Never Again

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields.

President Woodrow Wilson brought the American forces into WWI to help put a stop to the most terrible war the world had ever known. He sought to broker a peace between the old-world super-powers that had thrown absolutely everything into the war effort, shattering Europe, and with it, the social order of the last century. When the armistice was finally signed, the understanding was "Never Again". Never again would countries seek to eradicate each other in total war. Never again would nations sacrifice an entire generation of young men to satisfy the imperial ambitions of that nation's rulers. Never again would entire regions of land be devastated and poisoned by the modern weapons war had created. Never Again.

Twenty years later the world was back at war. The enemies were the same as last time, the weapons were even deadlier, the cost was even higher. This new conflict would be so devastating that the above-mentioned  conflict would no longer be known as the Great War, but would instead be the first of a two-part series, WWI and WWII. When WWII finally ended after years of bloody and total war, humanity had devised a weapon that could destroy all life on earth if used in open combat - the Atom Bomb. As America and the Soviet Union divided up the world into two power-blocs these nuclear weapons proliferated in a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. The Cold War, as this struggle was named, was fought via a series of proxy wars in Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, various African and South American countries, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War. As America became weary of war, hawkish politicians and generals reminded their citizens that they could not dishonor the memories of those brave young men and women who died in the name of "freedom" during the last conflict (usually WWII) to be in vain. They must not disobey the poet by "breaking faith" with the fallen. 

Thus John McCrae's poem was subverted by the propaganda arm of the military industrial complex. Instead of the clarion call for peace, we have created a state of perpetual war. Instead of picking up the torch of peace from the failing hands of the last generation, we have snuffed it out and buried it. We have not kept the faith with those veterans who fought, sacrificed, and died for the peace and security of their children, and children's children. Instead, we have offered up those children to the gods of war, sacrificed upon the altar of "remembering our heroes". 

Mennonite Central Committee has a peace-making campaign centered around Remembrance Day. Instead of the poppy, they pass out red pins that read "to remember is to work for peace". This encourages people to honour the sacrifice of our armed forces by building a world where they are no longer needed. 

Today I remember all those who have fallen in battles waged by peoples around the world since time began. I weep with the loved ones they left behind. I weep for the things we have asked them to do, for the murder we have asked them to commit, and for the atrocities they have been forced to see and endure. I weep for the veterans who came back to a society that has no room for their PTSD. I weep for the fact that the men and women whom we have shattered in our wars have no place to grieve or heal. I pray "Lord Have Mercy" and "Never Again".

This Remembrance Day, we are a nation at war. I confess and repent of the ways that I have lived that have not been peaceful. I am sorry that this year we have to remember the lives of more soldiers who have died, either by the hands of their enemies or by their own hands in the desperate throes of PTSD. I remember our soldiers today and I grieve. Let us not isolate these men and women further by placing them on the pedestals of heroism where they can neither show pain nor receive healing. 

War is a terrible crime, the victims of which are not just the innocent civilians bombed as "collateral" damage, the victims are not just the enemy soldiers sent into battle in loyalty to their government/religion/leader, but they are also our own soldiers. War is a crime that has no winners, the losers lose everything, the winners win nothing, and the earth bears the wounds to prove it.

This year, let us rekindle the torch of peace. This year, let us not have failing hands. This year, let us keep faith with the fallen by not offering up yet another generation of soldiers dishonour their memory.

Let us never again have war.

Lest we forget.

Black Lives Matter

What does it mean to speak the truth? Quite often, we understand something to be true if it corresponds to reality. The statement "It is raining outside" is true if, and only if, it is actually raining outside. This straightforward correspondence understanding of truth was hammered into my head at the beginning of every philosophy class I ever took.

Lately, I've been watching the Black Lives Matter movement and I have been dismayed and horrified by how many white, Christian, males, are completely missing the point. When Black protesters chant, "Black Lives Matter" and "Hands Up Don't Shoot", white commentators rush to claim the moral high ground by saying, "Well, of course, All Lives Matter". This is true, in an abstract general way, but it is not fitting in light of the particularities of the situation.

The Patristics understood that things were true not merely as a function of their correspondence with reality, but also because they were fitting and beautiful. Fittingness (often described as coherence in modern truth-theory dialogue), is a useful category to rediscover as it provides us with a moral framework for understanding how to best serve Truth (in a correspondence sense).

Let us accept for now that the general truth "All Lives Matter" is really true, and True in an absolute correspondence sense.  In a situation such as we have in the United States of America, we see a people group that for the last 4 centuries have suffered under slaver, Jim Crow, and the prison industrial complex. The reality for Black Americans is that their lives do not particularly matter, and have never mattered. Because they agree that indeed "All Lives Matter" is really true, they raise their voices in a prophetic corrective to proclaim, "Black Lives Matter".

It would not be good enough for them to say, "Black Lives Matter too", as this softens their prophetic claim to the above-mentioned general truth. They must explicitly say "Black Lives Matter" because for so long it has been implicitly said, "No they don't!" When white people seek to relativize their particular claim that "Black Lives Matter" with the general claim "All Lives Matter" they actually make themselves liars. The context of slavery, segregation, and oppresion put the lie to any notion that "All Lives Matter". General truths are too abstract to mean something in a context that has given the lie to the universality of their claims for too long. Only when the particular truth claim, "Black Lives Matter" has been recognized and actualized can the statement "All Lives Matter" be affirmed.

General, universal truths are real and important, but they become irrelevant and supremely unfitting when said in a context that reveals the lie of the claim. Sometimes, to serve a big, all encompassing truth, what is left to us to actually vocalize is the smaller truth that has been denied by the people who like to pretend that the the larger truth is being honoured.

My Muslim Brothers

"Salaam Alaikum" he said as he spotted me, lost, confused, but surprisingly calm. Idris, the kindly mosque manager, is a short smiley man that is quite possibly the friendliest man I've ever met. As we talked, he must have dashed off almost a dozen times to help a sister or brother, hearing prayer requests and checking to make sure everything was ready for the service. He did not abandon me to myself. A constant stream of people greeted me in peace and invited me onto the prayer floor with them. As the call to prayer went up I found myself being lifted up out of the mosque, carried on the wings of the song to the ears of Allah. Perhaps I didn't go anywhere, perhaps it was God that came down? Anyway, an African man beside me guided me through the prayers and saved me from the humiliation of ignorance. Charity, the kindness of hospitality was sent my way from everyone I met all wrapped up in the request and promise, Salaam Alaikum (peace be with you). After the service, I met Yusuf, a young Irish Canadian who had given a stirring sermon on community and race relations that afternoon. He told me how Islam had saved his life. He had grown up in a nominally Roman Catholic family but had spent most of his time on the streets getting into trouble. "Islam just answered all my questions" he said. I could tell he had found profound peace, and I rejoiced with him.

As I scrolled through Facebook drinking my coffee this morning I saw yet more posts about the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq. Yet another list of the horrors committed by ISIS insurgent. Yet another belligerent demand to "talk about Islam honestly". So that's what I want to do. Let's talk about Islam honestly.

How does anybody begin to talk about a global religion, never mind somebody like me; a student of Christian theology that has never encountered anything other than Christian thought? I think there are several ways. You can of course turn to the textual sources, though, as a student of Christian theology, I know that this can be plagued by centuries old interpretive questions. You can turn to experts, though as someone who is foreign to this field of study, I'm not entirely sure which experts are relevant. If I wanted to know about Christianity for example, I would probably get a very different account of the faith from a Mennonite than from a Russian Orthodox priest. In global religions, there are incredible amounts of variance. Finally, you can enter into relationship with people who have been shaped and formed by this religion from birth. Thus, my visit to Winnipeg Central Mosque.

When I arrived, there was a camera crew from one of the many story hungry outlets in town. There had been talk that day of the discovery that one of the ISIS extremists had ties to the Winnipeg area and they wanted a reaction from the leaders at the mosque. When the cameras left, Idris turned exhaustedly to me and said, "They come like this so often, and there is nothing I can do to explain that we are not in any way connected to ISIS. Islam is a religion of peace, why are we being held accountable for the actions of these barbarous heretics?" We talked for a couple more hours and he graciously answered even my most naive questions. I began to see that Islam, like Christianity, has bred many different schools of interpretation. It is far too simplistic to find a proof text in the Qu'aran that we find objectionable and then derive a normative ethics for this global (for the most part peaceful) religion. The actions of Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and ISIS are condemned by the mainstream of Islamic orthodoxy. In the same way the Christian Church condemns the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials and Westboro Baptist church, so the Islamic community condemns its radical elements as well.

Islam has given the world many great gifts, beautiful architecture, stunning literature and art, advanced science and philosophy, and above all, a people who are formed by the practice of giving and receiving peace to one another on a daily basis. Jesus taught us that by people's fruit you would know who they really are, and in the hospitality and love that I discovered at Winnipeg Central mosque, I saw the face of Christ.

Let's have an honest talk about Islam. But if we're going to do that, we should probably invite Muslims to the table with us.

Salaam Alaikum.