Weep for yourselves and for your children
Dear friends,
Over the years I have valued the writings of S. Wesley Ariarajah. He’s a Tamil from Sri Lanka, and a Methodist pastor and scholar. According to his recent book, Axis of Peace (World Council of Churches, 2004), he teaches ecumenical theology at Drew University. Wesley Ariarajah wrestles in this book with the problems of Christian faith in times of violence and war.
Dear friends,
Over the years I have valued the writings of S. Wesley Ariarajah. He’s a Tamil from Sri Lanka, and a Methodist pastor and scholar. According to his recent book, Axis of Peace (World Council of Churches, 2004), he teaches ecumenical theology at Drew University. Wesley Ariarajah wrestles in this book with the problems of Christian faith in times of violence and war.
I have been involved with such problems since the Vietnam War. The struggle arises from the divisiveness, from the separation I find between my understanding of what God asks of me, as opposed to what others say that God asks of them. This divergence, often bitterly expressed, polarizes Christians. I cannot understand how so many well-intentioned, sincere, devout Christian people in the United States can support this present US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is difficult to digest the fact that many do. But as Ariarajah points out, this is no surprise. Christians differ dramatically on several contentious issues. But I suppose that in my life, war and violence in relation to Christian faith is the issue that has been personally paramount.
One of the many aspects of going to war and inflicting suffering and death on others is the degradation suffered by the perpetrators of violence. Jesus said, “Weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28). Ariarajah takes this scripture as his point of departure. Jesus’ words in Luke were addressed to women of Jerusalem who were wailing as they watched him being tortured. How many women in the US cry today as they watch innocent people killed by the US military, murdered by their own sons and daughters? But Jesus’ powerful words uttered long ago bring us up short: we who send soldiers to Iraq to kill and be killed should weep for ourselves. We have lost something of our humanity. The violence lives on as nightmares in the consciences of these soldiers, for they are answerable to God for what they have done, even though they may have been forced into doing so.
All Turkish males are required by law to enroll in military service. I met a man in Istanbul the other day, a sincere Muslim, who happened to be doing his military service when the US military invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003. You may recall that the US government asked Turkey to lend support by sending troops to Iraq, which is Turkey’s neighbor to the south. The man I met was stationed in southeast Turkey at that time. If the Turkish government had agreed to the US request, which to its great credit it refused to do, then this man would have been among the soldiers sent into Iraq, to kill and to be killed. Both he and his parents had been terribly anxious in those days, precisely because of the suffering he would have had to inflict and to live with in his conscience. He says he is thankful he was spared that test.
It is not only Christians who face this dilemma of faith in times of violence and war. We are all contemporaries on the same planet, living with the same problems. Betty and I believe that if we more deeply empathize with these common human threads found among all nations and peoples, then we face better chances for averting war and violence.
Peace,
Ken & Betty Frank
Ken & Betty Frank serve as missionaries with the Near East Mission, assigned to the American Collegiate Institute, Izmir Amerikan Lisesi. Ken is a teacher of math and works in the area of Christian-Muslim Relations. Betty serves as the librarian and also works in the area of Christian-Muslim relations.