I would like to bring together today a scientific study my father sent me an animated youtubed video of, a strange dream I had last night, Planet Earth, Jesus’ call to His followers, and the Israeli-Palestinian issue. This may get weird.
Last night my friends and I watched the “Ice Worlds” episode of Planet Earth (an AMAZING BBC series on, you guessed it, the Earth) where, among other beautiful and horrifying things, we witnessed the death of a polar bear for lack of ice to stand on, and the ill-fated attack of a walrus by another polar which led to its death. There were two issues at play here: climate change caused by human over-consumption, and the competitive/violent nature of nature in this world. Both of these things distressed me profoundly. I went to bed and dreamt (among other strange things) that my family and I went to a restaurant where small, terrified, furry animals sat on shelves and hunting dogs snarled and kept watch all around. We were to choose the animal we wanted to eat and sit down to be served. It was horrifying. In all of this I’m wondering how it is we (humans/creatures) justify harming and killing other sentient beings when it isn’t actually necessary for survival. I’m also thinking that the vision of the lion lying down with the lamb, in light of the awesome but heartbreaking hunting scenes I’ve seen, is sounding a lot less cliché and a lot more desirable. And I’m thinking about empathy, and as usual about justice and Jesus and how all of these things play out.
Originally I wanted to write a whole post on Isaiah chapter 30 because it is just so friggin’ ballin’. (Aka it speaks, to me at least, almost uncannily, some might say prophetically, about the USA/Israel today and how God probably feels. I may yet write about it) Now, though, I just want to focus in on a few verses:
“Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and depended on deceit…[bad things will happen]… This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed be all who wait for him!’”
When I’m looking around this country, Israel, and I’m thinking of the US, but really about the whole of the Western world and increasingly everywhere else as well, I see pretty clearly that “strength” is defined differently than in these verses. Strength lies in our weapons, our pride, our productivity…whatever. Strength most certainly does not lay in quietness and trust, for sure not trust in God (perhaps in nuclear weapons or fatalism). This is where the youtube video comes in.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g&feature=player_embedded)
Essentially what Jeremy Rifkin is saying in “The Empathic Society” is that we are “soft wired” as humans for empathy with others. At first we only had the means to have empathy with family members, then religious affiliations, and then we developed a feeling of kinship with citizens of our nation-states. His thesis, which to me sounds a lot like the thesis of Human Rights and also Jesus Christ, is that we now need “to extend our identities to think of the human race as our fellow sojourners” and that empathy should flow over to our fellow creatures “as part of our evolutionary family” (or just because God created them good and we named them and why cause pain?) and the biosphere as our communal home. And so we become Homo Empathicus. We learn to live in the reality of the Kingdom of God.
I was in the park today and I saw an orthodox couple playing with their two kids. They were clearly American and the likelihood of their living in a settlement seemed pretty high (so much of Jerusalem is legally a settlement anyway). I was there with my Palestinian friend and as we looked on we couldn’t help but smile. They were extremely cute. I very much doubt they wished my friend any harm. And I mean the polar bear no harm when I take an extra 20 minutes in the shower. It’s not even close to a perfect analogy but my point is that most people who are causing harm to others in oftentimes life or death kind of ways are either clueless or simply don’t make the connection between their actions and the consequences. That’s why I think Rifkin concludes that if we let our institutions (educational, parenting, business practices, system of government) repress our innate empathetic nature our “secondary drives” towards narcissism, violence, materialism and aggression take over. I think increasingly we need to think more deeply about institutional fidelity to Christ’s call, and policies of love and empathy. Love needs to be not just the core of our personal drive and interactions but the core of any club, group, business, school or law we create. Just as there’s a disconnect when I order a steak at a restaurant between my meal and someone killing a cow somewhere, there’s a disconnect between an Israeli couple moving into their new home in a settlement and a Palestinian farmer having their land stolen somewhere. And yet the two are sometimes, oftentimes, just as closely related. These connections are actually everywhere. It matters how much and what we buy. It matters what we say and don’t say, how we do or don’t vote. Ask anyone who has seen some of these “disconnections” become connected.
As Christians who are taking advantage of such wonders as electricity, the internet, mass-produced everything, democracy, and education we need to admit we are undeniably and mostly irrevocably complicit in all kinds of things. We can’t all be advocates for all of them. Many of us aren’t called to be advocates for any of them. But we do all need to listen to the prophets around us. And then we need to act.
I was at the weekly protest in Sheikh Jarra again today and I got handed a business card that says “Don’t say you didn’t know” with a link (http://kibush.co.il/about.asp?lang=1) to an Israeli news source about the occupation. This is one of many issues we actually do have information about; we just need to be attentive and responsive.
Let’s end with some more Isaiah:
“Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” –Isaiah 30:20-22
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment