march and march in syncopated rhythm
to the drum beats calling you toward

eschaton

it is irresistable like a dance club night
the end is a thing that we can shake to 

we have been
a people called out
called out of ourselves
to the public square

we are a gathering
in the windy world
fools found and foul fishermen
brought under a lighter yoke

but

there are no shadows
beneath the mid-day Son
the streets are empty of us
as we have become
the called in and contained ones
the out of the world ones
hidden in plain sight
hermeneutically sealed by brick
safe and sound

’til

only the wilderness feels right
to me and mine and more
better to wander lost
than seek safe solace by the Nile
unwary of unknown cost

I say some scribblings because no amount of writing and arguing will ever get to the bottom of the topic. Specifically I want to discuss the “right” to take another’s life.

War. We see a lot of it these days. This is primarily the media’s fault because statistically we supposedly live in the most peaceful era of human history. Still – we know more about it in a broader sense than that previous era’s. I say broader sense because we who live comfortably an ocean away from the world’s most violent circumstances know nothing about it.

I was asked (perhaps challenged) recently about my role in the artillery and how that could be reconciled with a pacifist position. It was an interesting question. It was a good question. I am not a pacifist. I am not a just war theorist. I, like so many others, live in the mushy grey space of partially thought through positions and really don’t know where I stand on the issue of death and taking another’s life.

I do know a few things, history has taught us that unless you become a monster or forge others into monsters one needs to dehumanize people in order to effectively kill them. This is the point of most war propaganda…to comfort the population and let them know we are killing the enemy, and if a few innocents die in the process it cannot be helped really and we wouldn’t even be “over there” if it weren’t for the enemy so it is really their fault if any innocents die and not ours. It is like the mass free giveaway of indulgences.

As a Christian the question of death is particularly thorny. Who am I allowed to kill? It used to be “thou shalt not kill” until some clever linguists, overwrought with the frustration of that rule came up with the realization that it could also be translated “thou shalt not murder“. While subtle the difference is critical – to murder is to kill without provocation; without just cause; with no present threat to one’s own or another’s safety. To kill was so much broader – it meant what it said – don’t kill. What about…? No. What if…? No. But…? No.

I believe we have both systemic situations and individual contextual ones for virtually everything and both are required to some degree.

Systemically it is possible to say that Hitler and the Third Reich were enemies of the world. They were implementing state-wide systems of eugenics and reinterpretations of law and religion that, given time, would dehumanize whole segments of society and train up a culture and population of people incapable of seeing the moral wrongness in mass executions.

At an individual level I can say without so much as a twinge of guilt that should a grown man start beating a small child with a baseball bat I have an obligation to step in and try to stop it – even at the cost of the other man’s life. If I were the only one capable of defending the child and I simply stood there and said “You need to turn the other cheek and I am sorry but I cannot get involved because I do not believe in violence” I would serve only to have contributed to another’s death through my own inaction.

The problem of course is how do we bridge the gap between the systemic and the individual? We need to do this because the rationale for war exists not in the systemic but at the individual level.

The reality is we cannot bridge that gap. War takes massive leaps of faith. Leaders of one country make decisions based upon information given to them about a circumstance half the world away and than send, by proxy, warriors to theoretically defend the individuals who are currently being trodden upon. Than individual warriors must each come to the conclusion that these leaders and the populace who they represent are sending them overseas because they know that this war is just and required.

And so they go with the reality that taking an M16 and firing a bullet through the skull of the enemy combatant over the next ridge is not murder because that combatant represents a state that would over run the innocent. There is no sense that the enemy combatant is being motivated in the other direction with the same logic and that when he doesn’t have an AK-47 he scrapes out a living as a mechanic is a nearby community.

At an individual and contextual level it can be a simple decision to use whatever force is required to save someone’s life. At a national or international level it is never simple and frankly impossible to know for sure if this is the right and just thing to do.

Certain assumptions have to be made.

There is much more to be said on this for sure but it will have to wait. Stay tuned for part two.

Here is an ancient British nursary rhyme called How Many Miles to Babylon?

How many miles to Babylon?
Four-score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, there and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You will get there by candle-light.

King and Queen of Cantelon,
How many miles to Babylon?
Eight and eight, and other eight.
Will I get there by candle-light?
If your horse be good and your spurs be bright.
How mony men have ye?
Mae nor ye daur come and see.

I have been reading Ratzinger’s latest book on Jesus and I have found it incredibly well written, insightful and at times, provocative. One of those areas of provocation comes when he analyzes the nature of Christ’s betrayal.

The scene is the Passover that Jesus is celebrating with his disciples and comments he makes about being betrayed. Ratzinger points out that there is a level of confusion among the disciples about who would betray Jesus. They ask and Jesus says to them “it is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I have dipped it,” John 13:23-26.

“Jesus’ answer as given here, is quite unambiguous. Yet the evangelist says that the disciples still did not understand whom he meant. So we must assume that John retrospectively attributed a clarity to the Lord’s answer that it lacked at the time for those present.”

Christ says later in John 13:18 “The Scripture must be fulfilled: ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me’.”

While the context and our perspective clearly see this as referring to Judas it should be noted that Peter also betrayed Christ. That every person at the table ate Christ’s bread. That each of us who participate in the community of Christ and partake of the Lord’s Supper eat his bread.

There is a deeper sense in the text that Christ is alluding to the world; to each of us. That the point of his sacrifice was to remedy the betrayal which would be our own undoing. Judas, in many ways represents each of us, as does Peter and all of the disciples.

The point is not to focus on the destructiveness of the betrayal so much as on the miraculous sacrificial act of Christ that overcomes our betrayal and all betrayal.

It should also be noted that Judas was still beloved by Christ even up to and I suspect beyond his suicide. Ratzinger brings this out beautifully.

“For John what happened to Judas is beyond psychological explanation. He has come under the dominion of another. Anyone who breaks off friendship with Jesus, casting off his “easy yoke”, does not attain liberty, does not become free, but succumbs to other powers. To put it another way, he betrays his friendship because he is in the grip of another power to which he has opened himself.

True, the light shed by Jesus into Judas’ soul was not completely extinguished. He does take a step toward conversion: “I have sinned”, he says to those who commissioned him. He tries to save Jesus, and he gives the money back (MT 27:3-5). Everything pure and great that he had received from Jesus remained inscribed on his soul – he could not forget it.

His second tragedy – after the betrayal – is that he can no longer believe in forgiveness. His remorse turns into despair. Now he sees only himself and his darkness; he no longer sees the light of Jesus, which can illumine and overcome the darkness. He shows us the wrong type of remorse: the type that is unable to hope, that sees only its own darkness, the type that is destructive and in no way authentic. Genuine remorse is marked by the certainty of hope born of faith in the superior power of the light that was made flesh in Jesus.

John concludes the passage about Judas with these dramatic words: “After receiving the morsel, he immediately went out; and it was night” – Judas goes out – in a deeper sense. He goes into the night, he moves out of light into darkness: the “power of darkness” has taken hold of him.”

What more could be said? Brilliant.