Apology for Burning of Qurans?

I a trying to figure out why “good Christians” are attacking President Obama for apologizing to the Afghan people for what some Americans did to the Quran, the holy book of the Muslim people.

President Obama, in his apology, said that the burning of the Qurans, which were taken from possessions of a detainee center’s library and were burned because in the opinion of the Americans, they contained “extremist inscriptions,” was an “unintentional error.”

But some Christians are attacking the president for that, including Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Gingrich said that the president “surrendered” to the Afghans by apologizing for the burnings. His anger is tinged by resentment that the president has not asked for the Afghan government to apologize for the killing of two Americans, reportedly in retaliation for the burnings.

Palin, as well, says that “now the Afghans should apologize for killing two Americans.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has extended condolences to the parents of the murdered Americans, but has not issued an official apology. His energy at this point is being put into trying to quell the rising anger of Afghans who were insulted by the burning of the Qurans.

Gingrich and Palin cannot be faulted for wanting an apology for the Americans who were killed. These were two innocent people who, as far as we know, had nothing to do with the horrific act of burning the Qurans.

But as Christians, i.e., people who say they believe in Jesus the Christ, ought these two prominent political people admit that we as Americans need to apologize when anyone in the name of our government offends another country by an act such as this?

I keep thinking of how we would react, as Americans, if a foreign army official burned some of our Bibles because they thought they were being used for purposes other than spreading the Good News. I shudder to think of it; there would be outrage the likes of which we cannot imagine.

President Obama’s apology (and that from other U.S. officials) has not stopped the umbrage felt by the Afghan people, but that does not mean that as a person of faith and of decency he should not have offered that apology. Right is right. The Jesus I read about in the Bible demands love of our neighbor, and love includes treating them as human beings, rather than as an “object.”

It feels like Gingrich and so many others are attempting to feed into the fear so many Americans have of Muslims, repeating over and over the threat of “radical Islamists.” Yes, there are some radical Muslims, who would tear the world apart if they could, but so are there radical Christians who would be willing to do the same, if given the chance.

Like it or not, we are not living in a vacuum. Because of globalization, we are more and more in contact with people we as Americans never had to think about before. They are our neighbors; they are children of God, like it nor not, deserving of respect. I, for one, hope that President Karzai can calm his people down, and get them to know that there is not a need to hate all Americans because of what a couple of insensitive Americans did.

The president was right to apologize. It was the Christian thing to do.

A candid observation …

Merriam-Webster: qur’ans definition: the book composed of sacred writings accepted by Muslims as revelations made to Muhammad by Allah through the angel Gabriel. →

The Beauty and Power of Forgiveness

Once, not long ago, I listened to a white woman say that she was not interested in learning African-American history. “It’ll just make us mad,” she said, explaining that she knew the history was not good. She would rather just not know about it.

I thought her sentiments rather unfortunate. The only way America will heal of her horrid racism is by embracing the history that is hers. The embracing would be for knowledge, for understanding, not for criticism or blame. Both whites and blacks in America run from our racial history, to the detriment of our nation.

Krista Tippet, in her NPR program, On Being, recently interviewed Bishop Desmond Tutu. He said in that interview, “If these white people had wanted to keep us in bondage, they shouldn’t have given us the Bible!” The Bible, Bishop Tutu said, is “dynamite.” The “scriptures say that we are created in the image of God; each one of us is a God-carrier. No matter the color of our skin,” Tutu continued, “it does not take away our intrinsic worth.”

In Tutu’s South Africa, most black African women were called “Annie,” and most black men were called “boy,” because, the white people said, their African names were too difficult to pronounce. It was humiliating for the blacks, and yet, Tutu said, there was a need to forgive.

The scriptures demand it.

Interfaith cooperation helped make forgiveness the goal in South Africa. “God faith inspired people to great acts of courage,” he said. God faith made people to want to fall into the arms of forgiveness instead of the arms of revenge and enmity.

In the 1990s, there was, according to Tippet, a “heart-felt apology” on the parts of some in South Africa. “Just as we were recovering our breath, the God of surprises” revealed himself, said Tutu. Apartheid could not be justified scripturally. Those white clergy who said that suffered expulsion from their churches. No matter. What they stood for was right, and they were involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Tutu chaired. People who had been damaged by apartheid came forward and told their stories. For many, it was the first time they realized how horrible apartheid had been.

Tutu said, “I was amazed at how powerful it was to be able to tell your story. You could see in the number of people who for so long had been faceless…there was something to rehabilitate them. It was a healing thing.”

Tutu related the story of a young black man who had been blinded by police officers. After he told his story, a member of the Commission asked him, “How do you feel?” and the young man said, “You have given me back my eyes.”

When victims meet the perpetrator, Tutu said, they have a chance to drain the bitterness and anger out. Healing becomes possible, for victim and for oppressor. “We discovered…despite the fact that it was not a requirement…those who heard would turn to the victims, and say, “Please, forgive us,” and almost always, the victims would.”

What would happen if such commissions were held in America? We continually sweep the horrors of racism under the rug, all of us, black and white, and as long as we do that, there can be no forgiveness, no healing.

Tutu says that when he is asked if South Africa has achieved reconciliation, he asks them to look at Germany. “In Germany…where there are people who are speaking the same language, they are still alienated.”

Forgiveness…works.

In South Africa, in spite of many different ethnic groups, with people speaking many different languages, reconciliation has been achieved. “The promotion of national unity, reconciliation, has been set in place.” It is not complete, but reconciliation is a “national project.” It is a process, he says, a process which America has never engaged in.

Tutu says the world in general and South Africa in particular, has underestimated the damage apartheid has imposed on the psyches of the people, both black and white. The same can be said for what American racism has done in our country. The cloud of white supremacy and the underlying belief of black inferiority has taken its toll. It has done much damage.

America has not dealt with racism; she has not dealt with the damage done to a nation which has made one race think it is superior, and the other, grossly inferior. Tutu says South Africans are damaged. So are Americans.

It took a lot of courage for Bishop Tutu and others to call for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Forgiveness is a process, not an event. The first step, it seems is for the victims of horrid racism to be given a chance to tell their stories. Amazingly, anger dissipates. There is room for God, who, ultimately, is in charge.

It would be a wonderful thing if America had, long ago, made room for the God of surprises. God wants his people to live together. God wants forgiveness, wants us to give and to receive forgiveness. There is a beauty and a power in forgiveness.

The problem is not God. It is us…

A candid observation …

How We Romanticize War!

I listen to and read a lot of history; it is fascinating to me, but it also helps me see the world with a little clearer lens.

And one of the things I am seeing more clearly is the horror of war. Veterans come home with memories burned into their souls, as one veteran said, and they never go away.

What shook me was a documentary on the Civil War I was watching. Yes, we know that there was a bad war and people died, but the depth of the horror, and the breadth, eludes us. When I heard the narrator describe how it was bad for people in the Civil War to be killed, but even worse for them to be taken to a hospital, I shuddered.

There was no sterile technique. There was no anesthesia, or if there was, it was highly ineffective. Doctors didn’t wash their hands between taking care of different patients. Men were as likely to die from painful infection as they were from actually being shot.

Bodies of dead soldiers were left in the fields in the Civil War; even in the World Wars, dead bodies and horses often lay in fields, rotting in the sun. In World War I, I read that soldiers often stood for days in the trenches in water, so long that their skin began to come off their feet. In World War II, men often wore shoes that did not fit. In the Civil War, African-American soldiers often had no shoes at all.

The more I read about war, the more I shudder. We so romanticize it. What did Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like after the atomic bombs were dropped? A witness who was there said that the people were screaming, little children wailing, saying, “It’s hot! It’s hot!” Some of the people were so badly burned that this witness, a reporter and photographer, said he could not tell who was male and who was female. One account I read contained this description:

“A huge fireball formed in the sky. Directly beneath it is Matsuyama township. Together with the flash came the heat rays and blast, which instantly destroyed everything on earth, and those in the area fell unconscious and were crushed to death. Then they were blown up in the air and hurled back to the ground. The roaring flames burned those caught under the structures who were crying or groaning for help. When the fire burnt itself out, there appeared a completely changed, vast, colorless world that made you think it was the end of life on earth. In a heap of ashes lay the debris of the disaster and charred trees, presenting a gruesome scene. The whole city became extinct. Citizens who were in Matsuyama township, the hypocenter, were all killed instantly, excepting a child who was in an air-raid shelter.” (http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html)

We are quick to talk about the “bravery” of the men and women who fight in these wars, but we at home really have no idea. We hear wonderful, patriotic music; we see men and women in uniform and say we are proud of them…but what they have seen, we cannot even begin to imagine. It is easier to see a returning soldier hug and kiss his girlfriend than it is to take the time to read about and study what war does.

As war rages in Syria and in other places in the world, I shudder. I shudder to think that there are people, in quest of power, who want a war; they think, I suppose, that war is a sign of strength, but all it is is an exercise in human cruelty. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich criticized President Barack Obama because he apologized for the fact that Korans were burned in Afghanistan. Better an apology, a sign of respect for other people, than an arrogance which only feeds those hungry for war. The leaders of Pakistan and Iran seem to be hungry for war. It’s a scary thought.

The more I read, the more I want and need to read. It makes me wonder what this nation, this world, would be like if there had never been wars. It would seem that, given the horror of war, we in this country and in the world have a lot of men and women who are mentally ill, stressed beyond repair from the ravages of war and the horror they have seen. Post-traumatic stress syndrome might be causing post-war problems in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. We don’t come close to honoring and taking care of these men and women, our veterans, who have seen what no human eyes ought to see.

That cannot be a good thing. War is not something to be romanticized. War is to be hated and avoided.

A candid observation …

Girl Talk: Finding and Filling Our Empty Places

The Greatest Love of All — Image via Wikipedia

Whitney Houston has been dead a week, and I find myself wondering, still, if she was not like so many of us women: empty of the kind of love we crave.

Why is it that so many of us end up with people who are not good for us or to us? We are not with these people under duress: we choose and stay with people who do us emotional harm, who damage our already frail inner selves, and for what?

I guess men do it, too, but it seems like we women do it more. It seems that the worse we are treated, the harder we hold onto the person who is treating us so badly. We internalize blame for the reason we are being treated badly, and we decide that “if we can just” improve ourselves, do something better, that person whom we love so much will see the light …and there will be a “happily ever after” for us.

I am not saying that was the case with Whitney and Bobby Brown, but it just feels like, from the outside, that Whitney, for all her talent and beauty, had an emptiness inside of her that she was counting on Bobby Brown to fill.

Nobody can fill our empty spaces but ourselves.

It is ironic that Whitney sang the absolute notes off the pages when she performed “The Greatest Love of All,” but in the end, resorted to drugs to self medicate the inner pain she felt from that emptiness that too many people in general, but surely too many women feel.

Years ago, a woman came to my door in the middle of the night. She was bloodied all over her head; she was crying and shaking and said she needed help. I didn’t have to ask; I knew she had been beaten. I didn’t really know this woman, so I was afraid to let her in, but I finally offered to take her to the hospital. She didn’t want to go. She only wanted to talk. She wanted some water, and she wanted to talk, and talk she did, about this man of hers who “really was a nice guy.” As she talked, I couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of her injuries. I finally offered to call the police, but she said, “no. It’ll be OK. He just gets mad sometimes. I’m trying to be a better person…”

Though I had never been physically beaten, I had had my share of experiences with guys who were “really nice guys” but who were oppressive in their treatment of me. They didn’t have the problem; I did, because I took it. I was so interested in having a relationship that I accepted treatment that damaged my spirit. I, too, had been trying to be a “better” person.

I have to believe that we women will find ways to identify our empty places, and stare them down instead of running to or staying with people who will only exploit them. It baffles me that so many of us women are so love-starved that we latch onto people who mean us no good. I find myself wondering what it is we are being taught, even subliminally, as we are being raised. What is it that makes us doubt ourselves and be willing to compromise our very spirits for the sake of being in a relationship?

Certainly nobody wants to be lonely, but we should want to have quality lives while we are yet alive, and there is no quality of life when we are in relationships with people who exploit our personalities. We are looking for something and we are finding it, too often, in the wrong places and in the wrong people.

Kevin Costner said, in his remarks at Whitney Houston’s funeral, that she wondered if she was “good enough” as she auditioned for her part in “The Bodyguard.” She was “the voice,” for goodness’ sake! She was amazingly beautiful. She was smart…and still, she doubted if she was good enough. The “empty place” syndrome that plagues so many of us women plagued even her.

Kevin Costner said to Whitney, post-mortem, “Yes, Whitney, you were good enough.” Maybe that’s something we should say, as women, to ourselves, every day, no matter what we look like: no matter the color or length of our hair, the size of our hips, the number of mistakes we have made in our lives. Maybe we should say that we are “good enough” to ourselves, and in so doing, begin filling up our empty places so that we don’t depend on a human being to do what only we and God can do.

Just a painful…and candid…observation.

Whose Phony Theology?

This morning I heard a news report on “The Today Show” about the surging poll numbers of GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum. He is apparently appealing to Republican voters who like his socially Conservative views, and is ahead of last month’s front-runner, Mitt Romney, even in Romney’s home state of Michigan.

But I don’t write this because of Santorum’s poll numbers. I write this to challenge Mr. Santorum, Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich to be honest politicians, and to win their nomination based on truth and not on sensationalism…AND I challenge news organizations to be honest and accurate as well, seeking truth in reporting and again, not sensational reports that will drive their ratings up.

Peter Alexander did this morning’s report, saying that Santorum is using religion as one of his tools to fight his opponents. We already heard him say that President Obama has a “phony theology,” but Santorum took a jab at the President’s Christianity yesterday, intimating that something may very well be wrong with a man whose pastor was Jeremiah Wright. Said Santorum, “He sat under Pastor Wright for 20 years.”

Enter the now infamous sound bite of Wright saying, “no, no, no, not God bless America. God damn America!” End of clip. As the clip aired, Alexander continued talking, saying that Wright was “forced to resign from his church after making inflammatory remarks.”

My soul fell out of my body. First, the clip…which I will talk about in a minute, but Alexander’s carelessness as a reporter made my blood boil. Pastor Wright did NOT resign; he retired after serving Trinity United Church of Christ for 36 years! In his book, A Sankofa Moment: The History of Trinity United Church of Christ,” Wright writes, “It was during those years between 2001 and 2005 that we began to look earnestly for a pastor to succeed me in leading the flock of God known as Trinity United Church of Christ….We were looking for someone who loved the Lord with all their hearts, their souls and their minds. We did not want anybody coming into the congregation who was playing with the Gospel or playing God’s people, pimping them or trying to get over on them!” (p. 283) The church had a Plan of Succession; his retirement was not new news. Pastor Wright preached his last three sermons at Trinity UCC in February of 2008; his last Sunday as senior pastor of Trinity UCC was the first Sunday of March, 2008.

The lack of accuracy in Alexander’s reporting is a giant black eye on a news operation which prides itself as being competent and accurate.

But then…that clip. I cringed. There it was again…ten words taken out of context, and done purposely in order to feed into the fear, suspicion …and dislike of President Obama that has never disappeared. From the claim that the president is not American to the charges that he is really a closet Muslim…a non-American, non-Christian, who is in the White House. Santorum is feeding the sharks and he knows it.

That clip came from a sermon, entitled “Confusing God and Government,” and was actually preached in 2003. In that sermon, Pastor Wright began by asking, “If you were to ask the average Christian, ‘did Jesus cry?’ almost every Christian would quote for you that John 11:35 verse, which most Bible students call the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.”

He goes on to tell the story around that particular verse…but then he begins to talk about why Jesus cried, going to the Gospel of Luke, where on Palm Sunday Luke says Jesus wept over the city; “he cried for his people who did not know the things that make for peace.”

Wright says, “He cried for his people because they were blinded by their culture, they were blinded by their conditions, they were blinded by their circumstance, they were blinded by their oppression…” He described a people who in Jesus’ day were oppressed by the Roman government; he said these people were tired of their oppression…they were blinded by the pain of their situation…”

He explains how people get confused: “Let me help you with something,” he said. “The military does not make for peace. The military only keeps the lid on for a little while…War does not make for peace, war only makes for escalating violence and a mindset to pay the enemy back by any means necessary,” a sentiment spoken by preaching greats including William Sloan Coffin and Martin Luther King Jr.

Wright talked about the people in Jesus’ day who wanted a new king but who were blinded by their circumstances, and “it made Jesus cry because they missed the meaning of his ministry.” He continues to develop this thought, saying in the sermon that people were “confusing external appearances with external power. People look for a miracle, Wright said, which is “just a sign,” but “the deeds of power point to a God who is greater than any physical limitation, and a God who can overcome any limiting situation…The people under oppression were confusing God and government.”

As he develops his thoughts, he talks about how some Muslims (and he is careful to say “not all Muslims”) confuse God and government who “condone a law condoning killing any and all who do not believe what they believe. They call it ‘jihad.'” He says we in America do the same thing: “we cannot see how what we are doing is the same al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag, calling on the name of a different God to sanction our murder and our mayhem.”

“We confuse God and government,” he said. He mentions some of the things America has done in the name of God, including oppressing Native Americans and African Americans…”We believe God approved of African slavery.” He talks about America’s Constitution which assumed men to be “more equal” than women, and he said, “We confuse God and government; we believe God is on the side of the wealthy.”

The place of the wealthy is forever up for discussion. Jesus, in the New Testament, and God in the Hebrew scriptures admonished the wealthy for not caring enough for the poor. William Sloan Coffin once said “Our nation is going to have quite a lot to say about how tolerable this planet is going to be. And if it’s as hard for a rich individual to get into the kingdom of God as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, you can imagine what it must be like for a rich nation!” In other words, the debate about the rights of the rich versus the poor is not new; the chasm between the two has been a subject for prophets and apparently for God from the beginning of time.

In this sermon, Wright makes three points; Governments lie; governments fail, and governments change. He talks about how our government has lied over time “The government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie! The government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin – they wanted that resolution to get us into the Vietnam War. The government lied about Nelson Mandela and our CIA helped put him into prison and keep him there for 27 years. ..Wright talks about well-documented instances in which the government has lied, but ends that section with “God doesn’t lie.

He then talks about how our government (and others) change. “Long before there was a red, white and blue colonization, the Egyptian government was doing colonization. They colonized parts of the Mediterranean. All colonizers ain’t (sic) white…But while the government of Egypt and Pharaoh ran it, they don’t run a thing today, and why? Because governments change. When the Babylonians carried away the people of promise into exile, the Babylonian government was the baddest government around, but when King Nebuchadnezzar went crazy, his government was replaced by the government of King Belshazzar. King Belshazzar held a great big feast, big banquet, defiled the sacred vessels stolen from the temple in Jerusalem, and a hand appeared.” Here, Pastor Wright describes the writing on the wall translated by Daniel, which said to the king that his government would fail. Governments, Wright said, using the Biblical text, change.

But, he said, “God doesn’t change, quoting Malachi 3:6 which says “…thus says the Lord, and I change not.” God, he repeats, does not change, an affirmation and a comfort to people who need to know that God is a constant, no matter what.

Finally he says governments fail. He talks of how the Roman government fail; the Russian government failed; the British government failed; the Japanese government failed …and the American government failed “when it came to treating her citizens of Indian ancestry fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed; she put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, she failed.”

Said Wright: She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing, “God bless America” No, no, no! God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!”

Governments fail, he says, but God never fails. He asks the congregants to refer to the Bible, where it says people will be cursed for not treating people right; in Deuteronomy 27 and 28, there are extensive lists where Moses explains why people (and nations) will be cursed and why they can and will be blessed. The fall of Jerusalem came about because the people “forsook God,” and the curse was that God allowed the enemies of His own people to topple them. It is not a pleasant message, but it is in the Bible.

I challenge Mr. Santorum to read the sermon, instead of making sneaky comments implying that there is something wrong with the president’s theology because he sat under the teaching of Pastor Wright. One might argue that a theology that allowed for the enslavement of African-Americans, the oppression of women, and the exploitation of workers is phony, too, if the Bible is to be taken into account.

At the end of the day, though there is one God, there are many different theological perspectives. The Rev. Franklin Graham gave a lukewarm acknowledgement that President Obama is a Christian, though he strongly affirmed that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are. When pressed by reporters on “Morning Joe” about his thoughts about the president’s faith, he waffled, criticizing the president’s policies which to him seem to be more concerned with protecting Muslims than Christians in places like Egypt. “We are not protecting the minorities,” he said, intimating that a good policy would be one that protected “the minorities,” which, in Egypt, are the Christians.

Yet, in America, many Christians historically have not been all that concerned with protecting its minorities. So, which theology is “phony?” Which theology is “real,” in Santorum’s view or in Rev. Graham’s?

Rev. Graham said “all I know is that I am a sinner saved by grace.” That is the correct Christian jargon, but saying the words does not a Christian make, and, conversely, NOT saying those words when asked if one is Christian does NOT mean that one is not. Rev. Graham is right: the measure of one’s Christianity is found in the way one lives one’s life. Rev. Graham seems to have problems and issues with the president’s policies primarily in the Middle East, making him apparently doubt the president’s Christian belief claim.

As for NBC, I hope Peter Alexander corrects his error, and I hope all of the news operations are careful to check their facts before they put reports out that will only feed the fears and insecurity of so many people. I don’t feel sorry for politicians who rip each other apart, because those in politics know what they’re getting into, but the press has a duty to get the facts right and care about the lives of people it disrupts and destroys when it is not careful.

A candid observation ….