terror”.  They are designed to “deal with surplus populations amid growing economic disparity, [and] can be seen as a system of sacrifice within a U.S.-led imperium that practices domination on both internal and global fronts (p. 65).”

Part Two calls for a “Theatrics of Counterterror” along three lines: practising the way of the cross as “adversarial politics”, practising counter spectacles to those of prisons, thereby “stealing the show”, and practising the way of the cross as “building peoples’ movements” to counter empire ways of death.  There is explanatory detail in each instsnce.

The Epilogue is a call to “Christian living [that] can be viewed as the fullness of rebellion (p. 156).”  This is the Apostle Paul’s call: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed... (Rom. 12:2)” 

The author, a theology professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and longtime activist, illustrates with wide array.  Given the scapegoating dynamics of criminal justice systems which he names and well describes, it is surprising he did not discuss more extensively the work of René Girard, for instance his latest book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, and the vast body of interdisciplinary writings his work has inspired with relation to scapegoating violence.  Given his reading of Jesus as profoundly political, it is intriguing that he does not once reference John Howard Yoder, especially his best-known work, The Politics of Jesus.  And he could have deepened and broadened his biblical analysis, like Yoder, Jacques Ellul, (prison abolitionist) Lee Griffith, and James William McClendon do in similar directions.  He could have done likewise sociologically by adducing the works of prison abolitionists Nils Christie, especially Crime Control as Industry, and Thomas Mathiesen, particularly Prisons on Trial. Finally, Taylor’s work is as if there has been absolutely no international movement known as “Restorative Justice”, that has dramatically challenged and changed from within the ways of lockdown America, and other gulag states the world over. The book could have been strengthened by engagement with this phenomenon.  Restoring Justice by Dan van Ness and Karen Heetderks Strong would have been an excellent choice.

The author is well aware that his thesis is alien to most churches and Christians, for whom “Pax Americana, that mighty and efficient empire, is simply accepted ... as a kind of stage upon which church ministries are to be acted out (p. 135).”  For all Christians so acquiescent to the state even when it pursues and supports empire ways, that is the book’s greatest challenge.

A fitting conclusion is the opening quote from black death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal: 

“Isn’t it odd that Christendom – that huge body of humankind that claims spiritual descent from the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth – claims to pray to and adore a being who was prisoner of Roman power, an inmate of the empire’s death row?  That the one it considers the personification of the Creator of the Universe was tortured, humiliated, beaten, and crucified on a barren scrap of land on the imperial periphery, at Golgotha, the place of the skull? That the majority of its adherents strenuously support the state’s execution of thousands of imprisoned citizens? That the overwhelming majority of its judges, prosecutors, and lawyers – those who condemn, prosecute, and sell out the condemned – claim to be followers of the fettered, spat-upon, naked God? (p. xi).”

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey, James J. Megivern, New York/Mahwah, N. J.: Paulist Press 1997, 641 pages.

By Wayne Northey

“In this important study, James Megivern offers readers a comprehensive history of the death penalty in the West.  He explores the development of the death penalty chronologically through the early, medieval and modern periods while also providing geographical surveys.  He concentrates on the debate over its use by theologians and philosophers, and illustrates the inconsistencies in Western thinking on its merits.”  This according to the back cover.  There is added on the inside cover a claim that rings true: “The Death Penalty includes more information on the history of thinking about capital punishment than is available in any other English work.” 

There are twelve sections to the book, each taking us through an historical era since the time of Christ.  There is also a “Preface” in which the author explains that he had found it puzzling that no English-language standard church history text asked “How it had come about that churchmen in the High Middle Ages had adopted a position of staunch support of this singular practice of deliberately destroying human life? (p. vii)”  Hugo Bedau, noted author/researcher on the death penalty, asks a similar question in the “Foreword”: “How does it come to pass that the religion founded in the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth would for centuries – indeed until a decade or so ago – not merely tolerate but actively defend death deliberately and intentionally inflicted as punishment as a right of the state and as a desirable and necessary institution? (p. xi)”

Megivern indicates that there were clusters of centuries in which particularly important historical developments of Christian attitudes towards and practices of the death penalty occurred. They were:

• The fourth and fifth centuries when the church adjusted to      post-Constantinian status as legal then sole      “established” religion of the Empire.
• The eighth and ninth centuries when the church aligned with      newly ascendant Frankish barbaric powers.
• The eleventh to thirteenth centuries that saw the emergence of      the “papal monarchy” and its resort to and support of increasing lethal      force.
• The fifteenth to seventeenth centuries that saw the rise of      lonely protest movements (Lollard, Anabaptist,      Quaker) that resisted by then universal application of torture and the      death penalty by the church.
• The eighteenth to twentieth centuries that began with      Enlightenment attacks on church practice and endorsement of the death      penalty, and continued from secular and Christian sources to the time of      the book’s writing.

In the prologue to the early church era (“On Interpreting the Bible”), Megivern indicates that undoubtedly, the presence in the Old Testament law codes of capital punishment for up to thirty-six offences gave rise to “the kind of central position [of pro-capital punishment] that it [gained] in Christian history (p. 10).” And “In the history of Christian theological legitimation of the death penalty, Genesis 9:6 has probably been cited more frequently than any other text as basic proof of the propriety of humans executing fellow human malefactors (p. 15).”  That the entire pericope, Genesis 9:1 – 6, and verse 6 in particular, fairly bristles with textual problems if forced to support the death penalty, Megivern rightly indicates.  He does so similarly with the Romans 13:1 – 6 text.  “This passage vies with Genesis 9:6 as the most popular and frequent proof-text invoked to justify the practice of state executions over the centuries (p. 17).”  After again demonstrating the textual difficulties with such a conclusion, he asserts: “There is widespread recognition that texts… must be approached in a broader way than ahistorical proof-texting (p. 18).”

In a collection of essays on the death penalty the reviewer has read, the editor underscores the consistent pro-death penalty voices throughout the Christian era as proof of divine approbation.  Megivern indicates the contrary: the pre-Constantinian church (pre-fourth century) was generally anti-death penalty, which dramatically changed during the era of Constantine.  The author summarizes: “Once Christianity had become the state religion, the imperial values articulated in Roman law tended to overwhelm gospel values…  As a result, the legacy of Constantinian-Theodosian Christianity to subsequent ages was highly ambiguous on the ethics of killing, whether in the case of war or capital punishment. Less and less attention was paid to that most troublesome of the teachings of Christ: the prohibition of the taking of revenge (p. 50).”

What began to bedevil the church, and for centuries, was “The intractable problem of what to do about heretics [that] gradually led churchmen into the quicksand of lethal repression (p. 55).”  And with that grew not only massive church-sanctioned exercise of capital punishment, but also its theological justification despite univocal contrary New Testament witness. 

The Waldensians of the early 12th century first elicited the church’s rejection of a “group” as heretics.  Ironically, the issue of their “heresy” was mainly opposition to the death penalty!  “It is thereby one of the oddest legacies in Western church history, resulting in a strangely skewed discussion that made preachers of the ‘good news’ diligently elaborate arguments for the state’s right to kill wayward members (p. 103).” This is akin to American Southern preachers’ ubiquitous defence in the 19th century of slavery.  (“The parallels between approving slavery and approving capital punishment have always been disturbingly close (p. 384).”) As the medieval period wore on, “war” on heretics increased to fever pitch.  Otherwise great spiritual leaders like Thomas Aquinas were drawn in.  In a comparison of the “body politic” to the human body that was repeated often by Christian theologians, the Nazis, and many other totalitarian leaders, Aquinas wrote: “Therefore, if any man is dangerous to the community and is subverting it by some sin, the treatment to be commended is his execution in order to preserve the common good (p. 117).”

The Protestant Reformation fared no better.  “While the major Protestant Reformers called for change in many other things, they had no objection to the death penalty as such (p. 141).”  Luther wrote: “Let no one imagine that the world can be governed without the shedding of blood.  The temporal sword should and must be red and bloodstained, for the world is wicked and is bound to be so.  Therefore the sword is God’s rod and vengeance for it (p. 142).”  John Calvin oversaw the execution of heretic Michael Servetus October 27, 1553 in Geneva, with overwhelming Protestant approbation.

With the establishment of the auto-da-fé at the 1215 Lateran Council, and the consequent Inquisition, administrators of the Papal States devised ever more exquisitely cruel means of torture to accompany the death penalty.  In Catholic and Protestant jurisdictions, a “Gallows-Pietism” developed as well, whereby the condemned went to the gallows as “a special work of God, a providential occasion where proper dispositions for a good Christian death were ideally enacted in a grand public liturgy from which all could learn important lessons in both living and dying as good Christians (p. 162).”  Executions had become, throughout Protestant and Catholic Christendom, part of upholding the “sacred order”.  They were therefore as natural and self-evidently legitimate as all other aspects of God-ordained society.

Megivern points to many minority voices of dissent, a fact that “contradicts the popular idea that initial efforts to get rid of capital punishment came as a relatively unexpected bolt from the blue at the time of the Enlightenment (p. 193).”  The first voices against capital punishment during the long ascendancy of the Western death penalty were in fact Christian and biblical.  Yet, from the mid-18th century “For the next two and a half centuries the secular proponents of a more humane society were, ironically, to be the chief defenders of the dignity of human life over against those who continued to invoke the Bible to justify the gallows… (p. 218)”  Megivern details this history of growing rejection of capital punishment, clustered around three considerations:

• Biblical/theological
• Humanitarian
• Pragmatic/operational

In turn, the most compelling Christian arguments became: “(1) a fuller understanding of human rights, especially the right to life; (2) a fuller understanding of the gospel, especially the teaching of Jesus on relating to one’s fellow beings and renouncing revenge; and (3) a fuller understanding of the need for consistency (p. 449).” Megivern adds: “That [Christian] message needs to be clarified and amplified in concrete terms: deliberate killing of human beings is not an acceptable option. The magnitude of a crime, its hideous, heinous, gruesome, grotesque circumstances and details, are not and cannot be the issue.  Life is the issue, and deliberately destroying human life, all human life, any human life, is wrong, period.  Punishment, yes.  Death, no.  People are not to be killed – not by any ‘right’ of the state, not in God’s name, not for revenge, not to deter another, not at all.  That is the nature of the right to life, the dignity of the human person, the law of God, and the teaching of Jesus (p. 459).”

The book is a masterful blend of the scholarly and the prophetic.  Megivern charts a sure course through 2,000 years of Western church history.  He does not miss the pathos either.  Many times the text is punctuated with comments like: “If the legitimacy of deliberately killing people for having different beliefs had not become a Christian cultural given, how different might Western history have been? (p. 186).” His discourse is erudite, respectful, and unflinching.  He might have quoted Jesus with great irony in response to the longstanding majority Christian support for capital punishment and state-sanctioned violence in general: “Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.  He was a murderer from the beginning… (John 8:43 & 44a).”  He might also today advise reading The Nonviolent Atonement (Eerdmans, 2001) by J. Denny Weaver as theological corrective for this horrendous blot on Christian witness.  Megivern says: “As is evident, the problem being addressed extends far beyond the issue of capital punishment as such, since this practice is symptomatic and only one piece of the much larger puzzle, the puzzle of accounting for the oxymoronic phenomenon of ‘Christian violence’ in its many forms (p. 4).”  He rightly points to the work of and inspired by Christian anthropologist René Girard.  (A masterful discussion of Girard together with Søren Kierkegaard is found in Charles Bellinger’s The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil. Girard’s most recent book is entitled, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.)

To Megivern belongs the last word: “In the end, as in the beginning, the case for respecting human life prevails: from a Christian perspective, the death penalty has nothing to be said for it, and everything to be said against it (p. 489).”

Justice That Restores

Justice That Restores, Charles W. Colson, Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2001; 172 pages.

by Wayne Northey

Charles Colson explains that the seeds for this book were sewn while preparing for a series of lectures on criminal justice in England. “I needed to write a book that would help American policy makers and people who work in our country’s criminal justice system to think through their positions, policies, and practices (p. x).”

Colson states two premises giving rise to this publication. The first is: “The criminal justice system, which is absolutely crucial if government is to carry out its first duty - the preservation of order - urgently needs reform (p. vii).” The second is: “Our ideas and philosophies of criminal justice can no longer be considered in a vacuum (p. viii).”  These premises inform the four parts of the book. 

Part 1, “The Basis for a Just Society”, presents some sobering statistics about the exponential growth of America’s prison population in recent years.  Colson also indicates that “crimes” have changed into ever more vicious, senseless, and perverse acts, often with no motives connecting to the specific victims.  He provides a litany of randomly selected illustrative horrors. He proceeds to discuss what is justice, and the importance of natural law, which Colson claims references to biblical revelation.  Over against “biblically based” natural law there has been a process of erosion of this as foundation for law in Western history.   He concludes Part I with, “If restorative justice is to prevail, the first task ahead of us is to restore the authority of the law itself.  Without it, no criminal justice system can be fairly administered.  Without it, no society can survive (p. 41).”

Part 2 discusses “The Roots of Crime”.  Colson argues for the traditional doctrine of original sin as the explanation for crime.  In the process, he critiques “utopianism”, whereby people are not held accountable for the choices they have made.  The consequences of this bad “anthropology” are a fourfold erosion of personal responsibility, coarsening of crimes, dehumanization of the individual, and compounding of evil.  He discusses each of these in some detail.  Colson concludes this section with: “Restoration of justice is impossible without restoration of good anthropology...  [T]he true cause of crime... is not environment or poverty but wrong moral choices.  The truth is, we are not deprived, we are depraved (p. 74).”

Part 3, “Redemption” looks at the “Moral Roots of Crime”.  “So what is the cause of crime?  It turns out the Bible was right all along.  Humans are responsible for sin and evil (p. 79).” Along the way, he indicates that the lack of large scale religious training in American society, a training of Christian virtues, has significantly created the monstrous problems with crime we face today.  He writes, “So this brings us to the crucial question perhaps of this entire book: What can be done to bring about virtue in individuals as they make moral choices (p. 88)?”  His answer is personal conversion to Christ.  To get to that, he briefly examines other- and non-religious answers. He points both to studies and stories that underscore a christocentric conclusion.  In particular, he calls for the moral transformation of the American family as the place to start.  He calls also for the creation of “community cohesion” through the mobilization of America’s churches to re-establish virtue in its citizens.  He concludes this section with the words, “That reality, the reality of the gospel, is the only life-transforming, indeed culture-transforming power.  In that is the answer not just to crime but also to life’s greatest dilemma (p. 109).”

Part 4, “Justice That Restores”, finally delivers on the book’s title.  Colson uses other terms such as “relational” and “transformative” to describe this kind of justice as well.  He underscores that “Crime is the Community’s Business”, and proceeds to describe a range of community options, including prevention programs, “Christian” prisons as operated by Prison Fellowship (the worldwide organization founded by Colson), a variety of reintegration programs, and programs that bring healing to victims. The author concludes with further discussion of what Christian “transformation” means in today’s culture. The book’s final statement is, “... the time is at hand to turn to what may seem a new and radical model but is actually an old and well-proven one: justice that restores (p. 159).”

This book is an avowed attempt to set the issues of crime, punishment, and justice in a comprehensive historical and cultural context. It lacks however the well-researched erudition of his colleagues’ Restoring Justice (Anderson Publishing Company, 1997), and the theological acumen of Chris Marshall’s Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment (Eerdmans, 2001). Colson’s book has its good moments, in particular when Colson turns in Part 4 to practical descriptions of Restorative Justice initiatives and many of his points are valid.  His numerous stories, from a wealth of personal experience, are inspirational and heart-warming.  He also sources some good research material.

The book makes repeated unsubstantiated statements and assumptions however, and serves up many broad generalizations the reader is expected already to know and accept. Colson claims to see the woods by raising at the outset what he terms “Foundational Questions (p. 11)”.  Regrettably, in this reviewer’s opinion, he inadequately looks past the trees.  There is “not enough”, in the repeated phrase of activist Ruth Morris.  I shall mention two significant examples. 

First, there is Colson’s undefined use of the term “crime” itself, and the basic issue of who commits “crime”.  What would Colson say of the classic Canadian publication by Thomas Gabor, ‘Everybody Does It!’: Crime By the Public (University of Toronto Press, 1994), which demonstrates from  worldwide studies that Western democracies such as Canada and the United States are largely made up of “opportunistic repeat offenders” – approximately 90% of the population – including law enforcers and elected officialdom?  (“There is no one righteous, not even one” could have been the book’s subtitle.) Further, Colson provides for us a litany of horrific crimes to demonstrate how “(street) crime” currently is spinning out of control.  He thereby shows a simplistic, individualistic, politically conservative bias that street crime is the only kind legitimately to concern Americans. But evidence is readily accessible for the massive depredations of corporate crime in North America and worldwide.  (I need only mention Enron.)  The billions stolen, large numbers of victims annually, and great environmental devastation, make collective street crime in America seem tame by comparison.  (See Section III and the various bibliographies of Ruth Morris’ The Case for Penal Abolition, Canadian Scholars’ Press (2000) for example.  The literature abounds.)  Why does Colson not even allude to this?

Second, Colson makes no connection between crime in America, and the crimes of what American theologian Mark Taylor calls “Lockdown America”, an “American Empire” in pursuit of a domestic and worldwide imposed Pax Americana as (economically) conquest driven as ancient Rome (The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, Fortress, 2001).  Taylor, unlike Colson, connects the burgeoning “prison industrial complex” (what Nils Christie called “crime control as industry” in a masterful book by that title (Routledge, 1995) ) to the massive “military industrial complex” headed by the Pentagon.  Taylor says: “The fusion of our nation’s punishment regime at home with a military regime abroad was dramatically signalled in 2001 by the rise of George W. Bush from chief executioner among U.S. governors to chief executive commanding the U.S. military forces that guard transnational business interests (p. xvi).” The vast criminality of both “complexes” is also well documented.  (See for example, A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World, Vivien Stern, Northeastern University Press, 1998; and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000.)  Why has Colson absolutely nothing to say about these kinds of worldwide, organized criminal organizations?  Can Colson, former conservative politician, though Christian, possibly be influenced by political bias and not just the Bible in his cultural analysis?

Colson further and rightly specifically alludes to the way in which young people are increasingly desensitized across America through violent video games to commit cold-blooded murder without compunction.  He then readily acknowledges that contemporary American military training employs similar methods, but says reassuringly: “The difference, of course, is that soldiers absorb this training in a moral context... (p. 10)”  And then he moves on, without apparently batting an eye!  (For starters, why did Colson not at least adduce the chilling research conducted and widely disseminated by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman? See his website: http://www.killology.com/, and his book: On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Little, Brown and Co, 1995.) 

Further, is this not the very issue of the New Testament moral witness, that is “univocal” against killing (see Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Fortress, 1996, Chapter 14), epitomized in Jesus’ clarion command: “Love your enemies.”?   So when the American military “Timothy McVeighish” killed in excess of 6,000 innocent Afghani civilians in its air war on terrorism, as well as tens of thousands more combatants, and multiplied thousands of civilians and combatants again recently in Iraq; or “nuked” in 1945 120,000 innocent Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and slaughters thousands of innocents worldwide through American interventions since World War II, are these cold-blooded horrors also not moral issues of “crimes against humanity”?  (And the most obvious reason that America totally boycotts the recently established International Court). 

Are the above not murderous acts of violence that model and elicit imitation by America’s peoples as surely as violent video games? Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by American journalist William Blum (Black Rose Books, 1998) is a 457-page litany of such violent crimes by America, which in a more recent book as mentioned is consequently dubbed the ultimate Rogue State.  Blum writes, “What if all the nice, clean-cut, wholesome American boys who dropped an infinite tonnage of bombs, on a dozen different countries, on people they knew nothing about – characters in a video game – had to come down to earth and look upon and smell the burning flesh (p. 1)?”  And this kind of wanton carnage, blessed by Colson (apparently) and certainly by most major Evangelical leaders from Billy Graham on down in the United States, is not crime, is “justified” in fact, because willed by the nation (and hence by God in a perverse reading of Romans 13 worthy of Nazi Germany)?  And therefore, by divine alchemy perhaps, worldwide US violence practised daily (if we only care to know[1]) is exempt both from the category of “crime (against humanity)”, and wide imitation by the world public, not least other peoples and nations?

The book has some things to offer.  But given its unfortunate American cultural captivity, it is sadly and sorely inadequate to the task, amazingly naïve about the true depth and breadth of violence in today’s world, hence “not enough”, according to its own stated intention, of calling us to a cosmic biblical vision of “justice that restores”.  “For God so loved the world”! – one needs to remind Colson and a host of idolatrous American Evangelical leadership.

---

[1] “The former apartheid cabinet member Leon Wessels was closer to the mark when he said that they had not wanted to know [about apartheid’s horrors], for there were those who tried to alert them (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, p. 269).”

Against the Death Penalty

Against The Death Penalty: Christian and Secular Arguments Against Capital Punishment, Gardner C. Hanks, Herald Press, 1997; 208 pages.

by Wayne Northey

Eleven years after the Canadian Parliament decisively voted against the return of the death penalty, the Reform Party of Canada has decided to make this issue a major thrust in 1998.  The book’s appearance therefore, though directed towards and informed by current American reality, is timely for Canadians too.  The cold-blooded execution of Karla Faye Tucker, born-again Christian, is further pointer to the book’s timeliness.

The title gives away its thrust.  Of interest to Christian readers is, Hanks’ own conversion is traceable to the leadership taken by Christians in their opposition to capital punishment.  He was impressed by their powerful witness to “an executed Lord”.  Six months after their action in which he participated opposing the execution of John Spenkelink (May, 1979 in Florida), “I became a Christian”, the author tells us.  Further, “My friendships with death row inmates and with family members of other men on death row have convinced me more than ever that the death penalty is opposed to everything the God I love and worship stands for (p. 15).” His book is evangelistic in witness to his love for that executed Lord besides being apologetic against the death penalty.

Hanks explains that he struggled in writing the book concerning who is his audience.  He decided to include much argumentation that secular people could readily appreciate, but also to be true to his own story, and begin and end with Christian reasons for opposing the death penalty.  In the Preface the author outlines the structure of the book: two beginning chapters devoted to biblical considerations; two on the history of opposition to such punishment; two chapters on deterrence theories; a chapter on repeat offenders and the death penalty; the next on the needs of victims;  five chapters concerning myriad injustices around use of capital punishment; a chapter on wrongful convictions and the execution of innocents; two chapters on the staggering fiscal and social costs of capital punishment; a penultimate chapter on seeing the death penalty as “cruel and unusual punishment”; and a revisiting finally of the spiritual and moral considerations in opposition to such a heinous measure, what we learn in the Foreword writer Will Campbell once labelled “just plain tacky”.  There are also five helpful “Appendixes”, two of which are US-oriented.

The author at the outset uses compelling arguments to advance the proposition: “Since killing and revenge are incompatible with love, it should be obvious that capital punishment cannot be part of the reign of God inaugurated through Jesus Christ (p. 40).”  Hanks himself was drawn to Christ because of God’s love.  He sees in Christ an image of God shorn of all vestiges of violence, especially the ultimate violence of state sanctioned murder. He therefore interprets Romans 13 differently from dominant views (since the era of Constantine) of the state and capital punishment.  Likewise, he disallows Genesis 9 as a timeless rationale for the death penalty, and reads the Old Testament as pointer to the New Testament opposition to capital punishment.  He quotes I John 2:2 as a definitive NO to the need for any further atoning deaths: “[Christ] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

As Restorative Justice advocate Howard Zehr states in the Foreword, “The book is exactly what the subtitle says....  One by one, Hanks addresses the issues, steering through them without becoming lost - no mean feat with a subject as complex and emotional as this one (p. 12).”

I am surprised that there is no reference to the finest study I know of on Genesis 9 with relation to capital punishment, published in The Acts of Synod 1981, “Report 31: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT STUDY COMMITTEE” (Grand Rapids: Christian Reformed Church in North America, pp. 72-73, 448-91.), by a group of Christian Reformed scholars.  I have twice used their material in a public forum on the issue. Baldly and overwhelmingly they demonstrate that Genesis 9 cannot be used as a timeless basis for state killings (a point conceded once exegetical evidence was adduced in both my dialogue experiences).  I was also surprised that no writings by John Howard Yoder were used, recently deceased Mennonite biblical scholar, in particular his contribution to The Death Penalty Debate (H. Wayne House and John Howard Yoder, Dallas: Word, 1991).    Finally, I could have hoped for a development of the theme of scapegoating with reference to capital punishment.  The work of René Girard, interpreted and expanded theologically in James Alison’s books (and those of many others), Knowing Jesus and Raising Abel, would have contributed significantly to the theological presentation. Their massive enterprise argues, “The perception that God is love has a specific content which is absolutely incompatible with any perception of God as involved in violence, separation, anger, or exclusion (James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, New York: Crossroad Publishers Company, 1996, p. 48).”  “[I]n truth, and without any remorse or sadomasochism, Jesus loved his slayers. (Raising Abel, p. 188, see Luke 23:34)”, is the amazing Gospel reversal of the death penalty and all violent ways!  Nonetheless, Hanks has been quite thorough in drawing on secular and biblical sources.

This book will help convince the open but undecided, and bolster the opposition to the death penalty of the “already converted”.  It is likely to give pause at least to the thoughtful retentionist.  But for the “Pharisee” in the church ranks, Jesus’ words in Matt. 23:23 (KJV) will be used in ringing denunciation of all Christians “against the death penalty” (as once used in an angry diatribe against me and my “despicable ilk” during a secular public forum): “ye... have omitted the weightier matters of the law”, he thundered at me, “judgment!!!”  And to my verbal executioner that night, “judgment” meant capital punishment.  That such an inversion of the thrust of that passage (see Micah 6:8 and the rest of that verse and chapter for its background and context) could have been used in defence of capital punishment is sure proof of the enormous capacity of, and temptation towards, wrongly “dividing the word of truth (II Tim 2:15)”, we all share.

I warmly recommend this book with the warning: Lector caveat -let the reader beware!

Rogue State:

Book Review of Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, 308 pp.

By Wayne Northey

A former Canadian missionary colleague, Lloyd Billingsley, has published numerous books since his new-found faith in Americana, and adoption of the United States as his actual and spiritual homeland. His books have catchy subtitles such as: “recovering freedom in our time”, “a critique of Marxism and the religious Left”, “how communism seduced the American film industry in the 1930s and 1940s”, and “fanaticism in our time”.  In every instance, the United States of America emerges as Supreme Saviour and Ultimate Messiah.  If only we had faith and blind trust in “her”.  Almost all books chastise the “International Communist Conspiracy”, and uphold America as eminently “the Beautiful”, of immaculate historical conception, an unblemished paragon of virtue that shines as the sole beacon of hope in an otherwise morally bankrupt world of nations.  It is, as sometimes happens with religious converts, faith in America’s civil religion of Manifest Destiny off the charts, a boundless fanaticism of utter blind trust in all things American.

In light of such unfathomable devotion, the final chapter of the book under review asks: “How do they get away with it? How does the United States orchestrate economies, subvert democracy, overthrow sovereign nations, torture them, chemicalize them, biologize them, radiate them… all the less-than-nice things detailed in this book, often in the full glare of the international media, with the most stunning contradictions between word and deed… without being mercilessly condemned by the world’s masses, by anyone with a social conscience, without being shunned like a leper?  Without American leaders being brought before international tribunals, charged with crimes against humanity? (p. 243)”  Sheer romantic mystique, and a gargantuan propaganda machine are Blum’s explanation.

Canadians have recently been entertained by comedian Rick Mercer’s hilarious “Talking to Americans”.  From the current President, to state Governors and other politicians, to all kinds of Ivy League professors and students, to the normal Jane and Joe on the street, Americans have paraded on film their enormous, unconscionable ignorance of most things Canadian.  It is not surprising therefore that this book should detail a similar abject ignorance of America’s true place in the world. 

As numerous other publications carefully demonstrate, such as The “Terrorism” Industry by Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan (Pantheon Books, 1989), and as meticulously documented in this publication, the most pervasively brutal terrorist organization known to humanity is the United   States of America.  If Billingsley and the vast majority of similarly duped Americans only had eyes to see, instead of spewing billingsgate against endless lines of new “America’s/Free-world’s enemies”, the shock would be incalculable that in fact, writ large across America’s domestic and foreign policy for decades is not just America the Ugly, but AMERICA THE MONSTROUS, and that the only “god” trusted in by Americans blithely supportive of their “Evil Empire” is Violence.

Rogue State includes an Introduction, and three sections under which twenty-seven chapters are fitted.  The sections are entitled: “Ours and Theirs: Washington’s Love/Hate Relationship with Terrorists and Human-Rights Violators”; “United States Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction”; “A Rogue State versus the World”.

The thesis of the book is laid out clearly from the outset in three quotes.  The first is from a 1996 Amnesty International publication: “Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’, at the hands of governments or armed political groups.  More often than not, the United States shares the blame (no page number) .” And: “From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes.  In the process, the US caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair. (p. 2)” Finally: “There’s a word for such a continuum of policy.  Empire. The American Empire.  An appellation that does not roll easily off an American tongue…  The American Empire?  An oxymoron [?]  A compelling lust for political, economic and military hegemony over the rest of the world, divorced from moral considerations?  Suggesting that to Americans is akin to telling them of one’s UFO abduction, except that they’re more likely to believe the abduction story (pp. 24 & 25).”

Several years ago, a Canadian film producer described to Peter Gzowsky, host of CBC’s defunct Morningside, that he had managed to capture on celluloid representatives of all players in the 1980’s Guatemalan tragedy that saw at least 200,000 Mayans and other “subversives” liquidated.  “What became brutally clear”, he said,  “was that a Holocaust of similar kind, though to a different degree from that in Nazi Germany, had been perpetrated against these peoples.  And the buck for responsibility stopped with the President of the United   States of America.”  He then described that he had gone into deep depression in the post-production stage of the film, for he knew that his documentary, despite the undeniable evidence, would not be believed in North America – if anywhere.

When I lived for two years in West Berlin, I asked on occasion older people whom I trusted, “Did you not know?”  They always said the word, “Nein”, but their eyes invariably said “Yes!!!”.  During the Nuremberg Trials, one Nazi official said:  “You have defeated us Nazis.  But the spirit of Nazism rises like a Phoenix amongst you.”

That the vast majority of Americans and “Free-world” inhabitants could have supported Harry Truman’s decision to detonate two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in  calculated acts of cold blood, instantly incinerating 120,000 Japanese civilians: men, women, and children, innocent as any other humans on earth at that time, is beyond imagining.  No doubt the Nazi War Trials official had at least those bombs in mind when speaking of the rising Nazi-like Phoenix.  When another terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, destroyed 168 American civilians in an act of cold blood in Oklahoma City, the government of America, supported by the vast majority of its citizenry, judged that act worthy of the ultimate human penalty.  Even though it was the same government that had taught McVeigh to kill in the first place.  Yet Lloyd Billingsley writes, and most Americans believe, that “fanaticism in our time” is almost everything un-American! 

Blum states: “… it can be argued – based on the objective facts of what Washington has inflicted upon the world, as described in this book – that for more than half a century American foreign policy has in actuality, been clinically mad (p. 26).”  That of course is a line of defence in a criminal trial.  Unless America can be demonstrated to be fit to stand trial.  But who would do that?  And at what court, even of world opinion, would America be indicted?

The premier contemporary cultural theorist on violence, René Girard, argues that scapegoating violence is most effective when most hidden.  Jesus constantly challenged us to have “eyes to see”.  One Hebrew prophet announced: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it (Jer 17:9)?” A Christian prophet declared: “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’… (Rom. 3:10)”.

Most chilling for me, as a Protestant Evangelical Christian, is the awareness that virtually all accepted Evangelical leaders to the South, from the foremost Evangelical icon, Billy Graham, to lesser lights such as Charles Colson and Francis Schaeffer, to international voices such as C. S. Lewis and J. I. Packer, all endorse/endorsed the clinical madness of the ultimate “Rogue State”, the world’s only Superpower.  Blum dubs it “clinical madness”.  There is a longer-standing old-fashioned word that applies: sin.

The book is well written, carefully researched, and concludes with a litany of domestic crimes committed by America that goes on for pages.  It is terrible reading, but not due to the author’s skill, which is admirable.  Highly recommended. 

The most disturbing question for me as a committed Christian remains: Just what are American Evangelicals and their international supporters evangelizing for anyway?  I fear, à la Lloyd Billingsley, in the end, it is to make the world safe for America….  As Jesus would say, it thereby renders such converts “twice the sons of hell”. To which I say, in the word of Saint   Paul: Anathema!

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty (Part 3) by Wayne Northey

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty:  “The Talking Place: Discussing the Death Penalty” Forum on the Death Penalty, Fairbanks Alaska, March 22, 1997 – Part Three

[NOTE: I was invited to participate in a statewide dialogue on the Death Penalty in Alaska, where capital punishment is off the law books.  The issue was heating up, sadly because of Evangelicals in that state. I, representative of Mennonite Central Committee Canada Victim Offender Ministries at the time, was asked to “debate” the issue on biblical grounds with Dr. Richard Land (read about him at: http://www.erlc.com/CC_Content_Page/0,,PTID314166|CHID600674|CIID,00.html), then as now President
of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  I said I would not take part unless the event was changed to a “dialogue” where winners are not declared like a gladiatorial contest, but participants are honoured in honest dialogue.  Below is the text I first spoke from in that dialogue, held at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and teleconferenced throughout Alaska, including to the Juneau legislature.  I reflect on this, including inserting a letter I wrote Dr. Land years later in seeing that his support of the death penalty (he is after all a sixth-generation Texan, where Texas is the most killing jurisdiction in the Western world) had grown to support for U.S. Empire worldwide capital punishment (of vast numbers of innocents) in its War on Terror.  You may read these reflections at: http://www.clarion-journal.ca/article.php?story=20040721064535388. A professional video was done at the time, which one may borrow from me. 

The initial presentation is divided into Parts One and Two.  There is also Part Three where I gave responses to specific biblical texts usually (wrongly, I argue) adduced in support of the Death Penalty.]

Part III

Refutations of Use of Specific Texts:

In discussing specific texts, this is not to forget the wider "face of God" arguments that set an overall picture of God that simply disallows violent responses to others according to the picture of Jesus who is the final face of God in the New Testament.

What does one do with specific textual arguments, nonetheless?

Three main bodies of material are alluded to: Mosaic Law, the Noahic Covenant, and Romans 13:1 - 7.  I believe that none of these points to Christians' mandatory or permissible resort to capital punishment.

I.  Mosaic Law

When the Mosaic Code is alluded to, it is argued that this penal code enjoyed divine sanction, and should therefore be incorporated into the penal codes of contemporary countries.  There are several problems with this argumentation:

A.  There is no obvious biblical reason for believing that Mosaic Law is any more to be used today than genocide and scorched earth policies followed repeatedly by the people of God who similarly were given, according to the texts, divine sanction.  Why should the word of the LORD to Saul from Samuel about destruction of an entire people (genocide) and their belongings (scorched earth) in I Sam. 15 not be followed today?  If it is said it is today morally repugnant, I say precisely.  And that is again, why we are  followers of Jesus and not followers of Moses.

B.  We know of course that the death penalty in Mosaic Law was not limited to murder, but to a host of other offences, rebellious children.  On what basis can we be selective about how we will use the death penalty?

C.  The civil code of Mosaic Law is for an ancient people in an ancient time.  Likewise with ceremonial law.  With the end of the theocracy came an end to all such law. 

Mosaic Law therefore cannot be the basis for supporting capital punishment.   (John 1:17)  "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (NIV)  Mosaic Law was superseded in the fuller view of God's face in Jesus Christ.  That is why Jesus constantly said:  "You have heard it said... but I say unto you."

II.  Genesis 9

It is true that this passage has been used most to support the death penalty throughout all the ages of Christendom.  To challenge it may seem impertinent or even wrongheaded. Nonetheless, I am suggesting that we must look more closely.  When we do, I think that whatever else we do with the text, we may not use it to support the death penalty.  This is a simple matter of doing close exegetical work on the text.

Once in a dialogue at Trinity Western University on this very passage in my home town, BC, the New Testament scholar based his entire support upon this text.  In response, another New Testament scholar from Regent College raised some of the following considerations. The "for" capital punishment New Testament scholar graciously conceded at the end that he had no other biblical arguments to advance in support of the death penalty, and that he could no longer use Genesis 9 as a textual basis for capital punishment. 

A prison guard acquaintance of mine, in support of the death penalty, told me with real disappointment at the end of the evening that it had been like taking candy from a baby to refute the biblical arguments in support of the death penalty.   I thought so too.   Here were the arguments adduced to refute the use of Genesis 9 to support capital punishment.  They draw upon the work of Christian Reformed scholars who did an extensive exegesis of Genesis 9, and published their results in the Acts of Synod 1981.

1.  Contextual Considerations

a)  The key verse in question is Gen 9:6a:  "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed...." (NIV) The focus of meaning of this passage apparently is societal protection.  If this is true, then already the goal of protecting society is served if a "murderer" is placed into prison.  Surely the intent of the passage is fulfilled without doing the literal killing in response.  We know that the intent of Paul's instruction in several of his letters to "greet one another with a holy kiss" is fulfilled in a "hearty handshake all around" as J.B. Phillips paraphrases it.  This is a trivial example of how we contextualize interpretation of Scripture to extract a principle, but not necessarily to follow the "letter", which may in fact kill the Spirit!

b)  Now notice verse 5:  "And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man."  Notice that animals are to be killed, according to the text, as much as humans, for taking a life.  So why this verse?  Surely the issue is protection, and not a matter of divine retribution raining down on even the animals! There is clearly no solemn, divine commandment, that would slay an animal every time it kills a human.  Likewise, we cannot take this passage as giving a solemn, divine commandment to kill people for killing people.

2.  Dietary Considerations

How many of you have ever eaten "blut-wurst" or rare meat?  You shouldn't, according to this text!  Listen to verse 4:  "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it."  These are the same absolute terms as verse 6. Verse 4 clearly excludes blood from the diet of all humanity.  This is what "kosher" means, and millions of Jews throughout history have only eaten kosher.  Again, I ask: "Do you only eat kosher meat?" Why not, if Gen. 9:6 is to be timelessly binding?  The point of verse 4 is clearly the treatment of all life with respect, and therefore not to eat living flesh.  But "just as this respect need not take the form of eschewing the consumption of blood (as in 'blut-wurst'), so it need not take the form of inflicting capital punishment (Acts of Synod 1981, p. 459)."

4.  Historical Considerations

a)  If Genesis 9:6 is to be interpreted as timeless, since it pre-dated Mosaic Law, should not Gen. 4:5 be considered that much more prior and timeless, since it is dealing with the very first murder in history according to the biblical story? And what does God do in response to the first murderer, Cain?  God prohibits anyone from killing him in retaliation!  The question of the "state" of course is absent in Genesis 4.  But so is it in Genesis 9!

b)  If it is argued that God seemingly treats something as serious as murder differently at different times, that is precisely the point: we live after the time of the revelation of God in Christ!  That God in this age of grace says no to all human sacrifices, to all state killings is precisely my argument.

c)  "If there be in Genesis 9:6 an inviolable and universally binding command to execute murderers, then there is in Genesis 9:1 and 7 a similar command to 'be fruitful and multiply and to bring forth abundantly on the earth.' (Acts of Synod 1981, p. 460)."  We'll get to the issue yet of whether Gen. 9:6 is a command.  But surely here, with reference to procreation, this is much more a blessing than a command.  And do we modern Christians take from Genesis 9 that contraceptives are absolutely ruled out, or even natural methods of avoiding pregnancy, for we are "commanded" as absolutely in verses 1 and 7 as there is a "command" in verse 6, to "be fruitful and multiply".  We allow that in our different historical situation, where Malthusian overpopulation threatens, the most environmentally responsible thing we Christians can do is have only a few children! 

Likewise with the "command" in verse 6.  It surely at the least is historically conditioned, and therefore not an inviolable, timeless, universal requirement by God.

5.  Juridical Considerations

a)  From a juridical point of view, if this passage is to be taken at all in that light, please note that the offence for which capital punishment is "mandated" is "shedding another's blood".  Kidnapping, rape, mutiny, treason, etc. cannot be brought into view from this text. 

b)  i)  Further, this blood-letting lacks juridical specification, if it is meant to be taken juridically at all.  There is no distinction made between accidental, negligent, and willful homicide.  What if, for instance, the axe-head slips off while I am chopping wood and I kill my best friend?  Further, within homicide, there is no distinction made between crimes of passion and pre-meditated murder.  Most who use this text to discover a "command" in support of the death penalty however ignore all those questions, and read into it the offence of first-degree murder. 

ii)  There is however an even greater problem with taking this text to refer to first-degree murder.  And here my Acts of Synod exegetes let me down.  They claim to discover in the text that what is being talked about here is murder.  But there is no warrant from the text nor from the context for concluding that!  The context in fact is overwhelming violence for which God is deeply grieved.  God, the pre-Flood story tells us, hates violence. But he seemingly eschews violence in response to violence too, and that is clearly the import of the story of Cain. That is the timeless impact of the Cain and Abel story, that God says no to killing in response to killing!  And notice that the text of Gen. 9:6, if it is to be taken as a "command", says the same thing.  It says that all killing is wrong, no matter by whom.  There is no more reason in this text to say that a murderer is in special view here than there is to say that a policeman or a soldier is likewise prohibited from killing.

No one believes that it is God's will that anyone who kills, all the way from accidentally to pre-meditatedly to in the line of duty for the state - anyone! - is forfeit his life.  Why not?  The text is surely very clear here, if this is a "command" of God?

If we turn to Mosaic Law for a commentary on this passage, we immediately have a problem: a man who beats his slave to death (or employee today) is exempt from capital punishment according to Moses (Ex. 20:13; 21:20, 21).

In summary:  "An argument based on Genesis 9:6 commits one to demand the death penalty for any and every [killing] whatever the circumstances may be.  [Gen. 9:6] therefore cannot be taken as a law, or as a juridical requirement.  If it were so taken it would license unjust executions and subvert righteousness (Acts of Synod 1981, p. 462)."

c)  It is also a curious fact that almost all who take Genesis 9:6 as a mandate for capital punishment translate the Hebrew word for "man" - adam - as "duly constituted governmental authorities".  But there is no hint of this in the text at hand.  Most so inclined then jump ahead to Rom.13:4 to find warrant for such an interpretation.  But it is absolutely clear from the Genesis 9 context that "no state furnished with a penal code and judicial system was in existence (Acts of Synod 1981, p. 463)."  What would be in the historical context here?  It would doubtless be the ancient custom of the "avenger of blood" - the next of kin who pursues the killer to avenge his relative's blood. No Christian holds out for such a person today to take responsibility for killing those who have killed. Likewise, no Christian should make Genesis 9 do what it simply does not do: support capital punishment in a timeless way. 

d)  If Gen. 9:6 is not to be taken as a law or legal enactment, how then should it be read? The form of the verse suggests an answer.  It appears in fact in many translations as poetry, typical of Hebrew wisdom literature. In fact there is a chiastic structure to the first half of the verse typical of such literature. Literally translated, the order is perfectly symmetrical:

"Shedding blood of man by man his blood will be shed." The first and last ideas match - "shedding", as do the second and second last concepts - "blood", as does the centre of the whole discussion:  "man" - or "human being".  Now, unless this is the one exception throughout the entire Hebrew Bible that proves the rule, no law anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible is ever given in poetic form. 

We are familiar with this form from similar other biblical statements: (Matt 26:52)  "all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (NIV); and (Gal 6:7) "A man reaps what he sows." (NIV).  Put briefly: all such statements are descriptive of the way things happen in this world - apart from grace - but not prescriptive by any stretch of the way they ought to be in God's will.  The Hebrew verb about "shedding" in the passage in fact may be understood entirely as simply descriptive or predictive, and nothing like a categorical imperative.

And that is precisely the whole thrust of my argument: yes, the world knows endless retaliation in response to killings. Remember Lamech who boasted of limitless retaliation (77 times).  But as we know, in Jesus, the final face of God, in response to Peter's question about how often to forgive, Jesus said: (Matt 18:22) "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." (NIV)  Is that same number as used by Lamech just a coincidence? I think not.  Jesus directly contradicts the way things are in this world, its inclination towards limitless retaliation, in favour of something world-shakingly different: limitless forgiveness.  For that is the way it is when one gazes intently at the face of Jesus to get the correct picture of God.

Now do you understand why a close exegetical look at Genesis 9 leads to the concession that it simply is impossible to use it in any way as a support, let alone as a mandate, for the state to carry out capital punishment, and why my New Testament scholar dialogue partner 11 years ago had to let go of that passage in support of the death penalty?

III. Specious Arguments From New Testament Texts and Romans 13:1-7

If Mosaic Law and Gen. 9 are ruled out of consideration in the question of the death penalty, just what is left?  Well, there are several attempts to pull Jesus into the discussion.  I am prepared to deal with any that you may wish to raise.  But I will not raise more than one myself, for in response to all of them I say the same thing: specious argumentation from the text and context themselves, not to mention that an attempt to interpret specific statements of or about Jesus in favour of the death penalty directly contradicts the entire revelation of Jesus' desire for mercy, not sacrifice, as I laid out earlier.

One example:  one theologian suggests, and is actually serious, that "It is significant that when Jesus voluntarily went the way of the Cross he chose the capital punishment of his day as his instrument to save the world."  Therefore, it is argued, since the Bible says that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins", God must have endorsed capital punishment!  This is pure exegetical nonsense!  If God endorsed capital punishment by this line of argumentation, then it follows logically that he endorsed as well the gruesome method of crucifixion as the means! And thankfully no modern state employs that method.  That the world's greatest crime should be twisted to support capital punishment is irresponsible eisegesis (reading into the text) of the worst kind!

But there is one lingering text, and a commentary on it: Romans 13:1 - 7, and I Peter 2:13 - 17, and a few shorter texts which say nothing different from the Romans text - in I Timothy ((2:1 - 4) and Titus (3:1 - 2).  For centuries  the Romans text was taken to be the central teaching of the Church about the State. And therein is already the beginning of the problem!  For the Romans 13 text was not the primary early Church text about the relationship of Christians to the State, but Eph. 6:12 - 20, beginning: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood...". I'll return to that later.

My Acts of Synod interpreters say:  "No Bible believer would, of course, care to call into question the plain teaching of Romans 13.... (p. 463)."  But that is precisely what they have done about the traditional "plain teaching" of Genesis 9, and have been successful!  They should have taken a cue from their own work on re-examining Gen. 9 against the vast majority of previous or contemporary interpretations, to realize that something similar could be happening with the Romans 13 text.  And there is! 

My contention is that not only must the centuries-long dominant traditional interpretation of this text be challenged, but that once re-examined, it is found to be fully consonant with the "face of Jesus" I sketched at the outset. 

In a small book entitled Essays on The Death Penalty [no current bibliographic information], published 35 years ago, the Editor says confidently about each of the pro-death penalty works published in the volume: "While the studies have been made independently by men who, for the most part, have never met each other, their remarkable singleness of thought can be explained by the fact that Christian doctrine does not change.  Faith in Christ is truly catholic in the usual sense of that word as being of 'all men, everywhere, always.'  True declaration of the Faith is not a matter of opinion, but an inescapable line of reason and experience that must follow upon the confession that Jesus is Lord." And I say, balderdash!  This is in fact a remarkable boast, considering the first three centuries of the early Church knew a Church largely pacifist, and specifically excommunicated Christians who became soldiers and thereby participated in both capital punishment and war - as found in the widespread usage of the Canons of Hippolytus!  What the editor shows us unknowingly is indeed a "remarkable singleness of thought" - but one based upon a post-Constantinian reading of Jesus that simply reversed Jesus' ethical teachings, especially about love of enemies!  So for instance the lead essay is written by C.S. Lewis.  Yet Lewis does not even mention the text, "Love your enemies", in another essay he wrote on why he is not a pacifist!  Now I call that indeed a "remarkable singleness of thought", but one based upon a centuries-long rejection of the face of Jesus we see in the Gospels, upon a "scissors-and-paste" approach to Scripture,  not upon a "confession that Jesus is Lord" - except Jesus as Lord of the Dark Blotches. 

One Church historian, in a book entitled Constantine versus Christ (Kee,1982), indicates that there has been such a centuries-long overlay of Jesus' ethical teachings in the direction of rejection of them, that it is now nearly impossible to expect people to "see" Jesus' face right the first time in terms of his ethical teachings. For centuries, the Church has followed Jesus of the Dark Blotches, and has been unable to see Jesus' true face because of only expecting, and only viewing, dark blotches for so long.  Constantine, the 4th century pagan ruler who turned the Church back to all the old scapegoating ways and State power games, in fact became "Christ" ethically to the Church!  What no Emperor was able to do before him, Constantine achieved with a Judas kiss: he reversed the ethical teachings of Jesus so as to make the Church impotent and have Jesus after all bless all the same sacrificial ways that creation had known since time immemorial.  Therein lies the triumph of ideology, a triumph which the vast majority of Christendom has embraced ever since.  So this is what we're up against! 

Historical Context

The Apostle Paul is writing a major statement about Christian belief to a group of Christians under the eye of the Emperor in Rome.  Paul had never met this group of Christians, most of whom were Jewish, some slaves, and others on the margins of society in the great seat of Roman power. 

Only a few years prior to Paul's writing, Emperor Claudius had had church congregations at Rome broken up and dispersed, and at the same time he had expelled the Jews en masse from Rome.  This had not made the Roman government, nor the Emperor, particularly popular amongst Roman Christians.

Further, within the Jewish contingent of all first century Christian churches, there persisted a violent hatred towards Roman rule akin to the hatred the Vietnamese felt towards you Americans, or Afghanis towards the Russians. 

Jewish Christian Attitudes to the State and to State Authorities

Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is the "State" ever viewed positively.  In I Samuel 8, the text makes it clear that the people of Israel turned away from God precisely in their desire to become a "nation" like other nations, and appoint themselves a King.  This was a rejection of the unique role of God as their King, but also of Israel's unique peoplehood unlike other nations who relied upon violence and standing armies to be a nation.

Jewish Christians shared a general view about surrounding pagan states, the Roman occupying state most definitely, that they were largely evil. They knew Psalm 2 well that begins: "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One." (NIV)   This was always the way, Jews, and Jewish Christians, knew, of pagan states. They were opposed to God and his Messiah.   The nations were compared to the sea, which "became a symbol of the seething nations of the world and of the troubled lives of the unrighteous . Perhaps this is why the apostle John spoke of the glorious new heaven and new earth as a place in which 'there was no more sea' . (from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary)" - that is, no more nations.  In fact, throughout the book of Revelation, "the Kings of the nations" are the ultimate arch-rivals of the Lamb of God.  And in Revelation 13, the State is seen as the ultimate Beast.  And from where does the Beast arise?:  (Rev 13:1) "      And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea." (NIV) - from the pagan nations, identified supremely with the nation of Rome. So, for instance, Isaiah says, with reference to the nations:  (Isaiah 57:20-21) "But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.  'There is no peace,' says my God, 'for the wicked.' " (NIV)

Further, Jewish attitudes towards State authorities, and Christian attitudes towards State authorities, were extremely negative.  Indeed, such authorities were actually thought to be in league with Satan.  This was the idea in Eph. 6:12 - 18.  Listen to verse 12: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (NIV)  Now get this!: the author of the letter to the Ephesians, likely Paul, used the identical Greek terminology for "rulers" and "authorities" as found in Romans 13, which reads: (Rom 13:1) "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God." (NIV)  There is something suspicious the moment Romans 13 is taken as a positive view of the State and of the governing authorities within it! Nothing seems further from the consistent mind of the biblical witness, Old and New Testaments!

The consistent biblical position is:  "the primary threat to human dignity is not the impunity of individual offenders not proven guilty, but the absolute power to punish of the state itself (The Death Penalty Debate, (House and Yoder, 1991, p. 150)."  A profound study on this very issue was produced recently, entitled, The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition (Lee, 1993).  There is an international movement that works at this, doing a conference every two years, called:  "The International Conference on Penal Abolition".

Further, until well into the third century, there was a longstanding aversion amongst Christians to the Roman system of justice as it applied to non-Romans.  For Roman justice was highly punitive, retributive justice against all non-Romans, especially slaves.  It was brutal - and incidentally became the inspiration, in the 11th century, of an emerging barbarity towards criminals sponsored by the Church.  Over against punitive systems of the day, Jesus warns that one ought to settle quickly with one's adversary (Matt. 5:25), and Paul forbids taking cases to Roman law courts (I Cor. 6).

Finally, in the same book of I Peter that obedience to the State is encouraged, similar to Romans 13, there is a fascinating passage in I Peter 4:15:  "If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler." (NIV)  Do you notice anything incongruous in that line-up?  "Murderer", "thief", "criminal" - then "meddler" or "busybody" or "gossip"?!  Guess what! That unique Greek word occurring only once in the entire New Testament, translated by most as "busybody", may be translated entirely differently!  Listen to the line-up in light of this allowable translation: "murderer", "thief", "criminal" - and "revolutionary"!  Now that fits the context much better of Peter's earlier discussion of the State, and of his discussion of suffering at the hands of the State! 

The reality is, Jewish Christians in Rome (I Peter was likely written from Rome) were sorely tempted by incipient revolutionary fervour towards the Roman State! 

No wonder then, that Paul expands about a Christian attitude towards the State.  In Jesus' teaching, the State is merely a special form of the neighbour that is owed certain "dues" as says Romans 13 too: including at least payment of taxes.  But at the end of Romans 12, Paul, drawing on Jesus, specifically, enjoins love of enemies, saying: (Rom 12:21) "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (NIV)  Then he moves on immediately to discuss a specific example of the "enemy": the State of Rome and its governing authorities.  He knows that the State was seen by Jesus as a special form of "neighbour/enemy".  In this case, the Roman State is in fact already Public Enemy Number One and about to become more so when Emperor Domitian only a little later in the century unleashes the first persecution of Christians.

That this passage should be taken remotely as a benign theoretical discussion about the State for the benefit of those living in modern democracies is a gross perversion of the immediate historical and cultural context of the letter written to the Romans!  Paul's whole concern here is pastoral.  He wants  to encourage submission to the arch-enemy, the Roman State, as Jesus demonstrated in turning the other cheek when Roman soldiers slapped him, of going the second mile in carrying the Cross to his own crucifixion, of giving his extra clothes when he was stripped before his execution. Paul knew full well what kind of judgment Rome metes out to its rebels: if they could crucify the Prince of Glory, they could as easily crucify his followers!  And Paul is writing to spare Roman Christians in that historical and cultural context the agony of capital punishment at the hands of Roman authorities!  This is especially urgent because of the revolutionary fervour towards Rome Paul knew some in the Roman churches were exhibiting. Watch out, he warns: (Rom 13:4) "For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong [i.e. in open rebellion against Rome], be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer [namely revolutionary Christians living in Rome!]." (NIV)   Then Paul gives two explicit reasons for submission to Rome, neither of which remotely are positive statements about benign governing authorities "ordained by God" and ruling God's way: (Rom 13:5) "Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment [read: "for example crucifixion"] but also because of conscience." (NIV)  Why conscience?  Because Jesus explicitly taught "love of enemies", and Paul specifically picks up this theme as centrepiece for God's work in Christ, the Atonement, which is an offer of reconciliation to us, God's enemies (Rom. 5:6 - 11)! 

Rebellion is out in Jesus' and Paul's teaching, in favour of loving embrace even of the authorities (Pilate, Nero, Domitian, and the lesser State functionaries) whom God still loves and superintends - "ordains" -  providentially, as he superintended wicked pagan King Cyrus, whom God refers to nonetheless in Isaiah as the LORD's "Anointed" and "Shepherd" - both terms reserved for Jesus!  Remember Paul's words to Governor Festus and King Agrippa in the Book of Acts?:  (Acts 26:29) "Short time or long-- I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains." (NIV)

So Paul concludes the section under discussion with the words: (Rom 13:7) "Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor." (NIV)  This is precisely how one treats the enemy, even the enemy State, in hope that the evil of the State, and the evil of the State functionaries, might be overcome with good.

This reading of the text takes into consideration the historical and cultural context, the immediate teaching of Paul about love of enemy - of State authorities included - and does not land us upon the horns of an endless dilemma concerning State authorities who do evil.  It also allows full consistency with the rest of the biblical material, which relegates the State to the realm of evil and rebellion ultimately, even though superintended and ordained by God for his good purposes. But it is clear already from Paul that we do not go on sinning so that grace may abound (Rom. 6)!  Likewise, we do not bless the evil of the State in naïve expectation that the State may some day get it right!  Not too likely.  And the Book of Revelation shows the State and its authorities consistently to be the Beast, to be Babylon, that forever rebels and wars against the Lamb.

Yet for the majority of Christians throughout the centuries, such State authorities cannot be questioned for they are "God's servants" - just as Nebuchadnezzar, pagan King of Babylon, is called "my Servant" by God (Jer. 25:9, 27:6). But God judges Nebuchadnezzar, his "servant", and pagan King Cyrus, the Lord's "Shepherd" and "Anointed" for their sins!  And anyone who knows of God's "servant", Adolph Hitler, this century, surely does not need to be reminded of what evil the State (invariably!) is capable?  I know what Canada does.  Do you know what America does?  And so we have the vast majority of Christians living under Hitler blithely accepting the authority of the State as it undertook to carry out the death penalty on a scale unrivalled in this century.  And so we have the Anglican church actually (still!) allowing the King or Queen to be the head of the Church, when even a cursory reading of British history shows the British monarchy to be seething with blood-letting and treachery. (You Americans rebelled against all that, remember?) And so we have Bible-believing Americans supporting the Presidency and the "manifest destiny" of America in a way that is nothing short of idolatry.  When will biblical Christians break away from that false worship of the "State"?!

So Paul sums up his ethical section of the letter to the Romans, struggling in their revolutionary attitudes towards the State: (Rom 13:9-10) "The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." (NIV)  This includes love of the governing authorities even when overall the State does evil. 

Therefore, it is impossible, I contend, to read this text as remotely supportive of capital punishment.  The text does not mandate it for Christians to affirm, nor does the text indicate it is permissible for the State to carry out, nor that Christians ought to support, use of the death penalty.  That is not even remotely in the Apostle's mind when he raised the pastoral issue of (understandable) rebellious Christian attitudes towards the enemy - the State - in this passage.

Finally, the consistent biblical response to the State instead is: the non-violent wrestling against the "principalities and powers" using other means than physical weapons (II Cor. 10:4) - or lethal injections - to overcome evil.  And this includes other goals than destruction of the persons caught up in the evil.  This means the fervent desire to win over even Governor Festus and King Agrippa: President Clinton and Governor Knolls; Prime Minister Chrétien and British   Columbia's Premier Glen Clark.  This means the consistent move - even seventy-seven times - to work at overcoming evil with good, to attempt to make the enemy a friend!

This is the face of Christ who is the face of God.

Amen!

References

Griffith, Lee, The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition, Eerdmans, Grand   Rapids, 1993.

House, H. Wayne and John Howard Yoder, The Death Penalty Debate: Two Opposing Views of Capital Punishment (Issues of Christian Conscience), Dallas: Word Books, 1991.

Kee, Alistair (1982). Constantine versus Christ:  The Triumph of Ideology,  London: SCM Press Ltd.

The Acts of Synod 1981, "Report 31: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT STUDY COMMITTEE", Grand Rapids: Christian Reformed Church in North America, pp. 72-73, 448-91.

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty (Part 2) by Wayne Northey

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty:  “The Talking Place: Discussing the Death Penalty” Forum on the Death Penalty, Fairbanks Alaska, March 22, 1997 – Part Two

[NOTE: I was invited to participate in a statewide dialogue on the Death Penalty in Alaska, where capital punishment is off the law books.  The issue was heating up, sadly because of Evangelicals in that state. I, representative of Mennonite Central Committee Canada Victim Offender Ministries at the time, was asked to “debate” the issue on biblical grounds with Dr. Richard Land (read about him at: http://www.erlc.com/CC_Content_Page/0,,PTID314166|CHID600674|CIID,00.html), then as now President
of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  I said I would not take part unless the event was changed to a “dialogue” where winners are not declared like a gladiatorial contest, but participants are honoured in honest dialogue.  Below is the text I first spoke from in that dialogue, held at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and teleconferenced throughout Alaska, including to the Juneau legislature.  I reflect on this, including inserting a letter I wrote Dr. Land years later in seeing that his support of the death penalty (he is after all a sixth-generation Texan, where Texas is the most killing jurisdiction in the Western world) had grown to support for U.S. Empire worldwide capital punishment (of vast numbers of innocents) in its War on Terror.  You may read these reflections at: http://www.clarion-journal.ca/article.php?story=20040721064535388. A professional video was done at the time, which one may borrow from me. 

The initial presentation is divided into Parts One and Two.  There is also Part Three where I adduced responses to specific biblical texts usually (wrongly, I argue) adduced in support of the Death Panalty.]

Part II

In 1986 I was asked to participate in a public forum on the death penalty organized by a community college.  In Canada we knew that the issue was heating up.  In fact, in 1987, there was a free vote on the matter in the House of Commons.  I think you are aware that the 1976 decision to abolish the death penalty for our nation was upheld at that time.

The forum was not in a Christian context.  But the Fraser Valley just east of Vancouver is know as the “Bible Belt”, so the criminology instructor who organized the event, invited a Christian view on the matter to be given.  I gave it as part of a panel of four to speak to the issue.  The disclaimer was that of course I was only giving a Christian view.  When the question time came, a man stood up right away with a question for Mr. Northey. He began by quoting Matt. 23:23 in the KJV:  “... ye... have omitted the weightier matters of the law, JUDGMENT!!!” He thundered out that last word with all the gusto he could muster - reminiscent of preachers who come to a point in their sermon notes where is inserted: “Weak point.  Thump pulpit loudly now!” Then he proceeded with a diatribe against me and my kind for having neglected the law precisely in this way in my opposing the death penalty.  If “Christian expletive” is not an oxymoron (contradiction in terms) he unleashed precisely that kind of violent vituperative invective upon me and my ilk for the next several minutes.  His strongest accusation was that I was not, as I had claimed, an evangelical, rather a Liberal of the worst kind, who could not see or accept the plain teaching of Scripture.  He proceeded to call down judgment upon me, and issued a warning of dire consequences for the safety of our nation if Canada continued in its lawlessness by refusing to reinstate the death penalty.  So vehement was he that I felt genuinely embarrassed as a Chrstian to be associated with that display of “Christian” sentiment.  I realized too with a sudden chill that he apparently would have wanted the death penalty to be carried out on me for the offence of “wrongly dividing the word of truth” according to him!

When he finished, the moderator asked if I wished to respond. I indicated, as I tried to lock eyes with him, that it would perhaps be better if the two of us talked the issue over more at the end of the evening.

I looked for him immediately afterwards.  But he was nowhere to be found.  He had seemingly come to dump on me (if I failed to take the right position) and had no interest whatsoever in dialogue.  Too often I have found amongst Christians that kind of angry, judgmental, and mean-spirited response to a NO position on the death penalty!

What I would have raised with him, had he given me the chance, is the following: First, he was quoting from the KJV where the Greek word, krisis used can have that connotation of condemnation and judgment.  But it can also mean “justice” especially with reference to divine justice.  In fact, most other translations use the word “justice”.  By this time (Chapter 23) in the Matthew text, we know from Jesus that the Pharisees are a highly self-righteous, judgmental lot.  It is a little hard to believe that Jesus would be challenging them on their failure to show condemnation and judgment!  Second,  the text is misused if a huge exclamation mark is placed after the word, “judgment”.  In the KJV, the text says actually: “ye... have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”  There is already a hint of a continuum or even a parallelism here, that argues against the sense of this statement to mean “judgment” in the way my accuser meant it.  Jesus is quoting from Micah 6:8, which often is considered to be the high water expression of Old Testament spirituality.  Here is what the passage says in the KJV:

Micah 6:8

8          He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

The passage follows a specific disavowal of mountains of sacrifice, in favour of “justice, mercy, and faithfulness”. It precedes God’s castigating his people for their failure to treat others justly, compassionately, mercifully, caringly.  Twice already in Matthew’s Gospel (9:13, 12:7), Jesus says explicitly:  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” with reference to God’s way, God’s “face”.  The Gospel is nothing if it is not about a dismantling of the very scapegoating mechanism to be found in all cultures and all times that lead in fact to putting Jesus upon the Cross!  The Gospel is nothing, in other words, if it is not about denying capital punishment!  The terse statement of Jesus about desiring “mercy, not sacrifice”, slightly more fully reiterated here with reference to the Micah 6 text, is in fact the death knell of the death penalty!  Third, one could not therefore have chosen a better passage to put the point home that true spirituality sees a face of God that is simply opposite to the face showed that night by such an angry diatribe, a face that rules out capital punishment.  It is a face that (Matt. 5:45) “Causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good”, that (Luke 6:35) is “kind to the ungrateful and wicked”, that says (Ezek 33:11) “ ‘As surely as I live, ... I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’ “ (NIV)

The Atonement

How can one, in just a few minutes, touch upon a biblical teaching, the atonement, that has induced the outpouring of rivers of ink and the felling of a forest or two to wrestle with its expression, ever since Anselm in the 11th century attempted the first systematic treatment of the subject in a famous treatise, Cur Deus Homo -Why God Became Man?  But I will raise briefly the doctrine of the atonement - how we understand the significance of Christ’s death on the Cross - to look at the whole dynamic of “scapegoating” and the Gospel’s response to it.

Last fall while serving on a panel at a conference on the work I do, “Restorative Justice”, I saw a man vigorously wave his head in affirmation as I alluded to the work of literary critic and anthropologist, René Girard.  I knew who the person was, and talked to him afterwards.  He is a Mennonite professor of many years’ counselling experience, and author of several books.  His name is David Augsburger.  He was an avid reader of René Girard, and of several authors inspired by his work spanning three decades on the origins of violence in human cultures.  David Augsburger said this to me in our brief discussion: “I knew for years in my counselling that the punitive ideas of the traditional view of the atonement did not work.  But it took my reading of Girard to grasp theologically why that was the case.”

If anyone is familiar with Girard’s writings, or with the annual international conference of interdisciplinary and inter- and non-faith scholars he has inspired, entitled “Colloquium on Violence and Religion”, you will know that it is ludicrous to do justice to the enormous volume of writing Girard and his theories have generated. Years ago, Jacques Ellul, the now-deceased famed French ethicist, indicated that Girard would never attract attention of biblical theologians because of his non-systematic and non-sacrificial reading of the Bible.  But he was wrong.  Several theological works alone have been produced, engaging Girard’s cultural theories of scapegoating.  And there is a growing body of literary and social sciences literature too.

Girard began developing his scapegoating theory while studying literature.  I will not attempt to summarize some of his key understandings about concepts such as “mimetic desire”, violence, the scapegoat, the scapegoat mechanism, etc.  Girard eventually turned his attention to the Bible.  Not only did he renew his own childhood faith commitment at this time, but he began to perceive the astounding relevance of the Bible to his own study of violence.  In his own words:

“The Bible was the first to replace the scapegoat structure of mythology with a scapegoat theme that reveals the lie of mythology (“Discussion”, p. 118).” And again:

“I certainly do not believe that the Bible gives us a political recipe for escaping violence and turning the world into utopia.  Rather, the Bible discloses certain truths about violence, which the readers are free to use as they see fit.  So it is possible that the Bible can make many people more violent... Religious truth and social usefulness do not necessarily go hand in hand...  In the Hebrew Bible, there is clearly a dynamic that moves in the direction of the rehabilitation of the victims, but it is not a cut and dried thing. Rather, it is a process under way, a text in travail... a struggle that advances and retreats.  I see the Gospels as the climactic achievement of the trend, and therefore as the essential text in the cultural upheaval of the modern world (Robert G.Hamerton-Kelly, ed., Violent Origins, Stanford: Stanford University Press,1987, p. 140 - 141 - italics added).”  The “lie of mythology”, according to Girard, is the legitimization of officially sanctioned violence by any culture and all cultures, by any state and all states.

We have in Canada an organization called. C.A.V.E.A.T.  It stands for “Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination”.  If only! In fact, it is a victims rights group, advocating anything but the “termination” of violence!  On the contrary, it advocates full recourse to violence in the extermination of all who commit violent crime, and it supports the return of the death penalty!  Do you see? No culture has ever really been against violence.  Our Western culture not the least!  On the contrary, we fully legitimize violence!

I participated last week in a conference that attracted 300 delegates to discuss the Restorative Justice work we do.  It was organized by the British Columbia Youth Police Network. One word in there - “Police” - should already give a hint of where I am going with this.  The theme of the conference was: “Youth Taking a Stand Against Violence”.  Now how do the police in all our Western cultures - and especially in the U.S. - deal with violence?  By resort to violence!  I believe the statistic is that fully one third of American prime time TV is about “cop shows” using violence against violence.  They call it “crime time”.  Our culture is fascinated not only with illicit violence, but with legitimized violence.  Only think of Rambo and whose favourite movie that was.....  A former actor-President loved it!  Why?!

Further, guess where this conference was held?  At the Canadian Forces Base in Chilliwack, B.C.  The army hosted a conference organized by the police that was looking at how to curb violence in society.  Yet, these are precisely the two institutions in Canada which are legitimized to use violence!  And how is one going to talk at such a conference about stopping that violence?

In the 1987 campaign we held in Canada against the death penalty, a very simple and effective slogan was used, impossible of refutation:  “Why kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”  It could be stated more generically to the issue of violence: “Why do violence to people who do violence to people to show that doing violence to people is wrong?”  Now the great irony is this: secular people get the logic on first blush - even if they do nothing about it!  But Christians have been brainwashed for so many centuries to believe that there nonetheless is a biblical differentiation between personal and state violence!., It is Christians, with absolutely no biblical basis whatsoever, who most continue to hold out for the legitimacy of state violence, of state scapegoating, of state sacrifice of others, despite the Gospel revelation to the contrary!

According to Girard, and to many biblical interpreters who read the Bible in light of Girard’s insights about cultural and state legitimizations of scapegoating violence, Jesus’ death is the only place in world literature that gives the lie to state-sanctioned, society-sanctioned violence!    For in the story of Jesus we see the unmasking of the legitimization of religious and state violence.  It promises to liberate from the myth of sanctioned violence.  In the very convergence of the best religious tradition the world then knew, Judaism, and the best legal system the world had seen to date, Roman law, to kill the “Prince of Glory”, the Gospel story is a profound delegitimization of religious and state sanctioned violence! In fact, the Gospel revelation in its political implication is nothing if it is not the bold refutation of legitimate state violence.  As Girard says:  “Jesus dies to put an end to sacrificial behaviour [by the state]; he does not die to strengthen closed communities through sacrifice, but to dissolve them through its elimination (quoted in Agnew, Mary Barbara.  “A Transformation of Sacrifice: An Application of Rene Girard's Theory of Culture and Religion.”, Worship 61 (1987): 493-509., p. 500).”

So Girard makes a bold interpretative move of the significance of the death of Christ on the cross, of the Atonement, one that is startling yet rings true to the biblical data, to the picture of Jesus, and to the picture of God on the jigsaw box cover: He says that Jesus is not “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” because God is the ultimate child abuser on a cosmic scale who demands blood sacrifice of his very own Son for humanity’s wrongs!  No, Jesus is the scapegoat alright, but because all culture in all times, all states, all governments, legitimize sacrificial violence.  Girard says that Jesus’ death on the Cross as the Lamb of God is the signal for the unravelling of the legitimization of religious and state violence; it is the unmasking of  a societal scapegoating mechanism that in the end always resorts to violence; it is the beginning of an anthropological revolution in consciousness that two millennia later, wherever the Jesus Story has taken root in various cultures, has elevated the victim of societal violence to a status unprecedented in the entire history of the world.  He says therefore:   “When the death of Jesus is presented as [legitimate] sacrifice its real significance is lost.... (quoted in Agnew, ibid, p. 500).”  If God intended Jesus to be sacrificed, then we are right back to the old scapegoating mechanism of all cultures for all time.  But the breathtaking Gospel revelation is the denial of the sacrificial mechanism through Jesus’ willingness to be sacrificed - but only as demonstration that this indeed is the “political logic” of all who consistently would lead lives opposed to sacrificial violence!  They do get crucified! - in all cultures whose hidden basis is still scapegoating violence.  Biblically, the anthropological (how one understands being human) significance of Jesus therefore is a definitive NO to all violence across the entire spectrum of personal and state devotion to it.  Jesus offers the world a new community based upon reconciliation, justice, love, and forgiveness.  And he invites everyone to join that new community, that new humanity, to demonstrate such unity to the world that they will know, just know, that God is real. This is the first principle of mission strategy, the ultimate way to do evangelism,  as enunciated by Jesus in the so-called high priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17, (John 17:21): “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (NIV)  The Church, in other words, is called to be now, what the world is meant to become then - the Peaceable Kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb, and violence is no more.  The Church therefore has no business endorsing violence now, when the world will not know it then!  The Church is already to live out the reality of Kingdom come, though it is not yet fully realized within history (to say the least!) The Church must say no to the death penalty therefore, and all other ways of legitimate violence. 

An outstanding anthropological study of contemporary culture was produced by Gil Bailie, who is openly indebted to Girard’s insights.  In Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Bailie, following Girard’s cues, explains that state and societal violence through the centuries has actually established social cohesion, has drawn most people together, but at the expense of destroying victims, and only for a limited time, before again state violence is needed to be exercised. He says: “... execution... ‘is a brutal act,’ but it is one carried out ‘in the name of civilization.’  It would be difficult to think of a more succinct summation of the underlying anthropological dynamic at work: a brutal act done in the name of civilization, an expulsion or execution that results in social harmony.  Clearly, after the shaky justifications based on deterrence or retribution have fallen away, this is the stubborn fact that remains: a brutal act is done in the name of civilization. If we humans become too morally troubled by the brutality to revel in the glories of the civilization made possible by it, we will simply have to reinvent culture.  This is what Nietzsche saw through a glass darkly.  This is what Paul sensed when he declared the old order to be a dying one (I Cor. 7:31).  This is the central anthropological issue of our age.” (Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie, New York: Crossroad, 1995, p. 79)

“Punishing wrongdoers or protecting society from them is an inevitable fact of social life...  And yet, vestiges of ritual sacrifice survive in even the most ideal criminal justice systems.  How morally problematic future generations will find these vestiges and how they might seek to eliminate them remains to be seen.  Reversals in  any historical development can be expected, but, in the long-term, I haven’t the slightest doubt that the exposure and renunciation of sacrificial violence will continue.  In which case, to the extent that societies under gospel influence exploit their criminal proceedings for the purpose of venting their resentments, indulging their lust for vengeance, and basking in the glow of unearned moral rectitude, they will sooner or later have the devil to pay. 

“When a culture or subculture turns the system for protecting law-abiding citizens into a social ritual for generating its camaraderie, it sets up a social pattern structurally similar to the crucifixion.  Eventually, in such situations, the objective wickedness of the culprit will not be enough to offset the moral misgivings aroused by that similarity.  For obvious reasons, this is especially so in the case of ‘public executions.’  This is no doubt why of the very few Western societies that still impose the death penalty, in none of them are the executions carried out ‘in public.’  “  (Bailie, ibid, p. 81)

At public executions and lynchings in the past, as you know, it was an occasion for all the family to come out and have a picnic with everyone else in the community!  It was a major social unifier - at the expense of course of eliminating totally someone from the community.  When a black was lynched “legitimately”, and everyone came to see, and felt warm towards everyone else, guess which community was even more alienated, driven even further away from the cultural mainstream, threatened even more by the sanctioned violence of the day!

Please listen to Gil Bailie further: “The experience of being morally shaken by a public execution is the beginning of an anthropological and spiritual revolution for which the term ‘Christianity’ was coined decades after the public execution of Jesus...  What Christ has in common with all those against whom a unanimous mob has risen up will eventually outweigh the moral differences, however vast, that separate them. Societies under biblical influence will little longer be able to nullify the empathy for scapegoats aroused by the Cross by reserving its righteous and socially galvanizing contempt for certified moral failures [such as blacks back then or murderers today - my addition].” (Bailie, ibid, p. 83)

“The gospel’s insistence on forgiveness is both profound and pragmatic, but we cannot fully appreciate either until we realize how routinely moral indignation leads to the replication of the behavior that aroused the indignation.  Moral outrage is morally ambiguous.  The more outraged it is, the less likely it is to contribute to real moral improvements. Righteous indignation is often the first symptom of the metastasis of the cancer of violence.  It tends to provide the indignant ones with a license to commit or condone acts structurally indistinguishable from those that aroused the indignation.    When moral contempt for a form of violence [such as murder] inspires so explicit a replication of it [such as state executions], there is only one conclusion to be drawn: The moral revulsion the initial violence awakened proved weaker than the mimetic [imitative] fascination it inspired.”  (Bailie, ibid, p89)

This is important stuff.  So I’ll let Bailie continue a bit longer:  “Even those who support the institutional versions of sacred violence [, for example, war, capital punishment] with the heartiest gusto will be morally and politically distraught by its unofficial replicas, but they may be less able or willing to recognize the mimetic [imitative] relationship between them.  They will be reluctant to realize that we are now living in a world in which flagrant displays of righteous violence will increasingly fail to achieve ritual effects - even when they achieve their penal or military purposes - and that as a result, the society once made more peaceful by these policies will now be made more violent by them.  As a result, each time we resort again to violence, the cogs and gears of the sacrificial system - which can operate effectively only when shrouded in myth and mystification - are more glaringly exposed to view.  Moral misgivings are inevitable, their mimetic results are predictable, and the process in irreversible.  (Bailie, ibid, p. 91)

One can give as examples Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, or the inner cities of numerous American cities which have turned into war zones.

  Gil Bailie one more time:  “... the defining theme of biblical literature was a gradually developing aversion for sacred violence and the religious blood sacrifices that extended its purview, and a corresponding tendency to see historical phenomena from the perspective of its victims.  These themes... achieved their decisive historical revelation at the crucifixion and their literary summation in the New Testament.  Anthropologically, this was decisive: the crucifixion and the New Testament’s disclosure of its universal meaning.  The historical convulsions of our age are an elaborate footnote to these things.  Attempts to comprehend these convulsions that fail to take into account the destabilizing effect of the Bible’s aversion for sacrifice and its concern for victims will never get to the heart of the present cultural predicament.” (Bailie, ibid, p. 114)

Sister Helen Prejean, the most noted opponent to the death penalty in America, wrote in her book, Dead Man Walking, on which the movie is based: “I am convinced that if executions were made public, the torture and violence would be unmasked, and we would be shamed into abolishing executions (Prejean, 1993, p. 197).” This precisely the insight of Girard and others!  And this too was the basis for her contribution to the production of the movie. She was hoping that bringing a state execution into our movie theatres and into our homes through video would incite moral indignation within America on such a scale that Americans would rise up against that form of pre-meditated, cold-blooded, first degree state torture and murder. Do you think she/the movie was successful in this regard? The state has no more biblical legitimacy to kill than you or I have is the breathtaking revelation of Jesus! This is precisely what Jesus’ unmasking of legitimizing violence, of scapegoating ways, of blood sacrifice, is all about!

Yet two millennia after Jesus, the Church still does not get it! And within a few centuries of Jesus’ time in fact, it turned around and blessed the reinstitution of scapegoating violence in the name of Christ who had so definitively disallowed it! One Church historian refers to this phenomenon as Constantine’s Judas kiss to the Church, “the triumph of ideology” over the way of  Christ, the way of the Cross.  We might call it in this context “doing violence to the face of Christ”, so that again only dark blotches are seen.  And so throughout all centuries since Christ, the Church has been the primary carrier of scapegoating violence in the cultures where it has had influence.  What an indictment on the Church in the light of Jesus’ NO to scapegoating violence!

What is the biblical testimony concerning Christ’s death?

Heb 10:12

But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. (NIV)

The biblical revelation says that Christ’s sacrifice was once for all - and undid “for all time” all sacrifice!  Remember Jesus’ words, in the picture painted of God?:  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Can you see now that for Christians to support capital punishment, they are holding out for the continuation of a sacrificial system that in Jesus has been completely replaced by mercy!  Can you see why the death penalty not only is not consonant with the picture of God in Jesus I have been suggesting to you this afternoon, but it is in fact the “undeveloped negative” - to use a photographic image?  The full revelation of God in Christ is a revelation of mercy, not sacrifice.  And this means a decisive NO for Christians who might be tempted to support state-sanctioned violence!  Church Father Tertullian was right: when Jesus told Peter, the Rock in the early Church, to put up his sword, he thereby disarmed the Church for all time - for which the story of Jesus’ death on the Cross is the supreme example of God’s refusal to resort to violence in response to violence and murder. 

Christians through the centuries however have given in to the temptation to do an end-run around this disarming, and instead have mandated the state, or at least blessed it,  to and in resort to violence.  Do you know that there is not one war in the past two millennia where there have been churches that the Church on all sides of the conflict has not called down blessing upon its soldiers as they went out to kill - and often enough killed fellow Christians wearing the wrong uniform?  We all know of the incredibly bloody religious wars fought over the centuries in the name of Christ.  And we anguish over a Church that forced belief at the edge of the sword in the era of the Crusades, that organized the Inquisition, blessed torture and capital punishment of the most gruesome kind, supported pogroms against the Jews and a variety of less overtly violent, though no less anti-Jewish ways throughout the centuries, culminating in the Ultimate Scapegoating of millions of Jews this century in the Holocaust.

Just read what Martin Luther himself said about the Jews, and you will weep to think he has been revered all these centuries as a great Christian leader of the Reformation!  Thankfully, after World War Two, the Lutheran Church officially disowned Martin Luther’s terrible anti-Semitism.   Did you know as well that Martin Luther, based upon a similar interpretation of Rom. 13 to what has been presented today, in response to a Peasants’ Revolt in the early 16th century wrote to the Lutheran nobility:  “Smite, slay and kill all you can. You thereby do God’s will.”  And thousands were indeed slaughtered with Luther’s blessing.  (Incidentally, this is in the background of Marx’ rejection of Christianity in his development of communism.)  Did you know that Calvin likewise blessed the slaughter of Anabaptists for their rejection of the unity of Church and state (which rejection of course is now enshrined in your Constitution), and supported the drowning of them by the thousands in lakes and rivers?  Did you know that Calvin also gave full assent to the burning at the stake of Servetus, arch-heretic, in the name of Christ and the state?  Did you know that the Roman Catholics on St. Bartholomew’s Day [....] wiped out in horribly gruesome ways untold scores of French (Protestant) Huguenots, some claiming that the slaughter rivalled or outdid the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror two centuries later?  I could go on indefinitely.

I suggest to you: in all the examples given, Christians were only seeing dark blotches on the page, rather than the true face of God in Jesus Christ.  I suggest that they were directly inverting the message of the Cross which was the ULTIMATE NO to state-sanctioned scapegoating violence. I say that that is a heresy, which in Christian usage means: “false choice”.  False, because the jigsaw puzzle began to be put together wrongly in the era of Constantine, based upon a rejection of Christ’s ethical teachings, and the antichrist image of God that has emerged as dominant throughout the ensuing centuries is at best of a schizophrenic merciful heavenly Father, who, if not sufficiently propitiated by blood sacrifice, in the end turns on a humanity he loves with a torturous vengeance of such cosmic vehemence, that all the worst tyrants combined of all history appear gentle and loving in comparison!

In the faith tradition I was nurtured, as is the case with doubtless many of you, there was one outstanding favourite verse we all memorized and repeated constantly.  And it is indeed a wonderful text.   Do you know what it is?  Let’s hear it in the majestic KJV:  (John 3:16)  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”   Did you ever notice the footnote to that verse, however?....  No?....  It must be because you don’t read the KJV any longer!  Go back and check it out!  The footnote actually appears in the verse twice.  I’ll read it again with the footnotes in place:  “For God so loved  the world [FOOTNOTE: except our enemies such as murderers, Iraqis, gays, lesbians, Russians, “Indians”.... - the list has been terribly long and varied over the centuries], that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever [FOOTNOTE: except our enemies] believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  On the contrary, we have - we Bible-believing lovers of John 3:16 - we have helped all kinds of potential believers in Jesus perish - exactly what the text says should not happen!  And we continue to do that with endorsement of the death penalty and state killing in war, etc.  So in the end, our favourite verse does not encompass the “world” as the text says (kosmos in Greek - and think of the implications of that!), but only a narrow circle of those we are willing to count as “in”.  And I call that “the KKK mentality”.  God in Christ drew a circle - and invited us to do the same - God drew a circle of inclusivity large enough to encompass even the cosmos, according to John 3:16. When we argue in favour of the death penalty, I ask simply: why do we deny the truth of that verse and continue to draw circles of exclusivity in direct contradiction of the Gospel revelation?

I was raised with an understanding that the great anti-Christian watershed in the West was the beginning of the Enlightenment when the authority of the Bible and the Church began to be challenged openly by the academic elites and others.  Certainly the godless Reign of Terror during the French Revolution and Communism in the former U.S.S.R. and present-day China do represent the tragic outcome of rejection of God.  According to St. Paul in I Corinthians Chapter 1, “... the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (18).” (NIV)  So it is right to point to Christ, over against the challenge of the Enlightenment, as the Wisdom of God (according to I Cor. 1), as the ultimate source of all our knowing, all our “epistemologies” or ways of knowing. For Christ is indeed the Wisdom of God - the only ultimate face of wisdom we can ever hope to see.

But the same passage tells us that Christ is also the “power of God”.  And here we in the Church have faltered for centuries.  We affirm Jesus as the Wisdom of God over against all ways of knowing, but we do not affirm Christ as the Power of God - the merciful, non-violent way of the Cross of Christ - over against all other ways of doing power, of doing politics, of exercising authority in the polis - where our organized societies deal with arrangements of power.

And the world has looked on, and has simply turned away in revulsion.  Arguably, more people throughout the centuries have been lost to the Church that has presented only Jesus of the Dark Blotches, than have been turned away by sophisticated arguments about the historicity of the New Testament by people in the Jesus Seminar!  Think of the Muslims’ revulsion to Christianity alone! The key pre-Constantinian strategy of Church growth was demonstration of loving unity within the Church and compassionate caring for surrounding pagans.  That art often seems lost in Christianity Today.

It is ironic that, in America where the Church is under no threat of persecution or of being charged criminally for carrying out worship services, so few look to the “Bible-believing” part of the Church for compassionate caring! One journalist a few years ago entitled her study of evangelicalism: Faith, Hope, No Charity!, indication of what she failed to find in her looking into the tradition.  A Canadian study 30 years ago of the conservative Church concluded that in spite of Jesus’ own teaching and example of love, the conservative Church was less loving than the non-devout.  Remember my story of the man who apparently would have exercised capital punishment on the spot on me had he had the power?  Was he showing the face of Jesus when he did that - or only dark blotches?

I have learned from the Eastern Orthodox tradition that our humanity is best understood as being “in the image of God” in how God as Trinity is a True Self precisely in the Father’s showing Himself in the Son, of the Son’s being seen in the Spirit, and so on.  Likewise we are only a true self when we “love our neighbour as our self” - when we discover that our neighbour is ourself - which can only mean exegetically, when we discover constantly our true selves in the other.  And we know Jesus’ test case here:  the “enemy” whoever that may be.  Failure to do so is in the end “metaphysical suicide” - we destroy our very humanity, we simply never discover who we truly are.  In other words: though we may have gained the world, we lose our very soul/self. I learned from Mother Theresa in the Roman Catholic tradition, based upon Jesus’ teaching in Matt. 25,  that whatever is done to the “least of these” is done to him, that we have no hope of finding Jesus, despite our loudest religious protestations (remember Shakespeare here) if we do not find Jesus in the well-being of the neighbour near at hand - and far away, who is our “enemy”.

Put those two profoundly biblical insights together, and we have this: The only way to find one’s true self, the only way to find Jesus, the only way of salvation, is in our constant working for the well-being of the other, especially the enemy: who today in this forum is the murderer! So I say, will the death penalty for the murderer, and we will, finally, the death of our true selves, the death of Jesus himself.  In fact, we show ourselves in league with the devil who was  (John 8:44) a “murderer from the beginning”.  More chilling: we show ourselves still willing participants in the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory.  For in our yen to kill the murderer, we crucify Jesus all over again!

The biblical doctrine of salvation understands that God’s gracious act in Jesus of love towards us,  and our gracious act in Jesus of love towards the other - the neighbour near and the enemy far  away - are two sides of the same coin.  The great secular heresy (false choice), as we know, is people thinking they can love the other without loving God.  The great Christian heresy, as we often do not know, is people thinking they can love God without loving the other.  In the context of this dialogue this afternoon, failure to love the murderer, the willing of his death at the hands of the state, is failure to love God.

Conclusion

So I say in conclusion: the question of capital punishment is in the end the question of what face emerges from the jigsaw puzzle of the biblical data as we the believing community interact with it and tradition.  I suggest that if, throughout all our biblical work, we keep looking at the face of Jesus on the Gospel box, then we will say no to all forms of state-scapegoating, since they were once-for-all brought to an end in Jesus.  And this means saying no to the state-sanctioned violence of capital punishment.  If Jesus is for us the Power of God, then the death penalty stands in direct contradiction of Jesus.  Seek it, and we seek to crucify the Lord of Glory again.

A Mennonite theologian puts the matter thus:  “The Bible’s witness on these [ethical] matters is a long story, not a timeless, unchanging corpus of laws or of truths.  What matters for us is not the cultural substance of where the story started (with its racism, its superstition, its slavery, its holy warfare, its polygamy, and its abuse of women), but where it was being led.  That direction is toward Jesus; toward validating the dignity of every underdog and outsider, of the slave and the foreigner, the woman and the child, the poor and the offender.  This is done not on the grounds that this or that outsider [such as a murderer] is an especially virtuous person, but on the grounds of God’s grace.

The culmination of the story for our purposes is that the Cross of Christ puts an end to sacrifice for sin., (House and Yoder, 1991, p. 159)”

References

Agnew, Mary Barbara.  “A Transformation of Sacrifice: An Application of Rene Girard's Theory of Culture and Religion.”, Worship 61 (1987): 493-509.

Bailie, Gil, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, New York: Crossroad, 1995.

Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G., ed., Violent Origins, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

House, H. Wayne and John Howard Yoder, The Death Penalty Debate: Two Opposing Views of Capital Punishment (Issues of Christian Conscience), Dallas: Word Books, 1991.

Prejean, Helen Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. New York: Random House, 1993.

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty (Part 1) by Wayne Northey

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty: "The Talking Place: Discussing the Death Penalty" Forum on the Death Penalty, Fairbanks Alaska

[NOTE: I was invited to participate in a statewide dialogue on the Death Penalty in Alaska, where capital punishment is off the law books.  The issue was heating up, sadly because of Evangelicals in that state.  I, representative of Mennonite Central Committee Canada Victim Offender Ministries at the time, was asked to “debate” the issue on biblical grounds with Dr. Richard Land (read about him at: http://www.erlc.com/CC_Content_Page/0,,PTID314166|CHID600674|CIID,00.html), then as now President
of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  I said I would not take part unless the event was changed to a “dialogue” where winners are not declared like a gladiatorial contest, but participants are honoured in honest dialogue.  Below is the text I first spoke from in that dialogue, held at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and teleconferenced throughout Alaska, including to the Juneau legislature.  I reflect on this, including inserting a letter I wrote Dr. Land years later in seeing that his support of the death penalty (he is after all a sixth-generation Texan, where Texas is the most killing jurisdiction in the Western world) had grown to support for U.S. Empire worldwide capital punishment (of vast numbers of innocents) in its War on Terror. You may read these reflections at: http://www.clarion-journal.ca/article.php?story=20040721064535388.  A professional video was done at the time, which one may borrow from me.

The initial presentation is divided into Parts One and Two.  There is also Part Three where I adduced responses to specific biblical texts usually (wrongly, I argue) adduced in support of the Death Panalty.]

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty:  “The Talking Place: Discussing the Death Penalty” Forum on the Death Penalty, Fairbanks Alaska, March 22, 1997 – Part One]

Part I

A.  Introduction

I have come to participate in this forum today with some reluctance.  On principle I am opposed to “debates”, since they already presuppose a winner and a loser.  As I understand the Bible, Jesus draws a circle, and invites us to do the same, large enough to invite everyone into it, no exceptions, no losers.  Even when he was at his harshest in condemnation of the Pharisees, Jesus still had a Nicodemus and a Joseph of Arimathea knowing he was nonetheless reaching out to them.   I am pleased therefore that this is preferably called a “dialogue” today.  Yet it cannot help but be set up as two opposing sides kind of “going after each other”.

I guess that is unavoidable on any issue that has such life and death implications as the death penalty.

B.  Biblical Hermeneutics and the Picture of God

I was raised in the Church.  My parents both came from other denominational backgrounds into the “denomination” in which I was raised, the Plymouth Brethren.  If you know anything about that tradition, the Bible was kind of drilled into us.  One Church historian refers to my tradition as “quintessentially fundamentalist”, in part because of its emphasis upon the Bible as the “Supreme Authority”.  Some refer to this approach to the Bible as believing in a “paper Pope”.   

Will Campbell, a Southern Baptist preacher and writer, tells the humourous story of a man who came to his door one day to share his faith.  Campbell let him go on for a time, not revealing that he was a Christian pastor, and a Southern Baptist like his visitor. The man at the door mentioned that he believed in the Bible, 100%.  Campbell quizzed him closely on that to be sure he had heard correctly.  When he repeated his statement, Campbell ceremoniously walked over to his coatrack, picked up his coat, and said to the man:  “Sir, I’ve been just looking for someone like you!  Come along with me right now!  Let’s go!  For doesn’t Jesus say somewhere in that Bible of yours that he has come to set the prisoners free?  Well sir, there is a prison just a few miles from here, and I want you to come with me right now to knock on the front gates, and in the name of Jesus declare with me:  ‘We have come to set your prisoners free!’ “

The man was horrified and said back to Campbell:  “When Jesus said that, he meant spiritually not physically....”

“Don’t you go doin’ any fancy exegetin’ on me!”, Campbell shot back with a twinkle in his eye.  “You say you take the Bible to be literally true.  The Bible says that Jesus came to set the prisoners free, and I say that we ought to act on it right now!  Further, I understand there are at least 15 million Southern Baptists like you in America who believe in taking Jesus and the Bible literally.  I want you to help me mount a campaign all across America to ‘set our prisoners free!....’“

That would-be door-to-door evangelist that day got more than he had bargained for.

The point of the story according to Campbell is: we all interpret our Bibles. And we are therefore in an immediate dilemma about how to understand them.  The fancy word for the “how” is hermeneutics.

1.  Story of the Photographer and the Dark Blotches

An unusual picture was once circulated around our Church when I was a kid.  I remember it well.  The brief notation below the picture explained that a man had been travelling along the highway after a pristine snowfall sparkled its brightness everywhere under a glorious sun.  At one point he stopped, and noticed an unusual play of shadow against the backdrop of the freshly fallen snow.  Being an amateur photographer with his own dark room, he took out his camera and snapped a few pictures of the strange phenomenon.  He was astounded when, upon developing them, one in particular displayed an amazing likeness to the traditional artists’ depictions of the face of Jesus.  We all were invited to see what he saw.

What I saw first however, as did most, were dark blotches against a snow-white background.  There was no face of any kind to see.  Except there was!

It took some doing, some adjusting, but finally I got it! I saw the face too! 

Then, what was fascinating after that was, no matter how I looked at the picture, sidewards glance, upside down, back to front even when held against a clear window, I never failed immediately to recognize the face of Jesus in that photo.

We all know this phenomenon.

But some never did see the face.  Their eyes simply never adjusted.  They even doubted that we who saw really “saw”.

Theology means literally, a word, or words about God.  What theology really is concerning is creating for us, the believer, an accurate word-picture of God’s face.  Now I’m not an artist, unfortunately.  Still, my task at the outset is to draw a picture of God’s face for you, to ask if this fits Scripture, tradition, and your experience.

Unfortunately, there are no artists’ drawings of the real face of Jesus that have come down to us.  So we have to discover the face of Jesus, and thereby the face of God, we Christians say, somehow in the written word - the Bible.  The data of Scripture, in ongoing dialogue with Christians’ interpretations through the ages and our faith community’s understandings today all help us throughout our lives to form an ever sharper image of God.

Once an editor (in his 50’s) of a theological piece I had written and was publishing said to me as the task was completed: “I have never been able to shake a picture of God I have had since my childhood.  That picture is one of a God who is stern, harsh, totally demanding, punitive, a ‘Hangin’ Judge’ ready to condemn me severely for anything I do wrong, and likely to relegate me to hellfire should I ever so slightly step out of line.”  He was a Christian, to be sure, and a faithful church-goer, he acknowledged, but he wasn’t entirely sure that spending an eternity with such a “god” would not be more like his understanding of hell!

The dilemma we are in can be put as an analogy.  The Bible is like a monstrous jigsaw puzzle, with a vast number of individual pieces to it.  It’s in fact the Ultimate Cosmic Jigsaw Puzzle, we Christians believe!  I have seen once in my life the kind of jigsaw puzzle I am comparing the Bible to: one with identically shaped pieces.  In the puzzle I saw, they were all squares.  Now, it was a daunting enough  task to put the puzzle together that I saw with the original box and the picture on it.  Try doing an identically shaped pieces jigsaw puzzle sometime!  But what if there were rival box cover pictures, and debate about which was the authentic one? 

I am suggesting that the biblical data is precisely like that kind of jigsaw puzzle with identically shaped pieces.  I’m suggesting further that we would have no hope of putting it together at all were it not for the face of Jesus we discover in the New Testament revelation, which becomes for us the ultimate picture of the face of God.  I am suggesting that all other box covers than that of Jesus as seen in the New Testament revelation, are inadequate or wrong.  But I’m suggesting further that it is nonetheless difficult to see the face of Jesus properly.   For some they “see”, but all that is seen are dark blotches.  And I think that one in that case does not really “see”.  Piece together the jigsaw puzzle when one only sees dark blotches, and one’s picture of God will turn out entirely differently from doing it with the face of Jesus seen aright!

What do the biblical texts say:?

I Jn 1:1-7

1          That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

2          The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

3          We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

4          We write this to make our joy complete.

5          This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

6          If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

7          But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  (NIV)

The biblical text allows that we may in fact only see dark blotches - “walk in darkness” - even when we profess Christ.

John 1:1-5

1          In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2          He was with God in the beginning.

3          Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

4          In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

5          The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (NIV)

Again, however, we may look, but only see darkness, dark blotches.

.......

John 1:14-18

14        The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15        John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’“

16        From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.

17        For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

18        No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. (NIV)

Jesus is the face of God to us.

Heb 1:1-3

1          In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways,

2          but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

3          The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (NIV)

God spoke in various ways once, but definitively in Jesus.

Heb 12:1-2

1          Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

2          Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (NIV)

Jesus is the Centre of our faith.  No one, nothing, else!

What do all these texts say?  A few key points:

1.  Faith is all about “seeing” Jesus aright.  No dark blotches on white, for we are called out of darkness into the light.

2.  The Ultimate Picture of God is none other than the face of Jesus.  To fill that out: when Jesus teaches something, exemplifies it in the Gospel texts, then at least one New Testament writer seems to reflect that theological understanding (remember, theology is all about a word-picture of God), we ought to sit up, take notice, and work on living out the truth of it.  Now I was raised that way, as were many of you.  And I still am trying to live out my Christian life according to that understanding.

3.  If Jesus is the final, the ultimate picture of God, we need to be especially attentive to how that  picture appears.  We also need to be prepared to put the highly complex biblical jigsaw picture together according to the picture of Jesus as he teaches us about the picture of God.  For that is what the whole enterprise of Bible interpretation is finally about: seeing the face of God.  That’s what we want to see emerge everytime we approach our Bibles. And, (Matt 5:8) “           Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NIV)

But what then if we put the pieces together incorrectly? How are we to know?  By looking again at the face of Jesus. And what if in our dealing with all the data of the Bible we see at times other pictures of God seemingly in tension, perhaps in contradiction of the picture of  God in Jesus, what are we to do?  We are to look again at the face of Jesus.  And what if, in putting that jigsaw puzzle together, we discover that the image of God emerging challenges our long-held beliefs - even Christian beliefs - about how God is, and how we are to act in light of how we think God is?  We are to look again at the face of Jesus, and still follow him, even when no one else will, and we perhaps walk alone/

For we are Christians, not mosaic lawyers.  We are Christians of the New Covenant, not God’s people of the Old Covenant.  We are Christians, who take our cue from following Jesus when he said repeatedly in the Sermon on the Mount:  “You have heard it said... but I say unto you.”, and of whom our text says: “The Law was given through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ (John 1:17)”. 

My dad was a lay preacher in our Plymouth Brethren tradition and a longstanding elder in our home assembly.  Do you know what his favourite Bible verse was?  It was of course in the King James version, and it went like this:

1 Sam 15:22

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. (KJV)

In the New International version, it reads:

1 Sam 15:22

To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. (NIV)

Do you know what the context of that favourite verse is? It comes from I Samuel chapter 15. Samuel, the man of God, the prophet of Israel, says to King Saul in verses two and three:

1 Sam 15:2-3

2          This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.  [One could add, several centuries earlier!]

3          Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’“ (NIV)

We have two words for that policy today: “genocide” and “scorched earth”.  Now the text throughout I Samuel makes it very clear that Samuel is the prophet of God, and as such, speaks the word of God to the people of Israel.  There is no hint in this text that there is any problem with Samuel’s repeated declarations, “This is what the LORD Almighty says:...” 

So the text goes on with the story: 

1 Sam 15:8-11

8          [Saul] took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.

9          But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs-- everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

10        Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel:

11        “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night. (NIV)

Now listen to the dénouement of the rest of the story:

1 Sam 15:13-35

13        When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD’s instructions.”

14        But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”

15        Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”

16        “Stop!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.” “Tell me,” Saul replied.

17        Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel.

18        And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out.’

19        Why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?”

20        “But I did obey the LORD,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king.

21        The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal.”

22        But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

23        For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.”

24        Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the LORD’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the people and so I gave in to them.

25        Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD.”

26        But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!”

27        As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore.

28        Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors-- to one better than you.

29        He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.”

30        Saul replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel; come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD your God.”

31        So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshiped the LORD.

32        Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.” Agag came to him confidently, thinking, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.”

33        But Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so will your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal.

34        Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul.

35        Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the LORD was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel.  (NIV)

The NIV text says: “And Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal.”  Those translators were a bit squeamish.  The KJV rightly reflects the Hebrew verb used here when it reads: (1 Sam 15:33) “And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.”

So the context for my father’s favourite verse about how important it is to obey the LORD at all costs is a story of genocide, unforgiveness (of Saul and King Agag), pure revenge of the kind Lamech boasted about in Gen. 4 when he said: (Gen 4:23-24): “... listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.  If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.” (NIV) - all in the name of the LORD, and a savage slaughter of a King, when Samuel, the man of God, hacks Agag into little bits, gloating over him as he does about avenging for all the mothers Agag has rendered childless.

A simple question: Does the picture of God that emerges here or in other parts of the books of Samuel jive with the picture of God in Jesus, who wept over a whole people for their sinning, who said: “Father forgive them” about the people killing him wrongly, who absolutely forbade all revenge, and who healed the ear of a servant helping to arrest and kill him when a sword hacked that body piece off!?  So what do you do with this text and many other, what one author dubs “texts of terror”, throughout the Old Testament?

Now I ask: when my father read that favourite verse in context, what kind of scissors-and-paste exercise do you suppose he was going through to square that text with his Christian understanding?  For my father was a forgiving, caring, compassionate man, who believed he was that way out of allegiance to Jesus. 

I suggest that my father had, all through his life, the right intuitive sense about putting the revelation of Jesus first, while he had an inadequate theology of revelation that treated the Bible as a flat book into which one could dip anywhere, and come up with an accurate picture of God.  Whatever else, I suggest to you that the picture of God in I Samuel is a flawed picture, though no less part of God’s revelation.  And I suggest that Jesus alone can supply the corrective to all images of God that are incomplete, flawed, or are simply dark blotches against the white of the full revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  What does the Apostle Paul say about our seeing Jesus’ face properly?:

2 Cor 4:4-6

4          The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

5          For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

6          For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (NIV)

I suggest then, that there is only one way to see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God”, and that is “in the face of Christ.”  While I affirm that (2 Tim 3:16-17) “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”, we also must know how to “[handle correctly] the word of truth (II Tim. 2:15)”.  How to do that, I am suggesting, is for us so to gaze into the face of Jesus (the text says in Heb 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”), that we will ultimately see God the clearest we can ever hope to see this side of death.

I suggest that the longer we gaze at Jesus, the better we will understand all Scripture, “and so, somehow, ... attain to the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:11) .”  - somehow learn to see God aright.  What does Jesus say?: (Matt 5:8) “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  How do we achieve purity of heart?  By staring into the face of Jesus.  What does that mean, “gazing at Jesus”? Paul offers a succinct distillation of how to “gaze at Jesus” in the ethical section of his letter to the Romans when he says:

Rom 12:9-21

9          Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

10        Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.

11        Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

12        Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

13        Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

14        Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

15        Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

16        Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

17        Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

18        If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

19        Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

20        On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

21        Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Now beware in reading this text!  There is a centuries old view that we can somehow take Jesus seriously on the personal level, and for instance, not seek revenge, but then there is another level, that of the state, where we may do so after all!  Let me say with all the force I can muster:

That is not a biblical view!  There is simply nowhere in the teachings of Jesus where a signal ever is given that there is one ethic for the individual and another for the state!  Nowhere!  Nor for that matter, will such a differentiation be found anywhere in the Old Testament.  The view is, nonetheless a pernicious, persistent, and heretical (meaning a “false choice”) notion that the Church has had for centuries which has no warrant anywhere in the Bible whatsoever!  It is as much a non-Biblical notion as the idea that what Eve actually ate was an apple, or that the central view of justice (more to the point) of the Bible is “an eye for an eye”, tit-for-tat retaliatory justice. Yet there is a widespread notion that the Genesis story tells of Eve’s eating an apple, and theologians for centuries indicated that “eye for eye” was the central biblical view of justice.  Nonsense! 

You do know, do you not, that no specific fruit is mentioned that Eve ate?  You do know, do you not, that “eye for eye” is found only four times in the biblical texts, and then only with reference to physical injury, and then only with the meaning of compensation: the value of an eye for an eye, etc.?  Put bluntly: nowhere does the Old Testament text call us to an exercise in retaliatory dentistry!  You do know  that alternatively, the word shalom and related words, meaning peacemaking, restoration, wholeness is associated with a response to wrongdoing over 300 times in the Old Testament, and that Jesus specifically contradicted the “eye for eye” interpretation in the Sermon on the Mount?  We’ll get to that later.

So why is it that such a non-Biblical view should have been foisted on the churches and for centuries?  Because the Church has always found it too difficult, as have most humans who have ever lived, to live out a consistent ethic of enemy love. So it has chosen a classic sleight-of-hand hermeneutical trick worthy of the best of magicians, enabling it to reintsitute for the state to do what Jesus definitively said was not to be done: any kind of retaliation towards the enemy.  So John Stott can say that a Judge whose wife is murdered may legitimately do what the Judge as a private citizen is disallowed to do: sentence the murderer to death - i.e. bring down revenge upon the murderer’s head.  And I say, balderdash!  That is casuistry!  Casuistry is defined as: “false application of principles esp. with regard to morals or law”.  This is, to use the analogy, to say one is gazing intently at the face of Jesus, when after all, all one is doing is looking at a bunch of ugly blotches on the page!  And there is nothing uglier than deliberately doing an end-run around Jesus’ breathtaking teaching of love of enemies to allow us to do through the state after all what Jesus has disallowed us to do categorically: destroy our enemies. For as the Rom. 13:10 text says tersely (after most interpret it a few verses earlier to be a call or a permission to destroy the enemy):  “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” And Jesus taught nothing if he did not teach that love of enemies is the specific extreme test case of love of neighbour.  Now that succinct summary, in 15 English words, of the law dismantles all legitimization of the death penalty.

So in light of the case I’m presenting about how we are to interpret our Bibles, how can one justify beginning anywhere other than with Jesus?  How can we begin, for instance, with any portion of mosaic Law, or with Genesis 9, or any other portion of the Bible that is before the revelation of Christ?  That is not where we will find God’s face most fully shown.

Let’s turn now to a passage which supplies us with the fuller version of Paul’s teaching in Rom. 12 & 13.  Let us look into the face of God when we read:

Matt 5:38-48

38        “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’

39        But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40        And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.

41        If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

42        Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

43        “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

44        But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

45        that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

46        If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

47        And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

48        Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (NIV)

And again, the Lukan version:

Luke 6:27-38

27        “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,

28        bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

29        If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.

30        Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

31        Do to others as you would have them do to you.

32        “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.

33        And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that.

34        And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full.

35        But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

36        Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

37        “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

38        Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (NIV)

I think we are not human, nor honest, if we do not admit to the temptation to take scissors and paste to these teachings of Jesus! Ouch! we all say.  No wonder the Church has hidden for centuries behind a biblically unfounded two-tiered ethics that discerns one ethic for the individual and another for the state.  How conveniently an end-run can be done around Jesus to allow us to resort to all the violence we want under the guise of the state!  So Jesus himself would say: (Matt 23:23) “But you have neglected the more important matters of the law-- justice, mercy and faithfulness.” (NIV) And again: (Matt 23:31-32) “So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!” (NIV)  Pharisaism turns, ultimately, upon a justification of violence.  Jesus says no to violence, instructing Peter, for instance to put up his sword, whereby, Church Father Tertullian indicates, Jesus disarmed the Church forever.  Except the Church did not accept Jesus’ ethics, and instead it picked up, or at minimum, blessed the sword, and so in the main, an anti-Christian ethic has dominated the Christian Church since the era of Constantine.

Finally, let us see the face of God in the story of the woman caught in adultery, and of the Prodigal (recklessly extravagant) Son which should really be entitled “ The Prodigal Father” - for in the end the father is more recklessly extravagant in his mercy than his son is in his folly.    God’s face in Jesus forgives the woman with the challenge to sin no more.  God’s face in the Prodigal Father story Jesus tells does not even let the Son get his “I’m sorry” speech out before he is overwhelmingly embraced and welcomed back to the family!

Remember what I said earlier about the rule of thumb that if Jesus taught something, exemplified it, and at least one New Testament author theologized about it, we ought to sit up and take notice?

Alright, here goes:

1.  Jesus taught love of enemies in Matt. 5 and Luke 6

2.  Jesus stated from the cross: “Father forgive them... (Luke 23:34)”, and Paul universalized this in Romans (3:25-26) thus: “God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished--he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (NIV)

3.  Paul in Romans 5:6 - 11 says that God in Christ showed love to us his enemies, offering reconciliation; and again in Ephesians 5:1 & 2 we are told that we are to imitate God by living a life of love as Christ offered himself in love to us his enemies.

Now I will ask you, does the picture on the box of the jigsaw puzzle called God’s Word show the face of a God who in Jesus supports destruction of enemies called murderers, or does the picture on the box called the Bible show the face of a God who reaches out even to the murderers to bring them into his circle of friends?

So when Sister Helen Prejean, foremost Christian advocate against the death penalty, and author of the book, Dead Man Walking (1993), and advisor to the movie by the same title, says:  “Most Christians in support of the death penalty have a wrong picture of God. They see him as an angry, punitive Judge, rather than as a loving heavenly Father.”, do you disagree?

If I ask you how many times it was on Jesus’ lips to refer to God as Judge, and how many times he referred to God as (loving, heavenly) Father - the picture of a father Jesus painted in the story of the “Prodigal Father” - do you know the answer?  To the first question the answer is: never!  To the second question, the answer is: 171 times! - with the idea of God as “daddy”, Abba, or “nurturing mother” like a mother hen, always hovering just in the background.

Can you see why I say that our picture of God in the end determines our view of the death penalty?  What loving parent demands the killing of her or his own children and remains a loving parent?  If you say that is precisely what God did to his own Son, then I say your picture of God and of the atonement is wrong, and that we must turn to that the next time.

References

Agnew, Mary Barbara.  “A Transformation of Sacrifice: An Application of Rene Girard's Theory of Culture and Religion.”, Worship 61 (1987): 493-509.

Bailie, Gil, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, New York: Crossroad, 1995.

Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G., ed., Violent Origins, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Prejean, Helen Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. New York: Random House, 1993.

[NOTE: Please see Part Two.]

Restorative Justice and Spirituality by Wayne Northey

[NOTE: This was presented at The Sixth International Conference on Restorative Justice.  See: http://www.sfu.ca/crj/database/scholar/110_02_04.htm.]

By Wayne Northey

Introduction

A few years ago, at a VOMA (Victim Offender Mediation Association) conference in Des

Moines, Iowa, I saw a plaintive note on a bulletin board: DOES ANYONE KNOW OF ANY RESTORATIVE JUSTICE VIDEO RESOURCES THAT ARE NOT RELIGIOUS?! 

Restorative Justice in North America, birthplace of its contemporary worldwide expression from within criminal justice systems, grew out of a religious community, specifically in the mid-seventies in the Mennonite community of Kitchener, Canada, as an explicit religious response to a social problem[1].  No culture exists without religious foundation, claims anthropologist René Girard.  If, as Girard continues to explain in an expansive theory of the geneaology of violence[2], a “scapegoat mechanism” is generated by religion to address the problem of violence, by which sacrificial victims are immolated to restore peace and social cohesion, then religion just may be the source of the corrective to universal scapegoating violence as well[3].

Beyond Retribution

I thought I’d look at a Christian Spirituality of Restorative Justice through the recent publication of a book that directly addresses this issue.

Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment (Marshall, 2001) is a stirring instance of rereading the Judeo-Christian founding texts to provide a basis, not for continued scapegoating violence in the Western secular state (which still has intact many trappings of a bygone religious era![4]), but for a profound redirection of traditional interpretation of those texts away from violence, “beyond retribution”, towards, biblically, shalom, reconciliation and forgiveness.[5]

Marshall’s book is highly significant to “secular” Western culture, steeped in Judeo-Christian legacies, in its quest to move towards Restorative Justice.  “It is an irony of history”, claims Religious Studies professor James Williams, “that the very source that first disclosed the viewpoint and plight of the victim is pilloried in the name of various forms of criticism...  However, it is in the Western world that the affirmation of ‘otherness,’ especially as known through the victim, has emerged.  And its roots sink deeply into the Bible as transmitted in the Jewish and Christian traditions...  the standpoint of the victim is [the West’s] unique and chief biblical inheritance. It can be appropriated creatively and ethically only if the inner dynamic of the biblical texts and traditions is understood and appreciated.  The Bible is the first and main source for women’s rights, racial justice, and any kind of moral transformation.  The Bible is also the only creative basis for interrogating the tradition and the biblical texts (Williams, 2000, pp. 195 & 196).”

In response to the Judeo-Christian sacred texts, two broad approaches have been taken: rejecting the texts in a bid to find a higher humanism[6]; or reinterpreting them in the process of “appropriating their inner dynamic”.  The former I suggest is culturally akin to cutting off the nose to spite the face.  Marshall demonstrates the latter with this publication. He has thereby set a new benchmark in biblical studies on justice, crime, and punishment.  With it, one arguably sees the Bible as spiritually “the first and main source” for the emerging phenomenon of Restorative Justice[7].

In 1965, noted New Testament scholar C.F.D. Moule published an article in a little known Swedish academic journal.  Entitled “Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought”, he began with this observation: “It is likely, I know, that many readers – perhaps most – will find themselves in disagreement with the radical thesis I am about to present.  But my hope is that time will not have been wasted – whatever the conclusions reached – because the thesis leads us in any case to ponder, once more, the very heart of the Gospel.”  He continued with a terse summary of his conclusions: “What I offer for your consideration is the thesis that the word ‘punishment’ and other words related to it (especially ‘retribution’) have, if used in their strictly correct sense, no legitimate place in the Christian vocabulary (Moule, 1965, p. 21).”

His was a clarion call for the Judeo-Christian tradition to move “beyond retribution” in its appropriation of the sacred texts[8].  Thirty-six years later, New Testament scholar Chris Marshall published a book-length study with similar conclusions.  There was nothing like it in the interval.

The study is wide-ranging.  Section one, “Introduction”, considers various Christian sources of moral guidance; early Christian witness from the “underside” (“they write as, to, and on behalf of the victims of abusive state power (p. 16)”); and how Christian faith speaks to the public arena (neither “directly and legalistically to the machinery of the state” nor “irrelevant[ly] to wider social issues (p. 31).”)  Marshall states here that his “main intention is to survey a broad range of New Testament texts pertinent to the subject of crime and punishment in order to ascertain the extent to which they reflect what might be called a vision of restorative justice (p. 32).”  As to the contour of that vision, “My premise is that the first Christians experienced in Christ and lived out in their faith communities an understanding of justice as a power that heals, restores, and reconciles rather than hurts, punishes, and kills, and that this reality ought to shape and direct a Christian contribution to the criminal justice debate today (p. 33).”

In the second part Marshall considers “The Arena of Saving Justice”, with a look at Paul and Jesus, seeing in Paul Justice As the Heart of the Gospel, Divine Justice as Restorative Justice, Justification by Faith as Restorative Justice, and the work of Christ (atonement) as Redemptive Solidarity, Not Penal Substitution.  With this last heading Marshall challenges directly the longstanding dominance of atonement as “satisfaction” and “penal substitution”, both retributive constructs, which historian Timothy Gorringe in a study of the impact of such understanding upon the development of western criminal law declares to be a “mysticism of pain which promises redemption to those who pay in blood (Gorringe, 1996, p. 102)[9]”.  Marshall writes: “The logic of the cross actually confounds the principle of retributive justice, for salvation is achieved not by the offender compensating for his crimes by suffering, but by the victim, the one offended against, suffering vicariously on behalf of the offended – a radical inversion of the lex talionis [law of retaliation] (pp. 65 & 66).”  Finally, he sees Jesus as embodiment of God’s justice, and his way as non-retaliation.

In the third Section, “Punishment That Fits”, Marshall looks at the Purpose and Ethics of Punishment, and after discussing all the main theories considers the notion of “Restorative Punishment”, which he believes is Punishment as the Pain of Taking Responsibility.  He retains the word “punishment”, but first empties it of all its punitive thrust, then reinvigorates it with an accountability/responsibility payload. The reader may decide if this semantic make-over is successful.

With the fourth Section, “Vengeance is Mine”, Marshall looks at divine and human justice, including the issue of “Final Punishment”, the doctrine of hell.  His overall conclusion is, “Restoration, not retribution, is the hallmark of God’s justice and is God’s final word in history (p. 199).”  The traditional Christian doctrine of hell as “eternal conscious punishment” shrivels under the glare of this biblical reassessment of the ultimate, literally most horror-filled, time-honoured image of a God who takes on the character of “a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for victims whom He does not even allow to die (theologian Clark Pinnock’s words, quoted in Dixon, 1992, p. 149).”  One author, though vigorously committed to this traditional interpretation, candidly admits: “Obviously, no follower of Christ wants to be guilty of presenting God as one more heinous than Hitler (ibid, pp. 149 & 150).”  Indeed, claims Marshall.  And one need not, according to the biblical texts!

The fifth Section, “Justice That Kills”, spends fifty pages on the issue of capital punishment. It should be no surprise that Marshall finds no biblical mandate for the death penalty.  “Capital punishment is incompatible with a gospel of redemption and reconciliation (p. 253).”, he succinctly sums up.

The final Section, “Conclusion”, presents Forgiveness as the Consummation of Justice.  Marshall discusses the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as illustrative of the attempt at a state-wide process and application of forgiveness and accountability in post-apartheid South Africa.  Marshall quotes Tutu saying, “[W]ithout forgiveness, there is no future (p. 283).”[10]  This conclusion is similarly argued persuasively in Donald Shriver’s An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics (1995).  “Forgive and forget” gives way to “Remember, forgive, and be free.”

The book is well written, cogently argued, and widely researched.  Few key books are left out of the discussion, except Shriver’s noted just above, and Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking (1993). In the words of a reviewer on the back cover of Beyond Retribution (Graham N. Stanton), “There is no comparable discussion [anywhere].”

Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1996) states that tradition, reason, and experience throughout history have prevented biblical Christians from living out the radical nonviolence of the Gospel.  Chris Marshall has pointed the way of such a biblical reading in response to crime and justice.  Will biblical Christians and a secular culture profoundly impacted by biblical revelation rise to the challenge, or settle as so often for sub-biblical, even non-biblical views about retribution?  This book stands as direct challenge to embrace a justice “beyond retribution” “that manifests God’s redemptive work of making all things new (p. 284).”

Marshall’s publication also demonstrates how important it is to read informed biblical reflection on social issues.  All cultures, secular Western societies no less, are profoundly religious. A Christian reading of Marshall’s book is immensely hopeful, both about theological contributions to the public square and the future of Restorative Justice.  A secular reading of Marshall’s book is highly educative in understanding both the religious roots of retributive justice, and the religious basis for critiquing those very origins.  I suggest that Marshall’s book, and The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice (Hadley, 2001), should be required reading on every academic reading list of courses on restorative justice.

Conclusion

In 1993 Lee Griffith published The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition.  His is a tour de force on a spirituality of penal abolition[11].  The book’s opening shot is: “The gospel is profoundly scandalous, and until we hear at least a whisper of its scandal, we risk not hearing any part of it (Griffith, 1993, p. 1).” He presents his thesis in beguilingly simple terms: “Ultimately, there are not two kingdoms but one – the kingdom of God...  ‘Freedom to the captives’ is not proclaimed [by Jesus] in some other world but in our world.  The matter finally comes down to a peculiar question: Are there prisons in the kingdom of God?  And if there are no prisoners there and then, how can we support the imprisonment of people here and now?  For in fact, the kingdom of God is among us here and now (ibid, p. 28).”

How indeed can a Christian spirituality, responsive to the liberating thrust of the New Testament founding texts, so utterly contradictory to state-sanctioned scapegoating violence (the very kind that crucified its founder!), support penal (pain delivery!) justice?  That is the “peculiar question” this reflection leads to. 

A contemporary theologian writes:  “…the human walk… begins in slavery and ends in freedom, and [its] point of progress at every moment is faith (Johnson, 1990, p. 11).”  That is the quintessence of spirituality arising from the Judeo-Christian narrative.  It shouts from the housetops:  “Freedom for the prisoners (Luke 4:18)!”, and “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1)!”

Anthropologist René Girard notes: “In the Hebrew Bible, there is clearly a dynamic that moves in the direction of the rehabilitation of the victims, but it is not a cut-and-dried thing.  Rather, it is a process under way, a text in travail; it is not a chronologically progressive process, but a struggle that advances and retreats.  I see the Gospels as the climactic achievement of that trend, and therefore as the essential text in the cultural upheaval of the modern world (Hamerton-Kelly, 1987, p. 141).”  If Girard is right, part of that “cultural upheaval” is penal abolition and restorative (transformative) justice. 

One writer commented on Griffith’s book thus:  “Jesus said he had come to proclaim release to the prisoners.  In The Fall of the Prison Lee Griffith makes what Jesus meant altogether clear. Now it is for us who have ears (quoted in Griffith, 1993, back cover).” 

Indeed!  What is needed is a spirituality of transformative justice with ears – then hands and feet! 

From a Christian founding texts perspective on restorative justice spirituality, the quest will never end until “Kingdom come”.  That is both permission and incentive from within Christian spirituality, to vigorously, creatively, and joyously join hands with all similar questers, whatever their religious beliefs or unbeliefs.  The best of Christian spirituality has been ever inclusive and collaborative, while holding onto the undisputed uniqueness of the Jesus story, which, as ultimate Story, points the way home[12]. 

References

Bellinger, Charles K. (2000).  The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil, New York: Oxford University Press.

Bianchi, Herman (1994).  Justice as Sanctuary: Toward a New System of Crime Control,

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Dixon, Larry (1992). The Other Side of the Good News: Confronting the Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ Teachings on Hell, Wheaton: BridgePoint. [Reviewed elsewhere by me on this site.]

Gallaway, Burt and Wright, Martin (eds.) (1989).  Mediation and Criminal Justice: Victims, Offenders, and Community, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Girard, René (2001).  I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press.

Gorringe, Timothy (1996). God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Griffith, Lee (1993). The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition,  Grand   Rapids: Eerdmans.

Griffith, Lee, (2002). The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Hadley, Michael, ed. (2001).  The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice, New York: SUNY Press.

Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G., ed. (1987).  Violent Origins, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Hays, Richard B. (1996).  The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, Harper.

Johnson, Luke T. (1990).  Faith’s Freedom: A Classic Spirituality for Contemporary Christians, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Marshall, Christopher (2000).  “Paul and Christian Social Responsibility”, Anvil, Volume 17, No 1, 2000.

Marshall, Christopher D. (2001).  Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and  Punishment, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Moule, C.F.D. (1965). “Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought”, in Svensk Exegetisk Arsbok 30, pp. 21 - 36.

Northey, Wayne (1998).  “Book Review, God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation”, Contemporary Justice Review, Dennis Sullivan, Editor, Volume 1, Number 1, 1998.

Northey, Wayne (2002).  “Book Review, No Future Without Forgiveness”, Catholic New Times, Ted Schmidt, Editor, in three issues, fall, 2002.

Prejean, Sister Helen (1993).  Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, New York: Vintage Books.

Redekop, Vern (1993).  Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice: Interacting with René Girard. Akron: MCC U.S. Office of Criminal Justice/MCC Canada Victim Offender Ministries.

Shriver, Donald W. (1995).  An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics, New York: Oxford University Press.

Tolkien, J.R.R. (1966).  "On Fairy-Stories", The Tolkien Reader, Ballantine, 1966.

Tutu, Desmond Mpilo Tutu (2000).  No Future Without Forgiveness, New York: Image Books.

Volf, Miroslav (1996).  Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Nashville: Abingdon Press.      

Williams, James G. (1996).  The Girard Reader, New York: Crossroad Herder.

Williams, James G. (2000). “King as Servant, Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations”, in Willard M. Swartley, ed., Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, Telford: Pandora Press U.S.

Zehr, Howard (1990).  Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, Scottdale:    Herald Press.

---

[1] See the story in “Introduction”, Mediation and Criminal Justice: Victims, Offenders, and Community, edited by Martin Wright and Burt Gallaway (1989).

[2]  Charles Bellinger (2000) argues that René Girard and Søren Kierkegaard are the West’s most profound theorists on the cultural origins of violence.  For an introduction to Girard, see Williams (1996).

[3]  This is in fact the “third great moment of discovery” for Girard, according to him.  “The third great moment of discovery for me was when I began to see the uniqueness of the Bible, especially the Christian text, from the standpoint of the scapegoat theory.  The mimetic representation of scapegoating in the Passion was the solution to the relationship of the Gospels and archaic cultures.  In the Gospels we have the revelation of the mechanism that dominates culture unconsciously (Williams, 1996, p. 263).”   Girard has since published a full discussion of his reading of the New Testament anthropologically with reference to violent origins in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (2001).

[4]  In Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice: Interacting with René Girard (1993), Vern Redekop asks: “Is it possible that what we call a criminal justice system is really a scapegoat mechanism?”  His response is: “In a secular democratic society, nothing is as sacred as the law code and the justice system which enforces it.  The buildings in which laws are made are the most elaborate and the courts in which decisions are made about points of law are the most stately.  Formality, uniforms, and respect surround the agents of law.”  He concludes: “It is possible to think of the criminal justice system as one gigantic scapegoat mechanism for society (pp. 1, 16, and 33).”, and illustrates convincingly.

[5]  A similar orientation is found in the publication The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice (Hadley, 2001), to which this writer co-contributed the chapter on Christianity.  It is also reflected in God’s Just Vengeance (Gorringe, 1996).  It is germane to point out that the impetus for these publications was the already established tradition from the Christian faith community of rereading its sacred texts in a nonsacrificial way, in the direction of Restorative Justice. 

[6] Girard refers to this as “crucifying the text”.  See Williams (1996).

[7] See Bianchi (1994) for a similar commitment to biblical sources, but from a secular perspective.

[8] Moule, an internationally renowned New Testament scholar, eventually became a staunch supporter of Restorative Justice, after reading Howard Zehr’s book, Changing Lenses (1990).

[9]  Reviewed in Contemporary Justice Review, Northey (1998).

[10]  Almost title of Tutu’s magisterial reflection on Restorative Justice (2000), through the story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Tutu headed from its inception.  It is reviewed in Catholic New Times (Northey, 2002).

[11] He has recently written another tour de force: (2002).

[12] “Stanley Hauerwas has suggested that the only thing that makes the Christian church different from any other group in society is that the church is the only community that gathers around the true story. It is not the piety, or the sincerity, or the morality of the church that distinguishes us (Christians have no monopoly on virtue). It is the story we treasure, the story from which we derive our identity, our vision, and our values. And for us to do that would be a horrible mistake, if it were not a true story, indeed the true story, which exposes the lies, deceptions, and half-truths upon which human beings and human societies so often stake their lot (Marshall, 2000, p. 13.)”  J.R.R. Tolkien of Lord of the Rings fame, as a philologist has written:

“In [a true fairy-story] when the sudden 'turn' [Tolkien calls this a 'eucatastrophe'] comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through...  The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.  They contain many marvels... and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered history and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation.  The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.  It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'.  There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.  For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation.  To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath (1966, Epilogue)”.

Restorative Justice and Prison Visitation by Wayne Northey

[NOTE: This was originally written for Mennonite Brethren Herald, August, 2001]

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matthew 25)

It makes you think a lot.  Jesus’ words about the marginalized.  I mean, unfortunately, he didn’t tie salvation down to a formula, a creed, or a set of “spiritual laws”.  Rather, he connected our freedom to others’ service.  It is a representative list only, in Matthew 25.  Really, simply no one is excluded – as that Legal Beagle in Luke 10 learned when he asked, “And who is my neighbour?”  He wanted to “justify himself”, the text says.  So he asked the question.  Quite plainly, our neighbour is Everyman. And we are, each one of us, a sheep or a goat, depending on how we respond to the neighbour. After all, our embrace of the other is the only thing that shows we have been justified, something we need not, cannot, do for ourselves anyway.

Included in that list is the prisoner.  Let’s face it: the criminal is an enemy.  Sometimes Public Enemy Number One.  And often rightly so.  A crime has been committed, a victim or victims are left in its wake.  They deserve justice.  And so does the perpetrator.  For that matter, the traumatized community also needs healing.

Enter “restorative justice”, or better, according to lifetime Quaker activist Ruth Morris, “transformative justice”.  Ruth, in her advocacy for transformative justice, has taken seriously the Apostle’s admonition: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will (Rom 12:2).”

God’s will for criminal justice is summed up in the Suffering Servant Song:

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.             A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;        he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope (Isa 42:1-4).”

God’s intent for the Suffering Servant, whom Christians understand is Jesus, is that through him and his church, a beachhead be established so that the healing powers of Restorative/Transformative justice might change definitively and forever the nature of justice in every culture.  As Amos the prophet pleaded for Israel, but no less for all nations: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream (Amos 5:24)!”  This is that same healing stream reprised in Revelation: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:1-2).”

One eddy of this stream has been church-based one-to-one prison visitation programs, active in several Canadian provinces since 1966.  The mandate is simple: provide  friendship resources for persons inside prison, and reintegration assistance outside the walls.  Thereby, conditions may be created for the healing powers of Restorative Justice to transform prisoners’ relationships to others, potentially the victim(s), the community, and ultimately God.

Sonya (not her real name) knew deep alienation in her marriage, and increasingly generally in life.  One day, she acted out her overwhelming frustrations, and her husband lay dead. Still in prison years later, she has been on a longstanding healing journey.  In it all, a volunteer has refused to let Sonya be a “project”, rather ever a friend.  And friends never give up, even when rebuffed.

Jerry (again, not his real name), meticulously planned his sexual assaults. He had several rape victims before the police caught him, and a completely traumatized community.  He too is still in prison several years later. But his transformation has been profound.  First in conjunction with a faithful volunteer, who cheered him on through his very hard work on himself.  Then in his professionally arranged, through months of case development, meeting in “therapeutic dialogue” with two of his rape victims, in which he found his own humanity rekindled in their reaching out to him.  And they discovered, as one put it to national media subsequently, “a new birth”.  The victim and wider community were thereby significantly impacted with hope.

Restorative/Transformative Justice defies any kind of easy definition or programmatic expression.  Like Kingdom Come, it is rather an enthralling vision that ever proves at once elusive and transcendent of all attempts to “capture” its essence in words, programs, or systems.  We in prison ministry acknowledge we are caught up in something far vaster than our little agencies and lives.  As Paul puts it: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Col 1:19-20).”  To which we all respond:  “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus (Rev. 22:20).”

If I Met a Great Man by Wayne Northey

If I met a great man…
I’d meet President George W. Bush.

I’d start off asking about his wife and kids;
His aspirations of becoming a grandpa;
His hopes for retirement.
  I’d enquire about adversities overcome;
What “makes his day begin”;
His greatest fears.
  I’d want to know who irons his shirts;
Does he lose socks in the dryer;
Has he sometimes kicked the dog;
Does he ever cry?
In all:
What makes him tick and why?

And yes, I’d finally get around to it:
  I’d ask about the war.
  Not the statistics, the politics, the gore.
  Rather impact on the kids: his for starters;
America’s next;
And victims of the bombs.
  About violence modelled;
About violence flaunted;
About violence vaunted.
  About another way;
  About going “home”;
About a gentler America;
About a kinder world;
About his heart.

If I met a great man…

Violence and Nonviolence: That is the Question (Part 2) by Wayne Northey

An unpublished novel by me treats of violence and nonviolence as a major theme with hell a subtheme.  It is entitled Chrysalis Crucible, and tells the story of a young evangelist’s coming of age on the short-term mission field in West Berlin.  Following is a chapter that is a kind of climax of this theme. Please also read “Violence and Nonviolence – (Part I)”.

If you are interested in dialogue on this, please feel free to contact the web administrator with your e-mail address and comments.  I will then respond to you at my discretion.  Thanks.

Wayne Northey]

Chapter Seventy-Five

Andy had not seen Petra since the Great Seduction.  Would she hit on Jack next?  Presumably not Gary and Peter, since they were after all married.  The next time he talked to Janys, he would ask her to work this through with Petra. Or should he?  The answer was instantly obvious.  He could not trust himself to do so.  He would ask Janys.  He would tell her that she could let their secret out to Petra: they were secretly engaged to be married.

He did. She did.  On Friday the 13th no less, that evening, Janys and Petra had a very blunt talk in the War Room at the girls’ apartment.  Andy still had not seen Petra.

Janys explained afterwards to Andy that she first approached the issue in terms of her and Andy’s secret engagement.  At that, Petra was thrilled for them, then immediately apologetic.

“Oh Janys”, she had said, “I’m so sorry!  Did Andy say…?”

Janys’ nodding in the affirmative led to further discussion about that side of the issue, that no one appreciates a boyfriend stealer.  Janys said that she approached more tentatively the issue of Christian sexual faithfulness, sexual parameters, etc.  It was a stretch for Petra; still in part linguistically.  But she eventually understood everything, Janys explained.

“But some men in the Bible had hundreds of wives, concubines, and prostitutes, it seems. King David for instance, a ‘man after God’s own heart’, it says in Scripture, must have been a sex addict!”, Petra had exclaimed. 

“Ever hear of Wilt the Stud?’, Janys had asked, wrestling with German and English.  “Or President Kennedy with Resident Kinky Dee… and Alice, and Jane, and Martha, and Marilyn, and….  Kennedy would have sex with several different women all in one day, sometimes.  His Secret Service would round them up for him, like Jesus said go to the highways and the byways and compel them to come in...  And strip and screw… in their case.  They all did for President John Don Juan.

“It’s amazing no one ever blackmailed him and with that the entire nation.  It came close to happening around the same time in Britain.

“You were probably too young”, Janys continued, “to remember the Christine Keeler affair.  She brought down in Britain the Harold Macmillan government in 1963 through her sexual involvement with both Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, and a Soviet Embassy attaché as well.  In 1964, there were consequently ‘winds of change’ for Prime Minister Macmillan, who was turfed out of office.  The joke at the time was, ‘Question: Who’s the worst carpenter in the world? Answer: Christine Keeler…  A few screws here and there, and the whole cabinet fell apart!’”  It took Petra a while to get the joke with the play on “screw”…

“Well, my dear, that’s a little of why the Apostle Paul says no to be screwing around, unless in a committed marriage relationship, if one is a Christian.

“It’s tough when you’re sexy and used to it, Petra.  But go read the Book of I Corinthians, then let’s have another talk.”

Petra agreed.  She took it very well.  She said she’d apologize the next time she saw Andy.

Janys suggested they invite him right over and talk about it.  They did.  Petra said she was sorry; Andy did not even see naked boobs.  He thanked her.  It was over just like that.

“Oh, and you guys, congratulations!  This marriage thing must really be neat!  Can we talk about it sometime?  I have no idea…”

Janys said again, “Read the book of Corinthians.”  And they showed her to the door.

“I think Petra got it, Andy.”, Janys said finally.  “I wish we could go to another beach party. I’d love to see what kind of bathing suit she’ll wear…”

In October as well, the team added to its activities a Boys’ Club for the winter months, having received again permission from Wilmersdorf assembly to use their facility.  Still no offers of help from any of the churches they connected to.  They had hoped G.E.’s initiative might have changed things.  So far not.

Despite Braxman’s arrest, Fiona had remained melancholy.  Jack was still staying over Friday and Saturday night’s at the girls’ apartment.  Fiona was going thorough the motions of team life, but the lustre had gone.  It even showed in her complexion and hair.  Jack understandably cursed Braxman.  There were phone calls going back and forth between Fiona and her parents; Fiona and G.E.; Jack and G.E.  The phone bills, Peter’s domain, must have been significant. Maybe they shouldn’t have gotten those new phones installed…  So far, nothing was being resolved.  Jack and Fiona were showing the stress.

Meanwhile, Jean’s health had stayed constant.  For the time being, they too were holding.

On occasion, the guys’ apartment took in “strays” met usually on the Ku’damm during open-air Evangelisationen. One night in mid-October, a guy, Mannfred, stayed with them.  He had become ‘saved’ through a local Jesus People expression known as the Children of God.  He spoke not a word of English, but strangely claimed comprehension of English-language Christian magazines he perused in their apartment, believing the Holy Spirit somehow supplied spontaneous comprehension. Andy felt tempted to press him on content, but other than obliquely so as not to embarrass him, refrained.

Mannfred only stayed one night, then rather mysteriously disappeared with not a word of thanks.  A few others disappeared with a little more.  The first found the change purse, and absconded with it.  Thankfully there was little in it.  The next disappeared with one of Andy’s Schaeffer books.  He was less chagrined about that.  He suddenly knew he was changing… 

Mention was made of some of this petty theft by Gary in a letter to G.E.  A clear directive arrived shortly thereafter: STOP TAKING IN THE HOMELESS! G.E. went on to say that they had gone to Germany to preach and teach the Gospel.  This, he explained, would engage them in Bible studies, door-to-door and open air work, and many similar kinds of activities.  But it was too risky to be taking in street people.  Especially men with Sharon, not at all unattractive, living in the apartment too.  Though likewise if it was all girls being taken in, G.E. would still have prohibited the practice, for opposite reasons.

On the last Saturday of October, Jack had booked yet another visit to Scott Cunningham at the Zehlendorf American Army Base.  He was going weekly now, working out with him, hanging out, etc.  Jack never said very much about the visits. Todd Braxman was apparently being held at the Base now.  He had suffered a broken collarbone the night of the abduction.  It had sufficiently immobilized him that night.  No one knew how he had dealt with that medical condition. No one quite knew either how he had survived in the intervening weeks.  New German charges however were pending, for several Breaks and Enters. Jack’s working out included rebuilding his karate prowess.

Fiona was not doing well; there was talk of G.E.’s possibly coming to Berlin in early November. 

Jack asked Andy if he wanted to join with him for the ride that October afternoon.  They agreed that he would not meet with Scott. Andy said he’d be glad to go along, and take the car to a nearby park for an hour or so. 

The daytime drive to the Base was reminiscent of the wild drive there the night of the kidnapping.

Andy began, “You know, Jack, I can now imagine the terror of those Israeli athletes at the Olympics.  Look what it’s done to Fiona weeks later, even with the guy caught. 

“She’s not doing well is she, Jack?”

“She’s a mess, Andy.”, Jack said, agonizing.  “You know what she’s been talking about most?  Her son, Timmy.”

“So where’s this all going to end up, Jack?”, Andy asked.

“Almost for sure G.E.’s comin’ out in early November. One of the things I’m gonna talk to Scott today about is whether there may be any kind of psychiatric help for Fiona. They have a responsibility we both think.  It’s a real bummer.

“Her parents want her home.  I think now that is the best, too.  I’m thinkin’ of leavin’ too, Andy.”, Jack behind the wheel looked grim.  All the bounce had gone.

It was the first time Jack had come out and said so much.  It was not surprising.  It was still shocking to hear it said so starkly.  The whole team was tottering.

Jack easily found parking outside the Compound on Clayallee.  When Andy looked around he told Jack, “I’ve got a key too. I think I’m just going to stroll around. Take as long you need. 

“I have a novel idea that just hit me.  What if you were to ask to actually see Braxman in jail.”

“Whatever for, Andy?”, Jack looked incredulous.

“I don’t know, really, Jack.  The thought just hit me.  What if you could actually win him over?  That would sure set Fiona at ease…”, Andy was conjecturing.

Jack shook his head and strode towards the electronic gate.  He was soon ushered inside, leaving Andy to wander along the Allee.  It was like an Indian Summer fall day back home, though a touch cool.  Andy suddenly thought it would soon be Hallowe’en.  On which planet again?  It all seemed frightfully far away.  He was glad Janys had not joined him.  He had some serious thinking to do.  Somehow the sight of this Compound, representing American power flung to the far corners of the world, was an inspiration.  But not to sing The Star-Spangled Banner.

Andy’s mind first turned to G.E.’s forceful missive about only “preaching the Gospel”. He thought immediately of the Matthew 25 passage. 

He felt again overwhelmed with the salvation message of the passage.  It all turned upon good works performed in this lifetime. And yet he had been raised all his life to believe “not by works, lest any man should boast”, Paul’s teaching, which was all after-death oriented.  So did Paul simply contradict Jesus?  Did a choice have to be made of that sort?  Or was James, in echoing Jesus with “ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”, simply out to lunch, author indeed of a “right strawy epistle”, unaware that salvation was freely offered without good works?

Were James and Jesus in their teachings somehow heretics?  Even though Jesus the icon saved us through His blood?  But not through His words lived out?  Then Andy remembered the startling discovery in Matthew’s Gospel that the “wise man” was not the one who believed, and the “foolish man” not the unbeliever destined for hell fire. Rather, the wise man was “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice”.  And what was the immediate context for Jesus’ “words” to discern what practice?  The Sermon on the Mount, which is chock-a-block full of the call to treat the neighbour with justice, mercy and compassion. That was the purview of the wise man. That was the concrete actualization of salvation that is “today”. 

How had Andy missed, how had the entire Evangelical tradition misread, such evident biblical teaching?  Could it be that Evangelicals, for all their protestations of biblical faithfulness, were instead after all most like the legalistic Pharisees, “of their father, the devil”, murderers and liars from the beginning?  Andy hated it when his mind took such turns.  This could get a guy crucified he self-scolded with a chill.

Andy turned to the immense human capacity to inflict human suffering upon one’s fellow, as he walked alongside the American Base.  The American Army is the most capacitated in the entire world to do precisely that!  Images of Agent Orange defoliating multiplied hundreds of thousands of hectares of pristine jungle, and doubtless deforming thousands of unborns for a whole new generation; gas ovens; massive bombings; scientific excising of “cancer” from the body politic; cluster bombs scattered by the millions, and jungle slaughter of soldiers, villagers, and anyone else caught in the crossfire; napalm sending an eight-year-old girl naked down the road, the searing pain all over her face, captured for the world by a happenstance photographer.  He wondered at the enormous human capacity and lust for perpetrating overwhelming misery against others. 

The thought struck, had he first heard it from Hans?, that this had to be the ultimate inversion of evangelism, when bombs and bullets, Agent Orange, and God only knows what else in word and deed, not “the good seed”, were scattered indiscriminately upon the earth.  Pain, death and devastation followed.  Massively.

Then the terrifying reminder that Evangelicals en masse blessed all that!  The ultimate world evangelist gave routine assent, as surely as Saul and those stoning Stephen persecuted the early Christians.  Billy always prayed with the President during times of national crisis. And with Graham, the vast majority of Western Evangelicals nodded their approval, like the Nazis at Dachau and elsewhere in the white coats at the end of those one-way train trips.  What utter perversion of the Good News.  What Gospel travesty. What complete inversion of evangelism.  By the world’s greatest evangelist, and amongst the world’s most virulent religion propagators: Evangelicals.

How could this be?  How could a man, not to mention an entire faith tradition, so endorse and defend pure, unadulterated evil perpetrated against God’s good creation and his image bearers, for whom, additionally, Christ himself suffered a painful victim’s death by “legitimate” state decree?  Andy’s mind recoiled at the emerging sense of sheer horror of what he and his fellow Evangelicals accepted as nonchalantly as going out for a Sunday School picnic:  mass slaughter of enemies of the State.  This was in company with dominant Western Christian tradition since Constantine.  It was also in lock step with Machiavelli, Napoleon, Bismarck, the German Kaiser, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese Emperor, Mao, to name only relatively recent mainly Western tyrants.

His horror turned to terror that his entire life he had worshipped God and had been formed in all his core beliefs in company with such sycophants of mass murder and mayhem. As if he had been born into a Mafia family, where killing and slaughter were simply routine, justified as what was needed to “get the job done”, to enable “normal” life to go on.  “Just War” theory as Christians had always enunciated it, Andy suddenly understood, was equally the prerogative of the Mob and every vile tyrant known to humanity.  No doubt Christians were more sophisticated than what a Mafia family godfather or dictator might articulate, but in the end, it all boiled down to exactly the same thing: terror and slaughter.  People destroyed, the earth raped and pillaged, all for a “just” cause. How could he have been so duped, and not have seen the true face of Christendom, of Evangelicalism, viciously “red in tooth and claw”?

He crossed over the Allee at a light.  He walked towards the Base but from the other side.  As he looked at the base, he imagined all the keen Christians wanting to propagate their faith while they gleefully slaughtered their enemies in Vietnam.  The juxtaposition was stark.

He thought of Christian support of slavery and the slave trade.  Thousands of lives were stolen, brutalized, raped, terrorized, and discarded at the behest of those whose unquestioned, until politician William Wilberforce, participation in “Christian” genteel society was as grotesque then as Nazi concentration camp guards 150 years later – or Allied bombers or majority Christian supporters of the death penalty and warfare throughout church history.  The entire edifice of Western civilization after all built upon a gargantuan garbage dump of justified “holy”, wholly, terror.

There was a bench at the edge of the sidewalk.  The sun was warm.  Andy sat looking at the expanse of the entire Compound.

He was again realizing, like awakening from a terror-filled nightmare, that this kind of justification was dominant Evangelical Christian reality.  Not “justification by faith” intentionally productive of a “life of love”, which seemed largely a massive Christian fraud, a kind of ferocious legal fiction, but justification of every imaginable form of harm and destruction wreaked upon humanity and nature in the name of God. Andy wondered what kind of powerful sorcerer had incanted such a pervasive, potent spell, that the entire Evangelical tradition, including millions upon millions of ostensibly Bible-believing, Jesus-following, God-fearing souls, accepted such indescribably sick justifications as Gospel truth?  Was there ever any hope of breaking such a spell, when the Bible, God, and Jesus ostensibly, according to most mainline leadership past and present, queued eagerly in unequivocal endorsement?

His mind moved inexorably to Evangelical, in general Christian, justification of every war fought in the entire history of the church.  All had been blessed by the church on both sides of the conflict. Andy knew that over one hundred millions had been slaughtered in the twentieth century so far alone, mostly with the blessing of the church from every side.  He knew from Hans the terrible recitation of mass butchery by Western Allies.  These hundreds of thousands of immolated innocents just happened to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the infants under two that Herod had destroyed to wipe out the Christ-Child. 

Just like that!, Andy saw it with a start.  Then: And they’re still aimed at murdering the Christ-Child!  What was that Christian World War II slogan?: “Praise God and pass the bombs!”.  Sick, and designedly destructive of the Christ-Child in every last one of “the least of these”!  Herod’s decree marching orders ever since for virtually all Christendom, world without end; world brought to a horrible end possibly in nuclear nightmare!; all enemies for sure consigned to a God-forsaken end, Amen and Amen, intoned by every military chaplain in the history of Christendom.   

Why was such an obvious biblical association so out of step with virtually everyone else living in the West? Incredible! Astounding!  The power of monstrous myth-making to perpetrate the Ultimate Lie: “Might is right. Violence is holy.”  Isn’t that exactly what he was looking at?  One clarion symbol of that very mythmaking?  A two-millennia religious phenomenon, Christendom, including right up to its most vehement contemporary defenders, Evangelicals, utterly at odds with the most straightforward, most pervasive, most undeniably central Gospel ethical truth: Love your neighbour; love your enemies.  The Core of the Gospel: unbridled reconciliation; the Core of Christendom: endless violence.  Each in diametrically opposed stark juxtaposition.

Then: Who did Andy think he was?!  To see things so differently.  Who did Hans think he was?  Dan? Jesus?, the questions thudded like a sledge hammer.  Andy physically recoiled.  He held onto the bench as if falling. Then, but whom are Evangelicals following, when Jesus is the rock bottom source of the Gospel logic against violence?  What had Gandhi said?: “It seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was non-violent.”

When Gandhi once was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he paused, then replied: “I think it would be a great idea!”  Freedom of the Western press for those who own one.  Freedom from violence for those who own the biggest guns.  Drop that first atomic bomb.  Now the Russians will know who has the Biggest Gun! Stupid white men facing each other down on Main Street at High Noon.  Little kids all; puerile; totally stunted growth; utter fools every last one, from President John down to Kinky Sex Dee and Christine and Marilyn…  A great idea indeed, “civilization”, however foreign in the West.

Gandhi might have similarly responded to, ‘What do you think of Western Christianity?’ with, ‘I think it would be a great idea…”  Then he might have added, “They could even start by following Jesus!” What a novel thought.  And for different reasons, but in the end with identical outcome, both believer and non-believer respond: “So what?”  Billy Graham, the pagan, the lowly G.I. Private in Vietnam, latest evangelistic convert stroking his New Testament like a good luck charm, while proceeding to engage in routine acts utterly anti-Christ: blowing, not welcoming, the enemy to Kingdom Come!  That, in the end, is the true measure of Evangelical evangelism.  “Kingdom Come” all right, when all is said and done, at the point of the gun, the discharge of the bomb, the launch of the missile. Praise God and drop those bombs, toss those grenades, spew death from the automatic weaponry, fire those missiles. That’s God’s true Kingdom Come on earth for Western Christianity: all enemies be damned, God be praised forevermore.

Andy knew that his Evangelical peers did not see war, World War II, the Vietnam War, any war their nation needed to enter, that way.  That they invariably intoned, he had heard it, war was a tragic, unavoidable, necessity so that people could live in freedom and peace.  Which people?! his mind exploded in remonstrance! The hundreds of thousands who “are the dead, though short days ago they lived” whether or not “poppies grow in Flanders fields”?  Which poem was callous call to continue the massacring.  What of their peace and freedom?  They were to be accorded only the peace of the graveyard?, as Evangelicals and most of Christendom cheered, saying indeed ‘Praise the Lord, and pass the bombs! – or the spears; or the guns; or the missiles; or the electric chairs.’ Sick and desperately evil.  What a monstrous lie Christendom had believed, had perpetrated!  For centuries.  And with ubiquitous, iniquitous, world-conquering outcome. 

He could not stop his mind’s stream of consciousness.  He noticed absently geese overhead.  Presumably.  He imagined American war planes about to once again drop deadly destruction upon all beneath, the good creation.

What an abject, calculated rejection of the one who taught and lived, “Love your neighbour, especially your enemies”.  He wondered, as in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, what emissary from hell might perhaps be sent to lift the veil of abject evil from his fellow Evangelicals’ eyes so that they could see?  Or would they rather be as Jesus warned, seeing, yet they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand?  They already had Moses and the Prophets, and Jesus and the Apostles.  If they didn’t “get it” in reading them, what hope, were one even to raise again from the dead!  Did not Billy Graham and “a great cloud of witnesses” preach ‘Jesus Christ, Risen Again, Mighty to Save, Able to Keep’, what Andy’s home assembly boldly announced it preached, visible above the pulpit for all comers?  The iconic Bible wide open in Billy’s and millions of preachers’ hands as they thunder their evangelistic message without the Gospel; Jesus denied and crucified in Evangelicals’ blessing of mass victims everywhere.  Jesus the Salvation Icon.  But not Jesus the Exemplar.  Horrors no… Horrors yes.

Andy’s mind reeled, but had nowhere to turn.  This could get a guy crucified.  He was under no illusion that Evangelicals believed in Billy Graham, for all intents Pope of Evangelicalism, believed in Billy Graham far more than they believed in Jesus.  If Billy prayed with every President for victory in whatever war America was fighting, then Billy must be right and Jesus wrong!  It was surely as blatantly stark as that. 

And who would be thanked for saying, “But the Emperor has no clothes!”  Certainly not the little boy crying out the sudden revelation in Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes.  “Crucify him!”, Andy suddenly heard the Evangelical hordes crescendo in response, as robustly, as resolutely, as incomprehensibly, as the mob in front of Pilate two thousand years before – or the soldiers doing Herod’s bidding to the two-and-under toddlers in Bethlehem so long ago.  Why did Andy’s mind think this way?  What was the matter with him?  What had seized his troubled mind to arrive at conclusions that would get him crucified, and blacklisted by every Evangelical leader in the world?  Who did he think he was?!

He wondered about Scott Cunningham who wanted Christ and American Empire; his cake and eat it too; God and Guns.  Jack was obviously having a good discussion.  There was no sign of him yet.  Andy felt okay about that.  The sun was warm on his face.  He still had some ways to go in sorting some of this out.

Had he somehow misunderstood?  Did Evangelicals after all really take Jesus seriously?  He thought immediately of all the “born-again” military personnel right in front of him.  A real revival, the team had been told.  He remembered what Hans Beutler had said, recalled his discussions with Dan, and reviewed his own awareness of church history.  No.  He was not wrong. The vast majority of Christians throughout history, and of his contemporary Evangelicals, best represented by Billy Graham at the White House in his constant blessing of U.S. military interventions, had always underwritten mass slaughter of America’s, the West’s, the “good guys’” enemies, worldwide.  Whenever it served American, or Western interests. 

There was always justification for Western Holocaust.  The “other justification” like Paul’s “other gospel” that was pure symmetrical inversion of biblical “justification by faith”.  It was Evangelicals’ primary gospel; foremost kind of “justification”.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ, of the Bible, was unknown or secondary.

There was no difference between Evangelical doctrine and Mafia belief in the end. Regrettably or not, in cold blood, or with a glimmer of conscience, people must die, the good earth be wasted!  Whatever to get the job done.  It was the logic of High Priest Caiaphas who said of Jesus that it was better that one man should die than that the whole nation perish.  Evangelicals, all of Christendom, had simply repeated that scapegoating anti-Gospel dogma throughout their long, sick and desperately evil history, who can know it?; Andy’s mind echoed Jeremiah.  The dynamics that had killed the Prince of Peace were identical to those theologized, endorsed, and perpetuated by most of Christendom most of history, by most everyone.  Andy quoted to himself: the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?  Evangelicals obviously did not.  Did he?

And there was Andy daily on the streets of West Berlin, door-to-door at the Centre, with the evangelistic throngs at the Munich Olympics, preaching the anti-“Gospel”, representing reversed “Good News”.

He stood up, then sat down again; felt almost like throwing up, like expectorating to oust some kind of forbidden ingested food.  But he knew it was far too late.  He had long-since swallowed, for years, Evangelical belief, which included, like King Herod, perpetual endorsement of mass slaughter of innocents. Most Evangelicals, most Christian believers, were King Herod’s foot soldiers when it came to war and capital punishment.

He remembered the observation that Billy Graham’s first book was Peace With God.  But he had never written Peace With Man.  And not likely to, given his anti-Christ evangelistic theology.  Yet were there not two “Greatest Commandments”, not one?  Why in war and the death penalty did Evangelicals excise the Second?

So what about all the Germans, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese – enemies all within the past thirty-five years – murdered on a grand scale by the “Good Guys”, and blessed by all Christendom , except “enemy” Christendom, which of course identically called down God’s blessing on the slaughter of the “Good , really Bad, Guys”. Had God not made them in his image too? Had Christ not also died for them? Was there not Good News they were equally entitled to hear?  Embrace?  Live out? Does “love” mean in the end what the papal legate said centuries before, and Evangelicals explicitly follow in the present day, “Kill them all, God will sort out who are his own!”? 

Andy wished Jack would hurry out now.  He needed somehow to put a stop to the impossible build-up of stream of consciousness. There had been very little traffic on the Allee. He felt tempted to get up and walk again.  His mind roared on.

What kind of utter perversion, inversion, of biblical “love” had Christendom embraced, to permit the wholesale slaughter throughout the centuries of domestic and foreign “enemies”, who were “neighbours”, who were “God”, at least God’s image bearers, in whom, “the least of these”, Jesus was to be found?  Why had seemingly so few in the history of the church from within screamed out: The Emperor has no clothes!? 

Some of Andy’s earlier discussions were doing reruns.

In that light, in consideration of the overwhelming unrighteousness of Christian belief and action for centuries, was not the era of the Enlightenment a supreme gift from God to the church?  To the world? Were its proponents perhaps the “stones” God would make cry out when the church for centuries had endorsed and committed endless atrocious adulteries with the State, approving innumerably the very violence that killed its Founder?  Was not the revolt of atheism over against the church’s horrendous unfaithfulness pure religion of the sort James spoke of?  Were not Unitarians in their pacifism far more faithful even when throwing out the baby, Jesus’ Incarnation, with the bath water, however regrettably?  Was not Gandhi “right on” in his rejection of the missionaries’ “Christ”? 

Was not Martin Luther tragically misguided in only trying to find justification before a holy God, yet never likewise before God’s image-bearers, not least God’s chosen, the Jews?  Luther who had instructed the German Nobility, “Smite, slay and kill” the peasant hordes, and had committed to writing some of the most vituperative anti-Semitic hate literature known to humanity.  Which the Lutheran church officially rejected only after the Nazis, steeped in Martin Luther’s German Christianity, had slaughtered six million Jewish innocents.

Was not, come to think of it biblically, contrary to mainstream Protestant and Evangelical understandings, the only way to find a holy God through loving embrace of neighbour and enemy?  Was not Jesus the Way, and that Way according to Jesus is living out the two Greatest Commandments, of which the second is the “royal law” and only way of actually performing the first – loving God – Whom one has not seen? How had Evangelicals, so adamant about following Jesus, sucked him utterly dry of all true content when it came to Jesus’ own central teachings and example about love of neighbour and enemy?

Andy’s mind had built up such momentum that nothing seemed able to stop the ineluctable questions he was posing to himself.  He felt immobilized, like a terrified mouse before the proverbial snake. Yet somehow the serpent, unlike in the Primordial Garden, rightly was about to swallow its prey.  Wasn’t the church, in light of its long and terrifying history of violence, one of the most evil scourges on humanity the world had known? Possibly the most evil?  He remembered a line from a German poem, Die Gerechtigkeit der Erde, O Herr, hat Dich getötet - the righteousness of the earth, O Lord, has killed you.  Only he would change O Herr to O Kirche. The church had self-imploded in light of all human standards of righteousness, which were far more vaunted than the church’s.  Or were they? Had the secular world simply imbibed the church’s biblical teaching, despite Christendom’s contrary example, and now was holding the church to account when it had so quickly and so long since turned faithless to its own founding texts? 

Andy didn’t know where to turn.  Who had written on this stuff?  Why didn’t he know of it?  When in church history, if at all, did at least a few lonely voices cry out about the Emperor’s, Christendom’s, Evangelicalism’s stark and shameful, vile and unconscionably evil, nakedness; unrepentant and endlessly repeated whoredoms? Were there at least seven thousand in the long history of the church who had not bowed the knee?  Would he have to leave the church to find God?  Would he have to turn to the secular thinkers and philosophers to discover true biblical religion?  Was the church, in the end, the Mob; worse?

A car honked. For a split second Andy actually thought someone was acknowledging him.  But it was obviously not.  He decided he would get up to walk some more.  He continued in the same direction he had been heading.  His mind plunged headlong in a similar direction.

He wished he could somehow tear out that part of his brain that was causing so much offence, like Jesus had said one should do with an eye or a hand.  But wasn’t the church in fact the primary offender?  He recalled a saying he had read by Simone Weil: The church is that great totalitarian beast with an irreducible kernel of truth.  And Weil refused to join it throughout her lifetime.  No wonder, Andy now reconsidered.  And hadn’t she also said the most fundamental act of forgiveness humans needed to undertake is towards God?  Wasn’t she right?  Might it indeed have been better had Jesus never been born even, had the word “God” never first been uttered long ago amongst Semitic nomads?  Given how the church and its precursors had desecrated so violently its content?

Andy felt wretched.  It seemed like he was being thrust inside an Alfred Hitch*censored* horror movie, when all perspectives and norms were rendered kaleidoscopic.  Where was he to turn when everything normal had convulsed into a thousand distortions? He had come over to Germany to propagate faith, and instead had found his faith buffeted and sent topsy-turvy, not by contrary intellectual argument from others, he had braced for that, but from his own experience and rethinking within the faith. 

He was his own fifth columnist, his own desperate traitor, self-betrayed!  How distressing.  He had unwittingly been lying in wait to ambush his easy-believism cheap-grace Evangelical faith, so proud and *censored*y about having “the truth”, that he didn’t know that he was himself the hunted, not the hunter. 

The tables had been turned. The shoe was on the other foot.  He needed to be evangelized. He was that Emperor without any clothes.  This was his moment of truth.  Would he repent and turn, from what?, Evangelical faith?, or would he, like the Emperor, thrust his head a little higher, and strut stark-staring naked onwards to the beat of Christendom’s droning blood-drenched drums?  He knew the sycophants who in that case would cheer him on.  He knew the irony of a British gun boat “rescuing” the children in Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Was he, in his evangelistic zeal, only guilty of traversing the ocean to make his converts twice the sons of hell for his efforts?  Was this the indictment of most Evangelical missionary and evangelistic efforts worldwide, of every Billy Graham evangelistic crusade he had so unthinkingly prayed for?  How dare he think such thoughts?  Wasn’t this ultimate heresy?  Who did he think he was?

“O wretched man that I am!”, he suddenly cried out audibly.  No one heard. 

Around the corner at which intersection he had arrived, there was a horrific thundering as Army vehicle upon army vehicle rolled down Clayallee to enter the Compound.  There must have been twenty or more; tanks, armoured cars, and a fleet of others he could not identify.  They must have been on some kind of training exercise.  He was wrong, therefore.  All the Christians were not at the Base.  Some at least were training once again to kill.  He felt sick.  He felt like launching a rocket to wipe them all out.  He felt wretched.

Jack came out after the last of the procession had turned in to the Compound.

Andy crossed over to the other side.  Jack said he looked like he’s seen a ghost.  Andy said he had, millions of them.  But nowhere the Holy Ghost. 

Jack did not even try to understand.

“Let’s head back. I’ll tell you about the visit on the way.”

Andy looked again at the Compound for the Holy Ghost, maybe Jesus.  No such luck.

Violence and Nonviolence: That is the Question by Wayne Northey

[An unpublished novel by me treats of violence and nonviolence as a major theme with hell a subtheme.  It is entitled Chrysalis Crucible, and tells the story of a young evangelist’s coming of age on the short-term mission field in West Berlin.  Following are two chapters on violence and nonviolence.  Please also read “Violence and Nonviolence – (Part II)” as a kind of climax of this theme. 

If you are interested in dialogue on this, please feel free to contact the web administrator with your e-mail address and comments.  I will then respond to you at my discretion.  Thanks.

Wayne Northey]

 

Chapter Forty-five

The drive from Bonn through the East German “corridor” (there were only a few designated routes permitted through East Germany) was uneventful for Hans.  He arrived, as planned, in time for supper.  Together with Sharon, Joanne had prepared a repeat of Andy’s parents’ visit, Rouladen, Rotkohl, and Schwarzwälderkirschtorte. Such a spread from one experience had gone right up there for Andy alongside roast beef.  It succeeded again.

After supper, Joanne had suggested an evening of games.  She liked she had said a few times how the Team had fun together with Rook, Monopoly, and Stockticker, all brought over by Jack.  She said that Hans’ family never played games, that sitting around their table was at times like being at a funeral wake, so serious were they all in discussing “issues”.  Hans’ dad was also a physician, his mom a College professor.

Hans was completing his practicum as a doctor, and would begin working in a hospital in mid-October. He and Joanne were also to be married two weeks before, at the end of September and practicum.  They were to spend their Flitterwochen in northern Ontario.  Janys and Andy had promised to give them some good tips for the early October trip. 

Hans had belonged to the SMD, Studentmission Deutschlands, the German counter-part to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelistic student organization found on campuses throughout the world.  He had also studied a year at Wheaton College in the States – where he and Joanne had met.  His command of English was superb.  It helped that his mother was American, and that he read in English voraciously. 

At the end of the meal, the conversation turned to biblical infallibility.  Andy was remonstrating about the difficulty of getting Germans even to understand what was at stake.  Hans’ response was mild enough:  “At first when at Wheaton I wasn’t even sure of what the term meant.  It’s of course not anywhere in the Bible.”

“Neither is the word ‘Trinity’ ”, Andy came back quickly.

Hans continued:  “But as I discovered, it has a long and revered history in North American churches, because in particular of an interesting experience of a major ‘fundamentalist-modernist’ controversy earlier this century.”

Andy was very sketchy on recent, for that matter most, church history, so he remained silent.  As did Gary. Andy had however won the History Prize in Grade 13, so was keen.

“How I have come to understand it from my studies in the States, it seeks to affirm that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is equally accurate in all areas it touches upon: theology, science, history, anthropology, etc.

“The first question that arises is of course about manuscripts. There are no originals in existenz, not even fragments.”  Occasionally Hans’ pronunciation took on a German colouring - not unsurprisingly.  However, his vocabulary was even better than his usually excellent pronunciation. Andy always felt jealous.  There was intense concentration in his knitted eyebrows. Some faces exude intelligence.  Hans’ was one.  “This doctrine always claims infallibility to be true in ‘the original manuscripts’.

“But if ‘the original manuscripts’ have long-since been lost to history, it’s rather empty to claim anything about something likely forever disappeared.  Like the Angel Moroni’s magic glasses and manuscript the Mormons got their Book of Mormon from.

“Second, to say something is true in history is at best only talking probabilities.  You weigh many conflicting theories, and opt for what seems most probable.  Now, to say for example that the creation story is ‘true history’ immediately raises problems.  (Francis Schaeffer claims you could hear a clock ticking in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve.)  But the story ‘takes place’ really in the era of pre-history.  It is only written down aeons, centuries at least, according to ‘Creationists’, after the purported events, and only after a long process of oral transmission.  So there are no comparative records to glean from – except other entirely fanciful accounts of the origins of creation found, I believe, in most cultures throughout the world.

“So to say the creation story is ‘true’ is really to say: ‘I believe for this and that theological reason it is true, though no scientific/historical research can ever touch the issue, and fair enough.’ ”

“That sounds very neo-orthodox to me, Hans.”, Andy chimed in.

“What do you mean by that term, Andy?”

“Francis Schaeffer says neo-orthodox theologians like Karl Barth fall into the Hegelian synthesis by seeking to have the best of both worlds: a religiously true Bible in the area of Geschichte, salvation history, but a higher critical view of the Bible in the area of Historie, what really happened, which allows for the Bible to have mistakes.

Andy continued:  “That is really schizophrenic thinking, however, and the dilemma of modern man is that the Bible always stands for the antithesis: there is no ‘leap-of-faith’ truth in the religious realm that is not true in the phenomenological world.

“But”, and he pushed his point hard, “there has never been one proven error in the Bible.  Many apparent discrepancies have been dealt with through further diligent research, and those which have not been will no doubt be explained in time.

“That is why infallibility is so meaningful to me.  As I mentioned already, the word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible either.  But the New Testament everywhere reflects the concept.  Likewise, whenever the New Testament touches down on Scripture, it implies the concept of infallibility. 

“Perhaps the only uniqueness of finding it mainly in North America is, that is where the doctrine especially has been developed – in response to certain historical circumstances.  Just as, so I understand, the two-nature aspect of Christ at Chalcedon was developed in response to certain specific circumstances.  That makes it no less biblically valid.”

Andy felt fairly satisfied with his response to Hans.  He thought he had done with Schaeffer’s material what Bill Gothard encouraged people to do with his Basic Youth Conflict Seminars: so imbibe the teaching that it becomes one’s own.

What had been mainly purely theoretical to Andy back in North America reading Schaeffer’s books had been experienced in Germany.  Andy had begun to suspect that behind every thinking German Christian was tragically a Hegelian mind-set.  He sensed a need to challenge this wherever he met it.  He even felt compelled to elicit it, if it was there, where it perhaps lurked just beneath the surface.

Hans did not look all that impressed, Andy felt.  The others listened to the conversation politely, but rather blankly too.  Andy wondered why, not once thinking how esoteric it all sounded to “non-intellectual” ears.  There was some uncomfortable movement at the table.  Was Joanne about to say something?

Hans asked Andy, “Have you ever read Karl Barth?”  Andy admitted he had not.  “Do you know that Dr. Barth has written far more theology in his lifetime than most Christians read in a lifetime?  That he is considered the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas, a kind of theological Mount Everest?”

Andy did not feel all that impressed.  So what he though, if it is all error?  Why scale a man-made mountain like at Disneyland?  Why read man-made theology?  Ken Kincaide’s point.  Hans did not press for a response.

The discussion with Hans would have ended then had Gary, who was not put off by the rarified tenor of conversation, not asked Hans to state his own view of Scripture.  Andy thought Joanne was again about to interject.  She was keen on a Games night, he knew.  He looked at her.  Was there a slight deflated countenance? 

Hans responded calmly by telling briefly his own testimony. “I like all youth in Germany who reached the draft age knew I would have to do service soon in the army.  I had been a fairly nominal Lutheran until then.  But someone had passed on to me a small book entitled Militia Christi by Adolf von Harnack, a German theologian.  I became intrigued by his discovery that early Christians opposed war, and that the war imagery of the New Testament had to do with spiritual, not earthly, matters.

“This New Testament understanding is summed up in Paul’s words in II Corinthians.  Can someone please pass me a Bible?  Moment mal...  Here it is, chapter 10, verses 3 and following:  ‘For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.)’. 

“I think that sounds too old-fashioned.  Any modern translation around?”

Peter went to his room and returned with J.B. Phillips’ paraphrase.  Andy was amazed to hear the Scripture raised he had just discussed with the Americans.

“Here:  ‘The truth is that, although of course we lead normal human lives, the battle we are fighting is on the spiritual level.  The very weapons we use are not those of human warfare but powerful in God’s warfare for the destruction of the enemy’s strongholds.’  This of course is why Ephesians 6:12 and following says our ‘whole armour’ is for fighting spiritual battles.

“And by the way, early Christians understood Ephesians 6 to be the passage concerned with the State, not Romans 13, where exactly the same Greek for ‘authorities’ appears. From Ephesians 6, it is clear that the ‘authorities’ are part of the spiritual enemies of Christ and his church – and not a benign, or more, since Constantine, benevolent, State which Christians should obey uncritically and benefit from in its wielding the sword, as Evangelicals usually interpret Romans 13:4.  This view of the benevolent state is especially demonstrated by Reinhold Niebuhr, a great 20th century American political ethicist and advisor to presidents, since democracy for him is nearly kingdom come. Interesting that Niebuhr, who genuinely did not take Scripture normatively, and was truly “neo-orthodox”, should articulate by far the dominant North American Evangelical position on such a crucial matter as the State.  Ironically, I argue in line with John Howard Yoder, this position is profoundly unbiblical.”

Andy felt the point was somewhat arcane.  “Do you mean,” Andy asked, “that God did not ordain the State, let’s say especially one with Western-style democracy like the United States and Canada, as a ‘good’ automatically, by virtue of its being a constituted State?”

Hans said, “Yes. 

“And incidentally, the violence of the State, claimed as divine right and mandate in the ‘sword’ language of verse 4, is only extended, by Evangelical interpreters ever since Saint Augustine, to the nation state, but never to ‘revolutionaries’, or other kinds of ‘Robin Hood’ do-gooders, which are likewise ‘constituted authorities’.  The text never mentions ‘state’ as the only kind of legitimate ‘authority’.  Revolutionaries of course are self-appointed, but such is the history of all royalty – and through invariable vanquishing violence. Often, as in South America, revolutionaries’ causes may be vastly more righteous than the state they are subverting or overthrowing.  And for that matter, of course, the United States was born of a revolutionary deposing of Britain’s power in the New World – for very questionable ‘righteous’ reasons.  For all intents, the War of Independence was a mutiny against the legitimate (according to most Evangelicals’ interpretation of Romans 13) prerogatives of the then God-ordained ‘authority’ in North America: the British Crown.  ‘Captain America’, George Washington, John Adams, etc., by Evangelicals’ account of Romans 13 is in fact a “pirate” deserving the very sword used to overthrow British rule!

“Ironically again, most American Evangelicals indulge in histrionic hagiography about the great Christian ‘founding fathers’ of America.  Most were Deists in fact.  And George Washington amongst others was indeed ‘father’ of the nation in ways generally disapproved of by Evangelicals today.”

Andy felt shocked by these assertions, which at points he barely followed.  He fully expected an outburst from Fiona, maybe even Jack or the Collins’, but it never came, surprisingly.

Andy could not resist: “Hans, what does ‘histrionic’ mean?” Andy learned a new word that day in contemplating Evangelicals putting on a kind of theatre about the mythology of “Christian” origins of America, when it was so patently prevaricated; at least seriously skewed.

Hans was very patient.  He paused as if waiting for other questions or challenges.  Joanne finally said, “I was really hoping we could play some games tonight.  Anyone else game.” All but Andy, Janys, Gary and Hans put up hands.

Gary piped up. “I really want to hear Hans out some more.  But if some of you are game – ahem! – to clear the table at least, that will get us started.”  Peter and Jean immediately offered.  Joanne might have, Andy wondered, but perhaps stayed to watch over what Hans would say next. Andy looked at his watch.  It was only a little after 7:00. What was the big rush, he wondered impatiently. 

“Continue, Hans.”, Gary said.  “Though I have some real questions about your interpretation of American founding history. And I have one clarification question, What is a Deist?”

“At the time of the founding of the United   States,” Hans explained, “many of the intellectual elite imbued with the Enlightenment spirit of skepticism towards the truth claims of Christianity turned to Deism as a kind of way-station enroute to atheism or secularism.  Deism in brief believes in a Clockmaker for the universe, but one who wound it all up ‘in the beginning’, and lets it all slowly unwind without interfering.  No Revelation.  No Incarnation.  No Resurrection.  God as Ultimate Non-Interventionist.”  He waited. Peter and Jean had moved everything from the table to the kitchen. Would they come back to hear more?  Andy heard water being run.  Not likely.

Hans continued by saying he went through a re-conversion, ended up joining the SMD, then applied for alternative military service.  He was accepted at Wheaton College.  While there, the major project to which he devoted himself was a research essay on the early church period, and its applicability to the church today.

“Through authors such as Jean-Michel Hornus, C.J. Cadoux, Jean Lasserre and others, not to mention the church Fathers themselves, I concluded that the early church was in fact mainly pacifist. 

“There was further a new theological study about to be published by Eerdmans, called The Politics of Jesus, which developed this theme extensively from Luke’s Gospel. I was shown a copy in manuscript form through a student of Stanley Hauerwas, a young theologian.  I drew on that a lot.  It was written by a Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder. I also read other writings by him, including one on the state.  He had in fact studied under Karl Barth, and, like Barth, was a committed Biblicist.”

“It seems that the early church underwent a ‘Great Reversal’ at the time of Emperor Constantine more far-reaching arguably in outcome in Western history ethically, or in terms of ‘justice/righteousness’, than the negative effects of the Enlightenment and modernity.  The so-called ‘Great Reversal’ was a triumph of an alien (non)Christian ethical ideology.

“You want to know why the Muslim world to this day cannot see a loving Jesus?  Because they see the sword of the Crusaders ever in Jesus’ hand.  They only hear the words of Constantine’s vision: ‘In hoc signo vinceres’.  They know that they were direct targets of that vision:  ‘In this sign you will conquer’ – the sign of the labarum – for all intents, the sword.  How Billy Graham incidentally can continue to use the term “Crusades” for his Einsätze astounds me utterly.  There could not be a more offensive term imaginable for the Muslim.  It totally drives them away from Christ.  Is that what he, what America, wants subconsciously, still to declare war on Islam?  One wonders that when considering near universal American Christian support for Israel…”

Andy looked over at Fiona.  Her face was clouded.  Sharon’s nose wrinkled in concentration.  Jack appeared to be taking it all in.  Janys was inscrutable.  Did Hans remind her of her brother?  Gary seemed right on the edge of more questions.  And Andy?  Frankly confused.  He suspected Hans would have facts and figures to support his interpretations. Why then so at variance with American Evangelicals?  Ideology. There must be underlying ideology at work.  Could one look at anything without that sieve?  Lessing’s “necessary truths of reason” given the prior ideological set of coloured glasses. Put on a different pair, and Kant’s “categorical imperatives” are suddenly less of the essence, perhaps even to the contrary.

Hans was on a roll.  “You want to know why I believe Europe so quickly secularized and is so incredibly resistant to the Gospel today?  It’s not all that unlike Muslims.

“You North Americans are so hung up about the Enlightenment and its disparagement of the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel.  But you fail to understand that Western Europe simply became utterly sick of the endless and horrendous bloodshed blessed or instigated by the church: the Crusades; the Inquisition; the (what’s that word in English?) pogroms against Jews; the Holy Wars; the witch-hunts; the burning of thousands of heretics by the Catholics; the drowning of similar thousands of Anabaptists by Protestants; the incredibly retributive penal justice system modelled after church canon law, and universal support of the death penalty; the church’s blessing both sides of every war in Europe since Constantine; and on and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. 

“If I just had majority church history to go on, I’d be a raving atheist too.  There has been arguably no more bloody institution in Western history than the church since the fourth century!  If this is what Paul meant by ‘Christ, the power of God’, then frankly, ‘the revolt of atheism is pure religion’ by contrast.  (I heard an American theologian named Walter Wink once say that at Wheaton.) Ironically, however, that very revolt is instigated in the first place by biblical revelation.  Jesus first elicited the Western atheistic philosophical tradition with his cry from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’  Jürgen Moltmann, and I’ve also heard him say this, observes that this indeed is either the end of all religion, and therefore the atheists are right, and likely the anarchists too, or the beginning of a whole new way of understanding ‘the executed God’. 

“There’s a line from a German poem, I forget by whom, that goes: “Die Gerechtigkeit der Erde O Herr hat Dich getötet!”  The moral righteousness of the Earth, O Lord, has killed You!  The blood spilled on the ground in the name of Christ for nearly two thousand years is by far the strongest counter-evangelistic argument I know.  Why should any morally sensitive person want to align with such an insatiably blood-drenched institution?  I’ve never thought of this, but it would be like, like evangelizing for membership in the Mafia! 

“And it continues.  To this day, missionaries either follow the gunboats as Hudson Taylor did in evangelizing China, or they benefit from the violence of the colonizing powers.  One reason that missionaries in this century came to be hated in so much if the Third World was their complete identification with Empire – British or American, these past two centuries.  Hudson Taylor’s ‘spiritual secret’ was in reality a ‘military not-so-strictly kept secret’.

“Contrary to all that, I argue in my paper, if Christ is the foolishness of God in response to the Enlightenment, but really God’s ultimate wisdom, he is likewise the weakness of God in answer to violence and war, but really his is the way of self-giving, nonviolent sacrificial love which is truly God’s revolutionary power.  Jesus the (Other) Way, right?

“A lot of what I’m saying now comes from my paper, which gets quite technical, sometimes.  Sorry….

“I’ll stop now.”  He did.  Noises of dishes and pots came from the kitchen.  There was muted conversation.  Andy asked: “How can you appraise the Enlightenment so positively, calling it God-ordained?”

Gary added, “Hans, I learned at Bible School that the Enlightenment was the real enemy today of Christianity.  Yet you paint it as almost from God.”

Hans responded: “The Enlightenment was in part an understandable reactionary celebration of the brilliance and goodness of man over against a church perceived to exist to glorify violence through its belief in ‘god’ and a doctrine of ‘original sin’ that leads directly to a hell of eternal conscious torment and the ultimate degradation of man.  ‘Wretched worm’ theology is handmaiden to a hell of eternal conscious torment.  How does the King James go?:  “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

“The reason the Enlightenment took such root in the first place was the valid revulsion towards the ‘god’ of the churches: a ‘god’ who blessed war, bloodshed and everlasting punishment in Jesus’ name on a massive scale. Did you ever read Voltaire’s Candide?”

“I did – in French.”, Andy replied.  But got no further.

Gary snapped back: “Hans, this all sounds not just neo-orthodox, but even heterodox! How do you justify all this biblically?”

Hans paused for some time.  Then, “Perhaps hear me out a little more, and see whether you still think that.  You’ve gotten me going.  I’ll summarize a little more my paper, which, by the way, won the theological prize at Wheaton College last year.”

Andy felt impressed.  Joanne excused herself from the table, saying she’d help Peter and Jean. Couldn’t she handle it anymore? What?, Andy wondered.  Peter had come out at one point to turn on the lights. The entire apartment building was quiet. Not even street sounds invaded. Andy looked over.  The French doors were closed.

“In my paper, I suggested that North Americans positively worship at an alternative ‘god’s’ shrine, which is Mars, god of Violence.  Ironically, while you defeated the Nazis in World War II, you Americans have become increasingly more like them ever since!  ‘In God we trust’, I wrote, is a lie.  ‘In Violence – supremely bombs, bullets and missiles – We Trust’ is the real truth.  Bombs built by taking bread from the mouths of the poor. That’s what President Eisenhower once claimed.  Most Christians worship this ‘god’ every bit as much as secular people. 

“In Germany there was only a small ‘confessing church’ which refused to bow the knee to Hitler, while the majority of Germany’s Christians totally supported the entire Nazi enterprise.  Karl Barth, incidentally, was primary author of the Barmen Declaration that denounced Hitler.  He was forced out of the university he taught at in Germany to Basel, Switzerland.  He was one of the few theologians in Germany to oppose Hitler.  Another was of course Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“I personally think it is somewhat similar in America today.  And few of those refusing to bow the knee to America’s devotion to violence and the military are in the Evangelical churches.  They are Quakers, Catholics, Mennonites, and others.  Not Evangelicals.  Not Billy Graham.  Not Leighton Ford.  Not Bill Bright.  And not Francis Schaeffer, Andy!  Not the rank and file in the pews either.  Ever heard of Dorothy Day?  William Stringfellow?  Jim Wallis? They all draw blanks, don’t they?

“You know the famous statement by Pastor Martin Niemoeller after the War?  Probably not. Another name Evangelicals have never heard of.

“He spent seven years in Dachau Concentration Camp.  He said something like, more or less verbatim, translated: ‘In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.’ ”  Hans paused. He deliberately looked at each person at the table, as if asking, were they comprehending?

Andy found this very troubling.  He had gone over to Germany convinced of the need to show German Christians biblically their wrong allegiance to Enlightenment “modernist” theology.  Now, somehow, the very Bible he most wanted to defend was being turned back on him.  This was not right!  He did not have a ready response.  He said nonetheless: “But divine violence is the stuff of the Old Testament.  It’s also central to the atonement, God’s demand for penal substitution and satisfaction.  And the Book of Revelation is all about the Lamb who conquers all foes and violently tosses his enemies into the Lake of Fire.”

“Andy”, Hans came back, “you might read New Testament theologian C.F.D. Moule’s article sometime that I came across in a Swedish theological journal, entitled “Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought”.  He directly challenges the violent theories of the atonement, and argues that God never intended the dire consequences that ensue upon sin punitively, retributively. I’ve also heard American theologian Donald Bloesch in a lecture at Wheaton argue that the traditional doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment is not biblically God’s final word.  Love is.  As to the Old Testament, you’d find quite entertaining Vernard Eller’s romp through the Scriptures that says the Hebrew people set out heading north by going south on the issue of violence.  It’s due out next year, and is going to be called  King Jesus’ Manual of Arms for the ‘Armless: War and Peace from Genesis to Revelation.  Just the thing for all the new Jesus People.

Andy was mystified at how readily this was all rolling off Hans’ tongue.  He felt at a loss.  He’d never had time to do that kind of study.

Hans asked.  “Shall I continue?” No one spoke.

Finally, Gary said flatly, “I think we owe it to hear you through.”

“You got me started on this, Gary.  I’ll try to bring home a few points.

“You have a CIA which engages in the same amount of deception, assassination, destabilization, torture, covert – and overt – war, and blatantly immoral activities of every kind imaginable, as the SS ever did, or the KGB does today.  And you have CIA directors for instance, who, according to some stories, would make inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah blush, their personal lives are so immoral. You also have nuclear war preparation and stockpiling that is responsible already for incalculable numbers of deaths, maimings, and diseases the world over.  The environmental damage to the good Creation by military build-up in which America is massively front-runner, is overwhelming worldwide. You are the only country to have actually dropped atomic bombs, not once, but twice! – and on defenceless civilians, and when Japanese surrender was imminent.  They claim it was to protect up to a million GI’s lives in a potentially protracted land invasion.  Just as likely it was to say to Moscow à la Wild West: ‘Watch out!  We have the Biggest Guns!’  It was doubtless the first salvo of the Cold War.  And besides, these were innocent civilians! Do we now justify as well the Aztecs for their human sacrifices of innocents?

“But, ‘if it’s good for American security it’s good for Evangelicals’ is the seeming Evangelical norm.  ‘America The Beautiful’, right?  Just like Israel The Virtuous.  In both cases, they can do no wrong for they are God’s ‘Chosen People’.  Evangelicals subscribe to that throughout North America.  I’ve heard the sermons July 4th Sunday.  I’ve listened, even in one year, to innumerable prophetic teachings about modern Israel.  Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth is as you know an American best-seller.  With all due respect, what a piece of garbage!  And though it will be discredited eventually in its prophetic specifics in favour of endlessly shifting theories about contemporary application to world events and figures, as all others have been for the last 100 years, you can bet there will be an endless crop of these, ever best-sellers, since they not only work to get people saved, even closer to the American Evangelical and secular dream, they sell!”

Andy looked around him.  He suddenly thought of Jesus, whip in hand, clearing out money changers in the Temple. The image suited.  What could he say?

Hans continued.  “What Evangelical has raised any questions about the CIA – whose top boss is ultimately the President?  If the buck for a kind of wickedness – on a level though perhaps not yet the scale of the worst the Nazis ever did – stops with the President of the United States, amongst the main ‘money lenders’ and advisers to that President are Evangelicals across the nation.  They elevate ‘Nation and President’ to the status of Deities.  ‘God and Flag’ right?  Not ‘Jesus and Resurrection’ as Paul preached on Mars Hill so that to some they sounded like two new gods for the Pantheon.  Rather, ‘God and Flag’, which are American ultimate idols. Evangelicals like Billy Graham have repeatedly been in bed with the President.  Billy Graham by Evangelicals is compared to a Daniel.  The more valid comparison is to the Whore of Babylon or the Antichrist!”  Hans’ nostrils flared.  He was worked up at last.

Fiona, though not understanding it all, exploded.  “Billy Graham is a great man of God!, who has told more people in this century about Jesus than any before him.  How dare you question his faith?!”  Andy had never seen her so angry.  Her beauty if anything was only enhanced, at least he could not miss the rapid rise and fall of her bosom.  Norton’s Notion came to mind; a midnight skating lesson.  His chest heaved too. He too was an enormous fan of Dr. Graham, but waited for Hans’ response.

Hans fell silent again.  Then: “Fiona, let me try to explain what I mean.  First though, I’m sorry.  I’m not against Billy Graham’s faith – as far as it goes. I fully affirm it, as far as it goes.  I’m just questioning some of where his and other Evangelicals’ faith has taken them – and has not taken them.  They tell me every word of the Bible is infallible.  But they apparently don’t apply that infallibility doctrine to one of Jesus’ main teachings, and certainly his premier ethical instruction, which he also lived out, and other New Testament writers consistently theologized about: ‘Love your neighbour/enemies’. 

“Billy Graham published his first book entitled Peace With God.  But that, according to Jesus, is only half the Gospel.  Dr. Graham has yet to publish the sequel, which should not even be such, rather it should have appeared simultaneously with his first publication, namely, Peace With Man.  Peace with God is religious sham if it is not demonstrated in peace with man. What were the Apostles’ words?  Just a minute, I’ll quote them exactly from the King James…

“Here: ‘If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.’ That’s Paul. Then John:  ‘If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’  That means the enemy too, Fiona!  And that’s why Jesus, when asked for the Greatest Commandment, gave two together for the price of one.  Peace with God, he consistently said, is a religious ‘crock’, I love that word!, if not demonstrated in peace towards man.  It is only half the Gospel and a heresy, baldly put.  It is clear everywhere in the New Testament that the litmus test for love of God is love of neighbour.  And the litmus test for love of neighbour is love of enemy.  To the extent we fail to love the enemy, precisely to that extent our love for God is phony – whatever our religious protestations and observances otherwise.” 

Andy had seldom listened to a more lucid or fluent, and erudite speaker.  And this by someone who had been raised in Germany.  Peter and Jean were listening at the kitchen door.  Andy had never heard such stuff before.  His mind was grasping at anything.  He suddenly said: “Hans, this sounds all so works-righteousness!  You seem to be adding so much to the simple faith ‘once delivered’.  Wasn’t that Luther’s great discovery: sola fide – justification by faith alone?”

Hans hesitated.  No one spoke up.  He replied: “And what did James say in his  rechter strörn Epistel – ‘right strawy epistle’, so designated by Luther? “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”; and “Faith without deeds is dead.” This just after James’ saying: “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.” – which incidentally St. Paul said summed up the entire Law and Jesus said was the Second Greatest Command just like the first to love God.”

Andy felt hemmed in.  How could Hans keep doing that?

Hans continued after a pause:  “I’ll add some more from my paper, if you wish, to put the biblical case home.  But let me say this: They can talk all they want about Christian revival at the American Army Base.  If all those good Christian soldiers do, ‘Onward Christian soldiers’ right?, afterwards is slaughter the enemy in Vietnam, whatever they are worshipping in their newfound religious zeal is alien to the God of the Bible.

“The point of Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees in Matthew 23 was their, yes, spurious, what a word!, faith in God.  And he says, to win people over in evangelism to that kind of ‘half-Gospel’ is to make them twice the sons of hell for the effort.  That’s very interesting arithmetic.  Now that should be very sobering for you in your enterprise in West Berlin – not to mention for Billy Graham Crusades and thousands of similar evangelistic efforts the world over. 

“Truth is, though, I argue in my paper, Evangelicals in the main don’t even see that in their Bibles.  So, just what are they, just what is Billy Graham, reading anyway?, I ask. Apparently not the Bible.  But doesn’t Billy always say, ‘The Bible says!’? Is he, are Evangelicals, after all, only Liberals in disguise, picking and choosing from the biblical witness what they will believe with the best of the ‘classic’ Liberals?  Only they never admit it.  Vehemently claim the contrary even.  Which makes them Liars as well as Liberals!”

Gary said angrily, “How can Evangelicals be ‘Liberals’?  That’s a contradiction in terms.”

Andy chimed in, simply befuddled, “And how can they be ‘liars’ when they follow Jesus who is the ‘Truth’?”

Hans responded quietly, “You tell me, you guys, you tell me.”

Then: “As you well know over here, and I illustrate it in my paper, Evangelical military chaplains abound in the armed forces.  I know you’ve met some of them here, not to mention thousands of ‘born-again’ Christians engaged in blowing their enemies’ brains out in Vietnam right now – and worse, if you think of napalm, cluster bombs, and saturation bombing of enemy territory.  And I’m sure the thousandth of all the horrendous human carnage in Vietnam we know nothing about – yet.  Just imagine what we will learn about the effects of Agent Orange alone. Birth defects, I’ve documented the predictions, will be massive.  Even if the North Vietnamese right now all deserved to suffer from grotesque deformities, does that mean their children too?!

“You North Americans likewise know so little about the countless atrocities committed by the Allies during both World Wars.  Something else I document in my paper.  For starters, in the last War the Allies did saturation bombing of civilian targets on at least 42 German cities.  Thousands of innocent civilians died and otherwise sustained horrendous maimings and injuries.  War is hell, pure and simple!  If American authors and movie makers afterwards do other than glorify the slaughter, as they mostly did of the first two wars, you can bet Evangelicals will ban all those books and movies as works of the devil or Communists.

“So where is the Evangelical church right now?  Nixon is a ‘Christian’ of course.  Billy Graham says so – even if he’s too busy with affairs of state to attend church – and the Republicans are close to ushering in the kingdom of God with their longstanding embrace of ‘Manifest Destiny’ doctrine.

“Meanwhile, Evangelicals go on endlessly about infallibility and the like, while ignoring entirely the eindeutigen – one-voiced, univocal, teachings of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament about how to treat the neighbour/enemy.”

“Hans”, Gary exclaimed in agitation, “this is coming out of nowhere for me. For all of us, likely.  You have to understand how hard it is to follow you, let alone agree!

“But, maybe, to draw this to a close, you could say, in your view, what your summation of Evangelicals is?”

“Well I came back to Germany grateful for the good education I got at Wheaton but deeply troubled about where the Evangelical church was at.  It has fallen in my view ‘culturally captive’ to a longstanding dominant American warmongering spirituality as surely as Jews were led captive to Babylon, or, more analogously, as the ancient Hebrews engaged in repeatedly the idolatrous activities of their neighbours.  Tell me if it is not dangerously close to Jesus’ idea that we should follow what Pharisees, read ‘Evangelicals’, believe – their commitment to Jesus, their love of the Bible –  but never do what they do.  Their claims about John 3:16 and God’s loving the world are rendered pure, what is reine Entweihung - in English?, sacrilege – that’s it! – in the jungles or skies of Vietnam.”

Joanne emerged from the kitchen with a Black Forest Cherry Cake ablaze with candles, singing robustly, “Happy Birthday to You!”  She had told no one except Jean.  It was Hans’ 26th birthday that very day, May 26, 1972.

The evening finished off in games and celebration.  Nothing more was said about the conversation.

Andy could not write in his diary that night.  His mind was churning.

 

Chapter Forty-Nine

Hans had had an uneventful trip.  When they returned to the girls’ apartment, shortly afterwards, they were called to supper.  Joanne and Sharon had done the meal together, with Jean’s help on setting up the dining room. It was one of Hans’ favourites. Bratwurst, sauerkraut, and boiled potatoes.  Easy to prepare they were assured.  Delicious, they all resoundingly approved.

Jack, unintentionally or not, got the conversation going as supper wound down.  The four singles had described their day in some detail, and with enthusiasm.  “I learned a new word today,” Jack started, “‘ideology’.  It means, if I got it correct, that we all have our ideas about what is true and right, and we end up killing for them. 

“Interestingly, Janys accused America of being driven by an ‘ideology’ not of good towards the rest of the world, but of greed.  Right, Janys?  I’d like to know, Hans, in light of our last discussion, what your thoughts are on that? Like, for instance Vietnam.  For me it’s black and white.  Communism is evil.  We’re fighting evil in Vietnam to make the world safe for democracy.  What’s your take?”

Hans looked over at Joanne.  There was a pause.  Joanne looked away, and said she’d start clearing the table.  Peter got up to help, and soon Jean and Sharon followed. There were signals…

Hans began.  “Let’s discuss Billy Graham and ideology.  He trained at Wheaton College too.  He went once behind the lines to preach to the GI’s about salvation.  I’m sure this was at American government expense, if not, at least obviously with full permission.  Why?  Because Billy Graham was a good propagandist for the ideology of the war America was fighting against the Communists.

“I can guarantee that in no part of Dr. Graham’s gospel message was there a call to ‘love your enemies’.  On the contrary, if soldiers became Christians, and proceeded the next day to blow their enemies to bits (there’s another word you use... yes, ‘smithereens’) for love of whom Jesus died too, Rev. Graham would have fully approved.  He did in fact, for the record.  And that’s ideology at work alien to the Gospel.  That’s in fact American anti-Communist ideology triumphing over the Gospel.  Or Darkness overcoming the Light, to use biblical language.

“So I ask, where’s the family resemblance to Jesus from Christians in that?  Did it ever occur to Evangelicals to go to North Vietnam with the message that God loves the Viet Cong Communists too?  And that one should rather lay down one’s life for them, than take theirs?  Apparently not.  So when Billy Graham goes to the American troops with the ‘Gospel’, should not part of his message be that they should stop the slaughter because God loves the North Vietnamese as much as he does Americans?  Or does God not love America’s enemies?  And is evangelism only for the ‘Good Guys’ (read: Americans)?  Is God the Ultimate American Nepotist?”

Andy strained at “nepotist”.  Then he remembered: one out only for kith and kin.  Where did Hans get such vocabulary?  Andy interrupted to supply that information, for which Jack indicated gratitude.

Hans continued.  “My conclusion from simple observation is: Evangelicals routinely practise an under-your-breath ideologized “footnote theology” that reads repeatedly, ‘Except our enemies’, when quoting John 3:16 and all other similar New Testament ethical teachings.  How could Billy Graham tell the North Vietnamese that God loves them, when he fully blesses his own country in doing the exact opposite; when Billy Graham is still praying with the President for victory in the War – which means massive carnage and widespread wanton destruction?  When he apparently wills the utter inversion of everything Gospel in treatment of neighbour, enemy and creation?

“Remember James’ juxtaposition of ‘saying’ and ‘doing’? Can someone bring me a Bible?  Moment mal.  Yes: ‘Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.’  The ‘works’ of James, likely Jesus’ half-brother, are found in the Sermon on the Mount, supremely summed up in ‘Love your neighbour/enemies’ which is biblical justice in the raw – without which, Jesus warns the Pharisees, one will never enter the Kingdom!  This is what the ‘wise man’ does, Jesus says in Matthew 7, with reference to the vast background Jesus the Sage brings to Hebrew Wisdom literature. 

“Which I also discuss in my paper I mentioned last time. This is not ‘works-righteousness’ my predecessor, Luther railed against. No, it is righteousness consummated, in the raw, acted out as ‘living sacrifice’, as ineluctable corollary to ‘justification by faith’, the other side of the two-sided coin of salvation.  Salvation embraced, salvation lived.  One does not exist – survive – without the other. Trouble is, the first exists in American Evangelicalism all too well in utter disregard of the other.”

Andy realized Hans had obviously thought lots about their last discussion.  So had Andy. He was beginning to change, he knew.

Hans stopped completely at that.  Joanne had come into the room.  She interjected, “Hans can go on like this for hours.  My best girlfriend asked me to consider what most would bother me about Hans.  This is it!”  To Joanne’s credit, she had said nothing about Hans’ predilection since the last discussion. She was feeling her way now.

Fiona almost ignored Joanne’s somewhat remonstrance.  She appeared angry, yet tenacious.  “But don’t we want this War to end real soon?”

Hans was obviously troubled.  He looked at Joanne.  She again looked away.

“Yes, Fiona,” he said finally with anguished voice.  He looked again at Joanne.  “Just like the Americans wanted World War II to end really soon, and incinerated instantaneously through two atomic bombs over 120,000 innocent Japanese civilians – infants, children, middle-aged and elderly.  Until the detonations, these civilians were going about their daily lives as normally as anyone else on the planet at that time.  Let your mind dwell on that scene.  Place yourself in it.  Better yet, place any – place all! – your loved ones in Hiroshima or Nagasaki August 6 or 9, 1945.  And let your mind imagine the monstrous horror willed upon the Japanese – and your loved ones! – by that Bible-believing President, most Evangelicals, the American people, all the Allies.  And tell me that it is other than homicidal madness: premeditated mass murder in the first degree!  And utterly wicked and evil.

“The Allies did that repeatedly to over 100 cities in Germany and Japan combined: carpet bombed them with napalm to the tune of over two million innocent civilian casualties! – up to half of some of the metropolitan populations.”

“I make this association in my paper.  When the 13th century papal legate in the southern France town of Béziers was asked how to distinguish between Albigensian heretics and ‘real Catholics’, he replied: ‘Kill them all!  God will sort out who are his own’. 

“There is, I believe, an absolute moral equivalency between that medieval ‘inhuman barbarity’ (they say 20,000 were put to the sword that day) and America’s today.  Incidentally, President Roosevelt used that language, ‘inhuman barbarity’, in a memo to all major nations in 1939, with reference to aerial bombing by the Germans of innocent civilians.  But America, in sheer numbers, went on under Roosevelt then Truman to vastly outstrip that long-ago body count.  Arguably, though I do not have the exact figures to prove it, America is responsible for an annual ‘Holocaust’ that adds up perhaps by now since World War II to that perpetrated against the Jews throughout the time of the Nazi ‘reign of terror’.  Most of this is of course kept hidden by the most sophisticated propaganda machine in human history called American corporate mass media, though anything but a ‘free press’: which would do Joseph Goebbels better than proud.

“The sheer wickedness of President Truman’s decision, himself an Evangelical Baptist Sunday School teacher, is so utterly beyond imagining that I think no American Evangelical today even questions the necessity and righteousness of that choice.  Those bombs have, what’s the medical term I used in my paper?, cauterized the American collective conscience into spiritual numbness and induced mass moral blindness.  It would be like the Mafia massacring dozens of their enemies through a bomb blast, and, because they were all ‘godless Communists’ anyway, the Mafia are unconscionably elevated to hero status!  So I ask: Just which ‘sacred text’ was President Truman reading?  The Bible or America’s Manifest Destiny, when he authorized full-scale massacre of Japanese civilians?  And just what Bible are Evangelicals reading today, when not a question is asked about these horrendous ‘crimes against humanity’ in Vietnam and elsewhere America still is routinely perpetrating?”

This was too much for Fiona.  “I believe in ‘Manifest Destiny’ for America.  I believe in righteousness that exalteth a nation, our nation, America the Beautiful.  I believe in God and Flag!” 

Joanne had remained standing throughout this exchange. “Don’t you think you have said enough, Hans?”, she asked.  She looked pained.  Hans looked pained.  Andy quickly surveyed everyone’s face listening in.  There was tension everywhere.  Maybe it would be best to wind down.  But this was fascinating, albeit perilously.

Fiona insisted that they continue.  “I want to hear Hans out.  I want to, I want to prove you wrong, Hans!  You obviously were not raised American, Hans, despite your American mom.  I think you are operating under an ideology I can’t quite name.  But it is alien to America.  I think we are the God-given norm, and what you are saying, even when quoting Scripture, is pure ideology.  I want to help name it for you, and then let you see it, if, like Jesus says, ‘you have eyes to see’.”

It was a valiant retaliation.  It was fiercely ‘Texan’, typically American Empire Loyalist, standing up for the ‘right’ against all odds.  The only problem for Andy was, so far all the “odds” were with Hans, all the ideology with Fiona.  He said nothing.  He had nothing to say.

Hans again looked at Fiona, and continued.  “I grant that by comparison to Stalin and Mao in sheer numbers slaughtered, Truman does look like a Sunday School teacher, which he was! But isn’t that the point?  Sunday School teachers should know better.  Much better.  Or doesn’t that Bible mean a thing even to Evangelicals beyond serving as the central cultural icon of America, all the more, for that honour, to be totally disregarded and trivialized? 

“I am not a Marxist-Leninist, if that is what you are alluding to, Fiona.  Far from it. I am a committed Christian who have discovered ‘the strange new world of the Bible’ as Karl Barth called it, and I am trying to find my way through its meaning for today.  Of course I’m biased.  But I’m trying to make my reading of the Bible challenge my biases, rather than my preconceptions filter the Bible, like I believe on this issue Evangelicals largely do.  As such, that is my conscious ideological commitment.  Consequently, in my reading of the Bible, no matter what, I cannot kill for my ideology, nor bless any state that does.  I agree with Gandhi who rightly read the Bible in saying, ‘It seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was nonviolent.’”

Gary had been listening intently.  He suddenly thought of something.  “Wasn’t it Christians who not only authorized the atomic bombings, namely President Truman, but also the chaplain who blessed the crew on their mission?  Do you claim to know better than millions of believers before you Hans?”

Hans’ eyes narrowed more.  “Gary, do you want me to respond?”  Fiona and Gary said in unison, “Yes!”

“Father George Zabelka was in fact the Catholic military chaplain who blessed the crew of the Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb, August 6, 1945.  He since repented totally, and has been telling the world that there is no moral or Christian justification whatsoever for such a coldly calculated act – and a second one, three days later! – of mass murder.  He says the entire Christian church has been utterly brainwashed for almost two millennia to accept war of any description (it always gets called ‘just’ by Christians), not least the deliberate slaughter of innocents. Ten percent civilian deaths in World War I.  Fifty percent civilian deaths in World War II.  Some claim up to eighty percent in Vietnam. You cannot bomb without huge percentages of civilian deaths.  And who said ‘combatants’, even if that’s all you killed, were Christianly fair game anyway?  Certainly not Jesus – or any other New Testament writer.

“So you say Fiona, along with High Priest Caiaphas at the Crucifixion of Jesus: ‘It is better that one should die than that the whole nation perish.’  Or in this case, that 120,000 plus innocent Japanese civilians, or several million North Vietnamese must perish, instead of precious American blood being spilled. Or that multiplied millions of innocents had to have been maimed and slaughtered to stop the Nazis and the Japanese.

“Doesn’t matter.  That is conventional scapegoat wisdom as old and allgegenwärtig – ubiquitous – as humanity.  Of course sacrificial violence always has made perfect cultural sense, and underwrites all rationalizations for immolating scapegoats amongst peoples as diverse as head hunters in New Guinea, cannibals the world over, the ancient Aztecs or Incas of the New World, Nazis in Germany, Whites lynching Blacks in the American South, and Americans slaughtering the Viet Cong in Vietnam, and vice versa of course.  It is also utter antithesis of all Gospel logic, though that is emphatically not majority church theory and practice. So much the worse for the church over against the Bible!  The Bible may be the church’s Book.  It has rarely with reference to state violence been the church’s Guide.

“Sometime, you must all read an unknown French Catholic author working in America: René Girard.  I used some of his material in my paper.  But it is doubtful Evangelical theologians will ever appreciate him, since he argues theologically and anthropologically the very inversion of the ‘satisfaction theory of the atonement’.  Another matter…”

“Hans”, Andy interjected, “I did read some of Girard in university.  What I didn’t like about him is his making a theory – scapegoating – fit all, like his own discovery of a revelation.  I think life is always more complex than any one metatheory.”

“Heh Andy”, Jack said, “keep the vocabulary simple.”  Andy laughed.  “I think metatheory means one grand explanation for everything about how violence originates and works itself out in human cultures, past, present, the world over.  Right, Hans?”  He nodded.

Hans then replied slowly: “Andy, I found I liked Girard because it corroborated and at times elucidated – shed light on, Jack! – the Bible’s own description and response to violence.  Not the other way around.  I found Girard supplemental, not revelatory.”

“So”, Gary quizzed, “my main question since the last time is, are you saying there is never a place, according to the Gospel, for killing our enemies.  Never?

”It seems you are.  Not only do I dispute that, but it basically says almost everyone in the church for two thousand years has been wrong.  That is pretty arrogant, to say the least!  And what about Jesus’ cleaning out the Temple with a whip?  What about his positive response to soldiers – and John’s, without ever telling them their killing was wrong?  What about the two swords Jesus says were “enough”, when the disciples presented them before his arrest?  What about Jesus’ painting God as “Judge” – like a sentencing judge, bringing down the violence of the State?  What about a doctrine of hell that is violence in the end, ultimate violence? Etc.?”

The dishes had long since been done.  Peter had finally turned on the light switch on his way to his room.  Jean, Joanne, and Sharon diffidently had sat down at the table again.  Andy felt the vibes from Joanne.  Sharon looked, if anything, bored.  Jean was just blank, though once again apart from Peter.

Andy suddenly remembered his thinking that very afternoon. He piped up, surprised at his sudden boldness, and in favour of Hans: “Isn’t killing the enemy, Gary, the exact opposite of evangelism – what we Evangelicals say all the time is our main mission on earth?  How can we warmly underwrite sewing life-giving seed, evangelism to bring life, on the streets of West Berlin, while equally supporting strewing cluster and conventional bombs – and worse! – on the villages of North Vietnam?  Is that not evangelism’s exact inversion – to bring death – as they once did over Berlin?”

Andy had a whole new insight: “Those same people who send us monthly cheques to support inviting Berliners today into the Kingdom simultaneously underwrite with their patriotism and taxes and sons and daughters consignment to hell of countless Vietnamese.  And their parents applauded, participated in, and prayed for the same slaughter of Berliners, parents and grandparents of those we now minister to, barely a generation ago!  Isn’t that juxtaposition contradictory of all logic – and that is just human logic?”

Hans agreed, adding: “Adduce Gospel logic, the only Reality Test Christians are to employ, and the unfaithfulness of Christian support of war and capital punishment materializes as surely as acid or alkaline solutions are demonstrated in a litmus test.

“So no, Gary, I see no place for ever legitimating killing one’s enemies.  Not in Gospel logic.  And there are responses to the exegetical issues – issues of interpretation – that you raise.  I’ll ask you: is there ever a place for extra-marital sex in a marriage?  Not in New Testament teaching, no matter how rampant the alternative cultural norm.  There are no exceptions to Jesus’ call to love neighbour and enemy.  On the contrary, see if there is not New Testament consistency that the only way to know I love God is loving the neighbour. And the litmus test for that is loving the enemy.”

Gary said nothing. Hans went on:  “Let me add, again about Billy Graham, who so classically is representative of the Evangelical mindset.  That’s why I mention him, not otherwise to single him out.  I believe he is a great man of God in his own context, utterly sincere.

“According to the Gospel as I read it, what Dr. Graham should be doing in addition to preaching to the American soldiers in Vietnam is going to his own Evangelical churches to challenge them to call for deep nation-wide repentance that would end the war.  No war since Christ has ever been God’s will.  The American Evangelical church is worshipping an idol, not God, when it participates in war, sends its children to war, blesses America and others in war. All wars, past, present, and future, are unreservedly contradictory to Gospel, its most complete symmetrical inversion.  War, all war by all sides, is utter transgression and the greatest heresy, according to biblical revelation.”

Fiona looked nonplussed.  Where could she begin, Andy wondered?  “But America stands for truth!,” she exclaimed.  “The truth that ‘shall set one free.’  Freedom.  Truth and freedom.  They are America’s birthright and bequeathal to the world.  And that’s what Vietnam is all about!

”What do you say to that, Hans?  What you are saying is so, is so, untruth!”

Janys, Andy suddenly realized, had listened intently without comment to the entire exchange.  Was she feeling repentant for having been too hard on Fiona earlier?  He looked at her.  She really looked great.  She was registering fascination even contentment possibly.  Was she wishing Ted might have been there?  Was she comparing Ted to Hans?  He’d love to have a long talk with her.

“Well?”, Fiona’s challenge was almost shrill.

Hans did not look at Joanne.  “The first casualty of all war, of all violence, by the state or the individual, is truth.  This is what former U.N. Secretary General U Thant once said and Cain’s religiosity demonstrated.  The first casualty of all religion, war’s first cousin, is also truth, Fiona.  And that’s why religion and war inevitably intertwine, the one feeding into the other, and looping back again.  That’s why all military chaplaincies are about truth’s opposite: violence.  Their final word is death.  I would add, incidentally, all sports chaplaincies too.  That’s why the worst plague on the planet has ever been religious wars; likewise the scourge of Western Christendom.

“Now contrast that with Jesus whom religious people claim to be “the Truth”.  Something has to give.  If violence is not truth’s casualty, like darkness’ dissipation the sun’s supreme handiwork, then all you have left is Jesus the Untruth.  Jesus the Violent.  Jesus the Avenger.  Jesus the Cosmic Tyrant.  Jesus the god of Christendom, ultimate scourge, ultimate violence.  Not Jesus the Truth, Jesus the Life of the World, Jesus the Light of the World, Jesus the Prince of Peace.  Then Constantine’s in hoc signo vinceres, in this sign you will conquer, rings true to Mars the god of war, to be sure, but utterly false to Jesus the God of love and peace.  The contrasts are utterly stark and irreconcilable.

“But most of us prefer our lies, are addicted, as surely as any alcoholic, to prevaricating violence.  So it is with dominant American Evangelicalism.  This is of course the brilliant point of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes: as John’s Gospel puts it, ‘men love darkness – lies and violence – rather than light’: Americans, Westerners, most of us, likewise love lies more than truth.  This is why Nazi Germany was so successful in liquidating six million Jews. While truth promises to set us free, we fairly grasp instead after our violent addictions: national security; right to private possessions; nationalism; the free enterprise system etc., etc., etc.  We thereby negate ‘the mind of Christ’ that didn’t ‘grasp after’ violently Christ’s own prerogatives as deity.  Remember, He could have called 10,000 angels, but refrained.  Your President calls up 10,000 G.I.’s, hardly angels!, to fight in Vietnam and Billy Graham and American Evangelical leadership, I’m sorry, cheer on the slaughter.  Billy even goes to preach in support of them, just like Bob Hope goes to entertain.  Same difference.  Identical ideology.  Both utterly foreign to the Gospel, that’s all.

“ ‘The truth that sets us, sets nations, free’ is nonviolence. In the CIA building is inscribed Jesus’ statement: ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. The irony is palpable.  An organization that is committed to covert violence and secret lies on a massive scale, with America in turn dependent upon the CIA to maintain its freedom, claims ‘freedom’ as they lie and murder, kidnap and assassinate, God only knows what else, routinely the world over!  This is George Orwell’s haunting double speak; this is Jeremiah’s ‘peace, peace, when there is no peace’.  This is what America’s most famous evangelist, and most others, sell to America and to the world as ‘beautiful’ and God-ordained, blessed, demonstrative of a righteous ‘manifest destiny’.”

Fiona looked furious and also near tears.  She appeared utterly tongue-tied as well.  No one else was saying anything, knew what to say. Andy was feeling sick but speechless.

Hans had more to add.  “To resort to violence means to deny God, since we trust in it instead and are bound by the ultimate anti-god, what is the final ‘anti-christ’: Violence. ‘In Guns we Trust’ is America’s de facto motto, what they really believe.  ‘One Nation Under the Gun’ is the last truth of American social reality played out in American overt and covert CIA and military interventions the world over, and on the streets of every American city.  America was born in violent revolution against a ‘lawful’ state.  It proceeded to steal wholesale an entire continent from its rightful occupiers, and now acts as Robber Baron to the rest of the world.  The CIA, many say, is about to orchestrate a military coup in Chile, to overthrow a democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende, because of his socialism!  And they almost invaded Cuba because Castro is Communist.  And so it goes, all over Latin and South America, and Asia – the entire world.  But you’ll never hear an American evangelist or Evangelical leader question the righteousness of all this monstrous murder and mayhem.  R

"Chrysalis Crucible" An Excerpt by Wayne Northey

I spent two years as a short-term evangelist in West Berlin from 1972-1974. These were momentous years internationally: the Vietnam War, the 1972 Munich Olympics slaughter (about which Steven Spielberg is currently doing a movie), the Canadians beat the Russians in hockey... to name but a few. (And they're all in my story!) For me, they were watershed years in prodding me toward conversion, particularly on two fronts:

1. That Christianity had *everything* to do with socio-political life - i.e. how one treated neighbour and enemy. (The litmus test for love of God biblically is love of neighbour. The litmus test for love of neighbour is love of enemy.  To the extent one fails in embracing neighbour and enemy, to that extent, one fails in embracing God.) 

The author had been raised Plymouth Brethren, "quintessential fundamentalism" according to historian Ernest Sandeen, and had no sense that Christianity was other than a personal, private relationship to God.  He was challenged that there was *no* relationship to God if there was no relationship to neighbour and enemy.

2.  The way to live out one's politics was the nonviolent way of the cross. Fail to discover God in the enemy, fail to discover God.

This novel, provisionally titled "Chrysalis Crucible," reflects the coming-of-age experiences of a young evangelist in Europe who has life figured out at the start of the novel until, for the first time perhaps, he really encounters life...

Chapter Nineteen

Andy thankfully had, the week before Christmas, completed the finishing touches on a hand-written version of a major essay due the first week in January.

The assignment was to research and generate an essay related to the target city or country. Since Germany was known as a hotbed of various forms of Liberal heresies, Andy had decided to undertake an ambitious project of summarizing some of the main Liberal thinkers, and suggesting how a Christian apologetic along historical and philosophical lines might appear.

During his last two years of university, Andy had devoured many of the popular works published by Inter-Varsity Press, Tyndale, Bethany, and the like. These included books by Francis Schaeffer; John Warwick Montgomery; J. N. D. Anderson; Michael Green; Clark Pinnock and others. He had indeed written a lively essay in university refuting some of

G. E. Lessing’s fundamental doubts about Christian faith. Andy drew on similar resources to produce the essay, which, handwritten, ran almost 50 pages.

He thought that such an essay would be greatly helpful in West Berlin, imagining the average Berliner mouthing a Lessingesque challenge, or pulling a Schleiermacher-type manoeuvre that turned theology into anthropology, or an outright Nietzschean onslaught of rank inverted belief. One by one, each straw-man objection to the faith tumbled before the deft advances of Norton’s fearless forays. The finished product was replete with footnotes, suggestive of a subconscious insecurity about the authority of his own thinking over against that of others who had written in defence of the ‘faith once delivered’.

Though he never quite acceded to fantasizing about this, he at least furtively imagined

G. E., himself, enthusiastically asking permission to photocopy the essay for the other trainees. Thirty-nine typewritten pages may have proven too much. Neither G. E. nor Mr. Myers ever suggested it in any event, source ultimately of some chagrin for Andy.

Andy’s mother had agreed to type the essay for him, a familiar enough experience from his university and high school years. She this time would not balk at French and German words, but new terms such as epistemology; presupposition; personal-infinite God; and the like, foreign enough to her straightforward faith, and far beyond any desire to inquire further into. Andy for his part had at best only a pseudo-awareness of this kind of thinking, having frantically cast about for a lifeline and found one over against the intimidating unbelief – or just plain lack of interest – of many about him at university.

As he awoke quite early that morning to get the VW going, he found anticipation of this essay’s final transformation as much keenly on his mind as seeing family or Lorraine. He spent no time wondering about that.

He walked over to the mish houses to get his and Janys’ bags.

“Good morning, Andy? Ready for a long day of driving?,” Janys asked cheerily. Jack had already flown home, and Dan had moved home for the holidays. No one saw them off.

They set out at about 4:00 a.m. December 23, praising the Lord for such excellent weather and road conditions. But not far into Canada, it began to snow. Andy chuckled at that, mentioning to Janys how most Americans in the southern states believe that snow actually is piled up in huge drifts along the border, acting summer and winter as natural demarcation of the 49th parallel. He included the story he had heard several times from his mom about Americans arriving in a July heat-wave in Kitchener, skis a-top their car, and obviously packed for winter weather. He surmised that if Southam News always discovered in their surveys an abysmal ignorance by even educated Americans of the Canadian social-political scene, then it was not surprising they would know as little about Canadian weather.

“Voltaire wrote, I think in Candide, of Canada as quelques arpents de neige - a few acres of snow. Though I doubt many Americans have ever read Voltaire, I reckon they have about the same notion.”, Andy chortled.

Janys chided Andy for having translated quelques arpents de neige

Conditions worsened rapidly, however, the thermometer obviously was plummeting, and it soon became apparent that a Great Lakes blizzard was brewing. The radio tuned into storm warnings, and notices of extreme caution to motorists.

It became increasingly treacherous. Traffic in the late afternoon had slowed considerably; they had passed several stalls. The front windshield even with the additional defroster at full blast was scarcely allowing a view through it; and suddenly a fierce gust of wind whipped snow directly under the rear. The motor sputtered and died, enabling Andy only barely to coast to the side of the highway.

Andy had on occasion looked at a car’s engine, just recently at this one, about long enough to verify his suspected intense disinterest in – even passionate dislike for – the intimidating pile of metal and hose. He in fact felt awe about the ineffable mysteries of the internal combustion engine. It had actually not been until first beginning to date at the age of 20 that he finally had obtained his driver’s license, when his erstwhile girlfriend had suggested it might be a nice thing to have. It was she also who eventually had suggested it might be nice for Andy to have feelings, he remembered with a pang. So it was purely male ego show that induced him to get out and look this time. He’d have really looked the fool had he opened up the wrong end. “Thank the good Lord for the crash course on VW mechanics!,” he said to anyone listening as he stepped into the howling wind. The wind vehemently hurled the words right back.

Andy actually breathed a sigh of relief upon discovering that the motor was sufficiently whitewashed with snow, such that little could be seen of anything. It looked far better that way, he thought.

He tapped on the passenger window, and over the raging told Janys to climb into the driver’s side to get ready to try starting the car. “Perhaps,” Andy ventured, mustering up all the authority his voice could pretend, “if I clear some of this snow away we’ll make her turn over.” That sounded fairly authentic, he thought. Snow had packed in amazingly solidly under that small lid. He cursed Hitler, who had originated the idea of a little “People’s Car” in the first place, for ever putting a motor in the rear. “Probably the snow would never have blown in had the motor been in the front.,” he muttered to no one in particular, not a little irrationally.

As it turned out, in Andy’s vigorous snow-removal activity, he had inadvertently pulled a spark plug wire. Had he noticed it, he would have wondered where it had come from, and what to do with it. Within minutes of that mishap, a clear diagnosis of the problem emerged: a dead battery. Janys actually volunteered that information just ahead of Andy’s observation, which left him a little nonplussed.

It was late afternoon. The wind was wild, the snow horizontal, and the thermometer hovering at about 0 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Daylight was fast retreating. They couldn’t even get the news on the radio, as they huddled inside under blankets mercifully kept in the front with just such emergencies in mind. Andy had tried for a few minutes earlier to flag down passing motorists. But they either did not see him, or perhaps feared risking stopping themselves. He hoped that someone would at least stop ahead to report them. He soon retreated inside and beneath the blankets. Now why could this not be with Fiona?, the thought released before he could catch it and stuff it away. Why couldn’t his mind give it a break, or at least acknowledge the serious predicament they were in?

“Why don’t you pray, Andy?”, Janys suggested, deferring naturally to his male presence.

Pray? Something flashed inwardly, and Andy momentarily imagined himself Sarah – or dumb-struck Zechariah. How incongruous, even absurd, it suddenly seemed, to pray! As if his prayer would somehow instantly stop the storm, like Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. Impossible. Then what use prayer, Andy’s mind was panting furiously? Even, what is prayer? Had he ever uttered an authentic prayer? One that could move mountains – or even a few drifts of snow, or make a car motor come back to life? Had prayer for him ever been more than a rote exercise (as a kid), like rhyming off poetry, or reciting a creed, more pious exercise than any true beseeching a God who, he felt, somehow should be answering? Had he ever known any answers to prayer beyond the endless rationalizations of ostensibly unanswered petitions?

All this processed through his consciousness in seconds. Evoking a cough as a kind of prelude, Andy proceeded to pray. His reputation was at stake, he knew, even more so than when he had looked at the dead motor. But he was no thaumaturge – nor wired to one. Did he really know anything more about God experientially than he did about reviving a car motor? Or was he content to be a mere passenger in the Christian enterprise, without really looking in to the motor itself – the reality, or otherwise, of a God who somehow acted into history – or did not?

In the extended silence after his rather perfunctory prayer, these questions flooded his mind, until Janys broke the brooding with a spontaneous, passionate plea to God to watch over them, and remove them safely from danger. Thank God women are allowed to pray at GO with men around (brethren assemblies forbade it), Andy couldn’t help inwardly laughing. Her prayer at least had a chance of getting above the wild blizzard out there. He’d heard his bounce off the car roof.

Andy’s mood darkened with the sky, leaving an uneasy aftertaste of uncertainty, like the acrid smell of burnt hair. It was tinged with an undefined sense of fear: not so much about the real predicament they were in, as that this little experiment might elicit an unwelcome hypothesis, namely that God was just a product of one’s religious upbringing cum wish-fulfillment. Could he honestly face that possibility? And why could he not have prayed like Janys? Was this his “ugly broad ditch”?

The snow, caught very intermittently in the headlights of passing cars, continued to blow mercilessly.

After some discussion of various courses of action, they again fell silent, nursing their own fears, having decided that it was best for the time to do nothing except wait.... Waiting for Godot was culled up from Andy’s memory. He recollected the hopeless absurdity of the Samuel Beckett play by that title. It was, after all, in the genre of Theatre of the Absurd. The dialogue near the end went:

“Vladimir. - On se pendra demain. (Un temps.) A moins que Godot ne vienne.

Estragon. - Et s’il vient.

Vladimir. - Nous serons sauvés.”

Godot was obviously playwright Beckett’s variation of god - perhaps meaning a little, ineffectual, ultimately unreal, god. The play had been as bleak as Sartre’s La Nausée. Andy remembered that Beckett reportedly often would not get out of bed ‘til well into the morning, or even into the afternoon, so fatigued he seemed with life. None of the brave staring down of evil urged by Sartre and other popularizing existentialists, just the absurd routine of day-to-day living, relieved perhaps only by his creative instinct, like a full bladder is relieved by a satisfying urination, with perhaps no more appreciation of the act or the outcome than that. It suddenly occurred to Andy that Beckett’s life motto might have been a Robbie Burnsesque: “Whene’er my Muse does at me glance/I piss on her.” with the attendant stench such writing evoked.

“Et s’il vient./ Nous serons sauvés.” And if he comes, this little, useless god, asks Estragon stupidly, why we’ll be saved, Vladimir assures him as blankly. Otherwise we’ll hang ourselves tomorrow. Why not? After all, what is the difference, if only in the state of consciousness, unless Godot comes? Unless Godot comes.....

There was suddenly a loud banging on the roof, followed by faint yells over the wind. “Yes, yes!”, they screamed in reply.

With great difficulty, Andy pushed open the driver’s side door. A large drift made the action hard. He was amazed at how high the snow had piled in such a relatively short space of time.

A large Bombardier snowmobile had come back of them, and they had not even heard the motor, nor noticed its light.

“There’s simply no way, lady!” the driver tersely responded to Janys’ question about loading their luggage. “Don’t even bother locking the doors! Might be wiser not to. That wind’ll freeze everything tonight. No fool thief will venture out in this weather, and you can come back in the morning when this blows itself out.”

The motel was about one and a half miles further down the road. The snowmobile driver together with his brother had been delivering people from other stalled vehicles for the last hour or so. There were several people crowded into the foyer, waiting to hear about a room, or trying to phone, or simply warming themselves in front of a huge fireplace.

They first phoned Janys’ aunt, when they finally got to the pay phone, asking them to contact Susan, who would then let Andy’s parents know. Andy wondered if Lorraine was already at Susan’s, but could not ask. Besides, there was a line-up behind them. The journey should be able to be completed the next day, Janys’ aunt had said, given the weather forecast of a clear and cold Christmas Eve. Provided they could get their car started, Andy worried.

“One party to a room”, the lady explained to everyone. “Don’t matter how many, or who. Just be thankful you’ve got a warm place at all! Hell, before the night’s over, we might be sleeping six deep!”

Thankfully, it didn’t turn out quite that crowded, but there was indeed some doubling up of strangers. For their part, the two would-be-missionaries were assigned a small one-bed room. “Mr. and Mrs…?,” she had asked, and Andy had deadpanned “Norton.,” before Janys could say anything. Why even bother explaining? They scanned it briefly, and then returned to the fireplace, waiting to be called for supper.

Food was in good supply, though there was a hint of rationing certain items such as bread and butter. “Has to last past breakfast”, the proprietor explained, “and God only knows how many more will be arriving.”

A spontaneous sing-song erupted after supper even, and thanks to Eaton’s carol sheets, almost all the verses of all the carols were sung, together with a good many of the more secularized kind, not on the sheets. People had stopped arriving by the time supper was over. Janys had heard one of their rescuers report that they had checked every car on both sides of the highway in both directions until the next county, and that all traffic had ceased.

Supper was sumptuous in fact. Someone there knew how to cook! Amazingly too, everyone was fitted in to the dining room, with extra chairs scrounged from everywhere; all tables crowded, and no one minded – on the contrary! The sense of warm spontaneous community by this group of strangers was palpable. There was excited chatter and loud laughter throughout the supper hour. When had Andy last felt that at church?

Everyone at Andy’s and Janys’ table had harrowing tales to tell, and expressed immense gratitude. Turns out a minister or someone was even asked by the owner to say a prayer for the food. It was heartfelt, accompanied by several equally animated “Amen’s”. “No atheists in fox holes I guess.,” he could just hear Dan say cynically.

“I just hope the car isn’t buried under a mountain of snow”, Andy asided to Janys during a rare lull in the conversation. “Or maybe the plow’ll just run right over the little bug! I remember seeing a picture in the Record once of just that: a parked car had been squashed, I think in London, by an army vehicle doing emergency snow removal. Apparently the driver didn’t even know until he’d rolled over it what had happened!”

Janys was not amused. “Just remember it’s your stuff in there too!”, she said. “Then what would you say to Thomas? And how would we get home?” Thomas was the guy from Colorado who had loaned them the car.

The sing-song happened right after supper, and was exuberantly participated in by all until they were suddenly plunged into darkness.

A voice rang out that there were lots of candles! Just be patient. And sure enough, candles soon were being lit and distributed with holders even for each table.

The proprietor said, “My insurance is paid up. But please! Be extra cautious. No one wants to stand around a bonfire tonight!” There was loud laughter. She had a spirited sense of humour just right for the occasion.

“And can I ask just one thing? PLEASE DON’T FLUSH THE TOILETS UNTIL THE LIGHTS COME ON AGAIN!” And she added, “And we’ll hope everything doesn’t freeze solid in the meantime!

“Now, let’s have some more singing!”

The singing went on for about a candle’s burn. People towards the end had slowly been drifting off to their rooms. A final carol was suggested. Someone had to call out the all-time favourite, “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas!” The room exploded in guffaws, and then erupted into a glorious rendition of same.

At the end, the landlady’s words were, “You’d all make a fine church choir! First rehearsal at 7:00 p.m. sharp in the lobby January, 2, 1972!

“Otherwise, good-night to all, and don’t hesitate to ask for anything. It’s going to be a long night. More candles on the table up here. Just remember to blow them out and don’t play with matches! Extra blankets as we said are piled high in the lobby. Please take just one per room. And cuddle up with your honey tonight.”

So there was really nothing left to do except go to bed. They picked up their duly assigned blanket.

Awkwardness. It was unthinkable for Andy to sleep in the same bed with Janys. But where else? The floor was hard linoleum. There was no extra mattress. The rooms weren’t the cleanest; who knows what might be crawling around? And they’d need all the covers on the bed, blanket, and possibly still then some. It could be mighty cold by morning…

Janys was reading Andy’s mind. “Andy, when we were kids, we’d sleep three and four to a bed sometimes, boys and girls. I think we have no choice tonight. Do you snore?

“We are after all, didn’t I hear you say it?, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Norton’,” she added flatly, her smile, was it red-tinged?, expansive. Then impishly, “But we’ll keep our clothes on. It’s gonna be cold tonight!”

Andy laughed. That smile.

The Morrison’s were former church family friends that used to visit the Norton’s years previously for a few summers after they’d moved to Michigan. The whole family would move in for a week or so, three sisters, all around the same age as Susan and Andy. They always pitched their tent in the backyard. One night, a huge thunderstorm streamed water through the floor, and everything was a soggy mess that took two days to dry out, since the sun didn’t shine much the next day, and the tent and sleeping bags did not fit in the dryer.

The night after the storm the parents all went off to a church meeting or something, leaving the kids with a babysitter. Two sisters were to sleep with Susan in her bed, but there was not enough room for the third, so she was to be settled with Andy. They were all of seven or eight years old.

Not long after the sitter had told them good-night, Andy distinctly remembers going to his dresser in the dark, after some discussion with Carolyn, pulling out a pen flashlight he’d won for reciting verses at Sunday School, and telling her she could go first. Under the covers that night, abetted by a tiny flashlight, they both had repeated hands-on lessons in the human anatomy.

That memory flashed now. But Andy knew candles caught fire under bed covers. Besides, he knew even better, though it did occur to him, how could it not?, he had no interest in exploring Janys sexually that night. He was a committed Christian. Janys had not attracted him particularly, except her smile. He’d really come to like her smile. What was it he saw? He pushed all further thinking below his consciousness.

Already the room, wind-battered as the entire motel, was feeling chilled. Who knew when the power would come back on?

“Well, okay, no tooth brush, Janys. I guess I’m about ready to crawl under.,” Andy said, after they’d tucked the extra blanket tightly in at the end of the bed. “Do you want to use the bathroom first? Remember, there’s no flushing…”

“No,” she said calmly, you go first. He did, and was soon enough done.

“Coast is clear,” he chimed. “Though a warning, the lock on the door is broken…” It somehow felt better to climb into bed before her. This was feeling a little more sexually charged than he’d thought.

“Good thing you have a sister!, ” Janys said as she stepped to the washroom.

“And you a brother,” he fired back.

They laughed, was it nervously?

Andy lay wide awake. He was feeling… aroused. Yes. That was le mot juste, remembering the quip in My Fair Lady, “The French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it correctly.” – or have “the right word”. But he did. Have the right word, but also cared what he did.

It had been a long day. He’d done all the driving, the last two hours or so with taut nerves still not relaxed. The room, in candlelight glow, was simply appointed: a washroom with sink and shower; a bed; a desk and mirror; a single stuffed chair he could have otherwise somewhat slept on. He thought of Lorraine. And Fiona. And his mom and dad. Susan! He could just imagine her mocking! Dan. G.E…. Groan, this last was the corker.

Janys came at last. Andy was surprised at hair that cascaded almost to her waist. When she took off her glasses he thought, wow, she should wear contacts. Then he thought he’d best stop using that word, “wow”. Then he thought he’d best stop thinking. But could not. She blew out the candle, and climbed in . He thought, two bodies in a single bed. Good thing she was petite and he slim. He thought, this is really weird.

The room was totally black. The storm raged furiously. Andy was already feeling cozy warm, almost euphoric.

 

“Janys,” Andy began, “have you already thought of this?: what will people say if they know we, literally, ‘slept together?’...”

Janys giggled. “There was some Christian sect, maybe the Cathars in medieval France, that used to believe sleeping together without ‘doing it’ was a powerful spiritual exercise.

“I think we see how much more spiritual we are in the morning, Andy, then maybe suggest this as a way to jack up the flagging spirituality of some at the Centre that G.E. is so exercised about..” She perfectly mimicked G.E.’s slight Scottish brogue on the “r”.

She was having fun! Andy felt a tad mortified.

“Seriously,” Andy pursued, tinge of recrimination, “can we agree we just don’t talk about… this part… you know, ‘sleeping together’?” Every time he said it, in spite of himself, he felt a tingle.

“Okay, my dear,” she said playfully, “if you insist. There won’t be too many asking the details anyway, and mum’s the word!

“Now, are you going to say a night-night prayer, or shall I?”

This was really no big deal to her at all. Had she been through this before? Andy couldn’t imagine. He knew she had been comfortable with him almost from the outset – something she easily was with everyone but those on doors, he’d observed. And she could put people so at ease too.

He replied, “You can do the honours, Janys.

“Before you do, can I ask one thing? Why don’t you ever wear your hair long?” Where had that come from? His boldness tingled, again.

Janys was quiet for a time. Maybe he’d gone too far.

“Maybe I will sometime, Andy.

“Okay, I’ll gladly pray.” And she did, thanking God above all for shelter and warmth.

“Good night, Andy.,” she said at the end.

“Sleep tight, Janys.,” he said back. And they each turned sideways, backs to the other.

Not long afterwards, Andy heard a patterned breathing beside him. It sounded a minor key to the furious lament outside. And she can fall asleep just like that, he thought. For his part, he was reviewing every discussion he’d ever had with Jack, with G.E., then Lorraine, his sister, and much much more… Janys slept peacefully on. She, at least, didn’t snore….

He awoke from a dream, had it been the magic carpet ride? He reached for it, but missed it beyond recall. He noticed instantly, the wind had stopped. It was so still. Light from an engorged moon was streaming in the window. He had to go to the bathroom. What time was it? He very quietly slipped out of bed. The heat must be back on, he thought uncomprehending. He tiptoed to the washroom door, and unthinking, flicked a switch just inside. Light blazed. His eyes blinked, dazzled.

That shock paled before what his blinking eyes suddenly took in. Janys at the sink, had turned towards him, in bra and panties only, blouse held in her hands, utterly startled look emblazoned across her face.

He gaped. She gasped.

“Andy, the light! Turn off the light!,” and she thrust her arms upwards to spread the blouse across her bosom.

Andy floundered a minute, found the switch finally. Glorious moonlight alone bathed the scene. A shaft fully spotlighted Janys. She stepped instinctively sideways, banged into the sink, and cried, “Ouch!”.

“I’m so sorry, Janys! Whatever are you doing?!,” exclamation marks, eyes averted, hasty retreat.

The door shut tightly behind him. Silence. Wow!, he said to himself, and again, wow! He didn’t care. Those loose clothes... Why did his mind first go there?... Why did his mind start instant replays? Why was there a close-up of her bra, the bare skin, the…

“Andy,” from inside the bathroom, “do you need to use the toilet? I’m done now.”

She stepped out. He stepped in.

He had to sit down to go pee. He realized only then he’d wet his pants. This was embarrassing! She’d walked out a bath towel draped over her.

He saw her blouse and sweater hanging over the towel rack, directly above an electric heater belting out hot air. The bathroom felt invitingly cozy. Whatever had happened?, Andy was still uncomprehending. He took off his pants and wet underpants, quickly ran some water in the sink, and soaked and squeezed them several times. He pulled on his pants, very careful of the zipper. The briefs were hung on the same rack. Hopefully they’d be dry by morning. He looked at his watch in the moonlight. It was 3:00 a.m.

Andy crawled back into bed very quietly. He desperately was trying to take measured breaths. His heart took even longer to slow down.

Janys shifted her weight towards him. “Andy, sorry.”

He said right back, “Janys, I’m so sorry!”

She continued. “This is now embarrassing, Andy, I admit.” Pause. Deep breath.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, it’s my period. I had no, no tampons. They’re frozen solid back in the car. I should have at least tried to get those out, but that skidoo driver was not waiting for anything. Besides, I thought I could get some at the motel. I did ask discreetly. Wrong. They were out of them. So she gave me… Andy, is this grossing you out?”

“I do have a sister, Janys, remember?”, Andy said evenly. This was beginning to make sense.

“So,” she went on, “the lady obligingly gave me a wad of paper towels. Now this gets even more embarrassing. Do you really want to hear? But I’ve gone this far…”

Andy said nothing. The moonlight outlined everything in the room, including, he looked over, Janys’ face. It gave it a pleasant, appealing, soft glow.

“I woke up to go pee, and discovered… nature had taken its course a bit more than I’d expected. Thankfully, she’d given me lots of those towels. But my panties, and the bottom of my blouse and sweater were… you do have a sister, Andy… quite red. So I quietly, I thought, poured water into the sink to rinse everything out… I’ll spare you further details, but just as you stumbled in, I was almost finished everything. Just had my blouse to scrub out a bit more…

“And the rest you know… I’ll admit, only my brother’s seen me in my undies before… So forgive me for being not a little shocked when you turned on the lights.”

Then: “Andy, didn’t you know I was in there?... No, you didn’t. The look of complete consternation on your face was worth a million bucks…”

Andy said nothing. Outside was utterly, eerily still. The moonscape must be glorious, he could only imagine. There was faint snoring through the walls. Andy said, “Hope I didn’t sound like that guy!” That got him over the hump. “Then, so, I’ve never asked anyone this question before, then do you have enough… “

“Paper towels until we wake up?”, Janys completed the query. “I hope so. And yes, before you ask, I had to put those well squeezed wet underwear back on, to.. You know. They’re feeling a little uncomfortable right now. But they’ll dry out by morning I’m sure. Pretty light material, and nice and warm under the covers.”

“And for the day?,” he couldn’t help asking. She should likely have slapped him.

“Let me worry about that. I hope we’ll get to our car soon enough…,” she said.

“But they’re frozen.,” he couldn’t resist. What had come over him? As if he was going over a grocery list or something.

“Andy…,” she said menacingly, then laughed. “I think you’re right though. I’ll be talking to no one about this. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Norton’ indeed. I guess I got over my embarrassment when we ended up in the same bed. This is beyond self-consciousness now to the point of ridiculous! And these are only bodies, you know. How about you?”

Andy treated her question as rhetorical. There was total quiet a few minutes.

She chuckled at last: “If some of my girlfriends could see me now… Good-night again, Andy.”

He debated about offering to climb out and onto the stuffed chair for the rest of the night. He was very conscious she was only wearing a bra on top, saw it again in mind’s eye full light blazing, and fleetingly in the moonlight. The room was warming up after all. But they had come this far without mishap. He knew he’d do quite fine until morning. She certainly would. Probably’ll be asleep in just a few minutes.

He thought about those Cathars, or whomever, and drifted back to sleep.

Morning sunlight blazed through the frosted window. Andy rubbed his eyes, and took in the framed snowbound vista. Janys stepped out of the bathroom, hairbrush in hand, fully clothed.

“Good morning, sleepy head. Found this under the bed. After I’d cleaned out the hair, the brush works fine.” She stepped back into the washroom. “Oh, and I guess you’ll be wanting these.,” as she threw Andy his underpants. “They’re dry. So were my clothes.” She laughed at his look of embarrassment. “Thought we got over that last night… I can guess what happened… No need to explain.”

He didn’t. “Look out the window, Andy.”

He gasped.

As fearsome had been the storm of the day previous, as dazzling was its morning afterglow. If the scene was a painted landscape, the sun was the virtuoso artist, enlivening every view with a textured grace irresistibly exquisite. Each point of sight was multi-dimensionally a-shimmer

“Wow,” Andy said simply, after all finding the word still usable. He noted her long hair, almost indeed to her waist, glistened in the dancing sunshine as she looked out the window beside him. Moments later, they headed down the hall towards the dining area, her hair swooshing seductively behind her.

Eventually after breakfast they connected to the tow truck driver. Surely this kind of scene must be back of stories of resplendently dancing fairies, Andy mused. I’d take these arpents de neige any day, he thought, as he accompanied the driver to their abandoned car.

The after-glory of a Great Lakes winter storm is almost ineffable. It evoked associations of a desert traveller’s first happening upon an oasis, or the sudden turn in the fairly-tale (Tolkien’s eucatastrophe) with the sure knowledge that good would ultimately triumph. It was the apotheosis of Bing Crosby’s I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas so lustily sung the night before. If only the world could stay this white, he thought. A sense of deep tranquility settled over him, as he inwardly praised God for this glorious Christmas eve. Surely this must be a taste of heaven, even if there would be no snow up there.

“A mother and her two children are dead, after failing to be rescued last night from their stalled car”, the newscaster officiously announced over the tow-truck radio, “and President Nixon vows more troops for South Vietnam. But first, these messages from our sponsors.” Andy’s reverie was abruptly ended, as his mind instantly turned over the awful tragedy of the night before. How could such radiant whiteness have occasioned such stark misfortune? On Christmas Eve no less? How could anyone near that family sing Joy To the World! ever again at any Christmas? Why? Andy’s mind spun at the sheer gratuitousness of such evil.

And it’s not even man-made. Not like Vietnam, he further thought. He remembered Voltaire’s savaging any Leibnitzian notion of living in the best of all possible worlds, given the earthquake in Voltaire’s lifetime which had killed thousands. How to explain a good God in the face of such a happening? And if there is an omniscient God, mustn’t his switchboard be besieged daily by similar events? Yet he fails to lift a finger to prevent at least the natural disasters – quite apart from man’s inhumanity to man?

An acquaintance had loaned him Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, while he was in university, which Andy had dutifully read. He remembered then how airily he had dismissed Russell’s entire thesis since he only treated of philosophical objections.

“The Christian faith is not primarily a philosophy but a fact of human history – rooted in the space-time continuum we daily encounter”, he had urged upon his friend. No “accidental truths of history” either, he’d forcefully urged. There had ensued a hot debate, which abruptly was halted by his opponent’s searing words: “Then, if God is so good, damn it, why is my sister, who believes in God, dying of leukemia right now?!”

Andy had been taken aback and shaken by the outburst. In the face of such raw emotion, he had fallen silent. He had never discussed the faith with that person again; and once more tasted the guilt of his failure.

He had had no answer then, and felt still at a loss as he absently watched the tow-truck operator hitch up the VW, which, thankfully, had neither been buried, nor run over by a snowplow.

The overworked mechanic laughed at the pulled spark plug wire. “If only all car problems today would be this simple!”, he exclaimed. With the plug in place, and the battery recharged, Andy and Janys finally completed their journey. Hasty phone calls arranged that her brother and dad were to pick up Janys at the Norton’s. And Susan would after all drive to Kitchener, hoping for the best from her Mustang.

Before twilight eased into clear stellar night, they arrived safely in Kitchener. As they neared his home, Andy noticed Janys putting her hair up again, but said nothing. He really liked it down, would have to tell her that sometime again.

“So good to have met you.,” Janys said to Andy’s parents upon departing. Then: “And Andy yesterday and last night will remain unforgettable!” Right in front of everyone. Andy felt a red rush. But nothing was said, perhaps Janys’ very intention. Though Susan did look at him strangely.

Andy finally entered into the warmth and joy of Christmas Eve celebrations at home, feeling suddenly exhausted...

At the first opportunity, they slipped into Susan’s bedroom and Andy asked Susan about Lorraine. “Sounds more like I ought to be quizzing you about Janys, Andy.,” she looked at him sharply. Susan’s bedroom was still like she’d left it, including some of the posters of the Beatles on the wall her mother had always wished to take down, with not a few arguments over “such godless” music. Susan liked soft colours with two-toned upbeat flair. She’d painted the room herself: well, picked out the colours and had done it with her mom. The room really was compact but “Susan” all over. Andy liked her room as he really liked his sister.

Susan asked, “What happened last night with you guys?” There was no red warmth, not a tingle in Andy. He maintained a poker face that amazed him. How could last night seem “normal”, but such it simply did. Objectively, to sleep in the same bed with a half-naked woman (well half the night anyway) and nothing have happened, including no shame, well… His head cross-examined the heart, and the testimony held with not even an “Objection, your Honour.”

“Susan, I really do like Janys. But what happened ‘happened’ by serendipitous… happenstance. Pure and simple. Nothing else. Nothing new. Nothing to tell. No regrets but the obvious: I missed Lorraine!

“Now what to do?”
“I told her,” Susan accepted the finality of Andy’s tone, dropping her own temptation to cross-examine, “that you’d call as soon as you could. But she knew this would show on the phone bill. Instead, she’s agreed to call at 11:00 tonight, sharp! You or I will grab the phone first, wherever we’re at in celebrations. Hopefully we’re done, and mom and dad are already safely tucked into bed. Best case scenario. In that case, you take the kitchen phone into your bedroom, I discreetly close the hallway door, and you keep your conversation short. The only possibility for a rendez-vous is late Boxing Day evening.

“I ended up taking the bus to Kitchener today. My car was so jittery, dad suggested it… I can now say I have to get back to Toronto a day earlier, and you could drive me tomorrow evening to Toronto; stay the night; and pick up Janys at her relatives’ really early; drive here, exchange cars and be on your way.

“But this all seems so ridiculously tight. Though I don’t mind cutting out early after you’ve left. It’ll be a bit rough around here with mom anyway… Can’t you delay by one day returning? It’d be so much better, Andy.”

“Can’t,” Andy said resolutely. He thought that’s all G.E. would have to catch wind of: Congress ’71 in part exchanged for Lorraine… “I have to be back. There’s no give.”

“Okay kiddo! What a sister won’t do for her kid-brother…,” she sounded very magnanimous.

“Oh, give me a break.,” Andy came back, catching the mirth at the corners of her eyes. She’d proven it more than once: she’d do lots for her kid-brother, Andy felt so lucky and proud.

The phone rang sharp on the hour. Parents had gone to bed, Christmas tree enveloped by presents. Andy eagerly caught it, and thrilled at her voice. It would work! The secret could be kept.

Andy already knew this was going to be his best gift.

The concluding words in his diary that night were:

Silent Night, Holy Night,

All is calm, all is bright.

Praise God for answered prayer!

It is 11:45 p.m.

Good night.

He wrote nothing about sleeping with Janys. He only said he’d have more to share the next time he wrote the Professor.

Break-In: A Literal Allegory by Ron Dart

There lived, many centuries ago, a young man. This man had built a large and spacious home, and the home had many rooms in it and much furniture. The fact that he had so many things in his house meant he was concerned that thieves might break in and steal many of his possessions. All sorts of protection and security devices were purchased and installed to insure the place was safe.

The fact the home was so large meant that the man did not have the time or energy to decorate or visit all the rooms he would have liked to. In fact, some of the rooms were quite dark and dank. There were rooms in the basement that had doors locked and nobody ever visited. Some worried and feared what might be growing in such places.

There were a many rooms on the main floor that were well decorated, and guests were invited to wine and dine in such well lit rooms. In fact, the well dressed rooms on the main floor were a place of much merriment and joy for many when the man and his friends were young. Good memories were etched and written in the well carved and crafted walls.

Time has a predictable way of aging one and all, and, predictably so, the young man passed through the necessary stages of life from youth to middle age to an aging old man.

The seasons of transition in the man’s life brought with them new and deeper fears, and he began to withdraw more into his home and house. Fewer people were invited to visit him, and he feared that thieves might break in and steal much of his fine furniture. So, he bought bars for the windows and installed them. He bought better and more sensitive security systems and had them carefully installed.

The deeper the fears, the fewer people he trusted, and less people came to see him. The basement was closed off, and most of the rooms on the main floor were locked. He had not been to the upper rooms for decades. Windows had been closed, shutters locked from the inside and outside. Old friends tried again and again to warn the aging man that his attitudes and actions would cause him great hurt and harm, but the more they did this, the more he interpreted their actions in a negative way. He was sure they were interested in his possessions and property. He stopped contacting such friends, and he rarely left his large home. The once lush garden and fruit laden orchard became thick with weeds.

Older friends did continue to call, and the man would answer some calls, but he feared going out under the blue canopy and the warmth and light from day star.

It happened that in the winter of the year, when the ground was frozen and hard with snow, a call was send through to the old man but there was no answer. A few more friends tried to contact him, but silence was the only reply. Day turned to dusk, and his few remaining friends became quite worried. They went over to the home, and knocked on the door. There was no answer. They waited and waited in the cold not knowing what to do. They finally decided, after much pondering and reflecting, to break in. The locks were broken, the door beaten down and the friends entered the dark and dingy home. They called out to the old man, but there was no answer. They rushed and hurried from room to room. They soon found him in his bedroom, shaking and trembling, hardly any clothes on him. They called the ambulance, but the man insisted he did not want to be taken to the hospital. The first aid worker and the ambulance driver placed the old man on a stretcher and took him in haste to the hospital. The man fought and resisted, objected and protested all the way. He wanted to stay in his home.

The man had had a serious stroke, and he was immediately taken into emergency in the hospital. The nurses and doctors did what they could, and, in time, with much treatment and care, the aging man was put in extended care. His friends came to visit him, and the staff were most kind and gracious to him. He was never able to use his legs again, he needed assistance to dress, eat and go to the washroom. He forgot about his home, and, in time, he made many new friends in the extended care ward.

A Young Boy and His Father by Ron Dart

Once upon a time, many decades ago, a young boy, his father, mother and sister took a trip to the north. It was autumn, and the leaves were brown, red, gold and rust. It was the season of the year when much was dying or going into hibernation. Frost was on the ground each morning. The days were bright and warm. Many a pleasant hour was spent in a canoe on the lake. The eyes of the night were clear and clean, and a full moon offered a well-lit path for night hiking.