The Real Natural Disaster

We like to draw stark lines between the widely-acknowledged "moral monsters" of our time -- Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. -- and "decent folk" like ourselves.

That line is really about as firm as a Louisiana levee.

I recently sat down for a viewing of Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (in German, with subtitles) which dramatizes the last days of the Nazi leaders as they huddle in their bunker and await an increasingly-certain defeat.

Hirschbiegel isn't interested in Hitler, the comic-book villain at the end of the video game's last stage. He believes, instead, that Adolf Hitler was a human being. Writes reviewer Matt McAllister:

It was accusations of 'humanising Hitler' that saw the film become the center of a great deal of controversy when released in Germany last year. Certainly it does make Hitler a human rather than a simplistic emblem for evil itself; we see him as a complicated multi-layered man capable of moments of charm and gentleness as well as rage and hate. As Hirschbiegel has said, it is precisely the fact that Hitler was a man that makes the facts much more horrifying.

In Hirschbiegel's movie, Hitler is often, well, quite a likable guy. He enjoys kids. He can be warm and generous. And he's darn sure of himself. It's not hard to see how his followers could become so emotionally attached to him, even to the point of irrationality.

On the other hand, we have the beleaguered citizens of New Orleans. Certainly the folks left behind in the Atlantisized city can be excused a great deal -- few people would condemn looting doomed stores for survival. But then we read an eyewitness account such as this one, and it becomes very hard to keep one's temper.

Anyway we get to the city and it looks like a freaking war zone. The best visual I can give is the movie "Blackhawk Down" when all the Somalians are rushing the city. They are people EVERYWHERE, they are pissed off, and all have weapons, 2X4's, Axes, and guns. If this wasn't bad enough we are 2 white boys in a truck in a sea several hundred armed pissed off blacks. There wasn't a white person to be found. I couldn't get over the little 8-10yr old kids with weapons, I ever saw one carry a claw hammer!

These people were absolutely nuts rammed trucks (stolen I'm sure) in to jewelry stores stealing items, they were tearing apart Wal-Mart carrying out TV's, Playstations, DVD players, etc. One lady was wheeling out an entire rack of merchandise, not sure what it was but sure wasn't clothes for food. They were all laughing and carrying on like it's freaking Christmas.

The present situation in New Orleans has been variously described as "downtown Baghdad" and "Lord of the Flies II." Stores are ransacked for guns and ammo, and armed gangs roam the streets. There is no one to keep order -- even the police are participating in the free-for-all.

It seems incredible that any US city could reach a point of such chaos, violence and dissolution. It's incredible that so many ordinary citizens could be so quickly reduced to their worst instincts. It is, in fact, the nature that always bubbles just beneath the surface veneer of social nicety and affected indignation.

It's the real natural disaster.

Guilt and Judgment

Recently, I was watching a baseball game at a local pub and talking with a server friend of mine. We were talking about some philosophical issue and right in the middle of the conversation my friend threw out this question: “you aren’t trying to get me to go to church are you? Because I am not going.” I was stunned, but took up the question. “I would love for you to go to church, but not because I get another star by my name and need only three more to win a prize. I want you to come because I think you just might find what you are looking for. It’s just for one hour. And if you don’t like it you don’t ever have to go back. But it just seems to me that if you are looking for meaning and identity you ought to look in all places offering those things. Church, if it is preaching the gospel, deals in those areas directly.” “Yeah, I guess that’s a good point. But aren’t they just going to tell me I need to be healed emotionally or something like that. I don’t need to be healed from anything.”
This is not the only experience of this type I have had. Many of my non-christian friends will talk about Christianity, but they balk at the idea of church. And many of them have had, at various times in their life, experiences that have turned them off to traditional religion and Christianity in particular.
When I hear a complaint from a non-believing friend that they felt judged the last time they were in church, I hear two things. Perhaps she was actually judged by someone, and the extent to which she could feel this palpably from the churchmembers is a failure to be sure. But the other thing is that beneath her resentment and anger at the church for judging her, is real and palpable guilt.
In an attempt to be accommodating, and open, my friends and I have often been too eager to judge the church for its judgmental-ness but not eager enough to talk about the guilt that is only the flip side of that experience.
Whatever her experience was it was a part of her reaction to me, in that moment. I could sense it through our conversation and I didn’t push it. The line between felt guilt and perceived judgment is thin to the point of invisibility. And here is the rub.
On the one hand guilt is real, and it often points to a deeper truth. That we are guilty before a holy god, but on the other hand Christians, have, at various times taken advantage of those guilt feelings to extract all manner of things from people. Guilt, among many other things, has become a lever in the exercise of power and subjugation. The modern church cannot ignore its past, nor can it afford to ignore its sins, of which there are many. We cannot condone the disgusting parts of our collective past, but we cannot overlook the other either. This is the irony for the modern Christian apologist.
We must offer apologies for the mistakes and faults of the church. Yet we cannot allow our apologies and our desire to be relevant to somehow turn the gospel into mush and our message into one of appeasement. The gospel cuts two ways, into our hearts and into the hearts of unbelievers. It is only when it is truly doing both that it becomes effective.