Prodigal Medic....

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of society to affect change in this world. I’ve been watching the news, even though it depresses me. I’ve been watching the coverage of Israel invading the Gaza and the protests in response to that all over the world, and coverage of the officer involved shooting in Oakland right here in our own backyard. All over, there are people taking to the streets, hoping their voice will be heard. My point in writing this is not to address the politics or culpability of anyone or any group of people involved on any side of these issues. Its about something bigger than that.

 This past summer, I had decided to take a change of reading material and read more biographies or autobiographies. I read the biography of Desmond Tutu, listened to the life of Martin Luther King through audio recordings of his sermons, and read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. I also cheated and saw a movie of William Wilberforce’s life in “Amazing Grace.” These people are but a few examples of men who have changed the world, brought down massive political machines and redirected the morality of generations.

 Contrasting the two movements today brought me to a strange realization. Those that now seek justice, in whatever its form, who seek for their voice to be heard have lost their way. Dr. Cornell West, a professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton says this:

And one of the problems these days of our precious young folk, is that they don’t have a sense of history. They are unable to preserve the ancestry, the afterlife of their ancestors in them. All they have is just the present. That therefore present becomes a fleeting moment of pleasure, a hedonistic instance rather than a connection of a story and narrative.

 I think this is the failing of these new movements of protest. The greatness of Tutu, King, Mandela, Gandhi, Wilberforce, the Dali Lama and so many others has been the non-violent aspect of the protest. Watching video of a Palestinian woman calling for the Jews to “go back in the oven,” watching the people randomly loot and destroy property, watching all of this chaos makes me think these people have forgotten their history. In doing so, they have compromised the lessons of these leaders that have gone before and in turn, voided the value of the expression of their voice. They no longer have the greatest powers available to them: love and forgiveness. Without that, they only serve to propagate the cycles of violence, thinking that by assigning blame they will find “justice.” All they will find instead is the sharp end of another sword pointed at them, which in turn will give them reason to “prove” their point.

 This makes me think of the need to examine definitions.

 retribution |ˌretrəˈbyoō sh ən|

noun

punishment that is considered to be morally right and fully deserved

 

I remember back a while, when I really felt like retribution was a valid response for crime or for terrorism. After 9/11, I remember feeling that sense of rage that almost 4,000 lives were lost at the hands of some thugs with complete disregard for any human life, their own included, driven to this madness by some incomplete and biased reading of a text that calls for peace and hospitality to strangers. (Religion really drives many to madness and violence, and has been used by almost all religions to justify such for centuries, and those that claim to follow Jesus are no different.) I remember having this sense that We (the collective identity of “The Good Guys”) need to go get Them (the collective identity of “The Bad People”) and punish them. This is a mindset well formed in our society. From this, comes much of our justification for war, the death penalty, and many of our social prejudices against others. We show increasing levels of anger and violence towards “The Bad People” and want them to continue to suffer, often in the same way that we were made to suffer. This is retribution. This moral imperative to answer those that have wronged us or society in a similar or like way in response to an act against us.

 

revenge |riˈvenj|

noun

the action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands

 

What I begin to understand more and more though is that there is little justice in this model. What there is, is a whole lot of revenge. I see more of the concept that we should actually “outdo” what they did to us. I struggle with the idea though that violence begets violence, and that what we create, is not a more just society, but one where each side hardens their hearts more and more, with each rocket and bomb and air-strike and with each bullet fired. Generations of people learn nothing more than to hate The Other. I’m reminded of the movie “The Kingdom” starring Jaime Foxx and Jennifer Garner. The beginning of the movie starts with a terrorist attack on United States interests overseas, and is the story of a team of FBI agents sent to investigate the attack. It’s a good action flick, and shows a lot of the tension of this kind of thinking. The part that eventually ties it all together, and shows the similarity of Us and Them, is the mindset that exists on both the US side of the equation and the Muslim side in response to all the violence. Both sides have embraced the idea of “We’ll kill them all” as an acceptable response to aggressions committed against each side.

(Part 2 to follow soon...)