By Martin Accad
Israeli assault on Gaza. IS(IS) assault on everybody. US assault on Iraq, still vivid in everyone’s memory. Self-proclaimed Muslims attacking the NY twin-towers. Self-proclaimed Jews burning alive a young Palestinian teenager. Self-proclaimed Christians promoting the apocalyptic heresy of “Christian Zionism” to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Spurts of Hindu violence against Muslims in India and Buddhist violence in Myanmar. These are just examples from recent memory. The rest of history is no-less littered with bodies of women, children and men in the name of God and religion. Although I’m talking here about the horrors committed by religious zealots (particularly those priding themselves in belonging to one of the three Abrahamic religions), Atheists and Agnostics are not off the hook either. What of the disastrous a-religious experiences of Nazism, Stalinism, and other secularist and nationalist fiascos of the twentieth century, as well as the ongoing horrors and brutality of the Communist North Korean regime? What’s wrong with the human race?!
The Bible calls it “human fallen-ness” – this natural human inclination towards evil that each individual needs to conquer for themselves by taming the darkness in their own soul. What I will say from here on will sound “preachy” to some. But as much as I try, I am incapable of finding any intelligent “humanistic” narrative to make sense of the despair that I feel towards the current situation of my region and of the world. For in fact, a fundamental teaching of the Bible is that, as humans, we don’t possess in us the required capacity to conquer this darkness in our soul. It is not our natural human inclination, and we have the facts on the ground, as well as an entire history, to prove it. Our humanity is not inclined towards good. The human race is not on a victorious ascent to greatness. Clearly, we are altogether descending an irresistible spiral towards doom and self-destruction.
The problem is that our common understanding of religion does not seem to cut it either, even for those best-intentioned among us. I have many well-meaning Christian and Muslim friends for whom I have deep respect and love. I even have a few Jewish friends around the world, and I would have many more if the 65-year old Israeli-Arab conflict had not made them nearly obsolete everywhere in the region outside Israel. Each of us continues to claim that our religions are the solution to the human predicament. We all denounce our religious zealots as “unchristian,” “unislamic” and “unjewish.” When we sit together, we highlight the most lofty teachings of our founders and their books and brush the more “embarrassing” stuff under the carpet. But the skeletons of our religions keep springing back at us like a jack-in-the-box through the trails of cadavers that our religious fanatics leave behind them. I want to say to all my well-meaning religious friends, it is time to change strategy:
I am not calling for more “religiosity”; God knows how I hate religiosity! I am not calling for secularism either; that too miserably fails our deeper spiritual longings. What I am calling for is more “Christlikeness,” of the kind that loves one’s “enemy” to the point of laying down one’s life for them. Jesus’ teaching in his “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7) has often been viewed as “impractical” and at best as a high moral standard by which we can measure human behavior but which we can never achieve. His staggering teaching about loving our enemies (Matthew 5:44) is proclaimed from our pulpits but generally considered unrealistic. When it comes to practice, our ethics become thoroughly situational, and we take great pains to uphold the necessity of balancing grace and love with justice and retribution. But even that highest fathomable human goal is not working anymore. It is not working in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not bringing long-term reconciliation between communities in long-term conflict anywhere.
Jesus’ most unnatural (to our human nature that is) and seemingly most impractical teaching about loving our enemies in the final analysis is the ONLY starting point that can begin to bring a solution to our self-defeating world. It is immensely paradoxical, yet fully demonstrated in practice through his own life – and death on the cross.
How ironic that Jesus’ death on the cross has been such a point of contention between the three “Abrahamic religions.” The early Christian accusation against Jews of having “killed our Lord” has justified unimaginable hatred, violence and killing against Jews, when the cross precisely should have been our greatest model of love and self-sacrifice. Muslims continue to deny Jesus’ crucifixion and death based on a Qur’anic verse which – in my respectful opinion – they misinterpret in solemn repetition of their Qur’anic commentary traditions. Jesus was not a helpless victim of religious violence and zealotry. As he put it himself: “No one takes (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). The apostle Paul had already recognized that the cross was “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23). It will likely continue to be so. Yet my hope is that at least a growing core of men, women, children, and youth who seek to be pleasing to God, will be willing to embrace the true and profound implications of the cross. May they be willing to lay their lives down, to redeem not just their friends, but more importantly their enemies. If at least those of us who claim to love God were willing to do this, perhaps we would start a movement of peace to conquer our bleeding world.
Note from IMES: Over the summer, IMES blogging will be suspended, except for possible occasional posts. We will revert to our regular weekly blogging in the month of September.
6 Comments
A perfect message.
You have brought me to tears.
Thank you for speaking the voice of God.
Thank you Arkan
Thank you Martin for saying it as it is. It is sad that religions are helping our human race to be better. We need to hear voices like your from other religions.
Thank you Martin for an accurate view of what we should be as followers of Christ. May this plea for more integrity, courage to face our own weaknesses and for more compassion for the difficult ones to love be heard and applied in our life! Praying for the children of Ghaza, the Christian of Mossoul and the ones who are killing them or forcing them out of their home….
[…] in recent months. Last July, as we were beginning to get to grips with the savagery of the group, I tried to call us all, as people who claim to love God, to face and fight our own demons instead of claiming they have […]
[…] in recent months. Last July, as we were beginning to get to grips with the savagery of the group, I tried to call us all, as people who claim to love God, to face and fight our own demons instead of claiming they have […]