Here are some of his thoughts concerning the execution of Saddam Hussein...
"What do you think of that man?" the old guy asked in a raspy voice as I settled in next to him on the plane. He pointed to the face of Saddam Hussein on the front of his newspaper with a headline story of the looming execution. I gathered myself, and prepared for what could turn out to be a rather chatty plane ride. I replied gently, "I think that man needs some love." And the rather boisterous gentleman sat still, perhaps not exactly the response he predicted. Then he said pensively, "Hmmmm. I think you're right..." And finally, he whispered in a forlorn tone, "And it is hard to communicate love through a noose."
Sometimes we just need permission to say, "It's not okay to kill someone to show everyone how much we hate killing." As Christian artist Derek Webb sings, " Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication. It's like saying murder is wrong and showing them by way of execution."
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Look, by rights everyone of us should hang. There but for the GRACE of God go I.
10 comments:
Hey Dale, good to see you back in the saddle again. We missed you in Alberta over Christmas...
Just curious about your final comment:
"Look, by rights everyone of us should hang. There but for the GRACE of God go I."
I understand what you're getting at here, and I'm certainly no advocate of capital punishment; however, I can't help but think that God is somehow more deeply grieved, or at least grieved in a different way, by the gassing and torture of thousands of Kurds and Iraqis than he is by the sins of those who have committed themselves to following Christ, and who strive on a daily basis to obey his commands. It somehow seems to minimize human freedom and personal responsibility to say that if it wasn't for the grace of God, any one of us would be committing horrific war crimes. Are we prepared to say the reverse? That God's (lack of?) grace is responsible for Hussein's actions?
Having said that, I absolutely agree with Claiborne that it's very difficult to show the love of Christ through a noose, and that the whole eye-for-eye thing was transcended by the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps I'm just quibbling about non-essentials here... I tend to read issues of divine providence and human freedom into far too many issues...
If what you mean is that peace by way of peace is a universal impossibility, then i agree. Its just theory...and has no practical application.
nice to see your names (evy and ryan) pop up on my blog.
To be honest the comment that I made at the end is more rhetorical - intended perhaps to mimic Paul a bit when he says that each of us deserve death due to our own problems with sin. I was also acknowledging that the potential for calamitous evil lurks beneath us and that God's grace has not only rescued me from the consequences of sin but has allowed me the advantage of redirecting my life in order to discipline myself against such horrible attrocities.
my final statement is clearly not broad enough to capture the essence grace and its function in our lives.
I wasn't trying to suggest that God brandishes his grace willy nilly to whomever he chooses and the rest of us poor saps are stuck committing genocide.
I was thinking how priviledged I have been in having some of the advantages offered to me to realize the benefits of God tranformational power in my life (which I clearly deserved no more than buddy Saddam over there).
So i am not interested in dimishing the responsibility of human choice in following God's design.
your question about what God is grieved over more is definately facinating and I will need to ponder it further. I'm not sure that I fully agree with what you've stated but maybe you could expand on that theme for more clarity.
btw - it's not a non essential.
Evy you're gonna have to give me a little more of what exactly you agree with. Are you suggesting that peace needs violence in order to be achieved?
curious?
I guess my main issue has to do with consistency. If we're going to say that it's down to God's grace that some of us enjoy certain benefits (i.e., having certain advantages which allow us to realize God's transformational power in our lives) are we prepared to say that God is equally responsible for cases in the other direction? Is God's grace or lack of it responsible for a life as destructive and evil as Hussein's? We tend not to do this - God is given credit for the good, but when it comes to the bad it's all on the human end. Maybe this is appropriate, who knows. Maybe it's nothing more than a restatement of the mysterious capacity of human beings to introduce evil into the world in the first place.
By the way, I sort of suspected that you weren't trying to say anything about issues of human freedom - that it was a rhetorical point more than anything else. I also agree that we all possess the potential for calamitous evil. I'm just being picky about the way we speak about God's role and intervention in human affairs...
Everett,
I, too am curious to hear more about what you're getting at. I remain uncertain as to whether or not peace by way of peace is a universal impossibility - it's difficult to know because it's never really been consistently applied on a large scale at any point in history. I suspect you may be right, however - this side of Eden, evil means will sometimes be required to prevent even more evil ends.
I still can't help but wonder how far we are meant to imitate Christ in this respect - what the fact that God's way of dealing with evil was to lay his life down in the face of it has to say about those of us who claim to follow him. I'm reading Bonhoeffer for a seminar now, and I was interested to see that even while he was part of an attempt to assassinate Hitler, he was repenting of what he felt to be necessary. He clearly felt that what he was planning to was wrong, but necessary nonetheless to prevent greater evil.
I think you raise a valid point Ryan. I do think there is a tendency to give God credit for positive life outcomes and give credit for bad ones to personal choice. I do think there needs to be more consistency.
Having said that, I am not sure how reconcile the advatage difference. What I mean is: it seems clear to me that because of my birth location, upbringing, socio-economic status and genetic predisposition I have a different (and some would argue better) access to the truth about God. Not only that my environment conditions me (it would seem) to be less predisposed to calamitous violence in the vein of hussein.
Now I would also say that my theological perspective is that everyone has the same access to God's redeeming work in their lives - that God does not play favorites. So I am left in a quandry sort of...
How do you work these things out
You 2 are much too wordy for me (and by wordy i mean i don't understand half of it - this is not an insult).
I tend to think about life and death in this particular discussion similar to your stmt re Bonhoeffer. Grace is individualistic and communal, i feel, and i think biblical past has evidenced that the sins of one can have a huge impact on others, both intra and intergenerational. As such, mans' sin is not just his own but the responsibility of the world. Hussein did not feel remorse or confess wrongdoing, therefore as patrons of the world he lived in we should have authority to judge (technically, i would have to forgive him if he asked...just like i forgave mel gibson!!). In this sense, death itself is not the defining moment in mans' life, but every moment is defining. Death is merely a consequence of error, whether it is Adam's or my own.
Now i realize you will ask me at what point we can see the big picture and fully recognize the utility of each individual's actions/motives (future actions?), and i must concede no response. I will kick the money lenders out of the temple though, if you can see my alegory(?).
"it seems clear to me that because of my birth location, upbringing, socio-economic status and genetic predisposition I have a different (and some would argue better) access to the truth about God. Not only that my environment conditions me (it would seem) to be less predisposed to calamitous violence in the vein of hussein."
You're right Dale - acknowledging the above (and I certainly think that it's true) is difficult to reconcile with the theological perspective "that everyone has the same access to God's redeeming work in their lives - that God does not play favorites."
The way I at least partially reconcile the difficulty is to broaden my conception of the scope of human freedom (so as to account for the sociological, psychological, and political factors which can lead to the production of a monster like Hussein) and conceive of the scope of salvation differently. In short, I suppose I would move toward an "inclusivist" understanding of salvation whereby God sort of "makes up the difference" in the life of someone who genuinely does seek him even if it is in a confused manner from our perspective. God's grace and goodness are bigger than cases where it seems that some have less of a chance of responding appropriately to the gospel than others simply due to where they are born, how they are raised, and various other societal factors.
Inclusivism seems to put the focus more on the grace of God (who understands all of the factors that go into how human beings turn out) than on human ability to proclaim and transmit his saving message effectively enough. John Sanders has written some pretty good stuff (at least from my perspective) on this.
I think it is also important to note that saying that "everyone has the same access to God's redemptive work" is not the same thing as saying that God "desires that all should be saved." I think I would affirm the latter, but not the former. I simply don't think that everyone has the same access to understanding and applying the benefits of what Jesus accomplished - at least not in the same way. I don't know how we could say that some Arab kid who is schooled in hatred towards the USA, for example, from the time he is born, and associates Christianity with this nation, could be said to have the same access to embracing Christ that I do. However, this is probably another discussion and, as Everett alluded to, I'm already writing another novel here..
good thoughts ryan - its helpful.
That whole idea of God 'making up the difference' is an interesting perspective. Personally, I like it alot but I could see where someone could argue that perhaps even in his deluded state Saddam believed that he was serving God. Does/would God make up that kind of difference in his life?
I think it is important for us not to superimpose our own ideas of how people access God's grace especially when we can't see the heart of the person as completely as God can. We are so judgemental as it is...
It's not hard for me to see that Saddam is accountable for deep attrocities that he was not ignorant of so maybe that is the starting point sort of...
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