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| Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Once in undergraduate school in a Human Behavior
class I saw a movie entitled The Eye of the Perceiver. This film taught a very important lesson, one’s
perception is greatly influenced by one’s inclinations and prejudices. The last two Friday’s I have attended jumu'ah with
my Muslim son Nurideen. After the khutbah and
prayers, the service is followed by lunch in a dining area. Today I had an interesting and for me
broadening conversation with a faithful member of the Mosque. We were discussing the unfortunate often
negative news coverage of Islam. The extremists,
the killers of innocents, often seem equated with Islam itself. The member informed me that the killing of
innocents is specifically prohibited by Islam so people who do so are outside
the mainstream of the faith. I responded
that sometimes hate groups go under the moniker of Christianity. My friend winced when I said this and said he
would not go so far as to label Islamic extremists as hate groups. Rather, they are people who have been pushed to
a corner. I replied, “Oh so it is not
hate so much as desperation.” He agreed.
After thinking about this, I have considered that desperation
can too often be used as an excuse. For
example, Martin Luther King, Jr. could have justified all sorts of violence in
segregated America and claimed justification based on desperation. Actually MLK was a faithful Christian in a
special context. He was in a land where
passive resistance had some hope of success.
He was confident that he could appeal to the consciences of the American
people and that a significant number of them would respond. They in fact did so, and the country now
honors him with a national holiday. Yet,
I must ask, what if MLK had wished to have peaceful protest in Nazi
Germany. Would he have survived the
night? Would passive resistance really
been an option? I think of the Christian
theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who worked to further an assassination plot
against Hitler. Was the situation then one in which the notion of passive
resistance would have been a farce? Was
killing Hitler out of desperation the only option?
These thoughts only serve to open up dangerous territory. I consider the many atrocities America has carried
out under the name of desperation.
Untold numbers of innocents were killed during the firebombing of Germany
and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.
During the Vietnam War inconceivable things were committed against man and nature
under the banner of desperation during our fear of falling dominoes. We always have justified this by saying we are
only responding to dire threats. We
picture willful and deliberate acts against us and thus justify almost anything
in response. Cannot we understand then
the perpetrators of 9/11? From their
point of view, they saw their culture under daily and direct attack by the
chief perpetrator of Western values. But why attack the World Trade Center? Why
not? Influence destructive to their culture
had a thousand sources, one being untold thousands of expansionist decisions by
American business.
I am not offering up excuses for man’s inhumanity
to man. But I am asking us to look
coldly at human behavior during times of desperation. If we can relieve this sense of desperation,
we can do much to attenuate nightmares and horrors. Religion—especially Christianity—it would
seem should be able to help. Jesus trusted
in his Heavenly Father even to the point of death. But clearly his followers, as in the Garden
of Gethsemane on the night of betrayal, found it a continuing challenge to do
so. We are confronted
with an important question—is self-defense without limits an
inherent right of man? If we think so,
we had best work extra hard to alleviate feelings of desperation on an
international and local level—both of which provide fitting settings for
desperation and tragedy.
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