Brian Williams, St Augustine, & Me (eCrozier #250)

On February 13, 2015, in grace, love, news, sin, St. Augustine, by bishopbenhase

When I was about 14 years old, a group of guys I desperately wanted to hang out with invited me to an overnight party where the boy’s parents would be out of town. I made up some lie to my parents assuring them that there’d be adult supervision. So, I went hoping to fit in with this group. The party turned out to be boring. We played cards and listened to music. Someone brought beer. As so often happens when teenage boys mix beer and togetherness, someone had a “bright” idea: “Let’s go steal some road signs!” We went into the garage, found some tools, and set off to steal. I don’t recall how many road signs we took that night. Who knows what kind of danger we put motorists in during the weeks that followed? Why did I steal those road signs? I wanted acceptance. I wanted to be part of the cool kid’s group. I’m ashamed of my behavior even to this day.

In his Confessions, St Augustine tells about a time as a teenager when he and some friends scaled the wall of a neighbor’s pear orchard. While there, they picked a pear tree clean of its fruit. St Augustine says his group did this “not to eat the fruit ourselves, but simply to destroy it.” Why did he and his friends engage in such pointless destruction? Were there “double dares” declared? For St Augustine, the answer for why he did such a thing was clear: our inherent human sinfulness. OK. But I also wonder, was the pear tree incident about him wanting acceptance by the other boys? Did he just want to fit in with the cool kid’s group? He, too, was ashamed of his behavior.

And that brings us to Brian Williams, the NBC News Anchor, who is currently being pilloried in the media for his lies about his record as a TV journalist in Iraq during the war and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He apparently embellished his record citing deprivations and dangers that were simply false. We don’t know how he really feels about these embellishments. So far, his response to being exposed hasn’t been quite “confessional.” He hasn’t said why he felt he needed purposely to misrepresent his resume. Why would someone who has achieved all he has feel a need to lie about his record? My hunch is there’s something inside telling him that what he’s achieved isn’t good enough; that embellishing his resume would make him more loved and accepted; that the lies he told would assure him of a seat at the cool kid’s table. He didn’t steal road signs or destroy pears, but I hope on some level he’s ashamed of his behavior.

There’s something profoundly human about the need we have to be loved and accepted by others. We all long for others to love us. We desire their acceptance. But such longing and desire can become consuming and twisted because it can never be fully satisfied this side of heaven. Just how much love and acceptance do we need? We may get plenty of both, but we may never feel that’s enough. That’s the power sin exercises in our lives. That’s why we shouldn’t be so snarky about Brian Williams’ situation. He’s just struggling with the same issues with which we all struggle, that is, if we’re honest with ourselves. Even accepting God’s grace-filled acceptance of us through the mediation of Jesus on the cross doesn’t keep us from longing to sit at the cool kid’s table. My prayer is that Brian Williams and all of us finally realize how truly unimportant that is. God’s grace is more than sufficient for all of us.

+Scott

 
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The Moral Bankruptcy of Violence (eCrozier #245)

On January 9, 2015, in evil, Facts, fear, Grief, Justice, media, morality, news, politics, by bishopbenhase

As we all heard the news of the mass shootings at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, it was natural for us to be horrified by such violence, which is so often fueled by perceived political or religious anger and grievance. This news from Paris comes at the same time as the lone surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings begins to have his day in court. In the midst of such violent news, we may lose our perspective, and thus the big picture and the larger trajectory humankind appears to be on, at least based on the real data we have. More on that in a moment.

Mass murder, such as we just witnessed in Paris this week, has almost always been born out of people’s twisted response to their anger and grievance (at least in their own minds) over some great wrong being done to them or to their “tribe” or to their “people.” Timothy McVeigh was motivated by such anger and grievance when he set off a deadly bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995. In the same state 74 years earlier, hundreds of white citizens in Tulsa systematically murdered as many as 300 black residents in a part of town known as the “Black Wall Street,” which at the time was the wealthiest African-American community in the United States. In Wilmington, North Carolina there was the so-called Massacre of 1898, which was actually a coup d’etat of the elected government. No one knows the full extent of the massacre since many of the bodies of the African-Americans killed were dumped in the Cape Fear River and never recovered.

In each of these instances, as we will probably discover with the one this week in Paris, the deranged actors all justified their murderous act or rampage on settling some score or righting some wrong. In their own warped sense of logic (engaging in an evil for an alleged evil), they were right to do what they did. The actions of others, they claim, led them to do what they did. That leads inevitably to the old “ends justifies the means” argument, which is always morally bankrupt.

But we should also know, even as the horrendous act in Paris sinks in, that such actions are actually fewer in number and less frequent than at other times in human history. It may be hard for us to believe because of the media available today, but war and other forms of political violence (like the examples above) are declining. As Steven Pinker illustrates in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, deaths related to such political violence are falling. This coincides with a steady decline worldwide of extreme poverty, child mortality, and hunger as well as the continued growth, since the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, of the number of countries that are democracies.

Of course, such perspective doesn’t help those who mourn now for their murdered loved ones and fellow citizens. For now, we should just grieve with them and share their outrage and sadness, while also reminding ourselves about the historical moral bankruptcy of responding to evil with more evil. But I do hope it helps us all take a step back and see the arc of history better. As Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1967, Jr. (paraphrasing the words of the Reverend Theodore Parker a century before): “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.

+Scott

 
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eCrozier #88

On May 6, 2011, in news, by bishopbenhase

“I’m just glad he’s dead,” God forgive me, was my first thought when I heard Osama bin Laden had been killed. I’m not proud of that thought or the feelings that led to it. And I shouldn’t be. Quite the contrary, Jesus expects more of me than that. If you had similar thoughts and feelings, then I hope you will join me in such higher expectations. The sporadic and spontaneous celebrations that popped up in various places in our country following the news of bin Laden’s death have left me sad and numb.

I’ve had similar feelings that led to such thoughts in the past. I’ve sat with a family of a murdered relative after they were informed that the murderer had been executed. I heard the family members say the same thing: “I’m just glad he’s dead.” But it didn’t end their grief or bring them what we like to call “closure.” My empathy and compassion for that family temporarily gave me the rationale to justify and share such feelings and thoughts. But such justifications never last long. The sadness and the numbness soon arrive. My conscience and faith will not allow it otherwise.

I will not grieve over bin Laden’s death, per se, any more than I grieved over the death of that murderer. But that does not mean that can I bring myself to celebrate it or find any joy in it. I worry about our moral center when we find joy or cause for celebration in anyone’s death. Such violent deaths diminish us all. And the more of them, the more we become desensitized to the next one. Left to our own devices, revenge consumes our souls. Yes, we might say that justice was served. We might also contend that bin Laden got what he deserved. After all, the moral theological principle of “just deserts” has been with us a long time.

There’s a scene in Clint Eastwood’s film, Unforgiven, that powerfully questions this principle. Clint plays a retired gunslinger who comes back for one more job. He’s hired to avenge the brutal face-slashing of a prostitute by two young, drunk cowboys. A young, wannabe gunslinger joins Clint to exact revenge. As the scene plays out, the guilty cowboys are gunned down and so are the sheriff and his deputies all who had ignored the crime committed against the prostitute. So all the “guilty” parties got what they deserved, at least by some moral code. Toward the end of the film, the young gunslinger is shaking and nauseated by what he has participated in. Seeking to convince himself he did the right thing, he turns to Clint and says: “well, I guess they done deserved it.” Clint turns to the youngster and says: “we all deserve it, kid, we all deserve it.”

Biblical faith tells us that we all deserve to die for our sins. So we are only talking about degrees here. Yes, bin Laden’s sin was great. My hunch is you and I can always find someone else like bin Laden who deserves it more than we do. But that is simply our human drive to provide self-absolution for our own sins. In our all too human and fallen world, bin Laden “done deserved it.” Yet, this is no occasion for rejoicing any more than our own sin is an occasion for rejoicing. In the end, all any of us can do is beg God for mercy through the merits and mediation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

+Scott

 
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