Okay, it has been awhile since I’ve done one of these and so I thought I would, once again, give away some books.
Here are the books I’m offering:
1. Christian Theology (Second Edition) by Millard J. Erickson.
2. Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart.
3. In the Ruins of the Church by R. R. Reno.
4. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya by Ruth A. Tucker.
5. Community That is Christian by Julie A. Gorman.
However, I’m going to change the rules a bit. There is a book I want — Documents and Images for the Study of Paul by Elliott and Reasoner — so I’m going to also offer a trade. Basically, it goes like this. Anybody is eligible to receive the free books. Anybody who expresses interest gets their names put into a hat for a random draw to determine the winner.
If, however, you have a copy of the Elliott and Reasoner book that you would be willing to trade, or if you simply want to buy me the Elliott and Reasoner book in exchange for the ones I’m offering, then only those who make this offer will have their names put into the hat. If only one person makes the offer, then that person gets the books. If nobody makes the offer, than everybody goes into the draw.
The draw will be held in about a week and I will notify the winner.
November Books
Well, November was a heavy writing month, so not a lot of reading was done. Here’s what I got:
1. Criticism of Heaven: On Marxism and Theology by Roland Boer.
Roland was kind enough to send me a copy of this book after this post prompted this exchange over on his blog. He has also continued to extend that kindness and has agreed to be interviewed about this book on my blog, so hopefully that will be posted in the (near-ish) future.
In this book — the first in a series of five — Boer looks at the ways in which theological themes or biblical reflections impact the writings of eight prominent “Marxist” scholars: Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Louis Althusser, Henri Lefebvre, Antonio Gramsci, Terry Eagleton, Slavoj Zizek, and Theodor Adorno. The first two he refers to as “biblical Marxists,” the next four as “catholic Marxists” and the final two as Marxists who exhibit a “Protestant turn.”
As with any book exhibiting this kind of scope, some chapters are better or more exciting than others. With some (notably Althusser and Lefebvre) it seems as though Boer is digging pretty hard to meet the demands of his project. With others, however (notably the chapters on Bloch and Gramsci), the writing really is quite captivating. I also found the chapter on Zizek to be of quite a bit of interest. I’ve read a lot of Zizek but not a lot of what has been written about him, and so it is interesting to read what others are saying who have stepped back and taken the time to study his entire project. Boer is also quite critical, probably more so of this author than any of the others mentioned, to it is interesting to see Zizek’s praise for Boer’s work on the back cover.
All in all, quite a good read. I would like to pick up the other volumes in the series (or maybe Roland could mail them to me, along with that case of beer and carton of smokes he still owes me…), and would recommend them to others who are interested in this sort of thing.
2. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
This is the first volume of McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and it is fantastic–right up there with my other McCarthy favourites (Blood Meridian, The Road and Suttree, although it feels deceptively gentler than each of those novels). It is something like a coming of age story, something like a love story, and something like Scripture. Recommended reading (if you want a detailed plot overview, see here, but I would suggest just jumping in blind).
3. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy.
This is the second volume of the Border Trilogy. It is not as good as the first — it lags for about the first 100pp, but then it gets back up to McCarthy’s standard for story-telling (the first part of the book has been compared to Moby-Dick so that may be why I found it slow!). Oddly enough, it was in this book that I encountered one of the better possible descriptions of my own “apocalyptic” life experiences that led me to the faith I live. Here’s the quote, with some context thrown in to make sense of it:
He carried within himself a great reverence for the world, this priest. He heard the voice of the Deity in the murmur of the wind in the trees. Even the stones were sacred. He was a reasonable man and he believed that there was love in his heart.
There was not. Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear in them but only that wildness of heart that springs from such longing and they cry out to stay in his presence for they know at once that while godless men may live well enough in their exile those to whom He has spoken contemplate no life without Him but only darkness and despair.
That, I reckon, sums up a lot of my journey. Also recommended reading. (Aside: there are a lot of quotable passages in this book. As I was looking back through it to write this, I came across several that could inspire posts of their own.)
4. As I crossed a Bridge of Dreams by Lady Sarashina.
Since I was having a lot of fun reading the Norse and Icelandic sagas, I thought I would try something different and so I decided to read this book, which was written by a woman who lived in Japan during the 11th century (which means it dates to around the same time as the sagas). I have concluded that it is far, far more exciting to read about Vikings than ancient Japanese women who write poems to each other, or to trees, or who get excited to go on a trip to nowhere to do nothing. So, while this book is interested just for the glimpse it provides into a world that is dead and gone, the woman who lived in that world sure lived one helluva boring life.
5. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Ann-Marie MacDonald.
I grabbed this play out of a free book bin and read it at the bar one night after I got too tipsy to read anything heavier. It is a pretty clever feminist reading of Othello and Romeo and Juliet. Lots of wordplay, lots of innuendo, mimicking the bard and all that. However, I was never a big Shakespeare fan (although I did once send my wife to a sketchy hotel to buy a $10 leather-bound complete works of Shakespeare from a big sketchy dude… sorry, wife!), and I never was really able to get into reading plays, so I feel pretty ho-hum about all this.
The New Testament and Violence. Part Two: The Nonviolence of Paul
[This is the second part of my ongoing series. For Part One, see here. I will turn to the Sectarianism of John in my next section, before offering some concluding remarks in a final post.]
The Nonviolence of Paul
You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the assembly of God and was ravaging it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many contemporaries in my nation, being far more of a zealot for my ancestral traditions ~ Gal 1.13-14.
The turn from Jesus to Paul leads to what some may consider to be an unexpected reversal. Having noted the violence of Jesus, it is interesting to note how Paul develops the Jesus tradition in a more thoroughly nonviolent, or pacifist, manner. Just as our assumptions about “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” have been challenged, so also our assumptions about Paul, the man blamed for legitimizing the sword of the State along with a host of others evils, end up being reworked in light of what the texts actually do and do not say.
Of course, like Jesus, Paul has not entirely escaped from the ideologies of the triumphant that seek to impose “legitimate” violence upon one’s enemies. Like Jesus, Paul sometimes speaks of a coming moment of cataclysmic divine violence and judgment (cf., for example, Ro 2.5-11; 2 Cor 5.10; Gal 1.8-9; Phil 3.18-19; 1 Thess 1.9-10, 2.16). Also like Jesus, he is not beyond verbally abusing his opponents – even wishing that some of his opponents in Galatia would go ahead and castrate themselves (Gal 5.12 – Paul refers to a comparable group as “dogs” in Phil 3.2)! However, it is worth noting that in relation to both of these areas, Paul seems to exhibit more grace than Jesus. In relation to violent divine judgment, Paul focuses God’s wrath upon the here-and-now, with God’s wrath simply being God’s refusal to intervene and prevent the inevitably tragic end result of a people’s self-chosen sinful activities. When speaking of final judgment, however, Paul does not have a lot to say and, in fact, he refuses to cast any sort of judgment upon either those outside of the assemblies of Jesus (cf. 1 Cor 5.9-13) or the enemies of those assemblies (cf. Ro 12.14-21). Even when Paul does find it necessary to pronounce an exceedingly harsh judgment upon another Jesus-follower, something he describes as handing a person “over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” Paul still limits this judgment to the temporal realm, so that the spirit of this man “may be saved on the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5.5; see also 1 Cor 3.12-15). Finally, not only does Paul limit his reflections upon some final divine act of violence, but he also leaves the door open for a great final act of universal salvation. Thus, he writes, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor 15.22) and again, “just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Ro 5.18 – some tantalizing results are also produced when Phil 2.10-11 is read in conjunction with Ro 10.9!).
Turning to the second parallel, having noted that Paul sometimes loses his temper and verbally abuses his opponents, it is still worth noting that Paul is much more focused upon redefining enemies as non-human structural, cosmic and spiritual Powers. Again, in this regard, it seems to me that Paul demonstrates more grace than Jesus – not only holding out the possibility of final salvation for the worst offenders and for his opponents, but also shifting the focus of one’s warfare or hatred to the non-human realm. This emphasis comes through especially strongly in the Deutero-Pauline epistles of Colossians and Ephesians (which remain much more faithful to Paul than the Pastorals), but it is already found in the non-contested Pauline letters. Thus, in Ro 13.12, Paul calls the Jesus-followers to put on armor, not of metal in order to battle other people, but of light in order to battle darkness and the vices of the flesh (a metaphor further developed in Eph 6.10-17). Thus, while some of our contemporary bourgeois pacifists may express discomfort with Paul’s usage of warfare imagery here or elsewhere, the point is that Paul has shifted the terrain of the war from the personal to the spiritual and structural realms.
Therefore, when we compare Paul’s rhetorical violence to that of Jesus, we discover a Paul who is much more gentle, meek, and mild than Jesus. This difference is only heightened when we compare Paul’s actual actions to those of Jesus. For, unlike Jesus, we are hard pressed to find any sort of violent action employed by Paul as God’s ambassador to the nations.
However, it is important to note that this refusal of violence comes after Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. Prior to that apocalyptic event, both Paul and Luke claim that Paul was engaged in violent actions – arresting and imprisoning some, seizing property, and even assisting in the executions of others. Here Paul’s references to his allegiance to “Judaism” (a term coined to express opposition to “Hellenism” and highlight separation from other nations), to being a “Pharisee” (meaning a “separated one”), combined with the mention of his “zeal,” all lead to the hypothesis that Paul, before his encounter with Christ, was a member of a Pharisaic group that modeled itself after the likes of Phinehas and the other “heroes of zeal” in the Hebrew Scriptures—people whose unconditional commitment to the distinctiveness of Israel was exhibited in a willingness to use violence, even against other Judaeans. For Paul and other zealots (i.e. others who were “zealous” for Israel), zeal was “something you did with a knife” (to borrow the words of N. T. Wright).
Therefore, one of the ways in which Paul’s call produces a significant conversion in his work post-Damascus is the way in which it moves him from violent to non-violent actions. Instead of violently purging the people of God, Paul embraces non-violence in order to suffer with Christ and extend the offer of the peace of God to the members of all the nations. Paul’s zealous violence has given way to zealous love which now manifests itself, not in the willingness to kill but in the willingness to die. Of course, Paul does not completely break with his old behaviours – in Acts 13.6-12, for example, we read of Paul temporarily blinding a sorcerer named Elymas – but the transition is a very significant one.
Does this mean that Paul understands the conflict between that which is life-giving and that which is death-dealing in a different way than Jesus? Do his different tactics reflect a different agenda? I do not think so. It seems to me that Paul is just as deeply committed to the pursuit of life, and the worship of the God of Life, over against Death and the death-dealing Powers of his day. Paul’s embodied proclamation of the good news of Jesus’ lordship, still runs completely against imperial modes of domination. Thus, Paul urges economic mutuality, along with the emancipation of slaves, and the equal status of all – men and women, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free people, within the assemblies of Jesus. Yet almost nowhere does he engage in the same sort of violence against private property exhibited by Jesus. I can only think of one example of Paul engaging in an illegal action of that nature.1 While in Philippi, Paul and Silas encounter a female slave who is possessed by a pythonic fortune-telling spirit. This slave, Luke tells us, made a great deal of money for her masters. However, Paul ends up casting this spirit out of her, thereby enraging the owners who end up getting Paul and Silas stripped, beaten, flogged and imprisoned by the magistrates (cf. Acts 16.16-24). By casting out the spirit, Paul has damaged the value of the slave-owners property (the female slave was legally considered a thing, not a person). Thus, he destroys “property” in the service of life. Of course, Luke frames this act as though is arose spontaneously on Paul’s part (Paul became too “annoyed” to properly control himself), but it actually fits in rather well with Paul’s entire trajectory regarding slavery, wherein slaves were to be treated as people, as equals, as siblings, as citizens of heaven, and as children and heirs of God.
This is just one area that demonstrates Paul’s desire to create alternative communities of life within central places of the Empire. For Paul, this is such a crucial and dangerous task that he tries to “fly under the radar” rather than jeopardize his mission in any other way (indeed, even without any outright actions of violence against property, Paul is still executed by the Roman imperial powers, an observation that demonstrates the degree of risk involved in his work). Therefore, what we see when we compare Jesus and Paul are different tactics employed in the pursuit of the same goal. While it is tempting to psychologize the differences between the two – perhaps by suggesting that Jesus was better equipped to ably employ violence whereas Paul needed to more wholeheartedly avoid this realm of possible actions due to the violent nature of his past – I do not wish to press that point. I simply want to observe that the tactics of both are different but legitimate options available to those who seek to follow Jesus and imitate Paul.
1There is one great act of Christian property destruction in Acts, when the sorcerers at Ephesus burn their books, which had a combined approximate value of 50,000 drachmas – however, while this fits into the general trajectory of supporting the destruction of property that is idolatrous and death-dealing, it was a voluntary action performed by the owners of the property and so no crime was committed. Cf. Acts 19.17-20.
Beyond the Life of the Beloved
[I have been thinking about the subject of this post for quite some time. I’ve tried to sit down and write it more than once but am having difficulty expressing myself in this regard. In fact, it has been sitting near completion in my Drafts file for over a month.
The only way I can think of communicating this thought is through the telling of a story, parts of which I’ve already written here, so I apologize for the repetition and I apologize for the length of time it may take me to get to the point. This is the story of how I have moved beyond the life of the beloved.]
In my life, I have gone through roughly three major stages of self-identification. The first stage spanned from my early childhood until my late teens. The second stage spanned from my late teens until my late twenties. I am currently in the third stage.
Stage One: Fear, Guilt, and Shame
When I was young, I was deeply impacted by the bourgeois, conservative morality of North American Evangelicalism and the (concomitant) presence of violence, or the threat of violence, within my family home. I lived in constant fear — fear of not being good enough, fear of not being “man enough”, fear of being punished for things I knew I had done wrong, and fear of being punished for reasons I did not understand. When I was around twelve years of age, the doctor thought I might actually be developing stomach ulcers from laying awake at night and worrying about the next day. The only way I could still my mind was bouncing my head of the pillow and counting (1, *bounce*, 2, *bounce*, three, *bounce*, up over one thousand… although I learned to turn my head every one hundred bounces so that my neck didn’t lock up).
In such an environment, it is difficult to develop any strong sense of identity or self-worth. It was, to be blunt, traumatic. Now, the thing about trauma is that it profoundly disorients us — it shatters our understanding of the world (what was safe is no longer safe, what we believed no longer makes sense, and so on). However, when one is born into a traumatic situation, then one has not had the opportunity to develop an understanding of the world or a sense of what to believe or not believe and so the world appears to be inherently tumultuous, chaotic, nonsensical, and dangerous.
Growing up in this world, I came to believe that I was a bad person. If I was abused, I was to blame. If things didn’t go well, it was because I had done something wrong. All of this culminated, then, in the events that occurred when I was seventeen when my father kicking me out of my family home (“You’ve got an hour, get your stuff and go.” “Should I phone?” “No, get out of my life.”).
The hardest thing about that experience was seeing my mother — a gentle and loving person who, alas, allowed my father to abuse her and his family because of her understanding of her role as a “Christian woman” — sobbing submissively as I packed and left. I thought I was the son who broke his mother’s heart. I thought it was my fault for getting kicked out. I thought I was a piece of shit and sometimes, at night, I would walk around looking for guys who wanted to start trouble because I thought I deserved to get shit-kicked.
Stage Two: The Life of the Beloved
However, shortly after being kicked out, I had an experience that completely changed my life, my understanding of myself, of God, and of others, and this experience has actually dictated the course of my life from that point onwards. To make a long story short, I had what could be could be called a “mystical religious experience” (a “road to Damascus” sort of “Event”) that functioned as a major trauma for me. However, this trauma was a good one — the trauma of unexpected beauty, joy, wonder and love invaded my life and completely changed the world in which I found myself. Instead of viewing myself as a a source of shame, I now believed myself to be source of delight, instead of feeling worthless, I felt valuable, instead of being an outcast, I felt beloved. To me, this was the experience of new life rising out of the context of death. It felt like new creation, resurrection, that sort of thing.
This, then, marked everything about my life from that point on. I wanted to throw myself into loving and being loved. I wanted others to know this abundant life. I wanted others to know their own overwhelming goodness and breath-taking beauty.
I did this because it simply made sense to pursue this trajectory. After coming to know myself as beloved — despite everything, and at my lowest point (to date) — this was simply how I saw others. I suppose this was the realization of what Christian theologians refer to as “grace.” I did not believe that I had earned my experience or done something to merit the title “beloved.” Rather, it came to me as a gift.
However, the experience of this “grace” wasn’t quite in accord with many theological formulations related to it. Having come to know myself in this way, notions of being “sinners” or “wretches deserving of hell and damnation” no longer made sense to me as I thought about myself or others. Rather, having experienced this gift, I came to believe that I was beloved simply because I was. Thus, I came to view others not as sinners in need of grace or as depraved folks in need of salvation, but as people who already were good, beautiful and lovely, simply because they were people. The experience of grace made the status of the beloved an ontological category for me (and, I should note, having a son now has only confirmed this way of thinking to me — we are born good, beautiful, lovely, and pure — albeit vulnerable — and we only later learn to break ourselves and others).
Thus, I began to love exuberantly. And I began to see the transforming power of love in the lives of others. I saw a close friend discover new life after having undergone some unspeakably violent traumas. I saw two other friends overcome the most severe crack addictions I have ever encountered. I saw people who were consigned to death on the streets — by even the most admirable social workers — come into new life as they also came to know themselves as beloved. That was a wonderful time in my life.
Stage Three: The Lives of Others
However, over the last few years, another major shift has occurred. I find it difficult to articulate this well, so you’ll have to bear with me. Basically, I have moved from being centred in an awareness of myself as beloved to being centred in an awareness of the lives of others — specifically, the suffering and dying of those who are marginalized and godforsaken, both in my own city and around the world. As a result of this shift in focus, it has mattered less and less to me how I identify myself “in and of myself.” Therefore, although I would still consider myself to be beloved, the point is that I don’t really care about myself all that much anymore. My happiness or sense of peace, no longer hinges upon me but hinges upon the experience of others.
Indeed, the experience of the form of grace I described above, leads naturally to a focus upon others. Grace being both a gift and a simple recognition of who we are, is something that is fundamentally outwardly focused. The God of grace is a God that is not absorbed in herself, but is defined by a reaching out or drawing near to others. Thus, to live in grace is to have one’s life oriented in the same way.
The catch is this: there are many who are longing to encounter this experience of themselves as beloved but who never have this desire satisfied. I have known so many longing to love and and be loved, but others death-dealing powers have dominated their lives instead. Those who have cried out to God but who only received silence in return. Those who have sought love from others, only to be rejected. Those who have tried to make good but whose identities were far too shattered by abuse and violence to be able to recover. Those for whom the love I and others have tried to offer has not been enough.
Reflecting upon this in light of my own experiences, it is difficult to understand how this can be the case. Grace does not always rupture the fabric of our world. Love is not always enough. Time runs out. Other things are stronger. Often, the nightmares win. For me, the great mystery of my life is why I would have this experience and why others would not (after all, it’s not as though merit or effort on my part produced the experience). Thus, the trauma that shatters me is not one that I experience directly in and of myself. Rather, I am increasingly shattered by the traumas encountered by others. I feel godforsakenness because, fuck, we’re all in this together and for any of us to be godforsaken means that we all are. I am reminded of a famous quotation from Eugene V. Debs:
years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
The only thing to add to that is this: as long as there are those who are abandoned by God, I am forsaken.
Therefore, while knowing myself as beloved became a crucial element in my journey, it is not the end-point that I once thought it was. Instead, I now believe that it is but one stage along the way. Knowing myself as beloved has, for me, been that which has given me an understanding of myself that now permits me to move beyond myself. I am content in myself now. My conscience is not tortured. Although I know the deeds I have committed and continue to commit, I am not particularly concerned about them, good or bad. At least, I am not concerned about them in relation to myself. I am, however, very concerned about these deeds in relation to others. Simply stated: I have found life. Now, what matters, is sharing life with others, especially those who have had it taken away from them. I’m not what matters.
Perhaps I am having trouble articulating this and am repeating myself because this is a relatively new stage for me. I’m not sure what will follow (good or bad or, more probably, both in different ways). However, I am very curious to see how things go. I am happy to move beyond the life of the beloved. Happy to move into the lives of others. Although, again, the language of happiness is deceptive here. A better way to express that may be to say I have made my peace with sharing the godforsakenness of others — even though I cannot make my peace with the godforsakenness of others. For others, I will cry out to God. For myself, I am content.
October Books
Bit late… bit distracted by a chapter I’m writing on the socioeconomic status of Paul and the members of the early assemblies of Jesus (and the implications of this analysis for various political readings of Paul)… so here we go:
1. Paul and the Roman Imperial Order edited by Richard Horsley.
This is a really excellent collection of essays written by scholars who are extending counter-imperial readings of Paul from various trends in the Roman Empire more broadly to a more detailed analysis of each of the specific locations to which Paul is written. In my opinion, the strongest essays here are those by Robert Jewett (who examines how Paul’s talk about the corruption of nature in Ro 8.18-23 acts as a counterclaim against the imperial assertion that nature had been redeemed via the epiphany of the Caesars), Abraham Smith (who engages in a postcolonial analysis of 1 Thess) and Erik Heen (who reads Phil 2.5-11 in light of the imperial cult as it was specifically manifested at Philippi). Simon Price, who wrote one of the essential texts on this topic (Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor — a must read for anybody interested in this subject) also pens a helpful response to the essays. This is recommended reading.
2. The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Churches Conservative Icon by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.
It seems like John Dominic Crossan likes to pair up with different authors and write close to the same things about Paul over and over. Thus, in this book, we find the same material that Crossan and Reed covered in their earlier book, In Search of Paul (and that Crossan had already repeated in God and Empire… seriously, kinda makes me wonder if Crossan is just exploiting this trend to make some cash and boost his brand-status which, given the nature of the subject at hand, would be something of a betrayal). The major additions to the earlier writings are a more sustained analysis of the theopolitical vision of Rome and how Paul counteracts that vision. As usual, however, the points of contemporary application seem a little pale in comparison to what Paul was doing (i.e. there’s more going on here than simply calling contemporary liberal Christians and conservative Christians to get along with each other).
All in all, I suppose that this book would be a decent popular-level introduction to some of the broader themes of counter-imperial readings of Paul. However, for those who are already familiar with this subject, there is nothing new here.
3. Civil War by Lucan.
Lucan was a Roman writer, a friend of Nero’s (for awhile anyway), and this book is his unfinished epic account of the civil war that raged between Julius Caesar, Magnus Pompey, and Cato the Younger in the middle of the first century BCE. What comes through in Lucan’s text is just how appalling and traumatic the civil was was to Roman sensibilities. That Romans were killing other Romans (instead of killing members of other nations) was seen as absolutely immoral and an act that threw all of the cosmos into a state of disorder and chaos. Understanding this helps the reader to see why Augustus was treated as a divine Saviour-figure when he brought an end to the civil wars and reestablished peace (peace being the time when Romans get back to killing other nationalities instead of each other).
Thus, Lucan’s text ends up serving the purposes of the imperial ideology, but there are ways in which it also challenges that ideology. Thus, for example, Lucan’s portrayal of Julius Caesar — as a bloodthirsty, power-hungry, treaty-breaking, immoral tyrant — falls outside of the standard imperial treatments of that personage. However, such criticisms of the imperial ideology are couched in such a way that they rebound back to strengthen that ideology — thus, Lucan writes that all the horrors of the civil war are worthwhile because, at the end of the day, they lead us to Nero who is portrayed as an even greater Saviour than Augustus (this sort of criticism rebounding back to strengthen the ideology of Rome is visible in other texts that have been transmitted by the Roman elite — for example, in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis the recently deceased Claudius is viciously mocked but the now-regnant Nero is highly praised, as is the deified Augustus).
Recommended reading for those interested in these things.
4. Hope in Time of Abandonment by Jacques Ellul.
Last month I mentioned that I was taking the time to reread a few books that had really jumped out at me when I first read them several years ago. I reread Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved and was surprised by how little it resonated with me (I’ve got a follow-up post I’m almost done writing about that, but I can’t quite seem to express myself at the crucial part of the post and so I’ve been stalled on it for weeks now). I also decided to reread this book by Jacques Ellul as I remember it really kicking my ass in good ways when I first read it about ten years ago. At that time I was burying myself in Moltmann’s writings and Hope in Time of Abandonment provided a very important shift of emphasis in my thinking: while Moltmann emphasises that God is with us in the experience of godforsakenness (the crucified God, etc.), Ellul brings to the fore the reality of the experience of godforsakenness in and of itself.
The book did not disappoint this time around. In fact, I think this really is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Seriously, this is a very rich text. Ellul, more than any other I know, expresses what I take to be our contemporary situation in relation to God. If you only ever read one book I recommend, this would be a good one to choose.
5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
This is an extremely well written book (that kind that makes me despair of ever being a decent storyteller), and it has been called one of the great American novels. However, it is also the kind of book that makes me completely depressed. What Franzen does is tell the story of a couple and their three children who grow up in the Midwest and end up moving on to other places, people, and things. As Franzen takes his time, shifting his focus through all the characters, he ends up providing a moving and authentic-feeling snapshot of the lives and struggles, joys and sorrows, of the contemporary middle-class. And this is why I find the book so depressing — everybody, no matter how wonderful they are or could have been, is caught in small lives, petty struggles, trapped in shitty circumstances, negotiating stupid family politics to try and keep everybody happy… and it makes me think, “my God, is that all there is? Is this the kind of life we are all bound to live?” Scares the bejeezus out of me (much like Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ series).
Recommended reading (given that others who read this book actually seem to find it quite humourous and not so depressing… it really is very well written).
6. Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger.
I’ve never been a fan of short stories (not sure why that is), but I’ve been enjoying Salinger lately as have a few of my friends and so I thought I would read these stories. All in all they weren’t too bad. Salinger certainly has a way of presenting dialogue that captures how people actually speak (or used to speak). We also see the return of some of the members of the Glass family (written about in Franny and Zooey and elsewhere) and I especially enjoyed the story that dealt with them (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish”). The other story that I liked a fair bit was “Teddy”. Interesting, given the similarities that exist between those stories. Anyway, decent reading.
The New Testament and Violence. Part One: The Violence of Jesus
[What follows is my submission to the series on “Violence and Christian Holy Writ” that has been running for the last number of weeks over at the blog of Cynthia Nielsen. Up until today, I was under the impression that my post had been accepted but Cynthia has since notified me that (for reasons I won’t go into here) my submission has been rejected. Therefore, I thought I would post it here because I am genuinely interested in what others might think of this topic. I envision three follow-up posts exploring this theme in the New Testament — the nonviolence of Paul, the sectarianism of John, and a concluding post on the importance of respecting and employing the diversity of tactics we encounter in the NT.]
The Violence of Jesus
For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places – Eph 6.12
In what follows, I will argue that some Christians should embrace a certain kind of violent action in order to faithfully follow Jesus within our present context. By making this argument, I will be situating myself within an uncomfortable ideological location – rejecting the (often imperialistic and murderous) Niebuhrian position on violence as a “necessary evil,” and standing outside of the (often superficial and self-serving) pacifism of Anabaptist-inspired Christians, there is every chance that both parties will be ill-equipped to hear what I am saying.
This is why it is essential to examine the words and actions of Jesus before we embrace any ideology related to non/violence. Rather than asking, “Is violence (whatever that is) right or wrong?” it is better to ask “How did Jesus act and what might it mean to faithfully follow Jesus today?” Pursuing this question, helps us to escape from ingrained theological or cultural perspectives that have prevented us from recognizing what the Gospels actually say on this subject.
When studying Jesus, a few important points stand out. First, although Jesus sometimes verbally abuses others – referring to Peter as “Satan” (Mk 8.33), calling a Gentile woman a “dog” (Mk 7.27), and saying a whole host of nasty things about the scribes, Pharisees, and teachers of the law (cf., for example, Mt 23.1-33) – and although he seems to expect some sort of future divine violence to be enacted against people, in part, because of the way they treat him (Mt 11.20-24, 23.35-38, 25.1-46, 26.24, etc.) – Jesus never engages in any act of physical violence against another person. Furthermore, when people do engage in what could be legitimate forms of violence against others, Jesus is quick to counteract their actions (as when he heals the fellow whose ear is lopped off by one of the disciples [cf. Lk 22.49-51]).
The concomitant of this rejection of acting violently against others is Jesus’ ongoing action to heal, forgive, accept, and touch others – especially, the poor, the sick, the sinners, and the ostracized. Thus, while some may be fated for the experience of divinely-imposed violence in the future, at the moment of Jesus’ ministry all people are offered God’s gift of new and abundant life.
Here we get to one of the fundamental points of Jesus’ ministry: Jesus was acting in the service of the God of Life, offering life to all, and thereby also actively resisting all the Powers that acted in the service of Death (Powers that included demons, sin, sickness, loneliness, deprivation, and the theopolitical authority of Rome and Jerusalem). This is why, despite his sometimes violent rhetoric and his threatening scare-tactics, Jesus cannot act in a way that harms anybody else. To be in the service of life for all, means that one cannot physically harm anybody else. One must love even one’s enemies, and loving one’s enemies means that one cannot harm them, even if they seek to harm you. Here, the Anabaptist-inspired Christians are right, and the Niebuhrians and the “just war” theorists are wrong. Physically harming any other person falls outside of the range of actions appropriate to contemporary followers of Jesus.
However, that is not the end of Jesus’ engagement with violence, and this is where the Anabaptist-inspired Christians tend to get things wrong. What is almost universally neglected in Christian conversations regarding non/violence, are Jesus’ actions of violence against private property. This is the second point that needs to be highlighted (indeed, that this point is neglected by both sides of the debate demonstrates that both parties tend to share a common class interest and bias – i.e. people on both sides tend to hoard a great deal of private property).
The most obvious example of this type of violence is the “direct action” Jesus takes in the Jerusalem temple (John 2.13-16; cf. Mk 11.15-17; Mt 21.12-3; Lk 11.45-46). This event is interesting because it is the closest Jesus comes to employing physical violence against others. Indeed, the reason why the buyers and sellers fled the temple was because of the perception that physical violence might be employed against them. However, the texts seem to suggest that violence was only actualized against property. Here, property is not only damaged, it is probably also stolen, and violence is used to facilitate that theft (to imagine the scattered coins being left for the money changers to gather is a bit implausible).
Two points are usually overlooked here: first, although a detailed exegesis is employed in order to demonstrate the likelihood that Jesus’ violence was restricted to property and not people, the point that Jesus actually does engage in an act of violence against private property is not appropriately emphasized. Secondly, this passage tends to be cited as the only example of Jesus engaging in a physically violent act, but this overlooks other passages demonstrating Jesus’ willingness to destroy private property or approve of others doing so.
To choose a second example, one can also recall the healing of a certain demon-possessed man (cf. Mk 5.1-20; Mt 8.28-34; Lk 8.26-39). In this action, Jesus casts a “Legion” of demons into a herd of about two thousand pigs (the pig, it should be remembered, was a symbol of one of the Roman legions that destroyed Jerusalem in 70CE). These pigs rush into a lake and are drowned. This prompts the locals to plead with Jesus to depart from their region. This response is a bit puzzling until one remembers that Jesus had just destroyed an expensive herd belonging to a wealthy but absent land-owner. This land-owner had entrusted his herd to the locals and would be furious at his loss. Therefore, the locals likely wanted Jesus to leave before he could do any more damage and further threaten their safety.
As a third example, we can recall Jesus’ tacit approval of those who damaged the roof of a private home in order to have their paralyzed friend healed by him (cf. Mk 2.1-5; Lk 5.18-26).
Again, the clash between serving life and confronting that which is death-dealing is at the core of Jesus’ actions in these three cases. When private property is linked to that which is death-dealing or prevents that which is life-giving, Jesus is not afraid to destroy it – regardless of the laws that exist to protect it.
This carries some important implications for those who seek to follow Jesus today and pushes us in an interesting direction. Instead of asking, “Is violence right or wrong?” followers of Jesus should be asking, “What is life-giving and what are the death-dealing things that stand in the way of abundant life for all?” Answering this question requires us to move beyond theory to action, perhaps even militant action. What we may need is a Christian militancy that is willing to destroy idolatrous and death-dealing private property (an enemy not of blood and flesh), while simultaneously holding out the offer of abundant life to all people.
Exploring two partially flawed Canadian examples may stimulate our imaginations in this regard (note: no people were harmed in both cases). First, recall the “Heart Attack” protest that occurred in Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics (cf. here for video of that protest and for information on why the Olympic Games are death-dealing – although you should read Helen Lenskyj or watch this documentary for more detailed analysis). During that protest, some windows of a Hudson’s Bay Company store were smashed (the HBC has a long history of brutality against the Canadian aboriginal peoples, and Vancouver exists on unceded and stolen Coast Salish land). Although I questioned the tactical value of smashing those windows – and raised those questions not from a distance but as one of the thirteen arrested that day – the smashing of those windows did not strike me as immoral. It may very well have been a Christ-like action.
Second, we can recall how an anarchist group (two fifty year olds and one thirty-five year old) firebombed a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada in Ottawa (our capital) prior to this year’s G8/G20 Summits (cf. here for footage and a glimpse into RBC’s brutal history). This may very well be a contemporary example of what it looks like to overturn the tables of the money changers.
This helps to clarify the true “cost of discipleship.” It reminds us that bearing the brand-marks of Christ on our bodies means living with bodies that are scarred by the disciplinary actions of the authorities who operate in the service of Death. We can no longer fool ourselves: our commitment to abundant life for all might lead us to be condemned with a terrorist (lestes) on either side of us. Only then will we be able to journey no further into union with the crucified Christ.
Fire on Babylon. Lord, have mercy.
This is What Democracy Looks Like
Well, I don’t know how many people are aware of what has been happening in France ever since the government started driving through a law that would shift the age of retirement from 60 to 62 but there have been massive uprisings across the country that have seen workers, students, seniors, new immigrants, and many others uniting to fight back against the powers that be. Gas and oil refineries have been shut down, along with other locations like high-schools, universities, highways, and airports.
There is an inspiring series of pictures documenting some of this here. I think this really shows us the two faces of “democracy.” On the one hand, we see the multitude rising up in an effort to claim (a form of) self-rule, and on the other hand we see hegemonic powers employing force to prevent anything that resembles the actual “rule of the people.”
September Books
Finished off a fair amount this month… which is why I’ve been delaying writing this up.
1. Reading Romans In Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level by Peter Oakes.
This is a really excellent study of socio-economic diversity that existed amongst the urban populations of cities during the time when Paul was helping to build the early Jesus movement throughout the Roman empire. Employing detailed archaeological evidence from Pompeii, Oakes helps to fill out the picture of the differences that existed amongst the 99% of the people who lived in the empire but were not elite. Picking representative examples from this population, he then looks at how members of those groups would hear Paul’s letter to Rome (while factoring in other local considerations).
By engaging in this study, Oakes is building upon the important contributions of those like Justin Meggitt and Steven Friesen who have done a lot of important work to demonstrate that the early Christian movement was one that arose amongst those who were poor, of little status, and likely lived just at or below the subsistence level (with a few members living slightly above subsistence). By building this case, Meggitt and Friesen have countered the prior conensus (most often associated with Gerd Theissen) which maintained that Paul’s churches were run by a wealthy and elite minority.
Oakes, then, mostly accepts the case made by Meggitt and Friesen but he fills it out and nuances it in some important ways. He demonstrates that even amongst the poor and those of little status, more diversity existed than had been previously imagined.
I believe that this is an important study and one of the best I have read on the socioeconomic status of the members of the early assemblies of Jesus. Oakes reading of Romans in light of this context, and of the possible members in the assemblies, is especially rich… and (surprise, surprise) continues to build the case for counter-imperial readings of Paul.
2. Christian Origins: A People’s History of Christianity, Volume One edited by Richard Horsley.
Inspired by Howard Zinn’s effort to write a people’s history of the United States — a history that looks at the experience of the conquered, the oppressed, the poor, and those generally not included (or mentioned favourably) in dominant historical narratives — a multi-volume series has been written in order to try and write a people’s history of Christianity. Scholars in various fields, disciplines, and sub-disciplines have contributed to the project creating a rich, albeit eclectic, look at what has arisen after the life and death of Jesus.
In this volume, a number of top notch scholars look mostly at Jesus, Paul, the Gospels, and the Pauline assemblies of Jesus and explore the actual cultural, economic, religious and political contexts of the first-century and what that might mean for a people’s history of the early years of the Jesus movement. There are a number of excellent essays here (and a few that are sorta dull) but all are quite accessible and would probably be of interest to those who want something of a scattered overview of these things.
3. Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen.
It’s always interesting to go back and re-read books that impacted you at different times of life. Throughout my undergraduate years, Life of the Beloved was the book that most impacted me. I gave copies to many others and it had a similar impact upon them as well. Last month, I thought I would pick it up again since I’ve been undergoing some pretty major shifts in my thinking regarding the significance of love and of knowing one’s self as “beloved” (I’ll probably blog more about that as some point). Therefore, I thought maybe I should re-read this book and see if it helped to reorient my thinking and root me back where I used to be.
But it didn’t. I actually hardly connected with the book at all this time around. This is not to say that I disagree with what Nouwen says. I actually agree with most of what he says, and still do understand myself to be “beloved”… it’s just that this doesn’t matter all that much to me anymore. Now, I tend to think of breaking through to this understanding of one’s self to be an important step along a certain road, but not the destination I once thought that it was.
I was quite surprised by all this. I have read some other works by Nouwen relatively recently (<i>The Way of the Heart</i> comes to mind) that I enjoyed but this one, previously one of my all-time favourite books, did little for me this time (unlike Jacques Ellul’s <i>Hope in Time of Abandonment</i> which blew my mind the first time around and, now that I’m re-reading it, is impacting me even more deeply… but I’ll save those remarks for next month).
4. Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks.
When reading hooks’ assertion that defaults on loans for mortgages, and issues related to housing, will provoke a massive crisis, it’s hard to believe that this book was written in the year 2000. At that time, hooks thought a housing crisis might give birth to class war. She was wrong about that (so far), but there is so much else that she gets right in this excellent study on the central significance of class analysis for efforts to create positive change.
Basically, what hooks does in a very personal way is demonstrate how struggles for liberation — notably those related to gender and race — are incomplete and bound to remain superficial, impotent or become co-opted unless they are fundamentally rooted in an explicit class struggle (Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton provide us with two great examples of that today). Tied into this is also a lot of discussion of wealth and poverty, status and shame, and ways in which Christian traditions (notably inspirations from Latin American liberation theology) can help us find our way forward.
A great book. Short, easy to read, but intimate and powerful. I recommend it.
5. White on Black by Ruben Gallego.
I saw this book mentioned on Jason Goroncy’s blog, and began searching for it immediately. It’s an horrific but compelling true story of the time the author spent as a disabled youth (he has cerebral palsy and lacks the use of his arms and legs) growing up in institutions in mid-twentieth century Russia. Gallego, however, writes with a very beautiful voice and, just to give you a glimpse of that, I thought I would record the preface here:
On Strength and Goodness
People sometimes ask me whether what I write actually happened. Are the heroes of my stories real?
I answer: It did, and they are, more than real. Naturally, my heroes are collective images from the endless kaleidoscope of my endless children’s homes. What I write, though, is the truth.
The sole characteristic of my work that departs from, and at times contradicts, the authenticity of real life is my authorial view, which may be rather sentimental, occasionally breaking into pathos. I purposely avoid writing about anything bad.
I’m convinced that life and literature have more than enough of the dark side. It’s just so happened that I’ve witnessed too much human cruelty and hate. To describe the vileness of man’s fall and bestiality is to multiply the already endless chain of interconnected blasts of evil. That’s not what I want. I write about goodness, triumph, joy, and love.
I write about strength. Spiritual and physical strength. The strength each one of us has inside. Te strength that breaks through all barriers to triumph. Each of the stories is a story of triumph. Even the boy from “The Cutlet,” a rather sad story, triumphs. He triumphs twice. First, when out of the chaotic mess of his useless knowledge, and for lack of a knife, he finds the only three words that have any effect on his adversary. And, second, when he decides to eat the cutlet–that is, to live.
Those whose sole victory is their voluntary departure from life triumph as well. The officer who perishes in the face of a superior opponent, who dies according to regulations, is a victor. I respect such people. All that same, what’s most important about this man are the stuffed toys. I’m convinced that sewing teddy bears and bunny rabbits all your life is much harder than slitting your own throat once. I’m convinced that on humanity’s scales of a child’s delight a new toy vastly outweighs any military victory.
This is a book about my childhood. Cruel and terrible though it was, it was still my childhood. It doesn’t take much for a child to retain his love for the world, to grow up and mature: a bit of lard, a salami sandwich, a handful of figs, a blue sky, a couple of books, a kind word. That’s enough. More than enough.
The heroes of this book are strong, very strong people. All too often a person has to be strong. And good. Not everyone can let himself be good, and not everyone can overcome universal misunderstanding. All too often, goodness is taken for weakness. That’s sad. It’s hard to be a human being, very hard, but altogether possible. And you don’t have to stand on your hind legs to do it. Not at all. I believe that.
Recommended reading.
6. The Vatnsdaela Saga (from the Viking Press collection of Icelandic Sagas… naturally).
When I read heavier literature — authors like Proudhon or Gaddis recently — I like to maintain some balance and also read something simpler (but still high quality). Thus, I continue to work my way through the Icelandic sagas. The Vatnsdaela Saga was fun (but not as fun as Egil’s saga) and I do like how simple prose and a sparsity of words can still communicate a vivid picture and a depth of character. Also, I think it’s funny that hella crazy/fierce/blood-thirsty vikings are scared of ol’ pussy cats.
7. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart.
This is really quite a beautiful story about three generations of women in Guadeloupe. They experience hardship, loss and poverty but maintain (or learn to maintain) a strong sense of dignity, pride, beauty, and strength. It is short but the prose is excellent, as though Schwarz-Bart employs just the right words and finds no need to fill them out or linger with them. Recommended reading.
Eighth Letter
So, some folks I know are running an “Eight Letter” conference in Toronto at the start of next month. Taking the letters to the seven churches in John’s Apocalypse as the point of departure, they have extended an invitation and asked people to pen an “eighth letter” to the contemporary church in North America. Of course, certain high-status people — Shane Claiborne, Pete Rollins, etc. — were contacted as well and will end up dominating the presentations (because, hey, whose going to pay to attend a conference where a bunch of nobodies share their thoughts? However, if you take a few nobodies and then mix them up with a group of somebodies, then you’ll make a profit and look like you’re doing something radical… which will sell more tickets!).
I’ve been thinking about what an eighth letter might look like, and have resisted writing anything because it seems presumptuous to write to “the Church in North America” in the same way that Jesus is said to have dictated letters to the churches in Asia Minor.
Additionally, I find myself at a loss when it comes to recognizing “the Church” in North America. What is this Church? Is it all those who gather together — in part — because they confess Jesus as Lord and participate in the sacraments? How can this be the case when various factions exist within this Church, and many of those factions are excommunicating, damning, or refusing to be in fellowship with various other factions (or, as in the recent case of one parish in Vancouver, are actually taking each other to court in order to try and possess properties valued around $20,000,000)?
Is it simply those who gather together in a way that I think more truly reflects what it means to follow Jesus (“new monastic” communities and so forth)? Wouldn’t that simply be me engaging in a similar action of excommunication and refusal of fellowship? I refuse to think that I can determine what is or is not the proper form of Christianity. Sure, I have my own beliefs about Christianity, and I openly espouse them and argue them (in part, because I’m willing to be converted), but that doesn’t mean that I think those who believe different things are not members of the people of God.
Is it, instead, the “Church of the poor” whose members apocalypse the crucified body of Christ in our day and age? If that is the case, then who am I — a person neither poor nor crucified — to pen such a letter? Wouldn’t one want to be a member of this Church before presuming to write to it?
Or is it simply the sum total of individuals in our context who are living a life empowered by the Spirit of Jesus? But if that is the case, does it make sense to talk of a “church” — an assembly of people gathered together? Furthermore, how are members of this group even identifiable to us? We can’t know them with any certainty, and the result would be a letter written to a non-existent theoretical audience rather than a letter written to any concrete persons.
Finally, perhaps “the Church” is some combination of all of the above? Would it be better to address a letter “to all those in North America who believe they are members of the body of Christ, as well as all those Scripture identifies as members of the people of God”? However, how can a person hope to write a single letter addressing this massive, disparate body?
At the conference in Toronto, I expect people will simply assume that everybody knows who or what “the Church” is and then will use that to push agendas for which they have already been fighting. There is nothing particularly wrong with that — I expect people like Wendy will speak about sexuality because she believes that “the Church” in North America really does need to address this issue, people like Shane will speak about Empire because he believes that “the Church” really needs to respond to this, and so on and so forth. However, I’m at a complete loss as to what I would say because I don’t know where or what “the Church” in North America actually is.
A little help here?
9/11 (here we go again)
Torture: Obama's business in Bagram
One of the most powerful ways of perpetuating and strengthening any given ideology is to gain control over the calendar and the ways in which people mark the passage of time, remember past events, and celebrate sacred moments. Thus, for example, Christendom took over the sacred days of paganism and converted them to Christian festivals (Christmas, Easter, and so on). Then, in our own time, global capitalism has taken over the sacred days of Christianity and converted them into festivities of consumption and debt accumulation (and has done the same with most of the sacred days of the Nation State as well).
On any day that is marked as sacred — or designated as a moment to remember some past event — it is worth recalling that some things are being remembered, while other things are being forgotten. Certain factions always have a vested interest in shaping our memory in this way, and they also happen to have the influence to impose their narration of history onto us.
Take today. September 11th. 9/11. What momentous event occurred on this day?
Well, the truth is that more than one momentous event has occurred on this date over the course of history. On September 11, 1973, Pinochet’s coup overthrew the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende. During his subsequent years of rule, between 9,000-30,000 people were murdered or “disappeared”, tens of thousands more were tortured or imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands experienced “situations of extreme trauma.”
Given the massive heart-breaking loss triggered by the events of September 11, 1973, one might think that it would be worth marking every 9/11 with some sort of remembrance ceremony. However, this did not happen, nor will it be remembered in this way. Why? Because Pinochet’s coup was backed by the CIA, his reign was sustained by the American government, his torturers were trained by American officers, and his death-dealing economics (which crushed the people of his nation, in order to sell their resources to outside corporations) was directed by American economists (Milton Friedman personally communicated with Pinochet and encouraged him to stay true to free-market capitalism and not get distracted by the sufferings of the Chilean people).
Therefore, those with the power and resources to direct our public stories and our narrations of history — those who create the special days we mark on our calendars — have ensured that 9/11 remains a day when this event is erased from history. Instead of being a day of remembrance, it is a day of forgetting. Forget Allende. Forget Pinochet. Forget the destruction of democracy in Latin America. Forget the death-dealing ways in which America and the rest of the West have treated the rest of the world. Lord knows, the memory of those things might inspire some folks to fly planes into buildings (although, I should note, I believe they would be wrong to do so).
However, nine years ago, some people did fly planes into buildings and this is what we are commanded to remember today. This is a much better option — America, the innocent victim is born! Yet, rising above the ash, she is still willing to sacrifice of herself in order to graciously bring freedom and wisdom (McDonald’s and Coca-Cola) to the rest of the world. America, the long-suffering hero. America, our Dark Knight.
What is interesting, is that the year when all this went down is usually removed from the vocabulary. Thus, people refer to “September 11th” or “9/11” instead of referring to “September 11th, 2001” or “9/11/01”. In this way, the events of that day gain a sort of timelessness and enter into a process of eternal recurrence. The removal of the year, brings the events closer to us and it makes it feel as though those events just happened a moment ago. Not only does this heighten the emotional manipulation that spectacles of remembrance produce, it also conveniently helps us to forget everything that has happened since then. In this way, we remember the American who unjustly suffered and die. We remember the heroism of the NYFD.
What we don’t remember are the 97,767 to 106,703 civilians who have died violent deaths in Iraq since the Americans invaded. Nor do we remember the 14,000 to 35,000 civilians who have died thus far in Afghanistan (not to mention the untold numbers left wounded, disabled, childless, orphaned, or traumatized in both those nations). We also don’t remember that countless number of innocent people kidnapped and tortured by American soldiers since 9/11 — in Bush’s Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo, and in Obama’s “super-Guatanamo” prison at the airforce base in Bagram (the picture above is not take from Abu Ghraib under Bush, it is taken from Bagram under Obama).
What we don’t remember is that the American government has invested $1,078,552,000,000 (and counting) into these wars. This is tax-payers’ money, but we don’t remember how much these wars are contributing to the economic crisis in America, to budget cuts in everything from affordable housing, publicly-funded school systems, roads, street lighting and social services. What we don’t remember is that the Bush administration lied to start these wars and the Obama administration has lied about ending them.
So, today we will be reminded to “never forget” the events that happened nine years ago. However, the command to remember certain events in certain ways, to the exclusion of all else, is actually a very powerful way of producing mass forgetfulness.