Booing the Golden Rule -- Really?

Some time ago during one of the many presidential debates, candidate Ron Paul suggested that the foreign policy of the United States would do well to follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The response of a significant portion of the audience in the hall, most of them, I would hazard to guess, Christians, was to boo.

It is shocking to hear the Golden Rule booed in any context.

My own belief that the crisis of our time and place is not a lack of faith in Jesus, but rather a lack of belief that Jesus is ‘up to the job’ – I think, without meaning to, we have somehow rewritten our understanding of just who Jesus is and what Jesus does and can do.  And so we believe we have to act in the ways we do, because Jesus just isn’t up to the job.

An example: on the eve of the Iraq war, I coincidentally happened to attend a church meeting as a student observer.  The minister asked his Session to reflect on what Jesus would do when it came to the decision whether to go to war or not.

The folks had many and varied answers; they were all thinking seriously on it; they were all taking their faith and their understanding of God and God’s word into account, including one gentleman who just couldn’t contain himself; the words literally burst from him: If you’re asking me if Jesus would ride into Baghdad on top of a tank, well, of course he wouldn’t.  But Jesus would be wrong!  

The silence that followed his outburst was, as you might imagine, stunned.  I don’t know how he and his church family dealt with that in the days, weeks, months and years after I left.  But his statement has never left me.

What was going on in his heart, I cannot know.  But I can tell you what I thought then and what I think now: I think the man is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, but that somehow, over time, he has stopped believing that Jesus really is the Savior, the Messiah, the Rescuer.  Somehow, he has come to believe that Jesus just doesn’t understand what we face; that somehow, Jesus isn’t up to the job.

I don’t know what else to call that except a crisis of faith.  So it’s my own guess that too many in the debate hall the night Ron Paul invoked the Golden Rule may suffer the same problem: believing that Jesus is a nice enough guy, that Jesus is a good model to follow for our kids; but when it comes to the world of grown-ups, when it comes to the serious ‘business’ of the work of nations, Jesus is just too darned naive to be considered, let alone believed or followed.

If I am right; if this is so, more’s the pity.

The Ways of Peace

The ways of peace are largely untried, but successful more often than we think.

I can almost remember the moment (I was in my late 40's) when I learned that the Cuban Missile Crisis was settled not by President Kennedy’s public showdown behavior, but rather was settled with a behind-the-scenes peaceful negotiation.

I was always taught that the Crisis ended because Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t back down.  I was shocked to learn that the United States actually negotiated a settlement whereby we would withdraw our missiles from Turkey and the then USSR would withdraw its missiles from Cuba.

I felt so betrayed because what I had been taught was a lie and it is a costly lie.  That lie led me and lots of others to believe that the only way to deal with world enemies was with force and the threat of force, when, in fact, the situation was resolved not by force, but by peaceful negotiation, by talking to our enemy, by making concessions and compromises.

We live in a time when the word ‘compromise’ has become a dirty word, where everything is tinged with the language of righteousness.  And the rightness of our cause, whatever it may be, becomes the justification for force.

Thus this president, along with every president I can remember, whatever party they belong to, speaks openly about protecting not only Americans and American land, but also American interests around the world.  A public Pentagon document planning through 2020 I once read refers to military readiness to protect American ‘interests’ around the world.

And now, we’re talking about military action, directly or by proxy, against Iran -- not around the nuclear threat, but against their stated intention to blockade the Strait of Hormuz (where much of our oil flows through Iran’s territory).

Thus I am, as a citizen, literally required to ask, “How many people am I willing to kill in order to drive my car?”  I know it’s not that simple, but the idea of self-defense has been expanded to mean not merely the protection of my life, but also of my way of life.

I don’t like or excuse Iran’s behavior.  But their bad behavior does not justify mine.  That, I think, lies at the heart of the Golden Rule.  

O Holy Night

I remember many holy nights, some bursting with the soaring strains of the hymn – Christmas Eve services past . . . three male friends at a Christmas party spontaneously dropping to their knees as they sang off-key and gloriously . . . Fall on your knees . . . the laughter, the wonder, the soul-touching music . . .

Tonight as I drove the mountains home through the dark tunnel of the night, the radio brought the glorious word to my hearing in a new way . . .

It was the last verse rather than the first that spoke into this night . . .

Truly he taught us to love one another; 

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

From that holy night to this, the message is heard anew and anew . . . when he appears, the soul feels its worth . . . 

From God’s worth comes ours . . . and we are taught again how to love one another . . . taught again the law of love and the gospel of peace . . . taught again that all our imprisoning chains are broken in Him for the sake of our brothers and sisters. . . taught again that oppression no more shall find its home on earth . . .

O Holy Night as sung by Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo 

A Mountain Cheesemaker

Should you be mislead in your search for the perfect cheese recipe, let me assure you, your search continues . . .

Whatever this is, it is most definitely not a treatise on that perfect Gruyere . . .

Allow me to introduce myself . . .

My name is Beth

I live in the mountains

I have never, and I do mean never, made cheese . . .

But I am a huge fan of Monty Python

Love Life of Brian

And fancy myself one of the ‘cheesemakers’ Jesus blessed therein [translate: blessed are the peacemakers]

Admit it - like me, you really wish Jesus had blessed the cheesemakers instead - it would have made life so much easier if all I had to do was go out and learn to make a fine cheddar - with all its challenges, that’s got to be so much easier than making peace . . .

And in the end, the cheesemakers have a fine wheel of something very tasty to show for all their effort, while all I have is more fighting and discord and disagreement and disharmony and dysfunction and and and any other dis– you can think of . . .

Not that I’m complaining, mind you – well, maybe a little. . . but I continue to be surprised that the efforts at peacemaking so often result in more discord, that the attempt to secure justice, at least for a time, increases injustice.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  This Newtonian law of momentum holds that “all forces are interactions between two different bodies.” [fn]

It would seem that Newton’s third law holds true in the world of the exchange of ideas as well.  It’s the only explanation I’ve got (nod to social scientists, who I’m sure can do better) as to why various propositions for peaceful resolution meet such anger and violence and resistance.

Virtually all humans claim to desire, even to long for, peace.  Yet proposals for peaceful change are often, if not usually, met with anger.

Resistance to change and the cost of that change to the individual or its society as a whole can offer only a partial explanation.  For the fact is that every war results in change and enormous cost.  Yet few wars provoke the violent response in the citizenry that calls for peace do.

Hypothesis: humans are on a trajectory of war and violence.  Ways of being peace would alter the trajectory.  Resistance is the predictable result.  Newton was more right than he knew.

Yet, if this is true, why does the trajectory of war and violence not yield an ‘equal and opposite reaction’ of peaceseeking?  Perhaps it does.  Perhaps by its very nature, the impulse to peace is quieter, more low to the ground, than the impulse to war, so that the ‘reaction’ of peace goes by unnoticed, even, sometimes, by those who seek it most fervently.

The Christian answer in these United States today to war and violence often includes statements offered so matter-of-factly that they are proffered as axiomatic: I’m not Jesus.  I’m not that good a person.  Jesus didn’t have to contend with nukes.  Even Jesus was violent (referring to the money-changers incident, but forgetting, somehow, the cross).  They’re evil.  They need killing.  What else can we do?

It is settling for so much less than the gospel of the Risen Christ, these reasons to stay on the course we’ve set for ourselves.

Perhaps peace is the dream of God.  But if there are any dreams in the universe that have a chance of coming true, surely they’re the dreams of God.

To all the peacemaking cheesemakers or cheesemaking peacemakers seeking your blessing, I say, blessed are you.

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[fn]  C Hellingman (1992). "Newton’s third law revisited". Phys. Educ. 27 (2): 112–115. Bibcode 1992PhyEd..27..112H, per Wikipedia article on Newton’s Laws of Motion.