February 4, 2015
ISIS is testing my resolve.
I determined a long time ago to see everyone as part of the human race. Some people are different and hard to understand; some are mean spirited; some are thieves; some are murderers; some seem to lack all empathy with others; some are devious liars; some are faithless; some are unfaithful to their own wives and mothers. Many disagree with me; many are rude; many are lazy and undisciplined, but they all are human beings, beloved by God.
The resolve to believe that this is so, must be demonstrated by my behavior. I will treat them like human beings. I will try to understand, rather than judge. I will forgive. I will turn the other cheek. I will be true to Christian principals. I will believe in the possibility of goodness. I will believe that all sinners are redeemable.
ISIS is testing my resolve.
Today we know that ISIS burned alive the young Jordanian pilot whom they captured more than a month ago. CNN did not show me the pictures, but they painted the picture with words, and I saw it happen.
I lived in Jordan once. The Jordanians were hospitable and honorable people. I remember our gardener, just a boy. He found a 20 lira bill blowing around in our yard and brought it me. I said that it was not mine, and he said, “Yes, it is, because it was in your garden.” And he would not keep it. I remember taking our children with us to visit a university student in his little rented room. When we arrived, he did not act like a poor student at all. He ran to borrow chairs so that we could all sit down in his room. He peeled his week’s supply of oranges so that our children could eat them. He made tea, emptying his sugar bowl into our cups. I feel in my bones that the young pilot was such a gentleman.
Once in a war situation, the American embassy told us to go to the airport and get on one of the planes they had arranged to take us to safety. They told us to park our car in the airport parking lot and leave the keys in it. When we came back, six weeks later, the car was sitting where we left it with the keys still in the ignition. We were told that King Hussein had made a Bedouin unit of his army responsible for our possessions. We were not to lose anything. I feel in my bones that his son, King Abdullah, is such a leader.
I love Jordan. The Jordanians are human beings.
Jordanians are today gathering in the streets to chant slogans demanding revenge. The King is on his way home to be with his angry people. Their resolve to be civilized and human is challenged.
Once a gentle Jordanian man pronounced judgment on two of his fellow citizens who had raped an American woman in Jerusalem. “They acted like animals,” he said. Only now I notice, remembering, that he did not say, “They are animals.”
Sometimes human beings act like animals, tempting us to say that they are not human. That happened when ISIS set that young man on fire. They acted like animals. I guess. Would an animal do that?
Recently I read a novel, a huge volume, written by my friend Madison Bell who teaches writing at Goucher College. The Stone the Builder Refused is volume three of Madison’s trilogy about war in Haiti. The story reminded me at times of things that happened in the civil war in Lebanon. The issues were complicated and often unclear; basically the black people wanted freedom from the whites, but he civil war was complicated by an invasion. Sometimes soldiers switched sides, still wanting what they wanted, but not being sure who would give it to them.
On page 238 a group of soldiers moving about as needed came to a destroyed village where a community of white people had been massacred. Some seem to have died begging for mercy. A woman had been killed by a lance that first passed through the infant she was holding to her bosom. The buzzards were feast on the bodies, some still warm.
A survivor had been nailed by his hands to a tree. He told them the name of the leader whose group has committed the devastation: Dessalines.
A man named Lacroix declares, “They are not human. Whoever did such a thing cannot be human.”
His comrade Mailart blurted, “Don’t say that. Never say it.” Lacroix looked at him somewhat suspiciously, and he said no more.
But when they lay down to rest for the night, Mailart could not sleep, remembering the incident and what he had said. And he realized, “To declare the enemy less than human opened the door to every horror.” He thought then that when Dessalines ordered his men to put their victims to the bayonet, he must have also said, “They are not human.” The scene keeps playing over and over through my head.
Today my resolve is tested but not broken. I admit that it is not for ISIS that I keep my resolve. It is for myself. I know I must not make a judgment that destroys my own spirit. I must not imitate the behavior I abhor. I am a Christian. What I really have resolved is to be true to the spirit of Jesus. ISIS is not going to kill the hope Jesus has put in me that all people are loved and redeemable. I can not give up my confidence in Jesus.
What people did to Jesus was just as brutal as what ISIS did to the Jordanian pilot, and he said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”
I don’t believe right now that ISIS deserves forgiveness. But Jesus will be Jesus, whatever happens. My resolve is to be a follower, whatever happens.