Darthben’s Weblog

I recently read a quote from a guy named George Zebelka.  Zabelka was the Catholic chaplain who administered mass to the bombers who dropped the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  He later came to repent of not speaking up about the bombing of civilians.  Having been thinkig about the topic of violence lately, this quote seems fitting. Here is his quote:

 ”To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christain and as a priest as I see it…I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best-at worst it was religously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them…Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan.  One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombings of nuns.  (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.)  One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb catholic children.  I didn’t.  I, like the Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, “The Great Artiste,” was heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, toruture, the pursuit of power, and perogative violence, all in the name of the Lord.

 I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Irakami Cathedral.  I picked up a piece of censer from the rubble.  When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teachings and destroyed his world by the dostortion of that teaching.  I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process that began with Costantine reached its lowest point-so far.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about violence, war and peace a lot lately, and blogging and talking about it. It has been helpful to think through some things. Here is where I think I’m at right now.

The Ultimate goal-

To me when talking about war and violence and whether it is good or bad, I think we need to establish what our ultimate goal is-and I think that our ultimate goal should be reconciliation. I think this is a central part of the gospel-that through the gospel all peoples can be reconciled, and that following Christ means not just loving our friends and eliminating our enemies-but even loving our enemies. So I think a key question that needs to be asked is: Does violence result in reconciliation? It may be possible, but I don’t think that violence is made for that purpose. I’ll get to this more in a second.

Violence:

It’s been difficult to form what I think about this, but I think right now I would say that volence is never good-whether or not it is a necesary evil at times is something that I don’t know if I’ll be able to resolve. However, it is not good, and should be avoided as much as possible. One problem with our culture is that we seem to see violence as the ultimate and best solution-we’d rather dominate others than be taken advantage of. This is perfectly understandable from a worldly perspective-however I think that part of Christ’s message is considering other betters than yourself, being willing to sacrifice-and Paul talks about being willing to be taken advantage of rather than hindering the Gospel by only being concerned about ourselves.

Domination:

This is becoming a more important word for me with this issue. I said earlier that I don’t think violence leads to reconciliation-and part of the reason is that most of the time violence is a vehicle for domination. Domination destroys unity, it destroys the prospect of reconciliation. Instead it alienates people from each other-the powerful from the powerless, the rich from the poor. And I think that wherever violence may be necessary, it must not be used as a means to dominate. I would not have such a problem with the war in Iraq, or with our foreign policy, or the American gov in general if it did not seem that our gov is using its power to dominate.

I listened to this song today by Teddy Geiger.  I’ve heard it before, but it really struck me today.

 You love to run
Into the arms of anyone
Take off your shoes and socks and stay awhile

CAUSE LOVE IS A MARATHON
THAT’S WHY YOU GET TIRED SO FAST OF EVERYONE
SLOW DOWN AND PACE YOURSELF
‘CAUSE WHEN IT’S GOOD
ITS A LONG OPEN ROAD

So I haven’t posted in a while, so here’s some of the things I’ve been thinking about the past few months.

I’ve been reading about stuff that our government had done around the world, or that big corporations have done around the world.  Stuff like convincing other countries to take out huge loans by telling them that their economy will boom, all the while knowing that their country will be buried under debt and that that debt will ultimately benefit big corporations.  Stuff like America overthrowing governments so that we can have access to their resources.  I could go on and one about this, but the basics is that America is oppressing other countries, and our own system is oppressing our own country.

There’s a couple reasons why I’ve been thinking about this so much.  But before I say that, I first want to say that not everything that is wrong with the world is America’s fault.  While I do think that America is becoming and has become an empire trying to keep it place in the food chain through whatever means, there are other problems in the world caused by other governments.  Secondly, America does some good in the world, but unfortunately much of this good is being defeated by some of the bad things.  For example, while America and other more industrialized countries send devoloping countries aid, the developing countries have to pay back even more in debt repayment-much of which was caused by America or corporations who were aided by America.  Thirdly, I don’t want to paint America as some irreconcibly evil nation and all developing coutries as sinless angels.  I think a Christian perspective  says that poor oppressed people are just as corruptible as rich oppressing people.  And throughout history the oppressed people who have overthrown their oppressors have typically become oppressors themselves.

That being said…

I believe that the Gospel is about living in the kingdom of God here and now.  I beleive that part of this is dealing with social justice issues-things like world poverty, homelessness, hunger, medical care, etc.  I think we need to do two things with social justice issues.  First, we need to meet the needs of the people who are suffering.  Feed the hungry, empower the impoverished, care for the sick, etc.  However, another thing I think we need to do is to address the reason of why these issues exist-what is causing poverty, hunger, etc.

However, it is most disheartening to learn that many of the reasons people are impoverished and starving in developing countries are caused by our own government.   And it is overwhelming to realize how big a force it is.  The powers that be are oppressing the world-and they are our powers.  So what do we do about it.

This is my biggest struggle right now.  The temptation is to find a solution that involves overpowering others.  However, though this may seem like the most logical solution, I don’t think it is the right one.  One reason is that Jesus chose not to conquer by power, though he had legions of angels at his command.  Another reason is that powers over turning powers has been a sickening cycle throughout history, and it is even more sickening that we still believe in this system.

However, we have problems in our own country as well.  Our country is being oppressed too, but by internal matters.  We are being oppressed by the way we worship capitalism as God.  Whenever capitalism is challenged and charged as failing to be the salvation of the economic world we cry “Communist,” which is the American economic term for “Heretic.”  But in this country the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider and wider, and it is only being fueled by our system.  Capitalism is not all bad, but the unrestained idol form of capitalism that we worship in this country is killing us.  It tells us that the billionaire CEO’s earn their money and deserve to do whatever they want to do with it, while the lower working class doesn’t work hard enough and deserves to be at poverty level.  It’s sick, it’s absolutely sick.  No one who works should go hungry while others who work have billions to spare.  I don’t think everyone getting paid exactly the same is necesary, but I think that there does need to be a maximum wag.

Our country is oppressed by the notion that we can establish peace through arms.  The amount of money spent on weopons in this country is astounding, and even more so when we sell much of the weapons to other governments, some of which our own government has warned are unstable.  Even during the arms race with the Soviet Union, when we had enough weapons to blow up the earth, we didn’t stop there, we kept building.  It’s insane, it’s irrational, and it’s killing us.

A lot of rambling here.