PartyTime: This Minister From Seattle Captures The Way I Feel Right Now...
Alternative is partnering with others
By ANTHONY B. ROBINSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Thursday, March 20, 2003
seattlepi.nwsource.com
In the church we are midway through the season of Lent, the 40-day period of preparation for Easter. Lent begins, every year, with the account of the 40-day temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. This temptation does not, however, consist in the debauchery often associated with temptation. It consists not in appeals to be less than human but to be more, to be as God, and to reach for powers not rightfully our own.
As the United States wages war against Iraq, without the support of the United Nations, or of most of our allies, or of world opinion, my apprehension is that we have succumbed to the temptation to reach for and exercise a power that is not rightfully ours. Not content to be one among the nations of the world or to live within limits, we seem intent on playing God.
I may, of course, be wrong. Perhaps we alone, along with Britain, have the courage to resist evil. Such is the president's argument. There are reasonable people who share his views, who believe we ought to have moved against Saddam Hussein long ago, and that the responsibility for this war is his, not ours. They may be right. But I am not persuaded.
Not only am I not persuaded about the war itself, I fear the path and role the United States is taking in the world. The war itself will probably be relatively brief and successful, in military terms. Certainly we must hope so, both for Americans serving in the military, and also for the people of Iraq. Iraq today is a country where the majority of the population is under age 15, or as a friend put it, "Iraq is a middle school with a standing army and a dictator."
While I grieve the immediate horrors of war, I worry even more about the path we are on as a nation, and about the war's aftermath. The president and key administration players have a grand vision for redrawing the map of the Middle East. First, democracy in Iraq, then the two-state solution in Israel, which will prompt democratic insurgencies in Iran and Syria. It is a grand vision, one New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called "breath-taking." It is not only that, it is playing God.
By now, the major events and themes of 2002 have faded from memory and public view. But they offered instructive warnings. The big events of last year were the business scandals, for which Enron became shorthand, and the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Both are stories about power, power unchecked and without limits. The lesson of 2002 was Lord Acton's, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But the lesson of 2002 has been lost on the present administration and president.
The end of the Cold War has meant that American power is unopposed and unchecked. There is no more Soviet Union over against us. It is a uni-polar world, a development that has been hailed as a victory. But every victory holds hidden within it the seeds of defeat. Within the success of the Cold War's end, lies the temptation to brook no limits on American power, and to pursue our perceived national interest unchecked. I doubt that the present administration would have come into office with such a cavalier attitude about international treaties, or the need for multilateral action were it not for our present pre-eminent and unchecked power.
The French and Germans have been trying to tell us, along with much of the rest of the world, that it is in our own self-interest, not to mention the world's, to accept limits on our power and not overstep our bounds. The president has taken the opposite path, threatening from the beginning to go it alone.
Now the die has been cast. We have begun a war that may be over, in one sense, in a matter of weeks. But since the president has pledged to bring stability, freedom and even democracy to Iraq, and hopes to reconfigure the region, it will not be over for a long time. We have been seduced by our own success, beguiled by the notion that we can re-arrange the world by force of arms. The alternative is not indifference to the world or isolation. It is working in partnership with others, acknowledging their interests and needs, and thus accepting limits on our powers.
Wendell Berry wisely observed, "We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being human-not by trying to be gods." I may be wrong. I hope that I am. But I fear we have fallen prey to temptation, the temptation to play God.
__________________________________________
Anthony B. Robinson is senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church: United Church of Christ in Seattle. E-mail: trobinson@plymouthchurch seattle.org |
