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A Feminism Survey: Men on the Street
This girl has amazing beatboxing skillz, she recently won the world beatboxing competition.
In 2005, my senior year at Wheaton College, in my ‘Christian Thought’ class, I participated in a debate on the topic: “Christians can Support and Participate in War.”
I was on the CON side, in line with my still being formed beliefs on what a Christian stance regarding war should be. I like resurrecting old writings and so I figured I’d share my opening statements from this debate I had in my college class. I’m not sure if I would hold so strongly to some of my points any more, but as this was a debate amongst Christians who believe the Bible is authoritative, I think these are still decent opening statements. I figure, as this Stories of Nonviolence series continues, there will inevitably be questions regarding the topic and I want to put this post as sort of the discussion point for the topic. Here are my opening lines:
Christian men and women, we have entered the battlefield. The true test has come: Will you follow the instructions of your commanding officer or act on your own judgment of the situation? It could be that from your view in the trenches His commands will result in the terrible death of many and even the triumph of the enemy over you. Will you, instead, respond in the way you discern is most in line with what He would have commanded if placed in your situation?
This debate is not a debate of effectiveness. It is irrelevant whether one side or the other would have been more or less effective of a response, whether in Nazi Germany or Saddam in Iraq. We must rest solely in the faith that following the commands of our God, who has revealed himself in Scripture, will result ultimately in the greatest good.
We believe that the scripture is inerrant and infallible; it is here that our debate lies. Whether His Word calls for us to take up arms is what we are here to debate, not whether this human action or that will result in the loss of less lives.
As Christians we are not to waver our beliefs based on the most current events. It is not because of Christianity’s rationality, reasonability and logical that we hold it to be true; we follow Scripture because we confess Christ as Lord.
Our Discussion is to be based on the Bible. “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecc. 12:13)
We also are not advocating that we do nothing. Pacifism does not equal passiveness. The same God that has told us to “love our enemies” has also told us to “do justly.” We hold each of those commands to be true and relevant, but we do not think they come in conflict with one another. We are here to say that war is not an option open to Christians. What options are open is extremely important, but it is not the discussion we are to have here. In fact, my earnest hope is that you will see what I believe to be true in the scripture, that is, that war is not an option, and will begin to think about and discuss what options there are.
We are in the trenches, and are loyalty is being tested. Do you believe that your commanding officer, the Sovereign God of the universe has in mind the best interest of you, your ally and your enemy? You would do good to follow His commands.
“For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” I Cor. 1:25
I return this week to an individual story, this one has been around for a while, from Terry Dobson a fourth degree black belt:
The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty – a few housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedge rows.
At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer’s clothing, and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that the baby was unharmed.
Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the other end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up.
I was young then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I like to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. Trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of aikido, we were not allowed to fight.
"Aikido," my teacher had said again and again, "is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it."
I listened to his words. I tried hard I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the chimpira, the pinball punks who lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty.
This is it! I said to myself, getting to my feet. People are in danger and if I don’t do something fast, they will probably get hurt.
Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. "Aha!" He roared. "A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!"
I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.
"All right! He hollered. "You’re gonna get a lesson." He gathered himself for a rush at me. A split second before he could move, someone shouted "Hey!" It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it – as though you and a friend had been searching diligently for something, and he suddenly stumbled upon it. "Hey!"
I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little old Japanese. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.
"C’mere," the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk. "C’mere and talk with me." He waved his hand lightly. The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above the clacking wheels, "Why the hell should I talk to you?" The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I’d drop him in his socks.
The old man continued to beam at the laborer.
"What’cha been drinkin’?" he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. "I been drinkin’ sake," the laborer bellowed back, "and it’s none of your business!" Flecks of spittle spattered the old man.
"Ok, that’s wonderful," the old man said, "absolutely wonderful! You see, I love sake too. Every night, me and my wife (she’s 76, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree had done better than I expected, though especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening – even when it rains!" He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling.
As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. "Yeah," he said. "I love persimmons too…" His voice trailed off.
"Yes," said the old man, smiling, "and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife."
"No," replied the laborer. "My wife died." Very gently, swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. "I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job. I am so ashamed of myself." Tears rolled dow n his cheeks; a spasm of despair rippled through his body.
Now it was my turn. Standing there in well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.
Then the train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. "My, my," he said, "that is a difficult predicament, indeed. Sit down here and tell me about it."
I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.
As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict.
By Terry Dobson, from What Would You Do?
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Stop Soot (2:14)
A really cool awareness raising campaign about landmines (3:29)
If you know nothing about the Swine Flu stuff, this is an interesting overview
I’ve started a series on stories of Nonviolence, basically sharing real life stories that I’ve heard over the past few years that tell of creative nonviolent responses to crime and violence. The reason I began these posts was that in my conversations over the last several years it seems quite rare that people have ever heard of actual creative nonviolent responses, aside from maybe the Civil Rights movement in the USA.
My posts last week talked about Nonviolent movements against the Nazi’s during World War II and was taken from a book called The Powers That Be, by Walter Wink. I hadn’t given the jump from personal actions to nations and states much thought before I posted. But, having received a couple comments from readers who both know their history and politics better then I do, I wanted to take a moment to clarify my position on nonviolence, particularly my stance from a faith perspective.
As a follower of the teachings of Christ, the discussion of war and pacifism is not a discussion of ends. We are not to choose are course of action based on what we think the possible or hypothetical ends of an action are (there are probably situations where you can do this, but I don’t believe this is one of them). Certainly if I was not a Christian, not some one who believed in the teachings in scripture and the person of Jesus Christ , I would more then likely primarily consider the ends to choose my course. For myself though, I believe that the means are more important then the ends we might conceive of. That, ultimately the end does matter, but what is important is that we are moral and just in our means or will never have a truly moral and just end.
We see numerous examples in the Bible where a choice was made based on means (as they saw God had called them to) rather then the ends that seemed likely. Daniel in the Lions den, Moses going to Pharaoh, Abraham venturing out, Stephen who was stoned, Jesus being crucified, and Paul going to prison. The most clear example probably is Rack, Shack and Benny (care of VeggieTales), when they refuse to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s God. The ends seemed quite obvious even to them: They’d be burned up in the furnace. But they knew clearly they needed to follow what God had clearly called them to regardless of the outcome; and we were all quite surprised at the outcome.
This is my point: If pacifism is what God clearly calls us to in the Bible, then we must follow it, regardless of how irrational it might be from our worldly (and even historical) perspective. My purpose behind sharing stories of nonviolence on this blog is not to prove nonviolence as a viable means to a ‘successful’ end, though I think that will be shown in many of the stories. Rather, my point is simply to tell these stories so that the concept of nonviolence movies from an abstract fantasy to a more concrete possible reality in others minds.
All this is to really say this, Wink could be wrong on his assessment of the ‘success’ of nonviolence against Nazi Germany. It could be argued based on our history and ones outlook on human nature that nonviolence is simply not a viable alternative to violence, but that will not alter my opinion on it being what followers of Jesus Christ are supposed to do.
(This post was adapted from one I wrote a while back, that has an interesting comment thread worth checking out). [photo credit]
Nazi Germany is often mentioned when I have conversations regarding nonviolence, particularly related to it on the international level regarding war. I’m going to again quote The Powers That Be, by Walter Wink, at length. This is a great and brief summary of the nonviolent action that effectively resisted the Nazis:
The brutalities of the Nazis stand for many people as the ultimate refutation of nonviolence. Surely, they reason, only violence could have stopped Hitler. The facts indicate just the opposite. Nonviolence did work whenever it was tried against the Nazis. Bulgaria’s Orthodox Biship Kiril told Nazi authorities that if they attempted to deport Bulgarian Jews to concentration camps, he himself would lead a campaign of civil disobedience, lying down on the railroad tracks in front of the trains. Thousands of Bulgarian Jews and non-Jews resisted all collaboration with Nazi decrees. They marched in mass street demonstrations and sent a flood of letters and telegrams to authorities protesting all anti-Jewish measures. Bulgarian clergy and laity hid Jews. Christian ministers accepted large numbers of Jewish “converts”, making it clear that this was a trick to evade arrest and that they would not consider the vows binding. Ron Sider and Richard K. Talor comment, “Because of these and other nonmilitary measures, all of Bulgaria’s Jewish citizens were saved from the Nazi death camps.”
Finland saved all but six of its Jewish citizens from death camps through nonmilitary means. Of 7,000 Danish Jews, 6,500 escaped to Sweden, aided by virtually the entire population and tips from within the German occupation force itself. Almost all the rest were hidden safely for the balance of the war. Denmark’s resistance was so effective that Adolf Eichmann had to admit that the action against the Jews of Denmark had been a failure.
The Norwegian underground helped spirit 900 Jews to safety in Sweden, but another 756 were killed, all but 20 in Nazi death camps. German wives of Jews demonstrated in Berlin on behalf of their husbands in the midst of war, and secured their release for its duration. In Italy, a large percentage of Jews survived because officials and citizens sabotaged efforts to them over to the Germans.
During the Nazi occupation of Holland, a general strike by all rail workers practically paralyzed traffic from November 1944 until liberation in May 1945–this despite extreme privation to the people, who held out all winter without heat and with dwindling food supplies. Similar resistance in Norway prevented Vidkun Quisling, Hitler’s representative, from imposing a fascist “corporative state” on the country.
The tragedy is that even though nonviolence did work when used against the Nazis, it was used too seldom. The Jews themselves did not use it, but continued to rely in the main on the passive nonresistance that had carried them through so many pogroms in the past. And the churches as a whole were too docile or anti-Semitic, and too ignorant of the nonviolent message of the gospel, to act effectively to resist the Nazis. –The Powers That Be, Walter Wink, p.151-153
“They even follow them into the bathroom. I interviewed a number of people who sat and watched children take baths and showers, watched how they interact with shampoo and soap and health and beauty products as that category is called, in order to go back and write a report for their clients on what to do with the packaging. It’s creepy. It’s just absolutely creepy the way children are being dissected and put under the microscope by marketers.” –Juliet Schor, referring to Child Marketers, in Consuming Kids
It’s no secret that your kids are being marketed to, you and I can point to ways we ourselves were marketed to, but it hasn’t caused the concern or action it probably should. It really is more then innocent marketing, our children are being exploited for profit without interest or concern for their overall well-being, simply for the bottom-line. This should bother us.
An estimated $15 billion dollars is spent each year marketing to children under the age of 18 in the United States. Given that there are only 74 million kids in that age group, that means corporations are spending roughly $200 per child in advertising. You’d better believe they aren’t blowing $200 on your child without knowing they are going to make far more then that back. And if your one of those invincible, unfettered-type who haven’t let advertising affect your purchasing, then that means they are making double their money off the kid down the street.
This isn’t the same as marketing to adults. Most children under the age of 10 don’t understand persuasion. They don’t understand that the smiling kids on the commercial are paid actors following an elaborate script with the soul purpose of making them want a product. They don’t understand that when they’re told by their favorite character that this junk food is fun or tasty or cool that it’s a deceptive scheme, not an honest opinion. We know when we see a celebrity or athlete promote a product that it’s an advertisement (that doesn’t mean it’s any less effective), but children don’t. Imagine you discovered that everything your trusted mentor (maybe a pastor) had ever said to you was in an attempt to get you to purchase certain items. You’d be shocked and appalled wouldn’t you?
This is something we as parents need to be proactive about. We need to be aware of the influence marketing and advertising has on our children and how we can combat it. We also need to be aware of how we can be advocates against this exploitation in our schools and daycares as well as in the media. The blame and ‘responsibility’ is often put on the parents, but the marketers and corporations bear responsibility too.
“It’s akin to a owner of a large fleet of trucks announcing that ‘our fleet of trucks from now on is going to be barreling down the road, especially where children are, at 150 miles an hour. Parents watch out. It’s your job to take care that your children don’t get hurt.’ No one would argue, in that case, that the owner of the fleet of trucks doesn’t bare any responsibility at all.” –Enola Aird, Consuming Kids
We just watched this amazing documentary, based off a fascinating book called Consuming Kids. It’s an eye opening documentary about the way children are marketed to beginning at a very young age. It’s a must watch film for anyone who has kids, works with kids, or plans on interacting with a child at any point in their life.
Below is the five minute trailer for the documentary which will give you just a taste of what it is about:
If that peeked your interest it’s time to get ahold of the actual DVD and host a screening in your area. Or, if you live in Minneapolis you can come check out the screening I’m hosting on May 22nd. And for those who aren’t interested in either of those options, I found the whole thing on Youtube… Enjoy.
About a year and a half ago, I had this idea. Basically, I wanted to create a community-driven, Wikipedia (online collaborative information hub) for North Minneapolis.
Like many struggling communities, there are a million different efforts for the betterment of the community going on all at the same time. Some are established non-profits with up to date websites, others are a few neighbors planting a community garden. There are lot’s of businesses, neighborhood activities, school projects, and a deep rich history. Basically, there is enough information to fill a book, or a website. And the benefits of a central information hub are far reaching. Getting the hours for the local hardware store, to foreclosure help. to the history of the neighborhood park. But, who would write it?
I figured wiki software, giving anyone the ability to contribute to the website, was the perfect solution for bringing together and building this community information hub. However, I didn’t want to launch anything on my own, being new to the neighborhood and relatively unknown. So, I put together a mock-up of the idea and sent it to a few of the community organizations and folks I knew in the neighborhood. I got a few “great idea” responses and one organization that jumped at the opportunity to make it happen, so we launched InsideNorthside.org. Long story short, the organization has done nothing with the project except pay the $200 hosting fee for the wiki site.
In the mean time, I’ve put in several hours designing the site, spreading the word and building the pages. It’s still something I think is a good idea, but it won’t succeed as just a one-man project. I’ve made efforts at finding others who believe in the project and want to contribute, but so far no one has really jumped on board. In all the edits to build the site there have been about 10-20 contributions besides my own, and that’s all.
So, I’m at a crossroads. Do I continue to try and build the site, growing it until it becomes a useful resource for the northside on my own? OR is it time to just put it to rest and join in other projects and efforts as I have opportunity?
This is a long excerpt from an amazing book, The Powers That Be, by Walter Wink. After coming to a belief, simply through reading Jesus’ call to “love your enemies”, that violence was not an appropriate action for Christians, a friend of mine on my dorm floor gave me this book. It was formative in helping me make further sense, not only of Jesus’ teachings, but also of the rich history of nonviolence in the Christian faith.
Toward the end of the book it includes a handful of stories, one of which I’ll include here. Enjoy.
From The Powers That Be (p. 172-175):
Identifying enemies runs the risk of freezing them in their role, and of blocking their conversion. Treating people as enemies will help create enemy like reactions in them. Too great an emphasis on liberating the oppressed, too big a focus on success in nonviolent campaigns, too pragmatic an orientation to nonviolent struggle, can have the effect of dehumanizing the opponent in our minds and acts.
The command to love our enemies reminds us that our first task toward oppressors is pastoral: to help them recover their humanity. Quite possibly the struggle, and the oppression that gave it rise, have dehumanized the oppressed as well, causing them to demonize their enemies. It is not enough to become politically free; we must also become human. Nonviolence presents the chance for all parties to rise above their present condition and become more of what God created them to be.
Just such a story comes from Lincoln, Nebraska. On a Sunday morning in June 1991, Cantor Michael Weisser and his wife, Julie, were unpacking boxes in their new home, when the phone rang. “You will be sorry you ever moved into 5810 Randolph St., Jew boy,” the voice said, and hung up. Two days later, the Weissers received a manila packet in the mail. “The KKK is watching you, Scum,” read the note. Inside were pictures of Adolf Hitler, caricatures of Jews with hooked noses, blacks with gorilla heads, and graphic depictions of dead blacks and Jews. “The Holohoax was nothing compared to what’s going to happen to you,” read one note.
The Weissers called the police, who said it looked like the work of Larry Trapp, the state leader, or “grand dragon,” of the Ku Klux Klan. A Nazi sympathizer, he led a cadre of skinheads and klansmen responsible for terrorizing black, Asian, and Jewish families in Nebraska and nearby Iowa. “He’s dangerous,” the police warned. “We know he makes explosives.” Although confined to a wheelchair because of late-stage diabetes, Trapp, forty-four, was a suspect in the firebombings of several African Americans’ homes around Lincoln and was responsible for what he called “Operation Gooks,” the March 1991 burning of the Indochinese Refugee Assistance Center in Omaha. (He later admitted to these crimes.) And Trapp was planning to blow up the synagogue where Weisser was the spiritual leader.
Trapp lived alone in a drab efficiency apartment. On one wall he kept a giant Nazi flag and a double-life-sized picture of Hitler. Next to these hung his white Klan robe, with its red belt and hood. He kept assault rifles, pistols, and shotguns within instant reach for the moment when his enemies might come crashing through his door to kill him. In the rear was a secret bunker he’d built for the coming “race wars.
When Trapp launched a white supremacist TV series on a local public-access cable channel—featuring men and women saluting a burning swastika and firing automatic weapons—Michael Weisser was incensed. He called Trapp’s KKK hotline and left a message on the answering machine. “Larry,” he said, “do you know that the very first laws that Hitler’s Nazis passed were against people like yourself who had no legs or who had physical deformities or physical handicaps? Do you realize you would have been among the first to die under Hitler? Why do you love the Nazis so much?” Then he hung up.
Weisser continued the calls to the machine. Then one day Trapp picked up. “What the f do you want?” he shouted. “I just want to talk to you,” said Weisser. “You black?” Trapp demanded. “Jewish,” Weisser replied. “Stop harassing me,” said Trapp, who demanded to know why he was calling. Weisser remembered a suggestion of his wife’s. “Well, I was thinking you might need a hand with something, and I wondered if I could help,” Weisser ventured. “I know you’re in a wheelchair and I thought maybe I could take you to the grocery store or something.”
Trapp was too stunned to speak. Then he cleared his throat. “That’s okay,” he said. “That’s nice of you, but I’ve got that covered. Thanks anyway. But don’t call this number anymore. “I’ll be in touch,” Weisser replied. During a later call, Trapp admitted that he was “rethinking a few things.” But then he went back on the radio spewing the same old hatreds. Furious, Weisser picked up the phone. “It’s clear you’re not rethinking anything at all!” After calling Trapp a “liar” and “hypocrite,” Weisser demanded an explanation.
In a surprisingly tremulous voice, Trapp said, “I’m sorry I did that. I’ve been talking like that all of my life. . . . I can’t help it. . . . I’ll apologize!” That evening the cantor led his congregation in prayers for the grand dragon.
The next evening the phone rang at the Weissers’ home. “I want to get out,” Trapp said, “but I don’t know how.” The Weissers offered to go over to Trapp’s that night to “break bread.” Trapp hesitated, then agreed, telling them he lived in apartment number three. When the Weissers entered Trapp’s apartment, he burst into tears and tugged off his two swastika rings. Soon all three were crying, then laughing, then hugging.
Trapp resigned from all his racist organizations and wrote apologies to the many people he had threatened or abused. When, a few months later, Trapp learned that he had less than a year to live, the Weissers invited him to move into their two-bedroom/three-children home. When his condition deteriorated, Julie quit her job as a nurse to care for him, sometimes all night. Six months later he converted to Judaism; three months after that he died.23
Most people who are violent have themselves been the victims of violence. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that Larry Trapp had been brutalized by his father and was an alcoholic by the fourth grade.
Loving our enemies may seem impossible, yet it can be done. At no point is the inrush of divine grace so immediately and concretely perceptible as in those moments when we let go of our hatred and relax into God’s love. No miracle is so awesome, so necessary, and so frequent.