Last week I
posted a bit of a rant over the situation in Aleppo, the situation in Syria in
general, and just what felt like the chasm between all of our festive Christmas
preparations happening in their light.
I
appreciate the feedback I’ve gotten about it, which has been overwhelmingly
thoughtful and positive.
Several
people have gotten in touch with me, either in comments or private messages,
all saying something almost identical:
Jon, thanks so much for this. I too am
suffering over what is happening. I feel so alienated from it all, and that’s
so frustrating! Please, tell me, what can I do? Apart from giving to the aid
agencies you mention and voting responsibly, what can I do?
It’s a
serious question, filled with frustrated longing, and it led to a lot of
pondering on my part. I really felt that it deserved a carefully-considered
response.
The simple
and plain answer is that no, beyond making sure aid agencies are staffed and
funded, there is nothing we can do.
Nothing.
We need to
hold that fact in our hands and hearts, to stare into that abyss, for it is the
reason that this is so horrifying.
Not every problem is solvable.
Sometimes, things are just
ruined.
Have you ever had a deep, close relationship, like with a
lover, and said something- a joke, an offhand remark, playful banter- only to
glance over and see that their face has fallen, that tears are starting to well
up, and you instantly realized that your comment cut them to the bone, hit them
where they were deepest and weakest? You immediately try to rebuild;
‘Oh my God… I am so very, very sorry. Oh dear God, I’m sorry…’
Wordlessly, they wave you off. They need to cry, to let
something die inside of them.
You want to die.
You’re flush with fear. You are positively frantic that all might be lost, and
all you want to do is fix. Say something. Talk. Make it better. Fix…
But you can’t fix. This isn’t about you. It is about another’s
pain- pain you inflicted- and everything is in their hands now…
Take that situation, those emotions, increase them by a power
of a million, and you have Syria…
The idea that every disaster, every murderous crisis, can be
overcome through the sheer force of our good will and determination- that
someone, somewhere has the solution that we can all plug into, get on board
with, make happen...
Well, to use King James language, that's vanity...
In some ways, that line of thought is an incredible
privilege. Liberal, progressive Americans and Europeans- with our safety pins, our
colourful ribbons, our online petitions, our ‘million likes if you agree’, our
declarations of ‘not in my name’ and ‘not my President’, our devastating
twitter quips, and our boundless enthusiasm- never waver in our certainty that our efforts can solve anything.
But not every problem is solvable.
Sometimes, things are just ruined.
The
murderous situation in Syria has been nearly a century in the making:
The
carve-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War;
the Cold
War manoeuvrings of the Americans, British, French, and Soviet Union;
the search
for ‘regional stability’ with the help of local (and usually very brutal)
despots;
the
founding of the state of Israel and the plight of the Palestinians in its wake;
the
collapse of the Soviet Union;
the two
wars in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan;
the rise and
spread of a virulent strain of apocalyptic, militant Muslim theology;
the Arab
Spring and the grudging, feckless indifference to it in Washington;
the
spectacularly incompetent handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine;
the equally
incompetent handling of the collapse of Libya;
the almost-unbelievably incompetent handling of the
Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers…
All of that
has led us, inexorably, to where we are today.
Pointing
out the sheer enormity of the problem, however, is in no way meant to absolve
us from blame or give us all a pass to say, ‘well, it’s all above us, and there's
nothing we can do.'
Put that notion right out of your head.
But we need to grapple with the full, horrific reality of
how long and how much greed, avarice, and power-mongering it took to create a
situation like this.
Put simply and bluntly, multiple governments and US
administrations have led us here, and now that we’re here, a whole lot of people are going to die.
We are all
complicit in this in direct and indirect ways.
Every time
we draw clear distinctions between ‘domestic issues’ and ‘foreign policy
issues’ and consider the former more important to how we vote and act
politically, we bear responsibility for what that distinction will mean for
real people all over the world.
Foreign
policy issues don’t magically disappear simply because voters choose to prioritize
issues closer to home and leave the ‘far-away things’ to the bureaucrats and
generals. We will need to bear responsibility for what our governments do, in
secret and in the open, around the globe.
That
includes who they support, who they undermine, who they sell weapons to, what
militaries they train, with whom they conduct business, who they loan money to,
who they punish, who they reward, who they assassinate, who they go to war
with…
Quick example: Did you know that the US is currently bombing- in some
cases, daily- seven countries? Well, it’s true; the US is currently bombing Pakistan,
Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya… and we haven’t declared war
on any of them…
The exasperated cry from the decent-minded citizen erupts,
‘what am I supposed to do about that?! I have no say in that whatsoever!’
If you’ve ever- even once- voted for a ‘pro-life’ candidate,
or a candidate who promised to lower your taxes, or who promised to ‘get tough
on crime’, or who promised to better fund your schools, and who then votes to
give the President or the military enhanced powers to bomb the infrastructure
of this or that country to ‘make America safer’, that is on you.
If that representative lobbies hard for the new computer
factory in your state that creates 400 new jobs, but that factory develops the
guidance systems for the drones that do the bombing, that’s on you.
If those airstrikes kill civilians, which they do almost
every day, that’s on you as well.
If that representative votes not to officially accept blame
or compensate the victims, that’s on you as well.
If that representative keeps it all ‘classified’, that’s on
you as well.
That’s how the system works. It’s how we can so grossly
inflict horror on so many, while simultaneously reaping benefits from it at
home, and also know very little about any of it.
It’s why candidates will stay laser-focused on the issues
‘you care about’- your money, your schools, your food, your home, your faith…
We have,
over decades, built a socio-economic/political system- or allowed it to be
built, which is basically the same thing- that neither requires nor desires
active, informed engagement from its citizenry. Indeed, from the standpoint of
those in power, the less engaged the citizenry, the better the system
functions. It’s particularly pronounced in international issues.
The
spiritual implications of all this comes down to the heart of the matter:
Modern
global capitalism- with its byzantine, labyrinthine, web-like system of
subcontracted manufacturers, billionaire financiers, suppliers, transporters,
buyers, bases, client states, allies, tacit supporters, ‘black spots’, and
classified secrets, spread out across the planet, with none of the players, perpetrators, or victims ever meeting each
other- makes it extremely difficult, if not practically impossible, to do the
right thing, to live justly, righteously, with love, respect, or dignity.
We buy food
with no thought of the grower. Ethical food costs twice as much and is rarely
stocked in major shops. It’s too expensive; no one buys it;
We buy
clothes with no thought of the makers. Ethical clothes cost twice as much and
are rarely stocked in major retailers;
We consume
and throw away. Once it’s in the bin, it’s forgotten. If it ends up poisoning
the drinking water of the population of a Pacific island, we’ll never know; our
major news outlets won’t report it;
Tactical
weapons, bombers, and drones are built in a dozen states at multiple
facilities. One makes a switch; another makes a tire; another makes gauges…
Nobody actually builds a ‘weapon of
mass destruction’; we all do…
We’re
vaguely aware that the US has military bases around the world, but we don’t
really know how many (662) or in how many countries (38), or what actually
happens at any of them;
Is
Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre still open? I’ll have to check… Didn’t they
talk about closing it? How many prisoners are still there? What did they do? It
must have been something; we don’t
lock people up for no reason… Do we?
Who are we
supporting in Syria? Who are we bombing? Do we want Assad to win? What is our
policy position?
That’s globalized,
mechanized, corporatized, militarized capitalism…
The world
we have built- or allowed to be built in our name- makes it almost impossible
to do good.
That is the
heart of its evil.
If all this
sounds depressing and distressing, believe it or not, that’s actually a good
thing.
To feel
anger and sadness over the pain of others and for one’s own complicity in it is
the divine spark of conscience.
What you’re
feeling is guilt- guilt and shame.
These are
terms that modern, progressive Christianity has nearly expunged from our spirituality.
We’ve done so with good intentions, because of the exploitation of those emotions
for spiritual abuse and social control.
But what we’ve
ended up with is very often a spiritual condition that is shallow, self-centered,
narcissistic, and vaguely psychopathic.
It’s
allowed us to ruin things and live comfortable lives, secure in the knowledge
that God loves us and nothing’s our fault.
But when we
actually become aware that something is terribly wrong, and we might actually
have, in some way, had some part in it, we panic. ‘Oh my God, we have to do
something? What can I do?!’
Two millennia
of Christian spirituality have given us resources to help us when things are
ruined:
None of it's fun or pleasant, but it's what you do.
We begin with
confession, our moment of clarity, admitting that we have failed and failed
utterly, and there is nothing we can do to make it better.
We ask forgiveness. When we ask for real, we know we don’t deserve it and we might not get it, but we beg for it anyway…
It is only
when something is ruined that we understand the true weight and value of what we
ask for when we ask for forgiveness. It's frightening to realize that
there's nothing to do but beg forgiveness- of the God who created life, and of
our victims, who grieve its cruel loss…
Then comes penance.
Penance: repentance. External actions in evidence of an
internal transformation…
Penance allows us to approach situations of ruin with
positivity without any trace of our well-meaning-but ultimately hollow- notions
of ‘fixing’.
Penance is power emerging from a place of utter powerlessness.
If
our penance does any good whatsoever, it is out of the mercy of God, out of his
forgiveness, his original creative miracle- life out of formless void and deep
darkness…
In the historic context of our part in the ruin of Syria,
penance is an act on our part of conscious, spiritual resistance to both the arrogant
power that brought about the ruin, the socio-political haze that keeps us
indifferent to it.
Practically, it will most likely look like the works of
mercy; food for the hungry; clothing for the naked, drink to the thirsty,
visitation and advocacy for the imprisoned, care for the ill, and dignified
burial for the dead.
It will be aggressive pressure on elected leaders to take serious and
concerted action against human rights abuses, indiscriminate targeting of
civilians, torture, and murder.
We must help the refugees. We can also donate to groups that are on the ground:
Catholic Relief Services;
Doctors Without Borders;
Save the Children;
Human Rights Watch;
Amnesty International…
That is our penance.
If we do that, who knows? Perhaps we might be saved...
