As the pastor of a small congregation of the United Church of Christ in Monroe, Washington, I lead worship every Sunday. Part of our worship service every Sunday is a time of confession. I usually introduce it by saying that it is the time in the service when we acknowledge our need for God’s grace. It consists of a written unison prayer of confession that I write followed by a brief time of silence for personal, private confession. As I was leading that part of the worship service on Sunday, March 20, 2011, a day after a full day of US military action against Libya, as we went into the time of silent, personal confession, I asked God’s forgiveness for the ways that I participate in this country’s systems that engage in and perpetuate violence. I first felt God’s grace and forgiveness pouring over me like a warm ointment, but then something else happened. An image appeared to me. It was the image of God kicking me in the butt and saying “So what are you going to do about it?”
I confess that I have no idea what I’m going to do about it, or even what I possibly could do about it. It seems that all I can do is analyze those systems that engage in and perpetuate violence, hold them up to the judgment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and keep proclaiming Jesus’ Gospel of nonviolence. I’ve been doing that for a long time now, although the audience for the writing and my preaching in which I do it is pathetically small. I’ve done it in my preaching to my small congregation, although I admit that I haven’t done it as forcefully as I might for fear of alienating some of my church people. I did it some in my book, which isn’t exactly an international bestseller--yet. I’ve done it in many of the posts on this blog, parts of which have been read by people all over the world but that in total has reached only a small number of people. I preach and I write, but that’s all I do. I continue to pay taxes to the United States government, an obscene percentage of which go to support the war machine and is used to kill and maim God’s people all over the world. I pay the taxes because I don’t want to go to jail for not paying them, and that’s how it works in human political structures, especially empires like the United States. I ask myself why we Americans aren’t out in the streets in our millions demanding an end to American militarism, to the violence we inflict on people all over the world, and to the use of our tax dollars to do it, but I don’t have an answer; and I’m not out in the streets doing that. I’ve never been arrested for an act of civil disobedience against the war machine, and because I haven’t I confess that I have not been as faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as I might be. I tell myself that my gift is writing, my gift is preaching, it isn’t physical action; but I ask myself: Is that a copout? Is it a rationalization trying to cover up the fact that I don’t really have the courage of my convictions? So I ask God’s forgiveness, and I receive it; but then God kicks me in the butt and says “What are you going to do about it?”
I guess what I’m going to do about it is what I’ve done about it before. I’m going to preach, and I’m going to write. It’s not enough, but it’s all I can, or at least all I’m prepared, to do. Writing is my gift, and being an activist certainly seems not to be, or am I throwing up rationalizations again? Either way I write, and I’m going to start by addressing here the latest act of American militarism, our military strikes against the forces of Muammar Khadafy in Libya. I start that analysis by admitting that this particular use of American military force challenges my commitment to nonviolence. After all, everyone who believes in freedom and in human dignity must support the Libyan rebels against the madman Khadafy. Not that all the rebels are necessarily freedom loving, democratically inclined people, but Khadafy is a megalomaniac who has oppressed his people and distorted Libyan life through the creation of a totalitarian cult of personality on the Stalinist model. He has destroyed any institutions in his country, civil or governmental, including the military, that could possibly have become centers of opposition to his rule. That Khadafy is a very bad guy is beyond question, and that fact does, I admit, make the analysis of our use of violence to support his opponents more difficult.
Khadafy and the humanitarian nightmare that will surely result if he succeeds in defeating the rebels make the analysis of our use of violence to support his opponents more difficult, but, in the end, one is either committed to nonviolence or one is not. So I oppose my country’s use of force in this situation as I oppose it in every situation. That being said, there is a lesson to be learned here about the effectiveness of nonviolence in a violent world and about how the international community can use nonviolence to control madmen like Khadafy.
The reason why I and so many have to struggle with our commitment to nonviolence in the current instance is that the international community waited far too long to try to remove Khadafy and did far too little when we did anything at all. We had sanctions in place against Libya when we listed that country as a state sponsor of terrorism; but those sanctions did nothing to remove Khadafy from power. There is one nonviolent thing that the international community could have done that would have removed him from power, and that is to stop buying his oil. Oil is, as far as I know, Libya’s only meaningful resource. The whole economy depends on it, which means that the whole economy depends on the sale of that oil to the industrialized nations. Very little of that oil comes to the United States, but some countries in western Europe, especially Italy, are heavily dependent on it. If the world, acting in unison, had stopped buying Libyan oil Khadafy would have been gone in very short order. Whether his removal would have been violent or nonviolent I cannot say. That would be up to the Libyan people; but we would not have engaged in violence. Coercion yes, but nonviolent coercion is not violence. If the world had said with one voice we will not buy oil from that brutal lunatic, that brutal lunatic would not have lasted long. We didn’t do that. The industrialized world is so addicted to oil that we didn’t do that. So now we perceive that we have no choice but to use military force to protect the rebels and try to oust the dictator from power.
This lesson applies to more than Libya of course. We so often think that violence is the only solution to a problem because we wait too long to address the problem with creative, assertive, nonviolent action. There is in fact a nonviolent solution to every problem, however difficult it may be to imagine and implement that solution; but nonviolence isn’t easy. It takes time. It takes creativity. It takes prophetic imagination. War is fast and requires no creativity or imagination at all. Just arm the bombs, aim the rockets, load the cannon and the rifles, and blast away. Great demonic creativity may have gone into creating those weapons, but it takes no creativity at all to use them. Technical skill yes, creativity no. So violence seems so much easier, and often it is; but that doesn’t make it right. It is still wrong.
Will we learn the lesson of Libya? Will we learn that it is better to apply creative, effective nonviolent measures as soon as a problem is identified than to wait until only violent measures will seem to work? History gives us no reason to be optimistic about the chances of the world, including the United States, learning that lesson. For people of faith there is, however, reason to hope. For us Christians our reason to hope is our firm conviction that when we act with creative, assertive nonviolence to oppose the forces of evil we are following the way of Jesus, we are doing the will of God. In the end that is all we really need to know. Yet the words of the great Pete Seeger still echo: When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
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