Praying for Iraq - The Moral Black Hole
Dec 05, 2009 17:39 Filed in: Iraq
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you;
—Matthew 5:43-4 (Authorized Version)
The Iraq War is a moral black hole. It’s there, it won’t go away, it’s dangerous, and it has become virtually invisible. Words go in, nothing comes out. Anyone who touches upon it suddenly becomes a non-person because the ears that should be listening dare not listen lest they themselves be drawn into the abyss.
Our Lord commanded us to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us.
Praying for one’s enemies is easy. Forgiving those who unjustly injure us is easy. It often gives us a sense of moral superiority over those with power over us.
Praying for those we have injured—our victims—that is a different matter. Praying for somebody means, at the least, wishing them well. It is quite a trick to oppress someone and at the same time wish them well. Praying for one’s victims (rather than someone else’s victims) tends to shove our own offenses back into our teeth. Until we stop hurting people our prayers on their behalf mean nothing. In fact, they stink.
It recalls the scene on the stairs in which Hamlet forgoes stabbing a praying King Claudius because doing so in the middle of his prayers might send him to Heaven, rather than Hell, where he belongs. Unknown to Hamlet, however, King Claudius has just uttered a desperate and hopeless soliloquy:
Because he was still benefiting from the crime that he committed Claudius could not find forgiveness.
We might as well acknowledge that even though we personally may not be profiting from the war and occupation in Iraq, some of the most powerful corporations and individuals in the world are profiting handsomely. After the administration announced that it would invade Iraq, members of the administration were openly holding seminars in Washington DC and other locations, explaining to potential contractors how to board the gravy train of war contracting. There was simply no question that the motive for war was economic—that the Bush administration and the contractors involved were bent on plundering both the American taxpayer and the unfortunate Iraqis. Joseph Stiglitz, economist and Nobel laureate, has estimated that the war will cost the American people upwards of $3 trillion. The cost to the Iraqi people in innocent lives, undeserved suffering, and massive economic loss, is incalculable.
Like Claudius, many of us are profiting either directly or indirectly from the war and occupation. So with Claudius, our unspoken song is “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below./Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Ibid.
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
Because Claudius’s victim, the elder Hamlet, was his brother—by all accounts, a good king and a virtuous man—Claudius could not solve his moral problem with the usual rationalizations.
Our government invariably seeks to justify its aggression by demonizing the enemy (the victim), whom we are conditioned to perceive as unfathomably evil and utterly unworthy of our prayers. If we believe the enemy is a devil, it follows that prayers for the enemy are not only unnecessary, but actually ineffective, since we have already let ourselves become convinced that the enemy is an inferior sort of human being, left behind by evolution, led astray by evil doctrine, or stunted by some other unfortunate circumstances that are no fault of ours.
Unlike Claudius, who knew his brother well, most of us have little or no personal knowledge of Iraq or its inhabitants. It is therefore easy to demonize the “enemy” through psychological projection, a pathology in which we literally project parts of our own dark side onto people whom we have never met and of whom we know virtually nothing. Most of the faults we attribute to Iraqis actually come from deep within our own individual and collective psyches.
If the victims happened to have given us civilization, as the Iraqis have done, we have another mental trick: the imperial fantasy that our intentions are honorable and that our war of aggression and subsequent occupation is just what the victim needs, a character and civilization-building treatment for which he will one day thank us. The victim, so goes the story, is like a child that needs the discipline of military and colonial occupation, or else he will destroy himself in an orgy of cannibalism, civil strife, communism, tribalism, nationalism, Islamism, terrorism, or whatever ism seems appropriate—in the opinion of the propaganda Pooh-Bahs—to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise unbelievable, if not preposterous, official narrative.
Those who refuse to accept these rationalization can either take refuge in silence or speak the truth to power, with all its unpleasant personal consequences. It is this profound moral and spiritual conundrum that has led to the pervasive silence in the pulpit. The occupation of Iraq has not even been mentioned in my church in months, and I suspect that this tacit agreement to remain silent holds wherever the war is not being actively promoted.
If we pray for our victims, we must think the unthinkable. We must confront our own evil—our lack of concern, our greed and even our viciousness. Officially, this is impossible. Because our intentions are noble, what we are doing is selfless and good. It is we who are making the sacrifice, not the people of Iraq. So goes the official story.
So we sit mute and listen to the Sounds of Silence coming from the pulpit.
God help us.
neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you;
—Matthew 5:43-4 (Authorized Version)
The Iraq War is a moral black hole. It’s there, it won’t go away, it’s dangerous, and it has become virtually invisible. Words go in, nothing comes out. Anyone who touches upon it suddenly becomes a non-person because the ears that should be listening dare not listen lest they themselves be drawn into the abyss.
Our Lord commanded us to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us.
Praying for one’s enemies is easy. Forgiving those who unjustly injure us is easy. It often gives us a sense of moral superiority over those with power over us.
Praying for those we have injured—our victims—that is a different matter. Praying for somebody means, at the least, wishing them well. It is quite a trick to oppress someone and at the same time wish them well. Praying for one’s victims (rather than someone else’s victims) tends to shove our own offenses back into our teeth. Until we stop hurting people our prayers on their behalf mean nothing. In fact, they stink.
It recalls the scene on the stairs in which Hamlet forgoes stabbing a praying King Claudius because doing so in the middle of his prayers might send him to Heaven, rather than Hell, where he belongs. Unknown to Hamlet, however, King Claudius has just uttered a desperate and hopeless soliloquy:
—Hamlet, Act III,Scene iiiO, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murther! …
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murther’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murther-
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain th’ offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but ‘tis not so above.
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well. He kneels.
Because he was still benefiting from the crime that he committed Claudius could not find forgiveness.
We might as well acknowledge that even though we personally may not be profiting from the war and occupation in Iraq, some of the most powerful corporations and individuals in the world are profiting handsomely. After the administration announced that it would invade Iraq, members of the administration were openly holding seminars in Washington DC and other locations, explaining to potential contractors how to board the gravy train of war contracting. There was simply no question that the motive for war was economic—that the Bush administration and the contractors involved were bent on plundering both the American taxpayer and the unfortunate Iraqis. Joseph Stiglitz, economist and Nobel laureate, has estimated that the war will cost the American people upwards of $3 trillion. The cost to the Iraqi people in innocent lives, undeserved suffering, and massive economic loss, is incalculable.
Like Claudius, many of us are profiting either directly or indirectly from the war and occupation. So with Claudius, our unspoken song is “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below./Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Ibid.
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
Because Claudius’s victim, the elder Hamlet, was his brother—by all accounts, a good king and a virtuous man—Claudius could not solve his moral problem with the usual rationalizations.
Our government invariably seeks to justify its aggression by demonizing the enemy (the victim), whom we are conditioned to perceive as unfathomably evil and utterly unworthy of our prayers. If we believe the enemy is a devil, it follows that prayers for the enemy are not only unnecessary, but actually ineffective, since we have already let ourselves become convinced that the enemy is an inferior sort of human being, left behind by evolution, led astray by evil doctrine, or stunted by some other unfortunate circumstances that are no fault of ours.
Unlike Claudius, who knew his brother well, most of us have little or no personal knowledge of Iraq or its inhabitants. It is therefore easy to demonize the “enemy” through psychological projection, a pathology in which we literally project parts of our own dark side onto people whom we have never met and of whom we know virtually nothing. Most of the faults we attribute to Iraqis actually come from deep within our own individual and collective psyches.
If the victims happened to have given us civilization, as the Iraqis have done, we have another mental trick: the imperial fantasy that our intentions are honorable and that our war of aggression and subsequent occupation is just what the victim needs, a character and civilization-building treatment for which he will one day thank us. The victim, so goes the story, is like a child that needs the discipline of military and colonial occupation, or else he will destroy himself in an orgy of cannibalism, civil strife, communism, tribalism, nationalism, Islamism, terrorism, or whatever ism seems appropriate—in the opinion of the propaganda Pooh-Bahs—to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise unbelievable, if not preposterous, official narrative.
Those who refuse to accept these rationalization can either take refuge in silence or speak the truth to power, with all its unpleasant personal consequences. It is this profound moral and spiritual conundrum that has led to the pervasive silence in the pulpit. The occupation of Iraq has not even been mentioned in my church in months, and I suspect that this tacit agreement to remain silent holds wherever the war is not being actively promoted.
If we pray for our victims, we must think the unthinkable. We must confront our own evil—our lack of concern, our greed and even our viciousness. Officially, this is impossible. Because our intentions are noble, what we are doing is selfless and good. It is we who are making the sacrifice, not the people of Iraq. So goes the official story.
So we sit mute and listen to the Sounds of Silence coming from the pulpit.
God help us.
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