Every Thursday evening around sundown for the past four or five years, maybe longer, a small group of people, mostly over 60, have gathered on the corner of Swarthmore and Sunset to protest the war. They are quiet, simply standing by the cross-walk with a few placards, "honk if you want peace," "end the war," nothing elaborate, nothing too profound, just simple protest. You have to wonder what they think they are accomplishing with their largely silent protest, traffic roaring past, or ignoring them while they wait for the lights to change, but they are there every week without fail. I find it inspiring, challenging and convicting at the same time.
It just so happened that I was reading Caputo today,
finishing up What Would Jesus Deconstruct? a definite top ten
read of 2007. In chapter 5 of his book Caputo asks the question, "Whatever happened
to the Sermon on the Mount? And then proceeds to offer us at least one explanation for its 'disappearance' from Christian life by tackling a
few key issues, the first of which is power and violence.
Noting that it
was the 4th century thinking of Augustine that gave us the concept of
'just war,' Caputo writes, "just imagine the challenge Jesus would have faced trying to work "just war" into the Sermon on the Mount! If we recall the historical context of "just war" doctrine, then it is clear that the only just war is the war against war and the war we should have with ourselves on the matter of war. Indeed the theory might be read as calling for no more war, on the grounds that hardly any war would ever be just."
Caputo doesn't pretend to have easy answers and notes the complexities of the issue--he writes what we writes in order to "emphasize how infinitely delicate a Christian conscience must be about war." About the war in Iraq in particular, Caputo says, "Can a heart formed by the gospel of Christian love judge that the harm caused by this war is proportionate to the evil we proposed to relieve?" There is an inherent powerlessness to the small group of people protesting each week, and perhaps that is why it is such a potent sight to see every week.
Caputo also tackles patriarchy and what he calls the two 'large white elephants' in the room--abortion and homosexuality--issues that, in his view, have caused much of the church to lose their equilibrium. "The ethical and political voice of the church has been distorted and drained by issues surrounding sexuality and marriage while violence and poverty are left to fester like unattended diseases in the body of the church." Again Caputo offers a provocative response, by-passing the parsing or proof-texting of scripture to say, "My own view is that the outcome of a careful debate about these matters would be to show that there simply are no arguments to show that homosexual love is of itself anything else than love, and that therefore, since the essence of the Torah is love, it hardly falls afoul of the law. To be sure, when it is not love, when it is promiscuity, or infidelity to a sworn partner, or rape, or the sexual abuse of minors, or in any way violent, then it is indeed not love, but that is no less true of heterosexuality." Well said, words to live by I think, on both counts.
words to live by indeed!
Posted by: seeward | 14 December 2007 at 05:58 PM