Missing a point. . . .

THE PICTURE IS OF ST. FRANCIS -- A MAN WHO COURAGEOUSLY AND SELF-DENYINGLY BORE WITNESS TO CHRIST AND THE GOSPEL




Diana West, who writes for Townhall.com misses an important point in THIS article.

She is writing about the problem that some of the moral introspection that some Americans engage in (read liberals and the media) is ultimately counter productive for the purposes of defending American interests. She writes:

If we still valued our own men more than the enemy's and the "civilians" he hides among -- and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq -- our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran, not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.

In the 21st century, however, there is something that our society values more than our own lives -- and more than the survival of civilization itself. That something may be described as the kind of moral superiority that comes from a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay. Morally superior people -- Western elites -- never "humiliate" prisoners, never kill civilians, never torture or incarcerate jihadis. Indeed, they would like to kill, I mean, prosecute, or at least tie the hands of anyone who does.

This, of course, only enhances their own moral superiority. But it doesn't win wars. And it won't save civilization.

Why not? Because such smugness masks a massive moral paralysis. The morally superior (read: paralyzed) don't really take sides; don't really believe one culture is qualitatively better or worse than the other. They don't even believe one culture is just plain different from the other.

She observes an important point in that there are many, many persons who (on the left) talk as though they can live as citizens of no particular culture, without allegiances or commitments other than to some abstract ideals about multi-cultural relativism and the equality of persons. We always have to live our lives from a particular point of view and with particular commitments. Hence, her critique of those who embrace multi-culturalism and moral relativism are on target.

I am concerned, however, with Christians who might read her criticism and not reflect a fully as they might need to about the nature of a Christian response to the war.

What West does not envision, in her Spartanesque retrenchment of moral certitude based on a certainty of the nobility and necessity of American interests, is that a Christian might have a completely non-liberal rationale for taking pause about the "war on terror." Rather, than being unclear about the questions of moral superiority of -- say -- American democratic respect for human life and being fuzzy about the barbarity of the jihadists acts in comparison to those of the American armed forces, a Christian might, indeed, embrace resistance to the war and to the violence necessary to successfully wage because they perceive in Jesus Christ that God's kingdom demands their first and foremost fealty. So, one might not accept the particular moral calculus that West suggests has to be employed. One might, instead, insist that God's kingdom on earth demands of Christian disciples an embrace of peaceableness, non-violence, and courageous witness against the God-denying nature of all violence.

A Christian who embraces this understanding of the meaning of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection would not be guilty of the moral equivalancy that leads to "moral paralysis" as West describes it. Rather, the point of such a Christian's resolve would be to declare witnes to the reality that in Jesus Christ we have learned that one does not overcome evil with another act that is itself (even if remarkably less so) evil. That a Christian is called to bear the abuse of others in the name of Jesus, because in Jesus Christ the world has been overcome. But, the perspective of this Christian pacificist would not be passivity. Rather, it would entail a courageous engagement with acts of self-giving love on behalf of one's fellow citizens, as well as one's enemies. Such a Christian might believe that the best service he could give to his country would be to insist that focusing of Abu Ghraib or other American failures far from being "a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay" actually helps approximate the values of the kingdom that Jesus came to inaugurate and make possible.

One can disagree with that kind of interpretation of the meaning of the Gospel in relation to political exigency, of course. But, let's be clear, it is not an example of failing to be clear about moral issues. Rather, it is a perspective that will not allow a moral issue to be discussed outside of the universal and all-inclusive claim of the Christian faith that Jesus Christ is Lord of all life -- even one's citizenship in a democratic republic that is morally superior to a barbaric jihad.