Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Reddenbops of Saturn by Christine Pendleton

On Saturn, a planet far, far away lived a large group of Reddenbops that drooled over anything red. 

Their chubby cheeks and furry bellies could make anyone laugh and their Red Rock Palace was a breathtaking sight to behold.  There lived the King and Queen Reddenbop with all their expensive red objects and glistening red fur.  No one was redder than the King and Queen and their palace was heaven to the eyes of all the Reddenbops.

Violence and Nonviolence: That is the Question (Part 2) by Wayne Northey

An unpublished novel by me treats of violence and nonviolence as a major theme with hell a subtheme.  It is entitled Chrysalis Crucible, and tells the story of a young evangelist’s coming of age on the short-term mission field in West Berlin.  Following is a chapter that is a kind of climax of this theme. Please also read “Violence and Nonviolence – (Part I)”.

If you are interested in dialogue on this, please feel free to contact the web administrator with your e-mail address and comments.  I will then respond to you at my discretion.  Thanks.

Wayne Northey]

Chapter Seventy-Five

Andy had not seen Petra since the Great Seduction.  Would she hit on Jack next?  Presumably not Gary and Peter, since they were after all married.  The next time he talked to Janys, he would ask her to work this through with Petra. Or should he?  The answer was instantly obvious.  He could not trust himself to do so.  He would ask Janys.  He would tell her that she could let their secret out to Petra: they were secretly engaged to be married.

He did. She did.  On Friday the 13th no less, that evening, Janys and Petra had a very blunt talk in the War Room at the girls’ apartment.  Andy still had not seen Petra.

Janys explained afterwards to Andy that she first approached the issue in terms of her and Andy’s secret engagement.  At that, Petra was thrilled for them, then immediately apologetic.

“Oh Janys”, she had said, “I’m so sorry!  Did Andy say…?”

Janys’ nodding in the affirmative led to further discussion about that side of the issue, that no one appreciates a boyfriend stealer.  Janys said that she approached more tentatively the issue of Christian sexual faithfulness, sexual parameters, etc.  It was a stretch for Petra; still in part linguistically.  But she eventually understood everything, Janys explained.

“But some men in the Bible had hundreds of wives, concubines, and prostitutes, it seems. King David for instance, a ‘man after God’s own heart’, it says in Scripture, must have been a sex addict!”, Petra had exclaimed. 

“Ever hear of Wilt the Stud?’, Janys had asked, wrestling with German and English.  “Or President Kennedy with Resident Kinky Dee… and Alice, and Jane, and Martha, and Marilyn, and….  Kennedy would have sex with several different women all in one day, sometimes.  His Secret Service would round them up for him, like Jesus said go to the highways and the byways and compel them to come in...  And strip and screw… in their case.  They all did for President John Don Juan.

“It’s amazing no one ever blackmailed him and with that the entire nation.  It came close to happening around the same time in Britain.

“You were probably too young”, Janys continued, “to remember the Christine Keeler affair.  She brought down in Britain the Harold Macmillan government in 1963 through her sexual involvement with both Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, and a Soviet Embassy attaché as well.  In 1964, there were consequently ‘winds of change’ for Prime Minister Macmillan, who was turfed out of office.  The joke at the time was, ‘Question: Who’s the worst carpenter in the world? Answer: Christine Keeler…  A few screws here and there, and the whole cabinet fell apart!’”  It took Petra a while to get the joke with the play on “screw”…

“Well, my dear, that’s a little of why the Apostle Paul says no to be screwing around, unless in a committed marriage relationship, if one is a Christian.

“It’s tough when you’re sexy and used to it, Petra.  But go read the Book of I Corinthians, then let’s have another talk.”

Petra agreed.  She took it very well.  She said she’d apologize the next time she saw Andy.

Janys suggested they invite him right over and talk about it.  They did.  Petra said she was sorry; Andy did not even see naked boobs.  He thanked her.  It was over just like that.

“Oh, and you guys, congratulations!  This marriage thing must really be neat!  Can we talk about it sometime?  I have no idea…”

Janys said again, “Read the book of Corinthians.”  And they showed her to the door.

“I think Petra got it, Andy.”, Janys said finally.  “I wish we could go to another beach party. I’d love to see what kind of bathing suit she’ll wear…”

In October as well, the team added to its activities a Boys’ Club for the winter months, having received again permission from Wilmersdorf assembly to use their facility.  Still no offers of help from any of the churches they connected to.  They had hoped G.E.’s initiative might have changed things.  So far not.

Despite Braxman’s arrest, Fiona had remained melancholy.  Jack was still staying over Friday and Saturday night’s at the girls’ apartment.  Fiona was going thorough the motions of team life, but the lustre had gone.  It even showed in her complexion and hair.  Jack understandably cursed Braxman.  There were phone calls going back and forth between Fiona and her parents; Fiona and G.E.; Jack and G.E.  The phone bills, Peter’s domain, must have been significant. Maybe they shouldn’t have gotten those new phones installed…  So far, nothing was being resolved.  Jack and Fiona were showing the stress.

Meanwhile, Jean’s health had stayed constant.  For the time being, they too were holding.

On occasion, the guys’ apartment took in “strays” met usually on the Ku’damm during open-air Evangelisationen. One night in mid-October, a guy, Mannfred, stayed with them.  He had become ‘saved’ through a local Jesus People expression known as the Children of God.  He spoke not a word of English, but strangely claimed comprehension of English-language Christian magazines he perused in their apartment, believing the Holy Spirit somehow supplied spontaneous comprehension. Andy felt tempted to press him on content, but other than obliquely so as not to embarrass him, refrained.

Mannfred only stayed one night, then rather mysteriously disappeared with not a word of thanks.  A few others disappeared with a little more.  The first found the change purse, and absconded with it.  Thankfully there was little in it.  The next disappeared with one of Andy’s Schaeffer books.  He was less chagrined about that.  He suddenly knew he was changing… 

Mention was made of some of this petty theft by Gary in a letter to G.E.  A clear directive arrived shortly thereafter: STOP TAKING IN THE HOMELESS! G.E. went on to say that they had gone to Germany to preach and teach the Gospel.  This, he explained, would engage them in Bible studies, door-to-door and open air work, and many similar kinds of activities.  But it was too risky to be taking in street people.  Especially men with Sharon, not at all unattractive, living in the apartment too.  Though likewise if it was all girls being taken in, G.E. would still have prohibited the practice, for opposite reasons.

On the last Saturday of October, Jack had booked yet another visit to Scott Cunningham at the Zehlendorf American Army Base.  He was going weekly now, working out with him, hanging out, etc.  Jack never said very much about the visits. Todd Braxman was apparently being held at the Base now.  He had suffered a broken collarbone the night of the abduction.  It had sufficiently immobilized him that night.  No one knew how he had dealt with that medical condition. No one quite knew either how he had survived in the intervening weeks.  New German charges however were pending, for several Breaks and Enters. Jack’s working out included rebuilding his karate prowess.

Fiona was not doing well; there was talk of G.E.’s possibly coming to Berlin in early November. 

Jack asked Andy if he wanted to join with him for the ride that October afternoon.  They agreed that he would not meet with Scott. Andy said he’d be glad to go along, and take the car to a nearby park for an hour or so. 

The daytime drive to the Base was reminiscent of the wild drive there the night of the kidnapping.

Andy began, “You know, Jack, I can now imagine the terror of those Israeli athletes at the Olympics.  Look what it’s done to Fiona weeks later, even with the guy caught. 

“She’s not doing well is she, Jack?”

“She’s a mess, Andy.”, Jack said, agonizing.  “You know what she’s been talking about most?  Her son, Timmy.”

“So where’s this all going to end up, Jack?”, Andy asked.

“Almost for sure G.E.’s comin’ out in early November. One of the things I’m gonna talk to Scott today about is whether there may be any kind of psychiatric help for Fiona. They have a responsibility we both think.  It’s a real bummer.

“Her parents want her home.  I think now that is the best, too.  I’m thinkin’ of leavin’ too, Andy.”, Jack behind the wheel looked grim.  All the bounce had gone.

It was the first time Jack had come out and said so much.  It was not surprising.  It was still shocking to hear it said so starkly.  The whole team was tottering.

Jack easily found parking outside the Compound on Clayallee.  When Andy looked around he told Jack, “I’ve got a key too. I think I’m just going to stroll around. Take as long you need. 

“I have a novel idea that just hit me.  What if you were to ask to actually see Braxman in jail.”

“Whatever for, Andy?”, Jack looked incredulous.

“I don’t know, really, Jack.  The thought just hit me.  What if you could actually win him over?  That would sure set Fiona at ease…”, Andy was conjecturing.

Jack shook his head and strode towards the electronic gate.  He was soon ushered inside, leaving Andy to wander along the Allee.  It was like an Indian Summer fall day back home, though a touch cool.  Andy suddenly thought it would soon be Hallowe’en.  On which planet again?  It all seemed frightfully far away.  He was glad Janys had not joined him.  He had some serious thinking to do.  Somehow the sight of this Compound, representing American power flung to the far corners of the world, was an inspiration.  But not to sing The Star-Spangled Banner.

Andy’s mind first turned to G.E.’s forceful missive about only “preaching the Gospel”. He thought immediately of the Matthew 25 passage. 

He felt again overwhelmed with the salvation message of the passage.  It all turned upon good works performed in this lifetime. And yet he had been raised all his life to believe “not by works, lest any man should boast”, Paul’s teaching, which was all after-death oriented.  So did Paul simply contradict Jesus?  Did a choice have to be made of that sort?  Or was James, in echoing Jesus with “ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”, simply out to lunch, author indeed of a “right strawy epistle”, unaware that salvation was freely offered without good works?

Were James and Jesus in their teachings somehow heretics?  Even though Jesus the icon saved us through His blood?  But not through His words lived out?  Then Andy remembered the startling discovery in Matthew’s Gospel that the “wise man” was not the one who believed, and the “foolish man” not the unbeliever destined for hell fire. Rather, the wise man was “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice”.  And what was the immediate context for Jesus’ “words” to discern what practice?  The Sermon on the Mount, which is chock-a-block full of the call to treat the neighbour with justice, mercy and compassion. That was the purview of the wise man. That was the concrete actualization of salvation that is “today”. 

How had Andy missed, how had the entire Evangelical tradition misread, such evident biblical teaching?  Could it be that Evangelicals, for all their protestations of biblical faithfulness, were instead after all most like the legalistic Pharisees, “of their father, the devil”, murderers and liars from the beginning?  Andy hated it when his mind took such turns.  This could get a guy crucified he self-scolded with a chill.

Andy turned to the immense human capacity to inflict human suffering upon one’s fellow, as he walked alongside the American Base.  The American Army is the most capacitated in the entire world to do precisely that!  Images of Agent Orange defoliating multiplied hundreds of thousands of hectares of pristine jungle, and doubtless deforming thousands of unborns for a whole new generation; gas ovens; massive bombings; scientific excising of “cancer” from the body politic; cluster bombs scattered by the millions, and jungle slaughter of soldiers, villagers, and anyone else caught in the crossfire; napalm sending an eight-year-old girl naked down the road, the searing pain all over her face, captured for the world by a happenstance photographer.  He wondered at the enormous human capacity and lust for perpetrating overwhelming misery against others. 

The thought struck, had he first heard it from Hans?, that this had to be the ultimate inversion of evangelism, when bombs and bullets, Agent Orange, and God only knows what else in word and deed, not “the good seed”, were scattered indiscriminately upon the earth.  Pain, death and devastation followed.  Massively.

Then the terrifying reminder that Evangelicals en masse blessed all that!  The ultimate world evangelist gave routine assent, as surely as Saul and those stoning Stephen persecuted the early Christians.  Billy always prayed with the President during times of national crisis. And with Graham, the vast majority of Western Evangelicals nodded their approval, like the Nazis at Dachau and elsewhere in the white coats at the end of those one-way train trips.  What utter perversion of the Good News.  What Gospel travesty. What complete inversion of evangelism.  By the world’s greatest evangelist, and amongst the world’s most virulent religion propagators: Evangelicals.

How could this be?  How could a man, not to mention an entire faith tradition, so endorse and defend pure, unadulterated evil perpetrated against God’s good creation and his image bearers, for whom, additionally, Christ himself suffered a painful victim’s death by “legitimate” state decree?  Andy’s mind recoiled at the emerging sense of sheer horror of what he and his fellow Evangelicals accepted as nonchalantly as going out for a Sunday School picnic:  mass slaughter of enemies of the State.  This was in company with dominant Western Christian tradition since Constantine.  It was also in lock step with Machiavelli, Napoleon, Bismarck, the German Kaiser, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese Emperor, Mao, to name only relatively recent mainly Western tyrants.

His horror turned to terror that his entire life he had worshipped God and had been formed in all his core beliefs in company with such sycophants of mass murder and mayhem. As if he had been born into a Mafia family, where killing and slaughter were simply routine, justified as what was needed to “get the job done”, to enable “normal” life to go on.  “Just War” theory as Christians had always enunciated it, Andy suddenly understood, was equally the prerogative of the Mob and every vile tyrant known to humanity.  No doubt Christians were more sophisticated than what a Mafia family godfather or dictator might articulate, but in the end, it all boiled down to exactly the same thing: terror and slaughter.  People destroyed, the earth raped and pillaged, all for a “just” cause. How could he have been so duped, and not have seen the true face of Christendom, of Evangelicalism, viciously “red in tooth and claw”?

He crossed over the Allee at a light.  He walked towards the Base but from the other side.  As he looked at the base, he imagined all the keen Christians wanting to propagate their faith while they gleefully slaughtered their enemies in Vietnam.  The juxtaposition was stark.

He thought of Christian support of slavery and the slave trade.  Thousands of lives were stolen, brutalized, raped, terrorized, and discarded at the behest of those whose unquestioned, until politician William Wilberforce, participation in “Christian” genteel society was as grotesque then as Nazi concentration camp guards 150 years later – or Allied bombers or majority Christian supporters of the death penalty and warfare throughout church history.  The entire edifice of Western civilization after all built upon a gargantuan garbage dump of justified “holy”, wholly, terror.

There was a bench at the edge of the sidewalk.  The sun was warm.  Andy sat looking at the expanse of the entire Compound.

He was again realizing, like awakening from a terror-filled nightmare, that this kind of justification was dominant Evangelical Christian reality.  Not “justification by faith” intentionally productive of a “life of love”, which seemed largely a massive Christian fraud, a kind of ferocious legal fiction, but justification of every imaginable form of harm and destruction wreaked upon humanity and nature in the name of God. Andy wondered what kind of powerful sorcerer had incanted such a pervasive, potent spell, that the entire Evangelical tradition, including millions upon millions of ostensibly Bible-believing, Jesus-following, God-fearing souls, accepted such indescribably sick justifications as Gospel truth?  Was there ever any hope of breaking such a spell, when the Bible, God, and Jesus ostensibly, according to most mainline leadership past and present, queued eagerly in unequivocal endorsement?

His mind moved inexorably to Evangelical, in general Christian, justification of every war fought in the entire history of the church.  All had been blessed by the church on both sides of the conflict. Andy knew that over one hundred millions had been slaughtered in the twentieth century so far alone, mostly with the blessing of the church from every side.  He knew from Hans the terrible recitation of mass butchery by Western Allies.  These hundreds of thousands of immolated innocents just happened to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the infants under two that Herod had destroyed to wipe out the Christ-Child. 

Just like that!, Andy saw it with a start.  Then: And they’re still aimed at murdering the Christ-Child!  What was that Christian World War II slogan?: “Praise God and pass the bombs!”.  Sick, and designedly destructive of the Christ-Child in every last one of “the least of these”!  Herod’s decree marching orders ever since for virtually all Christendom, world without end; world brought to a horrible end possibly in nuclear nightmare!; all enemies for sure consigned to a God-forsaken end, Amen and Amen, intoned by every military chaplain in the history of Christendom.   

Why was such an obvious biblical association so out of step with virtually everyone else living in the West? Incredible! Astounding!  The power of monstrous myth-making to perpetrate the Ultimate Lie: “Might is right. Violence is holy.”  Isn’t that exactly what he was looking at?  One clarion symbol of that very mythmaking?  A two-millennia religious phenomenon, Christendom, including right up to its most vehement contemporary defenders, Evangelicals, utterly at odds with the most straightforward, most pervasive, most undeniably central Gospel ethical truth: Love your neighbour; love your enemies.  The Core of the Gospel: unbridled reconciliation; the Core of Christendom: endless violence.  Each in diametrically opposed stark juxtaposition.

Then: Who did Andy think he was?!  To see things so differently.  Who did Hans think he was?  Dan? Jesus?, the questions thudded like a sledge hammer.  Andy physically recoiled.  He held onto the bench as if falling. Then, but whom are Evangelicals following, when Jesus is the rock bottom source of the Gospel logic against violence?  What had Gandhi said?: “It seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was non-violent.”

When Gandhi once was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he paused, then replied: “I think it would be a great idea!”  Freedom of the Western press for those who own one.  Freedom from violence for those who own the biggest guns.  Drop that first atomic bomb.  Now the Russians will know who has the Biggest Gun! Stupid white men facing each other down on Main Street at High Noon.  Little kids all; puerile; totally stunted growth; utter fools every last one, from President John down to Kinky Sex Dee and Christine and Marilyn…  A great idea indeed, “civilization”, however foreign in the West.

Gandhi might have similarly responded to, ‘What do you think of Western Christianity?’ with, ‘I think it would be a great idea…”  Then he might have added, “They could even start by following Jesus!” What a novel thought.  And for different reasons, but in the end with identical outcome, both believer and non-believer respond: “So what?”  Billy Graham, the pagan, the lowly G.I. Private in Vietnam, latest evangelistic convert stroking his New Testament like a good luck charm, while proceeding to engage in routine acts utterly anti-Christ: blowing, not welcoming, the enemy to Kingdom Come!  That, in the end, is the true measure of Evangelical evangelism.  “Kingdom Come” all right, when all is said and done, at the point of the gun, the discharge of the bomb, the launch of the missile. Praise God and drop those bombs, toss those grenades, spew death from the automatic weaponry, fire those missiles. That’s God’s true Kingdom Come on earth for Western Christianity: all enemies be damned, God be praised forevermore.

Andy knew that his Evangelical peers did not see war, World War II, the Vietnam War, any war their nation needed to enter, that way.  That they invariably intoned, he had heard it, war was a tragic, unavoidable, necessity so that people could live in freedom and peace.  Which people?! his mind exploded in remonstrance! The hundreds of thousands who “are the dead, though short days ago they lived” whether or not “poppies grow in Flanders fields”?  Which poem was callous call to continue the massacring.  What of their peace and freedom?  They were to be accorded only the peace of the graveyard?, as Evangelicals and most of Christendom cheered, saying indeed ‘Praise the Lord, and pass the bombs! – or the spears; or the guns; or the missiles; or the electric chairs.’ Sick and desperately evil.  What a monstrous lie Christendom had believed, had perpetrated!  For centuries.  And with ubiquitous, iniquitous, world-conquering outcome. 

He could not stop his mind’s stream of consciousness.  He noticed absently geese overhead.  Presumably.  He imagined American war planes about to once again drop deadly destruction upon all beneath, the good creation.

What an abject, calculated rejection of the one who taught and lived, “Love your neighbour, especially your enemies”.  He wondered, as in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, what emissary from hell might perhaps be sent to lift the veil of abject evil from his fellow Evangelicals’ eyes so that they could see?  Or would they rather be as Jesus warned, seeing, yet they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand?  They already had Moses and the Prophets, and Jesus and the Apostles.  If they didn’t “get it” in reading them, what hope, were one even to raise again from the dead!  Did not Billy Graham and “a great cloud of witnesses” preach ‘Jesus Christ, Risen Again, Mighty to Save, Able to Keep’, what Andy’s home assembly boldly announced it preached, visible above the pulpit for all comers?  The iconic Bible wide open in Billy’s and millions of preachers’ hands as they thunder their evangelistic message without the Gospel; Jesus denied and crucified in Evangelicals’ blessing of mass victims everywhere.  Jesus the Salvation Icon.  But not Jesus the Exemplar.  Horrors no… Horrors yes.

Andy’s mind reeled, but had nowhere to turn.  This could get a guy crucified.  He was under no illusion that Evangelicals believed in Billy Graham, for all intents Pope of Evangelicalism, believed in Billy Graham far more than they believed in Jesus.  If Billy prayed with every President for victory in whatever war America was fighting, then Billy must be right and Jesus wrong!  It was surely as blatantly stark as that. 

And who would be thanked for saying, “But the Emperor has no clothes!”  Certainly not the little boy crying out the sudden revelation in Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes.  “Crucify him!”, Andy suddenly heard the Evangelical hordes crescendo in response, as robustly, as resolutely, as incomprehensibly, as the mob in front of Pilate two thousand years before – or the soldiers doing Herod’s bidding to the two-and-under toddlers in Bethlehem so long ago.  Why did Andy’s mind think this way?  What was the matter with him?  What had seized his troubled mind to arrive at conclusions that would get him crucified, and blacklisted by every Evangelical leader in the world?  Who did he think he was?!

He wondered about Scott Cunningham who wanted Christ and American Empire; his cake and eat it too; God and Guns.  Jack was obviously having a good discussion.  There was no sign of him yet.  Andy felt okay about that.  The sun was warm on his face.  He still had some ways to go in sorting some of this out.

Had he somehow misunderstood?  Did Evangelicals after all really take Jesus seriously?  He thought immediately of all the “born-again” military personnel right in front of him.  A real revival, the team had been told.  He remembered what Hans Beutler had said, recalled his discussions with Dan, and reviewed his own awareness of church history.  No.  He was not wrong. The vast majority of Christians throughout history, and of his contemporary Evangelicals, best represented by Billy Graham at the White House in his constant blessing of U.S. military interventions, had always underwritten mass slaughter of America’s, the West’s, the “good guys’” enemies, worldwide.  Whenever it served American, or Western interests. 

There was always justification for Western Holocaust.  The “other justification” like Paul’s “other gospel” that was pure symmetrical inversion of biblical “justification by faith”.  It was Evangelicals’ primary gospel; foremost kind of “justification”.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ, of the Bible, was unknown or secondary.

There was no difference between Evangelical doctrine and Mafia belief in the end. Regrettably or not, in cold blood, or with a glimmer of conscience, people must die, the good earth be wasted!  Whatever to get the job done.  It was the logic of High Priest Caiaphas who said of Jesus that it was better that one man should die than that the whole nation perish.  Evangelicals, all of Christendom, had simply repeated that scapegoating anti-Gospel dogma throughout their long, sick and desperately evil history, who can know it?; Andy’s mind echoed Jeremiah.  The dynamics that had killed the Prince of Peace were identical to those theologized, endorsed, and perpetuated by most of Christendom most of history, by most everyone.  Andy quoted to himself: the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?  Evangelicals obviously did not.  Did he?

And there was Andy daily on the streets of West Berlin, door-to-door at the Centre, with the evangelistic throngs at the Munich Olympics, preaching the anti-“Gospel”, representing reversed “Good News”.

He stood up, then sat down again; felt almost like throwing up, like expectorating to oust some kind of forbidden ingested food.  But he knew it was far too late.  He had long-since swallowed, for years, Evangelical belief, which included, like King Herod, perpetual endorsement of mass slaughter of innocents. Most Evangelicals, most Christian believers, were King Herod’s foot soldiers when it came to war and capital punishment.

He remembered the observation that Billy Graham’s first book was Peace With God.  But he had never written Peace With Man.  And not likely to, given his anti-Christ evangelistic theology.  Yet were there not two “Greatest Commandments”, not one?  Why in war and the death penalty did Evangelicals excise the Second?

So what about all the Germans, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese – enemies all within the past thirty-five years – murdered on a grand scale by the “Good Guys”, and blessed by all Christendom , except “enemy” Christendom, which of course identically called down God’s blessing on the slaughter of the “Good , really Bad, Guys”. Had God not made them in his image too? Had Christ not also died for them? Was there not Good News they were equally entitled to hear?  Embrace?  Live out? Does “love” mean in the end what the papal legate said centuries before, and Evangelicals explicitly follow in the present day, “Kill them all, God will sort out who are his own!”? 

Andy wished Jack would hurry out now.  He needed somehow to put a stop to the impossible build-up of stream of consciousness. There had been very little traffic on the Allee. He felt tempted to get up and walk again.  His mind roared on.

What kind of utter perversion, inversion, of biblical “love” had Christendom embraced, to permit the wholesale slaughter throughout the centuries of domestic and foreign “enemies”, who were “neighbours”, who were “God”, at least God’s image bearers, in whom, “the least of these”, Jesus was to be found?  Why had seemingly so few in the history of the church from within screamed out: The Emperor has no clothes!? 

Some of Andy’s earlier discussions were doing reruns.

In that light, in consideration of the overwhelming unrighteousness of Christian belief and action for centuries, was not the era of the Enlightenment a supreme gift from God to the church?  To the world? Were its proponents perhaps the “stones” God would make cry out when the church for centuries had endorsed and committed endless atrocious adulteries with the State, approving innumerably the very violence that killed its Founder?  Was not the revolt of atheism over against the church’s horrendous unfaithfulness pure religion of the sort James spoke of?  Were not Unitarians in their pacifism far more faithful even when throwing out the baby, Jesus’ Incarnation, with the bath water, however regrettably?  Was not Gandhi “right on” in his rejection of the missionaries’ “Christ”? 

Was not Martin Luther tragically misguided in only trying to find justification before a holy God, yet never likewise before God’s image-bearers, not least God’s chosen, the Jews?  Luther who had instructed the German Nobility, “Smite, slay and kill” the peasant hordes, and had committed to writing some of the most vituperative anti-Semitic hate literature known to humanity.  Which the Lutheran church officially rejected only after the Nazis, steeped in Martin Luther’s German Christianity, had slaughtered six million Jewish innocents.

Was not, come to think of it biblically, contrary to mainstream Protestant and Evangelical understandings, the only way to find a holy God through loving embrace of neighbour and enemy?  Was not Jesus the Way, and that Way according to Jesus is living out the two Greatest Commandments, of which the second is the “royal law” and only way of actually performing the first – loving God – Whom one has not seen? How had Evangelicals, so adamant about following Jesus, sucked him utterly dry of all true content when it came to Jesus’ own central teachings and example about love of neighbour and enemy?

Andy’s mind had built up such momentum that nothing seemed able to stop the ineluctable questions he was posing to himself.  He felt immobilized, like a terrified mouse before the proverbial snake. Yet somehow the serpent, unlike in the Primordial Garden, rightly was about to swallow its prey.  Wasn’t the church, in light of its long and terrifying history of violence, one of the most evil scourges on humanity the world had known? Possibly the most evil?  He remembered a line from a German poem, Die Gerechtigkeit der Erde, O Herr, hat Dich getötet - the righteousness of the earth, O Lord, has killed you.  Only he would change O Herr to O Kirche. The church had self-imploded in light of all human standards of righteousness, which were far more vaunted than the church’s.  Or were they? Had the secular world simply imbibed the church’s biblical teaching, despite Christendom’s contrary example, and now was holding the church to account when it had so quickly and so long since turned faithless to its own founding texts? 

Andy didn’t know where to turn.  Who had written on this stuff?  Why didn’t he know of it?  When in church history, if at all, did at least a few lonely voices cry out about the Emperor’s, Christendom’s, Evangelicalism’s stark and shameful, vile and unconscionably evil, nakedness; unrepentant and endlessly repeated whoredoms? Were there at least seven thousand in the long history of the church who had not bowed the knee?  Would he have to leave the church to find God?  Would he have to turn to the secular thinkers and philosophers to discover true biblical religion?  Was the church, in the end, the Mob; worse?

A car honked. For a split second Andy actually thought someone was acknowledging him.  But it was obviously not.  He decided he would get up to walk some more.  He continued in the same direction he had been heading.  His mind plunged headlong in a similar direction.

He wished he could somehow tear out that part of his brain that was causing so much offence, like Jesus had said one should do with an eye or a hand.  But wasn’t the church in fact the primary offender?  He recalled a saying he had read by Simone Weil: The church is that great totalitarian beast with an irreducible kernel of truth.  And Weil refused to join it throughout her lifetime.  No wonder, Andy now reconsidered.  And hadn’t she also said the most fundamental act of forgiveness humans needed to undertake is towards God?  Wasn’t she right?  Might it indeed have been better had Jesus never been born even, had the word “God” never first been uttered long ago amongst Semitic nomads?  Given how the church and its precursors had desecrated so violently its content?

Andy felt wretched.  It seemed like he was being thrust inside an Alfred Hitch*censored* horror movie, when all perspectives and norms were rendered kaleidoscopic.  Where was he to turn when everything normal had convulsed into a thousand distortions? He had come over to Germany to propagate faith, and instead had found his faith buffeted and sent topsy-turvy, not by contrary intellectual argument from others, he had braced for that, but from his own experience and rethinking within the faith. 

He was his own fifth columnist, his own desperate traitor, self-betrayed!  How distressing.  He had unwittingly been lying in wait to ambush his easy-believism cheap-grace Evangelical faith, so proud and *censored*y about having “the truth”, that he didn’t know that he was himself the hunted, not the hunter. 

The tables had been turned. The shoe was on the other foot.  He needed to be evangelized. He was that Emperor without any clothes.  This was his moment of truth.  Would he repent and turn, from what?, Evangelical faith?, or would he, like the Emperor, thrust his head a little higher, and strut stark-staring naked onwards to the beat of Christendom’s droning blood-drenched drums?  He knew the sycophants who in that case would cheer him on.  He knew the irony of a British gun boat “rescuing” the children in Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Was he, in his evangelistic zeal, only guilty of traversing the ocean to make his converts twice the sons of hell for his efforts?  Was this the indictment of most Evangelical missionary and evangelistic efforts worldwide, of every Billy Graham evangelistic crusade he had so unthinkingly prayed for?  How dare he think such thoughts?  Wasn’t this ultimate heresy?  Who did he think he was?

“O wretched man that I am!”, he suddenly cried out audibly.  No one heard. 

Around the corner at which intersection he had arrived, there was a horrific thundering as Army vehicle upon army vehicle rolled down Clayallee to enter the Compound.  There must have been twenty or more; tanks, armoured cars, and a fleet of others he could not identify.  They must have been on some kind of training exercise.  He was wrong, therefore.  All the Christians were not at the Base.  Some at least were training once again to kill.  He felt sick.  He felt like launching a rocket to wipe them all out.  He felt wretched.

Jack came out after the last of the procession had turned in to the Compound.

Andy crossed over to the other side.  Jack said he looked like he’s seen a ghost.  Andy said he had, millions of them.  But nowhere the Holy Ghost. 

Jack did not even try to understand.

“Let’s head back. I’ll tell you about the visit on the way.”

Andy looked again at the Compound for the Holy Ghost, maybe Jesus.  No such luck.

Violence and Nonviolence: That is the Question by Wayne Northey

[An unpublished novel by me treats of violence and nonviolence as a major theme with hell a subtheme.  It is entitled Chrysalis Crucible, and tells the story of a young evangelist’s coming of age on the short-term mission field in West Berlin.  Following are two chapters on violence and nonviolence.  Please also read “Violence and Nonviolence – (Part II)” as a kind of climax of this theme. 

If you are interested in dialogue on this, please feel free to contact the web administrator with your e-mail address and comments.  I will then respond to you at my discretion.  Thanks.

Wayne Northey]

 

Chapter Forty-five

The drive from Bonn through the East German “corridor” (there were only a few designated routes permitted through East Germany) was uneventful for Hans.  He arrived, as planned, in time for supper.  Together with Sharon, Joanne had prepared a repeat of Andy’s parents’ visit, Rouladen, Rotkohl, and Schwarzwälderkirschtorte. Such a spread from one experience had gone right up there for Andy alongside roast beef.  It succeeded again.

After supper, Joanne had suggested an evening of games.  She liked she had said a few times how the Team had fun together with Rook, Monopoly, and Stockticker, all brought over by Jack.  She said that Hans’ family never played games, that sitting around their table was at times like being at a funeral wake, so serious were they all in discussing “issues”.  Hans’ dad was also a physician, his mom a College professor.

Hans was completing his practicum as a doctor, and would begin working in a hospital in mid-October. He and Joanne were also to be married two weeks before, at the end of September and practicum.  They were to spend their Flitterwochen in northern Ontario.  Janys and Andy had promised to give them some good tips for the early October trip. 

Hans had belonged to the SMD, Studentmission Deutschlands, the German counter-part to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelistic student organization found on campuses throughout the world.  He had also studied a year at Wheaton College in the States – where he and Joanne had met.  His command of English was superb.  It helped that his mother was American, and that he read in English voraciously. 

At the end of the meal, the conversation turned to biblical infallibility.  Andy was remonstrating about the difficulty of getting Germans even to understand what was at stake.  Hans’ response was mild enough:  “At first when at Wheaton I wasn’t even sure of what the term meant.  It’s of course not anywhere in the Bible.”

“Neither is the word ‘Trinity’ ”, Andy came back quickly.

Hans continued:  “But as I discovered, it has a long and revered history in North American churches, because in particular of an interesting experience of a major ‘fundamentalist-modernist’ controversy earlier this century.”

Andy was very sketchy on recent, for that matter most, church history, so he remained silent.  As did Gary. Andy had however won the History Prize in Grade 13, so was keen.

“How I have come to understand it from my studies in the States, it seeks to affirm that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is equally accurate in all areas it touches upon: theology, science, history, anthropology, etc.

“The first question that arises is of course about manuscripts. There are no originals in existenz, not even fragments.”  Occasionally Hans’ pronunciation took on a German colouring - not unsurprisingly.  However, his vocabulary was even better than his usually excellent pronunciation. Andy always felt jealous.  There was intense concentration in his knitted eyebrows. Some faces exude intelligence.  Hans’ was one.  “This doctrine always claims infallibility to be true in ‘the original manuscripts’.

“But if ‘the original manuscripts’ have long-since been lost to history, it’s rather empty to claim anything about something likely forever disappeared.  Like the Angel Moroni’s magic glasses and manuscript the Mormons got their Book of Mormon from.

“Second, to say something is true in history is at best only talking probabilities.  You weigh many conflicting theories, and opt for what seems most probable.  Now, to say for example that the creation story is ‘true history’ immediately raises problems.  (Francis Schaeffer claims you could hear a clock ticking in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve.)  But the story ‘takes place’ really in the era of pre-history.  It is only written down aeons, centuries at least, according to ‘Creationists’, after the purported events, and only after a long process of oral transmission.  So there are no comparative records to glean from – except other entirely fanciful accounts of the origins of creation found, I believe, in most cultures throughout the world.

“So to say the creation story is ‘true’ is really to say: ‘I believe for this and that theological reason it is true, though no scientific/historical research can ever touch the issue, and fair enough.’ ”

“That sounds very neo-orthodox to me, Hans.”, Andy chimed in.

“What do you mean by that term, Andy?”

“Francis Schaeffer says neo-orthodox theologians like Karl Barth fall into the Hegelian synthesis by seeking to have the best of both worlds: a religiously true Bible in the area of Geschichte, salvation history, but a higher critical view of the Bible in the area of Historie, what really happened, which allows for the Bible to have mistakes.

Andy continued:  “That is really schizophrenic thinking, however, and the dilemma of modern man is that the Bible always stands for the antithesis: there is no ‘leap-of-faith’ truth in the religious realm that is not true in the phenomenological world.

“But”, and he pushed his point hard, “there has never been one proven error in the Bible.  Many apparent discrepancies have been dealt with through further diligent research, and those which have not been will no doubt be explained in time.

“That is why infallibility is so meaningful to me.  As I mentioned already, the word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible either.  But the New Testament everywhere reflects the concept.  Likewise, whenever the New Testament touches down on Scripture, it implies the concept of infallibility. 

“Perhaps the only uniqueness of finding it mainly in North America is, that is where the doctrine especially has been developed – in response to certain historical circumstances.  Just as, so I understand, the two-nature aspect of Christ at Chalcedon was developed in response to certain specific circumstances.  That makes it no less biblically valid.”

Andy felt fairly satisfied with his response to Hans.  He thought he had done with Schaeffer’s material what Bill Gothard encouraged people to do with his Basic Youth Conflict Seminars: so imbibe the teaching that it becomes one’s own.

What had been mainly purely theoretical to Andy back in North America reading Schaeffer’s books had been experienced in Germany.  Andy had begun to suspect that behind every thinking German Christian was tragically a Hegelian mind-set.  He sensed a need to challenge this wherever he met it.  He even felt compelled to elicit it, if it was there, where it perhaps lurked just beneath the surface.

Hans did not look all that impressed, Andy felt.  The others listened to the conversation politely, but rather blankly too.  Andy wondered why, not once thinking how esoteric it all sounded to “non-intellectual” ears.  There was some uncomfortable movement at the table.  Was Joanne about to say something?

Hans asked Andy, “Have you ever read Karl Barth?”  Andy admitted he had not.  “Do you know that Dr. Barth has written far more theology in his lifetime than most Christians read in a lifetime?  That he is considered the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas, a kind of theological Mount Everest?”

Andy did not feel all that impressed.  So what he though, if it is all error?  Why scale a man-made mountain like at Disneyland?  Why read man-made theology?  Ken Kincaide’s point.  Hans did not press for a response.

The discussion with Hans would have ended then had Gary, who was not put off by the rarified tenor of conversation, not asked Hans to state his own view of Scripture.  Andy thought Joanne was again about to interject.  She was keen on a Games night, he knew.  He looked at her.  Was there a slight deflated countenance? 

Hans responded calmly by telling briefly his own testimony. “I like all youth in Germany who reached the draft age knew I would have to do service soon in the army.  I had been a fairly nominal Lutheran until then.  But someone had passed on to me a small book entitled Militia Christi by Adolf von Harnack, a German theologian.  I became intrigued by his discovery that early Christians opposed war, and that the war imagery of the New Testament had to do with spiritual, not earthly, matters.

“This New Testament understanding is summed up in Paul’s words in II Corinthians.  Can someone please pass me a Bible?  Moment mal...  Here it is, chapter 10, verses 3 and following:  ‘For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.)’. 

“I think that sounds too old-fashioned.  Any modern translation around?”

Peter went to his room and returned with J.B. Phillips’ paraphrase.  Andy was amazed to hear the Scripture raised he had just discussed with the Americans.

“Here:  ‘The truth is that, although of course we lead normal human lives, the battle we are fighting is on the spiritual level.  The very weapons we use are not those of human warfare but powerful in God’s warfare for the destruction of the enemy’s strongholds.’  This of course is why Ephesians 6:12 and following says our ‘whole armour’ is for fighting spiritual battles.

“And by the way, early Christians understood Ephesians 6 to be the passage concerned with the State, not Romans 13, where exactly the same Greek for ‘authorities’ appears. From Ephesians 6, it is clear that the ‘authorities’ are part of the spiritual enemies of Christ and his church – and not a benign, or more, since Constantine, benevolent, State which Christians should obey uncritically and benefit from in its wielding the sword, as Evangelicals usually interpret Romans 13:4.  This view of the benevolent state is especially demonstrated by Reinhold Niebuhr, a great 20th century American political ethicist and advisor to presidents, since democracy for him is nearly kingdom come. Interesting that Niebuhr, who genuinely did not take Scripture normatively, and was truly “neo-orthodox”, should articulate by far the dominant North American Evangelical position on such a crucial matter as the State.  Ironically, I argue in line with John Howard Yoder, this position is profoundly unbiblical.”

Andy felt the point was somewhat arcane.  “Do you mean,” Andy asked, “that God did not ordain the State, let’s say especially one with Western-style democracy like the United States and Canada, as a ‘good’ automatically, by virtue of its being a constituted State?”

Hans said, “Yes. 

“And incidentally, the violence of the State, claimed as divine right and mandate in the ‘sword’ language of verse 4, is only extended, by Evangelical interpreters ever since Saint Augustine, to the nation state, but never to ‘revolutionaries’, or other kinds of ‘Robin Hood’ do-gooders, which are likewise ‘constituted authorities’.  The text never mentions ‘state’ as the only kind of legitimate ‘authority’.  Revolutionaries of course are self-appointed, but such is the history of all royalty – and through invariable vanquishing violence. Often, as in South America, revolutionaries’ causes may be vastly more righteous than the state they are subverting or overthrowing.  And for that matter, of course, the United States was born of a revolutionary deposing of Britain’s power in the New World – for very questionable ‘righteous’ reasons.  For all intents, the War of Independence was a mutiny against the legitimate (according to most Evangelicals’ interpretation of Romans 13) prerogatives of the then God-ordained ‘authority’ in North America: the British Crown.  ‘Captain America’, George Washington, John Adams, etc., by Evangelicals’ account of Romans 13 is in fact a “pirate” deserving the very sword used to overthrow British rule!

“Ironically again, most American Evangelicals indulge in histrionic hagiography about the great Christian ‘founding fathers’ of America.  Most were Deists in fact.  And George Washington amongst others was indeed ‘father’ of the nation in ways generally disapproved of by Evangelicals today.”

Andy felt shocked by these assertions, which at points he barely followed.  He fully expected an outburst from Fiona, maybe even Jack or the Collins’, but it never came, surprisingly.

Andy could not resist: “Hans, what does ‘histrionic’ mean?” Andy learned a new word that day in contemplating Evangelicals putting on a kind of theatre about the mythology of “Christian” origins of America, when it was so patently prevaricated; at least seriously skewed.

Hans was very patient.  He paused as if waiting for other questions or challenges.  Joanne finally said, “I was really hoping we could play some games tonight.  Anyone else game.” All but Andy, Janys, Gary and Hans put up hands.

Gary piped up. “I really want to hear Hans out some more.  But if some of you are game – ahem! – to clear the table at least, that will get us started.”  Peter and Jean immediately offered.  Joanne might have, Andy wondered, but perhaps stayed to watch over what Hans would say next. Andy looked at his watch.  It was only a little after 7:00. What was the big rush, he wondered impatiently. 

“Continue, Hans.”, Gary said.  “Though I have some real questions about your interpretation of American founding history. And I have one clarification question, What is a Deist?”

“At the time of the founding of the United   States,” Hans explained, “many of the intellectual elite imbued with the Enlightenment spirit of skepticism towards the truth claims of Christianity turned to Deism as a kind of way-station enroute to atheism or secularism.  Deism in brief believes in a Clockmaker for the universe, but one who wound it all up ‘in the beginning’, and lets it all slowly unwind without interfering.  No Revelation.  No Incarnation.  No Resurrection.  God as Ultimate Non-Interventionist.”  He waited. Peter and Jean had moved everything from the table to the kitchen. Would they come back to hear more?  Andy heard water being run.  Not likely.

Hans continued by saying he went through a re-conversion, ended up joining the SMD, then applied for alternative military service.  He was accepted at Wheaton College.  While there, the major project to which he devoted himself was a research essay on the early church period, and its applicability to the church today.

“Through authors such as Jean-Michel Hornus, C.J. Cadoux, Jean Lasserre and others, not to mention the church Fathers themselves, I concluded that the early church was in fact mainly pacifist. 

“There was further a new theological study about to be published by Eerdmans, called The Politics of Jesus, which developed this theme extensively from Luke’s Gospel. I was shown a copy in manuscript form through a student of Stanley Hauerwas, a young theologian.  I drew on that a lot.  It was written by a Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder. I also read other writings by him, including one on the state.  He had in fact studied under Karl Barth, and, like Barth, was a committed Biblicist.”

“It seems that the early church underwent a ‘Great Reversal’ at the time of Emperor Constantine more far-reaching arguably in outcome in Western history ethically, or in terms of ‘justice/righteousness’, than the negative effects of the Enlightenment and modernity.  The so-called ‘Great Reversal’ was a triumph of an alien (non)Christian ethical ideology.

“You want to know why the Muslim world to this day cannot see a loving Jesus?  Because they see the sword of the Crusaders ever in Jesus’ hand.  They only hear the words of Constantine’s vision: ‘In hoc signo vinceres’.  They know that they were direct targets of that vision:  ‘In this sign you will conquer’ – the sign of the labarum – for all intents, the sword.  How Billy Graham incidentally can continue to use the term “Crusades” for his Einsätze astounds me utterly.  There could not be a more offensive term imaginable for the Muslim.  It totally drives them away from Christ.  Is that what he, what America, wants subconsciously, still to declare war on Islam?  One wonders that when considering near universal American Christian support for Israel…”

Andy looked over at Fiona.  Her face was clouded.  Sharon’s nose wrinkled in concentration.  Jack appeared to be taking it all in.  Janys was inscrutable.  Did Hans remind her of her brother?  Gary seemed right on the edge of more questions.  And Andy?  Frankly confused.  He suspected Hans would have facts and figures to support his interpretations. Why then so at variance with American Evangelicals?  Ideology. There must be underlying ideology at work.  Could one look at anything without that sieve?  Lessing’s “necessary truths of reason” given the prior ideological set of coloured glasses. Put on a different pair, and Kant’s “categorical imperatives” are suddenly less of the essence, perhaps even to the contrary.

Hans was on a roll.  “You want to know why I believe Europe so quickly secularized and is so incredibly resistant to the Gospel today?  It’s not all that unlike Muslims.

“You North Americans are so hung up about the Enlightenment and its disparagement of the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel.  But you fail to understand that Western Europe simply became utterly sick of the endless and horrendous bloodshed blessed or instigated by the church: the Crusades; the Inquisition; the (what’s that word in English?) pogroms against Jews; the Holy Wars; the witch-hunts; the burning of thousands of heretics by the Catholics; the drowning of similar thousands of Anabaptists by Protestants; the incredibly retributive penal justice system modelled after church canon law, and universal support of the death penalty; the church’s blessing both sides of every war in Europe since Constantine; and on and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. 

“If I just had majority church history to go on, I’d be a raving atheist too.  There has been arguably no more bloody institution in Western history than the church since the fourth century!  If this is what Paul meant by ‘Christ, the power of God’, then frankly, ‘the revolt of atheism is pure religion’ by contrast.  (I heard an American theologian named Walter Wink once say that at Wheaton.) Ironically, however, that very revolt is instigated in the first place by biblical revelation.  Jesus first elicited the Western atheistic philosophical tradition with his cry from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’  Jürgen Moltmann, and I’ve also heard him say this, observes that this indeed is either the end of all religion, and therefore the atheists are right, and likely the anarchists too, or the beginning of a whole new way of understanding ‘the executed God’. 

“There’s a line from a German poem, I forget by whom, that goes: “Die Gerechtigkeit der Erde O Herr hat Dich getötet!”  The moral righteousness of the Earth, O Lord, has killed You!  The blood spilled on the ground in the name of Christ for nearly two thousand years is by far the strongest counter-evangelistic argument I know.  Why should any morally sensitive person want to align with such an insatiably blood-drenched institution?  I’ve never thought of this, but it would be like, like evangelizing for membership in the Mafia! 

“And it continues.  To this day, missionaries either follow the gunboats as Hudson Taylor did in evangelizing China, or they benefit from the violence of the colonizing powers.  One reason that missionaries in this century came to be hated in so much if the Third World was their complete identification with Empire – British or American, these past two centuries.  Hudson Taylor’s ‘spiritual secret’ was in reality a ‘military not-so-strictly kept secret’.

“Contrary to all that, I argue in my paper, if Christ is the foolishness of God in response to the Enlightenment, but really God’s ultimate wisdom, he is likewise the weakness of God in answer to violence and war, but really his is the way of self-giving, nonviolent sacrificial love which is truly God’s revolutionary power.  Jesus the (Other) Way, right?

“A lot of what I’m saying now comes from my paper, which gets quite technical, sometimes.  Sorry….

“I’ll stop now.”  He did.  Noises of dishes and pots came from the kitchen.  There was muted conversation.  Andy asked: “How can you appraise the Enlightenment so positively, calling it God-ordained?”

Gary added, “Hans, I learned at Bible School that the Enlightenment was the real enemy today of Christianity.  Yet you paint it as almost from God.”

Hans responded: “The Enlightenment was in part an understandable reactionary celebration of the brilliance and goodness of man over against a church perceived to exist to glorify violence through its belief in ‘god’ and a doctrine of ‘original sin’ that leads directly to a hell of eternal conscious torment and the ultimate degradation of man.  ‘Wretched worm’ theology is handmaiden to a hell of eternal conscious torment.  How does the King James go?:  “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

“The reason the Enlightenment took such root in the first place was the valid revulsion towards the ‘god’ of the churches: a ‘god’ who blessed war, bloodshed and everlasting punishment in Jesus’ name on a massive scale. Did you ever read Voltaire’s Candide?”

“I did – in French.”, Andy replied.  But got no further.

Gary snapped back: “Hans, this all sounds not just neo-orthodox, but even heterodox! How do you justify all this biblically?”

Hans paused for some time.  Then, “Perhaps hear me out a little more, and see whether you still think that.  You’ve gotten me going.  I’ll summarize a little more my paper, which, by the way, won the theological prize at Wheaton College last year.”

Andy felt impressed.  Joanne excused herself from the table, saying she’d help Peter and Jean. Couldn’t she handle it anymore? What?, Andy wondered.  Peter had come out at one point to turn on the lights. The entire apartment building was quiet. Not even street sounds invaded. Andy looked over.  The French doors were closed.

“In my paper, I suggested that North Americans positively worship at an alternative ‘god’s’ shrine, which is Mars, god of Violence.  Ironically, while you defeated the Nazis in World War II, you Americans have become increasingly more like them ever since!  ‘In God we trust’, I wrote, is a lie.  ‘In Violence – supremely bombs, bullets and missiles – We Trust’ is the real truth.  Bombs built by taking bread from the mouths of the poor. That’s what President Eisenhower once claimed.  Most Christians worship this ‘god’ every bit as much as secular people. 

“In Germany there was only a small ‘confessing church’ which refused to bow the knee to Hitler, while the majority of Germany’s Christians totally supported the entire Nazi enterprise.  Karl Barth, incidentally, was primary author of the Barmen Declaration that denounced Hitler.  He was forced out of the university he taught at in Germany to Basel, Switzerland.  He was one of the few theologians in Germany to oppose Hitler.  Another was of course Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“I personally think it is somewhat similar in America today.  And few of those refusing to bow the knee to America’s devotion to violence and the military are in the Evangelical churches.  They are Quakers, Catholics, Mennonites, and others.  Not Evangelicals.  Not Billy Graham.  Not Leighton Ford.  Not Bill Bright.  And not Francis Schaeffer, Andy!  Not the rank and file in the pews either.  Ever heard of Dorothy Day?  William Stringfellow?  Jim Wallis? They all draw blanks, don’t they?

“You know the famous statement by Pastor Martin Niemoeller after the War?  Probably not. Another name Evangelicals have never heard of.

“He spent seven years in Dachau Concentration Camp.  He said something like, more or less verbatim, translated: ‘In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.’ ”  Hans paused. He deliberately looked at each person at the table, as if asking, were they comprehending?

Andy found this very troubling.  He had gone over to Germany convinced of the need to show German Christians biblically their wrong allegiance to Enlightenment “modernist” theology.  Now, somehow, the very Bible he most wanted to defend was being turned back on him.  This was not right!  He did not have a ready response.  He said nonetheless: “But divine violence is the stuff of the Old Testament.  It’s also central to the atonement, God’s demand for penal substitution and satisfaction.  And the Book of Revelation is all about the Lamb who conquers all foes and violently tosses his enemies into the Lake of Fire.”

“Andy”, Hans came back, “you might read New Testament theologian C.F.D. Moule’s article sometime that I came across in a Swedish theological journal, entitled “Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought”.  He directly challenges the violent theories of the atonement, and argues that God never intended the dire consequences that ensue upon sin punitively, retributively. I’ve also heard American theologian Donald Bloesch in a lecture at Wheaton argue that the traditional doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment is not biblically God’s final word.  Love is.  As to the Old Testament, you’d find quite entertaining Vernard Eller’s romp through the Scriptures that says the Hebrew people set out heading north by going south on the issue of violence.  It’s due out next year, and is going to be called  King Jesus’ Manual of Arms for the ‘Armless: War and Peace from Genesis to Revelation.  Just the thing for all the new Jesus People.

Andy was mystified at how readily this was all rolling off Hans’ tongue.  He felt at a loss.  He’d never had time to do that kind of study.

Hans asked.  “Shall I continue?” No one spoke.

Finally, Gary said flatly, “I think we owe it to hear you through.”

“You got me started on this, Gary.  I’ll try to bring home a few points.

“You have a CIA which engages in the same amount of deception, assassination, destabilization, torture, covert – and overt – war, and blatantly immoral activities of every kind imaginable, as the SS ever did, or the KGB does today.  And you have CIA directors for instance, who, according to some stories, would make inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah blush, their personal lives are so immoral. You also have nuclear war preparation and stockpiling that is responsible already for incalculable numbers of deaths, maimings, and diseases the world over.  The environmental damage to the good Creation by military build-up in which America is massively front-runner, is overwhelming worldwide. You are the only country to have actually dropped atomic bombs, not once, but twice! – and on defenceless civilians, and when Japanese surrender was imminent.  They claim it was to protect up to a million GI’s lives in a potentially protracted land invasion.  Just as likely it was to say to Moscow à la Wild West: ‘Watch out!  We have the Biggest Guns!’  It was doubtless the first salvo of the Cold War.  And besides, these were innocent civilians! Do we now justify as well the Aztecs for their human sacrifices of innocents?

“But, ‘if it’s good for American security it’s good for Evangelicals’ is the seeming Evangelical norm.  ‘America The Beautiful’, right?  Just like Israel The Virtuous.  In both cases, they can do no wrong for they are God’s ‘Chosen People’.  Evangelicals subscribe to that throughout North America.  I’ve heard the sermons July 4th Sunday.  I’ve listened, even in one year, to innumerable prophetic teachings about modern Israel.  Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth is as you know an American best-seller.  With all due respect, what a piece of garbage!  And though it will be discredited eventually in its prophetic specifics in favour of endlessly shifting theories about contemporary application to world events and figures, as all others have been for the last 100 years, you can bet there will be an endless crop of these, ever best-sellers, since they not only work to get people saved, even closer to the American Evangelical and secular dream, they sell!”

Andy looked around him.  He suddenly thought of Jesus, whip in hand, clearing out money changers in the Temple. The image suited.  What could he say?

Hans continued.  “What Evangelical has raised any questions about the CIA – whose top boss is ultimately the President?  If the buck for a kind of wickedness – on a level though perhaps not yet the scale of the worst the Nazis ever did – stops with the President of the United States, amongst the main ‘money lenders’ and advisers to that President are Evangelicals across the nation.  They elevate ‘Nation and President’ to the status of Deities.  ‘God and Flag’ right?  Not ‘Jesus and Resurrection’ as Paul preached on Mars Hill so that to some they sounded like two new gods for the Pantheon.  Rather, ‘God and Flag’, which are American ultimate idols. Evangelicals like Billy Graham have repeatedly been in bed with the President.  Billy Graham by Evangelicals is compared to a Daniel.  The more valid comparison is to the Whore of Babylon or the Antichrist!”  Hans’ nostrils flared.  He was worked up at last.

Fiona, though not understanding it all, exploded.  “Billy Graham is a great man of God!, who has told more people in this century about Jesus than any before him.  How dare you question his faith?!”  Andy had never seen her so angry.  Her beauty if anything was only enhanced, at least he could not miss the rapid rise and fall of her bosom.  Norton’s Notion came to mind; a midnight skating lesson.  His chest heaved too. He too was an enormous fan of Dr. Graham, but waited for Hans’ response.

Hans fell silent again.  Then: “Fiona, let me try to explain what I mean.  First though, I’m sorry.  I’m not against Billy Graham’s faith – as far as it goes. I fully affirm it, as far as it goes.  I’m just questioning some of where his and other Evangelicals’ faith has taken them – and has not taken them.  They tell me every word of the Bible is infallible.  But they apparently don’t apply that infallibility doctrine to one of Jesus’ main teachings, and certainly his premier ethical instruction, which he also lived out, and other New Testament writers consistently theologized about: ‘Love your neighbour/enemies’. 

“Billy Graham published his first book entitled Peace With God.  But that, according to Jesus, is only half the Gospel.  Dr. Graham has yet to publish the sequel, which should not even be such, rather it should have appeared simultaneously with his first publication, namely, Peace With Man.  Peace with God is religious sham if it is not demonstrated in peace with man. What were the Apostles’ words?  Just a minute, I’ll quote them exactly from the King James…

“Here: ‘If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.’ That’s Paul. Then John:  ‘If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’  That means the enemy too, Fiona!  And that’s why Jesus, when asked for the Greatest Commandment, gave two together for the price of one.  Peace with God, he consistently said, is a religious ‘crock’, I love that word!, if not demonstrated in peace towards man.  It is only half the Gospel and a heresy, baldly put.  It is clear everywhere in the New Testament that the litmus test for love of God is love of neighbour.  And the litmus test for love of neighbour is love of enemy.  To the extent we fail to love the enemy, precisely to that extent our love for God is phony – whatever our religious protestations and observances otherwise.” 

Andy had seldom listened to a more lucid or fluent, and erudite speaker.  And this by someone who had been raised in Germany.  Peter and Jean were listening at the kitchen door.  Andy had never heard such stuff before.  His mind was grasping at anything.  He suddenly said: “Hans, this sounds all so works-righteousness!  You seem to be adding so much to the simple faith ‘once delivered’.  Wasn’t that Luther’s great discovery: sola fide – justification by faith alone?”

Hans hesitated.  No one spoke up.  He replied: “And what did James say in his  rechter strörn Epistel – ‘right strawy epistle’, so designated by Luther? “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”; and “Faith without deeds is dead.” This just after James’ saying: “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.” – which incidentally St. Paul said summed up the entire Law and Jesus said was the Second Greatest Command just like the first to love God.”

Andy felt hemmed in.  How could Hans keep doing that?

Hans continued after a pause:  “I’ll add some more from my paper, if you wish, to put the biblical case home.  But let me say this: They can talk all they want about Christian revival at the American Army Base.  If all those good Christian soldiers do, ‘Onward Christian soldiers’ right?, afterwards is slaughter the enemy in Vietnam, whatever they are worshipping in their newfound religious zeal is alien to the God of the Bible.

“The point of Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees in Matthew 23 was their, yes, spurious, what a word!, faith in God.  And he says, to win people over in evangelism to that kind of ‘half-Gospel’ is to make them twice the sons of hell for the effort.  That’s very interesting arithmetic.  Now that should be very sobering for you in your enterprise in West Berlin – not to mention for Billy Graham Crusades and thousands of similar evangelistic efforts the world over. 

“Truth is, though, I argue in my paper, Evangelicals in the main don’t even see that in their Bibles.  So, just what are they, just what is Billy Graham, reading anyway?, I ask. Apparently not the Bible.  But doesn’t Billy always say, ‘The Bible says!’? Is he, are Evangelicals, after all, only Liberals in disguise, picking and choosing from the biblical witness what they will believe with the best of the ‘classic’ Liberals?  Only they never admit it.  Vehemently claim the contrary even.  Which makes them Liars as well as Liberals!”

Gary said angrily, “How can Evangelicals be ‘Liberals’?  That’s a contradiction in terms.”

Andy chimed in, simply befuddled, “And how can they be ‘liars’ when they follow Jesus who is the ‘Truth’?”

Hans responded quietly, “You tell me, you guys, you tell me.”

Then: “As you well know over here, and I illustrate it in my paper, Evangelical military chaplains abound in the armed forces.  I know you’ve met some of them here, not to mention thousands of ‘born-again’ Christians engaged in blowing their enemies’ brains out in Vietnam right now – and worse, if you think of napalm, cluster bombs, and saturation bombing of enemy territory.  And I’m sure the thousandth of all the horrendous human carnage in Vietnam we know nothing about – yet.  Just imagine what we will learn about the effects of Agent Orange alone. Birth defects, I’ve documented the predictions, will be massive.  Even if the North Vietnamese right now all deserved to suffer from grotesque deformities, does that mean their children too?!

“You North Americans likewise know so little about the countless atrocities committed by the Allies during both World Wars.  Something else I document in my paper.  For starters, in the last War the Allies did saturation bombing of civilian targets on at least 42 German cities.  Thousands of innocent civilians died and otherwise sustained horrendous maimings and injuries.  War is hell, pure and simple!  If American authors and movie makers afterwards do other than glorify the slaughter, as they mostly did of the first two wars, you can bet Evangelicals will ban all those books and movies as works of the devil or Communists.

“So where is the Evangelical church right now?  Nixon is a ‘Christian’ of course.  Billy Graham says so – even if he’s too busy with affairs of state to attend church – and the Republicans are close to ushering in the kingdom of God with their longstanding embrace of ‘Manifest Destiny’ doctrine.

“Meanwhile, Evangelicals go on endlessly about infallibility and the like, while ignoring entirely the eindeutigen – one-voiced, univocal, teachings of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament about how to treat the neighbour/enemy.”

“Hans”, Gary exclaimed in agitation, “this is coming out of nowhere for me. For all of us, likely.  You have to understand how hard it is to follow you, let alone agree!

“But, maybe, to draw this to a close, you could say, in your view, what your summation of Evangelicals is?”

“Well I came back to Germany grateful for the good education I got at Wheaton but deeply troubled about where the Evangelical church was at.  It has fallen in my view ‘culturally captive’ to a longstanding dominant American warmongering spirituality as surely as Jews were led captive to Babylon, or, more analogously, as the ancient Hebrews engaged in repeatedly the idolatrous activities of their neighbours.  Tell me if it is not dangerously close to Jesus’ idea that we should follow what Pharisees, read ‘Evangelicals’, believe – their commitment to Jesus, their love of the Bible –  but never do what they do.  Their claims about John 3:16 and God’s loving the world are rendered pure, what is reine Entweihung - in English?, sacrilege – that’s it! – in the jungles or skies of Vietnam.”

Joanne emerged from the kitchen with a Black Forest Cherry Cake ablaze with candles, singing robustly, “Happy Birthday to You!”  She had told no one except Jean.  It was Hans’ 26th birthday that very day, May 26, 1972.

The evening finished off in games and celebration.  Nothing more was said about the conversation.

Andy could not write in his diary that night.  His mind was churning.

 

Chapter Forty-Nine

Hans had had an uneventful trip.  When they returned to the girls’ apartment, shortly afterwards, they were called to supper.  Joanne and Sharon had done the meal together, with Jean’s help on setting up the dining room. It was one of Hans’ favourites. Bratwurst, sauerkraut, and boiled potatoes.  Easy to prepare they were assured.  Delicious, they all resoundingly approved.

Jack, unintentionally or not, got the conversation going as supper wound down.  The four singles had described their day in some detail, and with enthusiasm.  “I learned a new word today,” Jack started, “‘ideology’.  It means, if I got it correct, that we all have our ideas about what is true and right, and we end up killing for them. 

“Interestingly, Janys accused America of being driven by an ‘ideology’ not of good towards the rest of the world, but of greed.  Right, Janys?  I’d like to know, Hans, in light of our last discussion, what your thoughts are on that? Like, for instance Vietnam.  For me it’s black and white.  Communism is evil.  We’re fighting evil in Vietnam to make the world safe for democracy.  What’s your take?”

Hans looked over at Joanne.  There was a pause.  Joanne looked away, and said she’d start clearing the table.  Peter got up to help, and soon Jean and Sharon followed. There were signals…

Hans began.  “Let’s discuss Billy Graham and ideology.  He trained at Wheaton College too.  He went once behind the lines to preach to the GI’s about salvation.  I’m sure this was at American government expense, if not, at least obviously with full permission.  Why?  Because Billy Graham was a good propagandist for the ideology of the war America was fighting against the Communists.

“I can guarantee that in no part of Dr. Graham’s gospel message was there a call to ‘love your enemies’.  On the contrary, if soldiers became Christians, and proceeded the next day to blow their enemies to bits (there’s another word you use... yes, ‘smithereens’) for love of whom Jesus died too, Rev. Graham would have fully approved.  He did in fact, for the record.  And that’s ideology at work alien to the Gospel.  That’s in fact American anti-Communist ideology triumphing over the Gospel.  Or Darkness overcoming the Light, to use biblical language.

“So I ask, where’s the family resemblance to Jesus from Christians in that?  Did it ever occur to Evangelicals to go to North Vietnam with the message that God loves the Viet Cong Communists too?  And that one should rather lay down one’s life for them, than take theirs?  Apparently not.  So when Billy Graham goes to the American troops with the ‘Gospel’, should not part of his message be that they should stop the slaughter because God loves the North Vietnamese as much as he does Americans?  Or does God not love America’s enemies?  And is evangelism only for the ‘Good Guys’ (read: Americans)?  Is God the Ultimate American Nepotist?”

Andy strained at “nepotist”.  Then he remembered: one out only for kith and kin.  Where did Hans get such vocabulary?  Andy interrupted to supply that information, for which Jack indicated gratitude.

Hans continued.  “My conclusion from simple observation is: Evangelicals routinely practise an under-your-breath ideologized “footnote theology” that reads repeatedly, ‘Except our enemies’, when quoting John 3:16 and all other similar New Testament ethical teachings.  How could Billy Graham tell the North Vietnamese that God loves them, when he fully blesses his own country in doing the exact opposite; when Billy Graham is still praying with the President for victory in the War – which means massive carnage and widespread wanton destruction?  When he apparently wills the utter inversion of everything Gospel in treatment of neighbour, enemy and creation?

“Remember James’ juxtaposition of ‘saying’ and ‘doing’? Can someone bring me a Bible?  Moment mal.  Yes: ‘Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.’  The ‘works’ of James, likely Jesus’ half-brother, are found in the Sermon on the Mount, supremely summed up in ‘Love your neighbour/enemies’ which is biblical justice in the raw – without which, Jesus warns the Pharisees, one will never enter the Kingdom!  This is what the ‘wise man’ does, Jesus says in Matthew 7, with reference to the vast background Jesus the Sage brings to Hebrew Wisdom literature. 

“Which I also discuss in my paper I mentioned last time. This is not ‘works-righteousness’ my predecessor, Luther railed against. No, it is righteousness consummated, in the raw, acted out as ‘living sacrifice’, as ineluctable corollary to ‘justification by faith’, the other side of the two-sided coin of salvation.  Salvation embraced, salvation lived.  One does not exist – survive – without the other. Trouble is, the first exists in American Evangelicalism all too well in utter disregard of the other.”

Andy realized Hans had obviously thought lots about their last discussion.  So had Andy. He was beginning to change, he knew.

Hans stopped completely at that.  Joanne had come into the room.  She interjected, “Hans can go on like this for hours.  My best girlfriend asked me to consider what most would bother me about Hans.  This is it!”  To Joanne’s credit, she had said nothing about Hans’ predilection since the last discussion. She was feeling her way now.

Fiona almost ignored Joanne’s somewhat remonstrance.  She appeared angry, yet tenacious.  “But don’t we want this War to end real soon?”

Hans was obviously troubled.  He looked at Joanne.  She again looked away.

“Yes, Fiona,” he said finally with anguished voice.  He looked again at Joanne.  “Just like the Americans wanted World War II to end really soon, and incinerated instantaneously through two atomic bombs over 120,000 innocent Japanese civilians – infants, children, middle-aged and elderly.  Until the detonations, these civilians were going about their daily lives as normally as anyone else on the planet at that time.  Let your mind dwell on that scene.  Place yourself in it.  Better yet, place any – place all! – your loved ones in Hiroshima or Nagasaki August 6 or 9, 1945.  And let your mind imagine the monstrous horror willed upon the Japanese – and your loved ones! – by that Bible-believing President, most Evangelicals, the American people, all the Allies.  And tell me that it is other than homicidal madness: premeditated mass murder in the first degree!  And utterly wicked and evil.

“The Allies did that repeatedly to over 100 cities in Germany and Japan combined: carpet bombed them with napalm to the tune of over two million innocent civilian casualties! – up to half of some of the metropolitan populations.”

“I make this association in my paper.  When the 13th century papal legate in the southern France town of Béziers was asked how to distinguish between Albigensian heretics and ‘real Catholics’, he replied: ‘Kill them all!  God will sort out who are his own’. 

“There is, I believe, an absolute moral equivalency between that medieval ‘inhuman barbarity’ (they say 20,000 were put to the sword that day) and America’s today.  Incidentally, President Roosevelt used that language, ‘inhuman barbarity’, in a memo to all major nations in 1939, with reference to aerial bombing by the Germans of innocent civilians.  But America, in sheer numbers, went on under Roosevelt then Truman to vastly outstrip that long-ago body count.  Arguably, though I do not have the exact figures to prove it, America is responsible for an annual ‘Holocaust’ that adds up perhaps by now since World War II to that perpetrated against the Jews throughout the time of the Nazi ‘reign of terror’.  Most of this is of course kept hidden by the most sophisticated propaganda machine in human history called American corporate mass media, though anything but a ‘free press’: which would do Joseph Goebbels better than proud.

“The sheer wickedness of President Truman’s decision, himself an Evangelical Baptist Sunday School teacher, is so utterly beyond imagining that I think no American Evangelical today even questions the necessity and righteousness of that choice.  Those bombs have, what’s the medical term I used in my paper?, cauterized the American collective conscience into spiritual numbness and induced mass moral blindness.  It would be like the Mafia massacring dozens of their enemies through a bomb blast, and, because they were all ‘godless Communists’ anyway, the Mafia are unconscionably elevated to hero status!  So I ask: Just which ‘sacred text’ was President Truman reading?  The Bible or America’s Manifest Destiny, when he authorized full-scale massacre of Japanese civilians?  And just what Bible are Evangelicals reading today, when not a question is asked about these horrendous ‘crimes against humanity’ in Vietnam and elsewhere America still is routinely perpetrating?”

This was too much for Fiona.  “I believe in ‘Manifest Destiny’ for America.  I believe in righteousness that exalteth a nation, our nation, America the Beautiful.  I believe in God and Flag!” 

Joanne had remained standing throughout this exchange. “Don’t you think you have said enough, Hans?”, she asked.  She looked pained.  Hans looked pained.  Andy quickly surveyed everyone’s face listening in.  There was tension everywhere.  Maybe it would be best to wind down.  But this was fascinating, albeit perilously.

Fiona insisted that they continue.  “I want to hear Hans out.  I want to, I want to prove you wrong, Hans!  You obviously were not raised American, Hans, despite your American mom.  I think you are operating under an ideology I can’t quite name.  But it is alien to America.  I think we are the God-given norm, and what you are saying, even when quoting Scripture, is pure ideology.  I want to help name it for you, and then let you see it, if, like Jesus says, ‘you have eyes to see’.”

It was a valiant retaliation.  It was fiercely ‘Texan’, typically American Empire Loyalist, standing up for the ‘right’ against all odds.  The only problem for Andy was, so far all the “odds” were with Hans, all the ideology with Fiona.  He said nothing.  He had nothing to say.

Hans again looked at Fiona, and continued.  “I grant that by comparison to Stalin and Mao in sheer numbers slaughtered, Truman does look like a Sunday School teacher, which he was! But isn’t that the point?  Sunday School teachers should know better.  Much better.  Or doesn’t that Bible mean a thing even to Evangelicals beyond serving as the central cultural icon of America, all the more, for that honour, to be totally disregarded and trivialized? 

“I am not a Marxist-Leninist, if that is what you are alluding to, Fiona.  Far from it. I am a committed Christian who have discovered ‘the strange new world of the Bible’ as Karl Barth called it, and I am trying to find my way through its meaning for today.  Of course I’m biased.  But I’m trying to make my reading of the Bible challenge my biases, rather than my preconceptions filter the Bible, like I believe on this issue Evangelicals largely do.  As such, that is my conscious ideological commitment.  Consequently, in my reading of the Bible, no matter what, I cannot kill for my ideology, nor bless any state that does.  I agree with Gandhi who rightly read the Bible in saying, ‘It seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was nonviolent.’”

Gary had been listening intently.  He suddenly thought of something.  “Wasn’t it Christians who not only authorized the atomic bombings, namely President Truman, but also the chaplain who blessed the crew on their mission?  Do you claim to know better than millions of believers before you Hans?”

Hans’ eyes narrowed more.  “Gary, do you want me to respond?”  Fiona and Gary said in unison, “Yes!”

“Father George Zabelka was in fact the Catholic military chaplain who blessed the crew of the Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb, August 6, 1945.  He since repented totally, and has been telling the world that there is no moral or Christian justification whatsoever for such a coldly calculated act – and a second one, three days later! – of mass murder.  He says the entire Christian church has been utterly brainwashed for almost two millennia to accept war of any description (it always gets called ‘just’ by Christians), not least the deliberate slaughter of innocents. Ten percent civilian deaths in World War I.  Fifty percent civilian deaths in World War II.  Some claim up to eighty percent in Vietnam. You cannot bomb without huge percentages of civilian deaths.  And who said ‘combatants’, even if that’s all you killed, were Christianly fair game anyway?  Certainly not Jesus – or any other New Testament writer.

“So you say Fiona, along with High Priest Caiaphas at the Crucifixion of Jesus: ‘It is better that one should die than that the whole nation perish.’  Or in this case, that 120,000 plus innocent Japanese civilians, or several million North Vietnamese must perish, instead of precious American blood being spilled. Or that multiplied millions of innocents had to have been maimed and slaughtered to stop the Nazis and the Japanese.

“Doesn’t matter.  That is conventional scapegoat wisdom as old and allgegenwärtig – ubiquitous – as humanity.  Of course sacrificial violence always has made perfect cultural sense, and underwrites all rationalizations for immolating scapegoats amongst peoples as diverse as head hunters in New Guinea, cannibals the world over, the ancient Aztecs or Incas of the New World, Nazis in Germany, Whites lynching Blacks in the American South, and Americans slaughtering the Viet Cong in Vietnam, and vice versa of course.  It is also utter antithesis of all Gospel logic, though that is emphatically not majority church theory and practice. So much the worse for the church over against the Bible!  The Bible may be the church’s Book.  It has rarely with reference to state violence been the church’s Guide.

“Sometime, you must all read an unknown French Catholic author working in America: René Girard.  I used some of his material in my paper.  But it is doubtful Evangelical theologians will ever appreciate him, since he argues theologically and anthropologically the very inversion of the ‘satisfaction theory of the atonement’.  Another matter…”

“Hans”, Andy interjected, “I did read some of Girard in university.  What I didn’t like about him is his making a theory – scapegoating – fit all, like his own discovery of a revelation.  I think life is always more complex than any one metatheory.”

“Heh Andy”, Jack said, “keep the vocabulary simple.”  Andy laughed.  “I think metatheory means one grand explanation for everything about how violence originates and works itself out in human cultures, past, present, the world over.  Right, Hans?”  He nodded.

Hans then replied slowly: “Andy, I found I liked Girard because it corroborated and at times elucidated – shed light on, Jack! – the Bible’s own description and response to violence.  Not the other way around.  I found Girard supplemental, not revelatory.”

“So”, Gary quizzed, “my main question since the last time is, are you saying there is never a place, according to the Gospel, for killing our enemies.  Never?

”It seems you are.  Not only do I dispute that, but it basically says almost everyone in the church for two thousand years has been wrong.  That is pretty arrogant, to say the least!  And what about Jesus’ cleaning out the Temple with a whip?  What about his positive response to soldiers – and John’s, without ever telling them their killing was wrong?  What about the two swords Jesus says were “enough”, when the disciples presented them before his arrest?  What about Jesus’ painting God as “Judge” – like a sentencing judge, bringing down the violence of the State?  What about a doctrine of hell that is violence in the end, ultimate violence? Etc.?”

The dishes had long since been done.  Peter had finally turned on the light switch on his way to his room.  Jean, Joanne, and Sharon diffidently had sat down at the table again.  Andy felt the vibes from Joanne.  Sharon looked, if anything, bored.  Jean was just blank, though once again apart from Peter.

Andy suddenly remembered his thinking that very afternoon. He piped up, surprised at his sudden boldness, and in favour of Hans: “Isn’t killing the enemy, Gary, the exact opposite of evangelism – what we Evangelicals say all the time is our main mission on earth?  How can we warmly underwrite sewing life-giving seed, evangelism to bring life, on the streets of West Berlin, while equally supporting strewing cluster and conventional bombs – and worse! – on the villages of North Vietnam?  Is that not evangelism’s exact inversion – to bring death – as they once did over Berlin?”

Andy had a whole new insight: “Those same people who send us monthly cheques to support inviting Berliners today into the Kingdom simultaneously underwrite with their patriotism and taxes and sons and daughters consignment to hell of countless Vietnamese.  And their parents applauded, participated in, and prayed for the same slaughter of Berliners, parents and grandparents of those we now minister to, barely a generation ago!  Isn’t that juxtaposition contradictory of all logic – and that is just human logic?”

Hans agreed, adding: “Adduce Gospel logic, the only Reality Test Christians are to employ, and the unfaithfulness of Christian support of war and capital punishment materializes as surely as acid or alkaline solutions are demonstrated in a litmus test.

“So no, Gary, I see no place for ever legitimating killing one’s enemies.  Not in Gospel logic.  And there are responses to the exegetical issues – issues of interpretation – that you raise.  I’ll ask you: is there ever a place for extra-marital sex in a marriage?  Not in New Testament teaching, no matter how rampant the alternative cultural norm.  There are no exceptions to Jesus’ call to love neighbour and enemy.  On the contrary, see if there is not New Testament consistency that the only way to know I love God is loving the neighbour. And the litmus test for that is loving the enemy.”

Gary said nothing. Hans went on:  “Let me add, again about Billy Graham, who so classically is representative of the Evangelical mindset.  That’s why I mention him, not otherwise to single him out.  I believe he is a great man of God in his own context, utterly sincere.

“According to the Gospel as I read it, what Dr. Graham should be doing in addition to preaching to the American soldiers in Vietnam is going to his own Evangelical churches to challenge them to call for deep nation-wide repentance that would end the war.  No war since Christ has ever been God’s will.  The American Evangelical church is worshipping an idol, not God, when it participates in war, sends its children to war, blesses America and others in war. All wars, past, present, and future, are unreservedly contradictory to Gospel, its most complete symmetrical inversion.  War, all war by all sides, is utter transgression and the greatest heresy, according to biblical revelation.”

Fiona looked nonplussed.  Where could she begin, Andy wondered?  “But America stands for truth!,” she exclaimed.  “The truth that ‘shall set one free.’  Freedom.  Truth and freedom.  They are America’s birthright and bequeathal to the world.  And that’s what Vietnam is all about!

”What do you say to that, Hans?  What you are saying is so, is so, untruth!”

Janys, Andy suddenly realized, had listened intently without comment to the entire exchange.  Was she feeling repentant for having been too hard on Fiona earlier?  He looked at her.  She really looked great.  She was registering fascination even contentment possibly.  Was she wishing Ted might have been there?  Was she comparing Ted to Hans?  He’d love to have a long talk with her.

“Well?”, Fiona’s challenge was almost shrill.

Hans did not look at Joanne.  “The first casualty of all war, of all violence, by the state or the individual, is truth.  This is what former U.N. Secretary General U Thant once said and Cain’s religiosity demonstrated.  The first casualty of all religion, war’s first cousin, is also truth, Fiona.  And that’s why religion and war inevitably intertwine, the one feeding into the other, and looping back again.  That’s why all military chaplaincies are about truth’s opposite: violence.  Their final word is death.  I would add, incidentally, all sports chaplaincies too.  That’s why the worst plague on the planet has ever been religious wars; likewise the scourge of Western Christendom.

“Now contrast that with Jesus whom religious people claim to be “the Truth”.  Something has to give.  If violence is not truth’s casualty, like darkness’ dissipation the sun’s supreme handiwork, then all you have left is Jesus the Untruth.  Jesus the Violent.  Jesus the Avenger.  Jesus the Cosmic Tyrant.  Jesus the god of Christendom, ultimate scourge, ultimate violence.  Not Jesus the Truth, Jesus the Life of the World, Jesus the Light of the World, Jesus the Prince of Peace.  Then Constantine’s in hoc signo vinceres, in this sign you will conquer, rings true to Mars the god of war, to be sure, but utterly false to Jesus the God of love and peace.  The contrasts are utterly stark and irreconcilable.

“But most of us prefer our lies, are addicted, as surely as any alcoholic, to prevaricating violence.  So it is with dominant American Evangelicalism.  This is of course the brilliant point of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes: as John’s Gospel puts it, ‘men love darkness – lies and violence – rather than light’: Americans, Westerners, most of us, likewise love lies more than truth.  This is why Nazi Germany was so successful in liquidating six million Jews. While truth promises to set us free, we fairly grasp instead after our violent addictions: national security; right to private possessions; nationalism; the free enterprise system etc., etc., etc.  We thereby negate ‘the mind of Christ’ that didn’t ‘grasp after’ violently Christ’s own prerogatives as deity.  Remember, He could have called 10,000 angels, but refrained.  Your President calls up 10,000 G.I.’s, hardly angels!, to fight in Vietnam and Billy Graham and American Evangelical leadership, I’m sorry, cheer on the slaughter.  Billy even goes to preach in support of them, just like Bob Hope goes to entertain.  Same difference.  Identical ideology.  Both utterly foreign to the Gospel, that’s all.

“ ‘The truth that sets us, sets nations, free’ is nonviolence. In the CIA building is inscribed Jesus’ statement: ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. The irony is palpable.  An organization that is committed to covert violence and secret lies on a massive scale, with America in turn dependent upon the CIA to maintain its freedom, claims ‘freedom’ as they lie and murder, kidnap and assassinate, God only knows what else, routinely the world over!  This is George Orwell’s haunting double speak; this is Jeremiah’s ‘peace, peace, when there is no peace’.  This is what America’s most famous evangelist, and most others, sell to America and to the world as ‘beautiful’ and God-ordained, blessed, demonstrative of a righteous ‘manifest destiny’.”

Fiona looked furious and also near tears.  She appeared utterly tongue-tied as well.  No one else was saying anything, knew what to say. Andy was feeling sick but speechless.

Hans had more to add.  “To resort to violence means to deny God, since we trust in it instead and are bound by the ultimate anti-god, what is the final ‘anti-christ’: Violence. ‘In Guns we Trust’ is America’s de facto motto, what they really believe.  ‘One Nation Under the Gun’ is the last truth of American social reality played out in American overt and covert CIA and military interventions the world over, and on the streets of every American city.  America was born in violent revolution against a ‘lawful’ state.  It proceeded to steal wholesale an entire continent from its rightful occupiers, and now acts as Robber Baron to the rest of the world.  The CIA, many say, is about to orchestrate a military coup in Chile, to overthrow a democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende, because of his socialism!  And they almost invaded Cuba because Castro is Communist.  And so it goes, all over Latin and South America, and Asia – the entire world.  But you’ll never hear an American evangelist or Evangelical leader question the righteousness of all this monstrous murder and mayhem.  R

"Chrysalis Crucible" An Excerpt by Wayne Northey

I spent two years as a short-term evangelist in West Berlin from 1972-1974. These were momentous years internationally: the Vietnam War, the 1972 Munich Olympics slaughter (about which Steven Spielberg is currently doing a movie), the Canadians beat the Russians in hockey... to name but a few. (And they're all in my story!) For me, they were watershed years in prodding me toward conversion, particularly on two fronts:

1. That Christianity had *everything* to do with socio-political life - i.e. how one treated neighbour and enemy. (The litmus test for love of God biblically is love of neighbour. The litmus test for love of neighbour is love of enemy.  To the extent one fails in embracing neighbour and enemy, to that extent, one fails in embracing God.) 

The author had been raised Plymouth Brethren, "quintessential fundamentalism" according to historian Ernest Sandeen, and had no sense that Christianity was other than a personal, private relationship to God.  He was challenged that there was *no* relationship to God if there was no relationship to neighbour and enemy.

2.  The way to live out one's politics was the nonviolent way of the cross. Fail to discover God in the enemy, fail to discover God.

This novel, provisionally titled "Chrysalis Crucible," reflects the coming-of-age experiences of a young evangelist in Europe who has life figured out at the start of the novel until, for the first time perhaps, he really encounters life...

Chapter Nineteen

Andy thankfully had, the week before Christmas, completed the finishing touches on a hand-written version of a major essay due the first week in January.

The assignment was to research and generate an essay related to the target city or country. Since Germany was known as a hotbed of various forms of Liberal heresies, Andy had decided to undertake an ambitious project of summarizing some of the main Liberal thinkers, and suggesting how a Christian apologetic along historical and philosophical lines might appear.

During his last two years of university, Andy had devoured many of the popular works published by Inter-Varsity Press, Tyndale, Bethany, and the like. These included books by Francis Schaeffer; John Warwick Montgomery; J. N. D. Anderson; Michael Green; Clark Pinnock and others. He had indeed written a lively essay in university refuting some of

G. E. Lessing’s fundamental doubts about Christian faith. Andy drew on similar resources to produce the essay, which, handwritten, ran almost 50 pages.

He thought that such an essay would be greatly helpful in West Berlin, imagining the average Berliner mouthing a Lessingesque challenge, or pulling a Schleiermacher-type manoeuvre that turned theology into anthropology, or an outright Nietzschean onslaught of rank inverted belief. One by one, each straw-man objection to the faith tumbled before the deft advances of Norton’s fearless forays. The finished product was replete with footnotes, suggestive of a subconscious insecurity about the authority of his own thinking over against that of others who had written in defence of the ‘faith once delivered’.

Though he never quite acceded to fantasizing about this, he at least furtively imagined

G. E., himself, enthusiastically asking permission to photocopy the essay for the other trainees. Thirty-nine typewritten pages may have proven too much. Neither G. E. nor Mr. Myers ever suggested it in any event, source ultimately of some chagrin for Andy.

Andy’s mother had agreed to type the essay for him, a familiar enough experience from his university and high school years. She this time would not balk at French and German words, but new terms such as epistemology; presupposition; personal-infinite God; and the like, foreign enough to her straightforward faith, and far beyond any desire to inquire further into. Andy for his part had at best only a pseudo-awareness of this kind of thinking, having frantically cast about for a lifeline and found one over against the intimidating unbelief – or just plain lack of interest – of many about him at university.

As he awoke quite early that morning to get the VW going, he found anticipation of this essay’s final transformation as much keenly on his mind as seeing family or Lorraine. He spent no time wondering about that.

He walked over to the mish houses to get his and Janys’ bags.

“Good morning, Andy? Ready for a long day of driving?,” Janys asked cheerily. Jack had already flown home, and Dan had moved home for the holidays. No one saw them off.

They set out at about 4:00 a.m. December 23, praising the Lord for such excellent weather and road conditions. But not far into Canada, it began to snow. Andy chuckled at that, mentioning to Janys how most Americans in the southern states believe that snow actually is piled up in huge drifts along the border, acting summer and winter as natural demarcation of the 49th parallel. He included the story he had heard several times from his mom about Americans arriving in a July heat-wave in Kitchener, skis a-top their car, and obviously packed for winter weather. He surmised that if Southam News always discovered in their surveys an abysmal ignorance by even educated Americans of the Canadian social-political scene, then it was not surprising they would know as little about Canadian weather.

“Voltaire wrote, I think in Candide, of Canada as quelques arpents de neige - a few acres of snow. Though I doubt many Americans have ever read Voltaire, I reckon they have about the same notion.”, Andy chortled.

Janys chided Andy for having translated quelques arpents de neige

Conditions worsened rapidly, however, the thermometer obviously was plummeting, and it soon became apparent that a Great Lakes blizzard was brewing. The radio tuned into storm warnings, and notices of extreme caution to motorists.

It became increasingly treacherous. Traffic in the late afternoon had slowed considerably; they had passed several stalls. The front windshield even with the additional defroster at full blast was scarcely allowing a view through it; and suddenly a fierce gust of wind whipped snow directly under the rear. The motor sputtered and died, enabling Andy only barely to coast to the side of the highway.

Andy had on occasion looked at a car’s engine, just recently at this one, about long enough to verify his suspected intense disinterest in – even passionate dislike for – the intimidating pile of metal and hose. He in fact felt awe about the ineffable mysteries of the internal combustion engine. It had actually not been until first beginning to date at the age of 20 that he finally had obtained his driver’s license, when his erstwhile girlfriend had suggested it might be a nice thing to have. It was she also who eventually had suggested it might be nice for Andy to have feelings, he remembered with a pang. So it was purely male ego show that induced him to get out and look this time. He’d have really looked the fool had he opened up the wrong end. “Thank the good Lord for the crash course on VW mechanics!,” he said to anyone listening as he stepped into the howling wind. The wind vehemently hurled the words right back.

Andy actually breathed a sigh of relief upon discovering that the motor was sufficiently whitewashed with snow, such that little could be seen of anything. It looked far better that way, he thought.

He tapped on the passenger window, and over the raging told Janys to climb into the driver’s side to get ready to try starting the car. “Perhaps,” Andy ventured, mustering up all the authority his voice could pretend, “if I clear some of this snow away we’ll make her turn over.” That sounded fairly authentic, he thought. Snow had packed in amazingly solidly under that small lid. He cursed Hitler, who had originated the idea of a little “People’s Car” in the first place, for ever putting a motor in the rear. “Probably the snow would never have blown in had the motor been in the front.,” he muttered to no one in particular, not a little irrationally.

As it turned out, in Andy’s vigorous snow-removal activity, he had inadvertently pulled a spark plug wire. Had he noticed it, he would have wondered where it had come from, and what to do with it. Within minutes of that mishap, a clear diagnosis of the problem emerged: a dead battery. Janys actually volunteered that information just ahead of Andy’s observation, which left him a little nonplussed.

It was late afternoon. The wind was wild, the snow horizontal, and the thermometer hovering at about 0 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Daylight was fast retreating. They couldn’t even get the news on the radio, as they huddled inside under blankets mercifully kept in the front with just such emergencies in mind. Andy had tried for a few minutes earlier to flag down passing motorists. But they either did not see him, or perhaps feared risking stopping themselves. He hoped that someone would at least stop ahead to report them. He soon retreated inside and beneath the blankets. Now why could this not be with Fiona?, the thought released before he could catch it and stuff it away. Why couldn’t his mind give it a break, or at least acknowledge the serious predicament they were in?

“Why don’t you pray, Andy?”, Janys suggested, deferring naturally to his male presence.

Pray? Something flashed inwardly, and Andy momentarily imagined himself Sarah – or dumb-struck Zechariah. How incongruous, even absurd, it suddenly seemed, to pray! As if his prayer would somehow instantly stop the storm, like Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. Impossible. Then what use prayer, Andy’s mind was panting furiously? Even, what is prayer? Had he ever uttered an authentic prayer? One that could move mountains – or even a few drifts of snow, or make a car motor come back to life? Had prayer for him ever been more than a rote exercise (as a kid), like rhyming off poetry, or reciting a creed, more pious exercise than any true beseeching a God who, he felt, somehow should be answering? Had he ever known any answers to prayer beyond the endless rationalizations of ostensibly unanswered petitions?

All this processed through his consciousness in seconds. Evoking a cough as a kind of prelude, Andy proceeded to pray. His reputation was at stake, he knew, even more so than when he had looked at the dead motor. But he was no thaumaturge – nor wired to one. Did he really know anything more about God experientially than he did about reviving a car motor? Or was he content to be a mere passenger in the Christian enterprise, without really looking in to the motor itself – the reality, or otherwise, of a God who somehow acted into history – or did not?

In the extended silence after his rather perfunctory prayer, these questions flooded his mind, until Janys broke the brooding with a spontaneous, passionate plea to God to watch over them, and remove them safely from danger. Thank God women are allowed to pray at GO with men around (brethren assemblies forbade it), Andy couldn’t help inwardly laughing. Her prayer at least had a chance of getting above the wild blizzard out there. He’d heard his bounce off the car roof.

Andy’s mood darkened with the sky, leaving an uneasy aftertaste of uncertainty, like the acrid smell of burnt hair. It was tinged with an undefined sense of fear: not so much about the real predicament they were in, as that this little experiment might elicit an unwelcome hypothesis, namely that God was just a product of one’s religious upbringing cum wish-fulfillment. Could he honestly face that possibility? And why could he not have prayed like Janys? Was this his “ugly broad ditch”?

The snow, caught very intermittently in the headlights of passing cars, continued to blow mercilessly.

After some discussion of various courses of action, they again fell silent, nursing their own fears, having decided that it was best for the time to do nothing except wait.... Waiting for Godot was culled up from Andy’s memory. He recollected the hopeless absurdity of the Samuel Beckett play by that title. It was, after all, in the genre of Theatre of the Absurd. The dialogue near the end went:

“Vladimir. - On se pendra demain. (Un temps.) A moins que Godot ne vienne.

Estragon. - Et s’il vient.

Vladimir. - Nous serons sauvés.”

Godot was obviously playwright Beckett’s variation of god - perhaps meaning a little, ineffectual, ultimately unreal, god. The play had been as bleak as Sartre’s La Nausée. Andy remembered that Beckett reportedly often would not get out of bed ‘til well into the morning, or even into the afternoon, so fatigued he seemed with life. None of the brave staring down of evil urged by Sartre and other popularizing existentialists, just the absurd routine of day-to-day living, relieved perhaps only by his creative instinct, like a full bladder is relieved by a satisfying urination, with perhaps no more appreciation of the act or the outcome than that. It suddenly occurred to Andy that Beckett’s life motto might have been a Robbie Burnsesque: “Whene’er my Muse does at me glance/I piss on her.” with the attendant stench such writing evoked.

“Et s’il vient./ Nous serons sauvés.” And if he comes, this little, useless god, asks Estragon stupidly, why we’ll be saved, Vladimir assures him as blankly. Otherwise we’ll hang ourselves tomorrow. Why not? After all, what is the difference, if only in the state of consciousness, unless Godot comes? Unless Godot comes.....

There was suddenly a loud banging on the roof, followed by faint yells over the wind. “Yes, yes!”, they screamed in reply.

With great difficulty, Andy pushed open the driver’s side door. A large drift made the action hard. He was amazed at how high the snow had piled in such a relatively short space of time.

A large Bombardier snowmobile had come back of them, and they had not even heard the motor, nor noticed its light.

“There’s simply no way, lady!” the driver tersely responded to Janys’ question about loading their luggage. “Don’t even bother locking the doors! Might be wiser not to. That wind’ll freeze everything tonight. No fool thief will venture out in this weather, and you can come back in the morning when this blows itself out.”

The motel was about one and a half miles further down the road. The snowmobile driver together with his brother had been delivering people from other stalled vehicles for the last hour or so. There were several people crowded into the foyer, waiting to hear about a room, or trying to phone, or simply warming themselves in front of a huge fireplace.

They first phoned Janys’ aunt, when they finally got to the pay phone, asking them to contact Susan, who would then let Andy’s parents know. Andy wondered if Lorraine was already at Susan’s, but could not ask. Besides, there was a line-up behind them. The journey should be able to be completed the next day, Janys’ aunt had said, given the weather forecast of a clear and cold Christmas Eve. Provided they could get their car started, Andy worried.

“One party to a room”, the lady explained to everyone. “Don’t matter how many, or who. Just be thankful you’ve got a warm place at all! Hell, before the night’s over, we might be sleeping six deep!”

Thankfully, it didn’t turn out quite that crowded, but there was indeed some doubling up of strangers. For their part, the two would-be-missionaries were assigned a small one-bed room. “Mr. and Mrs…?,” she had asked, and Andy had deadpanned “Norton.,” before Janys could say anything. Why even bother explaining? They scanned it briefly, and then returned to the fireplace, waiting to be called for supper.

Food was in good supply, though there was a hint of rationing certain items such as bread and butter. “Has to last past breakfast”, the proprietor explained, “and God only knows how many more will be arriving.”

A spontaneous sing-song erupted after supper even, and thanks to Eaton’s carol sheets, almost all the verses of all the carols were sung, together with a good many of the more secularized kind, not on the sheets. People had stopped arriving by the time supper was over. Janys had heard one of their rescuers report that they had checked every car on both sides of the highway in both directions until the next county, and that all traffic had ceased.

Supper was sumptuous in fact. Someone there knew how to cook! Amazingly too, everyone was fitted in to the dining room, with extra chairs scrounged from everywhere; all tables crowded, and no one minded – on the contrary! The sense of warm spontaneous community by this group of strangers was palpable. There was excited chatter and loud laughter throughout the supper hour. When had Andy last felt that at church?

Everyone at Andy’s and Janys’ table had harrowing tales to tell, and expressed immense gratitude. Turns out a minister or someone was even asked by the owner to say a prayer for the food. It was heartfelt, accompanied by several equally animated “Amen’s”. “No atheists in fox holes I guess.,” he could just hear Dan say cynically.

“I just hope the car isn’t buried under a mountain of snow”, Andy asided to Janys during a rare lull in the conversation. “Or maybe the plow’ll just run right over the little bug! I remember seeing a picture in the Record once of just that: a parked car had been squashed, I think in London, by an army vehicle doing emergency snow removal. Apparently the driver didn’t even know until he’d rolled over it what had happened!”

Janys was not amused. “Just remember it’s your stuff in there too!”, she said. “Then what would you say to Thomas? And how would we get home?” Thomas was the guy from Colorado who had loaned them the car.

The sing-song happened right after supper, and was exuberantly participated in by all until they were suddenly plunged into darkness.

A voice rang out that there were lots of candles! Just be patient. And sure enough, candles soon were being lit and distributed with holders even for each table.

The proprietor said, “My insurance is paid up. But please! Be extra cautious. No one wants to stand around a bonfire tonight!” There was loud laughter. She had a spirited sense of humour just right for the occasion.

“And can I ask just one thing? PLEASE DON’T FLUSH THE TOILETS UNTIL THE LIGHTS COME ON AGAIN!” And she added, “And we’ll hope everything doesn’t freeze solid in the meantime!

“Now, let’s have some more singing!”

The singing went on for about a candle’s burn. People towards the end had slowly been drifting off to their rooms. A final carol was suggested. Someone had to call out the all-time favourite, “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas!” The room exploded in guffaws, and then erupted into a glorious rendition of same.

At the end, the landlady’s words were, “You’d all make a fine church choir! First rehearsal at 7:00 p.m. sharp in the lobby January, 2, 1972!

“Otherwise, good-night to all, and don’t hesitate to ask for anything. It’s going to be a long night. More candles on the table up here. Just remember to blow them out and don’t play with matches! Extra blankets as we said are piled high in the lobby. Please take just one per room. And cuddle up with your honey tonight.”

So there was really nothing left to do except go to bed. They picked up their duly assigned blanket.

Awkwardness. It was unthinkable for Andy to sleep in the same bed with Janys. But where else? The floor was hard linoleum. There was no extra mattress. The rooms weren’t the cleanest; who knows what might be crawling around? And they’d need all the covers on the bed, blanket, and possibly still then some. It could be mighty cold by morning…

Janys was reading Andy’s mind. “Andy, when we were kids, we’d sleep three and four to a bed sometimes, boys and girls. I think we have no choice tonight. Do you snore?

“We are after all, didn’t I hear you say it?, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Norton’,” she added flatly, her smile, was it red-tinged?, expansive. Then impishly, “But we’ll keep our clothes on. It’s gonna be cold tonight!”

Andy laughed. That smile.

The Morrison’s were former church family friends that used to visit the Norton’s years previously for a few summers after they’d moved to Michigan. The whole family would move in for a week or so, three sisters, all around the same age as Susan and Andy. They always pitched their tent in the backyard. One night, a huge thunderstorm streamed water through the floor, and everything was a soggy mess that took two days to dry out, since the sun didn’t shine much the next day, and the tent and sleeping bags did not fit in the dryer.

The night after the storm the parents all went off to a church meeting or something, leaving the kids with a babysitter. Two sisters were to sleep with Susan in her bed, but there was not enough room for the third, so she was to be settled with Andy. They were all of seven or eight years old.

Not long after the sitter had told them good-night, Andy distinctly remembers going to his dresser in the dark, after some discussion with Carolyn, pulling out a pen flashlight he’d won for reciting verses at Sunday School, and telling her she could go first. Under the covers that night, abetted by a tiny flashlight, they both had repeated hands-on lessons in the human anatomy.

That memory flashed now. But Andy knew candles caught fire under bed covers. Besides, he knew even better, though it did occur to him, how could it not?, he had no interest in exploring Janys sexually that night. He was a committed Christian. Janys had not attracted him particularly, except her smile. He’d really come to like her smile. What was it he saw? He pushed all further thinking below his consciousness.

Already the room, wind-battered as the entire motel, was feeling chilled. Who knew when the power would come back on?

“Well, okay, no tooth brush, Janys. I guess I’m about ready to crawl under.,” Andy said, after they’d tucked the extra blanket tightly in at the end of the bed. “Do you want to use the bathroom first? Remember, there’s no flushing…”

“No,” she said calmly, you go first. He did, and was soon enough done.

“Coast is clear,” he chimed. “Though a warning, the lock on the door is broken…” It somehow felt better to climb into bed before her. This was feeling a little more sexually charged than he’d thought.

“Good thing you have a sister!, ” Janys said as she stepped to the washroom.

“And you a brother,” he fired back.

They laughed, was it nervously?

Andy lay wide awake. He was feeling… aroused. Yes. That was le mot juste, remembering the quip in My Fair Lady, “The French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it correctly.” – or have “the right word”. But he did. Have the right word, but also cared what he did.

It had been a long day. He’d done all the driving, the last two hours or so with taut nerves still not relaxed. The room, in candlelight glow, was simply appointed: a washroom with sink and shower; a bed; a desk and mirror; a single stuffed chair he could have otherwise somewhat slept on. He thought of Lorraine. And Fiona. And his mom and dad. Susan! He could just imagine her mocking! Dan. G.E…. Groan, this last was the corker.

Janys came at last. Andy was surprised at hair that cascaded almost to her waist. When she took off her glasses he thought, wow, she should wear contacts. Then he thought he’d best stop using that word, “wow”. Then he thought he’d best stop thinking. But could not. She blew out the candle, and climbed in . He thought, two bodies in a single bed. Good thing she was petite and he slim. He thought, this is really weird.

The room was totally black. The storm raged furiously. Andy was already feeling cozy warm, almost euphoric.

 

“Janys,” Andy began, “have you already thought of this?: what will people say if they know we, literally, ‘slept together?’...”

Janys giggled. “There was some Christian sect, maybe the Cathars in medieval France, that used to believe sleeping together without ‘doing it’ was a powerful spiritual exercise.

“I think we see how much more spiritual we are in the morning, Andy, then maybe suggest this as a way to jack up the flagging spirituality of some at the Centre that G.E. is so exercised about..” She perfectly mimicked G.E.’s slight Scottish brogue on the “r”.

She was having fun! Andy felt a tad mortified.

“Seriously,” Andy pursued, tinge of recrimination, “can we agree we just don’t talk about… this part… you know, ‘sleeping together’?” Every time he said it, in spite of himself, he felt a tingle.

“Okay, my dear,” she said playfully, “if you insist. There won’t be too many asking the details anyway, and mum’s the word!

“Now, are you going to say a night-night prayer, or shall I?”

This was really no big deal to her at all. Had she been through this before? Andy couldn’t imagine. He knew she had been comfortable with him almost from the outset – something she easily was with everyone but those on doors, he’d observed. And she could put people so at ease too.

He replied, “You can do the honours, Janys.

“Before you do, can I ask one thing? Why don’t you ever wear your hair long?” Where had that come from? His boldness tingled, again.

Janys was quiet for a time. Maybe he’d gone too far.

“Maybe I will sometime, Andy.

“Okay, I’ll gladly pray.” And she did, thanking God above all for shelter and warmth.

“Good night, Andy.,” she said at the end.

“Sleep tight, Janys.,” he said back. And they each turned sideways, backs to the other.

Not long afterwards, Andy heard a patterned breathing beside him. It sounded a minor key to the furious lament outside. And she can fall asleep just like that, he thought. For his part, he was reviewing every discussion he’d ever had with Jack, with G.E., then Lorraine, his sister, and much much more… Janys slept peacefully on. She, at least, didn’t snore….

He awoke from a dream, had it been the magic carpet ride? He reached for it, but missed it beyond recall. He noticed instantly, the wind had stopped. It was so still. Light from an engorged moon was streaming in the window. He had to go to the bathroom. What time was it? He very quietly slipped out of bed. The heat must be back on, he thought uncomprehending. He tiptoed to the washroom door, and unthinking, flicked a switch just inside. Light blazed. His eyes blinked, dazzled.

That shock paled before what his blinking eyes suddenly took in. Janys at the sink, had turned towards him, in bra and panties only, blouse held in her hands, utterly startled look emblazoned across her face.

He gaped. She gasped.

“Andy, the light! Turn off the light!,” and she thrust her arms upwards to spread the blouse across her bosom.

Andy floundered a minute, found the switch finally. Glorious moonlight alone bathed the scene. A shaft fully spotlighted Janys. She stepped instinctively sideways, banged into the sink, and cried, “Ouch!”.

“I’m so sorry, Janys! Whatever are you doing?!,” exclamation marks, eyes averted, hasty retreat.

The door shut tightly behind him. Silence. Wow!, he said to himself, and again, wow! He didn’t care. Those loose clothes... Why did his mind first go there?... Why did his mind start instant replays? Why was there a close-up of her bra, the bare skin, the…

“Andy,” from inside the bathroom, “do you need to use the toilet? I’m done now.”

She stepped out. He stepped in.

He had to sit down to go pee. He realized only then he’d wet his pants. This was embarrassing! She’d walked out a bath towel draped over her.

He saw her blouse and sweater hanging over the towel rack, directly above an electric heater belting out hot air. The bathroom felt invitingly cozy. Whatever had happened?, Andy was still uncomprehending. He took off his pants and wet underpants, quickly ran some water in the sink, and soaked and squeezed them several times. He pulled on his pants, very careful of the zipper. The briefs were hung on the same rack. Hopefully they’d be dry by morning. He looked at his watch in the moonlight. It was 3:00 a.m.

Andy crawled back into bed very quietly. He desperately was trying to take measured breaths. His heart took even longer to slow down.

Janys shifted her weight towards him. “Andy, sorry.”

He said right back, “Janys, I’m so sorry!”

She continued. “This is now embarrassing, Andy, I admit.” Pause. Deep breath.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, it’s my period. I had no, no tampons. They’re frozen solid back in the car. I should have at least tried to get those out, but that skidoo driver was not waiting for anything. Besides, I thought I could get some at the motel. I did ask discreetly. Wrong. They were out of them. So she gave me… Andy, is this grossing you out?”

“I do have a sister, Janys, remember?”, Andy said evenly. This was beginning to make sense.

“So,” she went on, “the lady obligingly gave me a wad of paper towels. Now this gets even more embarrassing. Do you really want to hear? But I’ve gone this far…”

Andy said nothing. The moonlight outlined everything in the room, including, he looked over, Janys’ face. It gave it a pleasant, appealing, soft glow.

“I woke up to go pee, and discovered… nature had taken its course a bit more than I’d expected. Thankfully, she’d given me lots of those towels. But my panties, and the bottom of my blouse and sweater were… you do have a sister, Andy… quite red. So I quietly, I thought, poured water into the sink to rinse everything out… I’ll spare you further details, but just as you stumbled in, I was almost finished everything. Just had my blouse to scrub out a bit more…

“And the rest you know… I’ll admit, only my brother’s seen me in my undies before… So forgive me for being not a little shocked when you turned on the lights.”

Then: “Andy, didn’t you know I was in there?... No, you didn’t. The look of complete consternation on your face was worth a million bucks…”

Andy said nothing. Outside was utterly, eerily still. The moonscape must be glorious, he could only imagine. There was faint snoring through the walls. Andy said, “Hope I didn’t sound like that guy!” That got him over the hump. “Then, so, I’ve never asked anyone this question before, then do you have enough… “

“Paper towels until we wake up?”, Janys completed the query. “I hope so. And yes, before you ask, I had to put those well squeezed wet underwear back on, to.. You know. They’re feeling a little uncomfortable right now. But they’ll dry out by morning I’m sure. Pretty light material, and nice and warm under the covers.”

“And for the day?,” he couldn’t help asking. She should likely have slapped him.

“Let me worry about that. I hope we’ll get to our car soon enough…,” she said.

“But they’re frozen.,” he couldn’t resist. What had come over him? As if he was going over a grocery list or something.

“Andy…,” she said menacingly, then laughed. “I think you’re right though. I’ll be talking to no one about this. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Norton’ indeed. I guess I got over my embarrassment when we ended up in the same bed. This is beyond self-consciousness now to the point of ridiculous! And these are only bodies, you know. How about you?”

Andy treated her question as rhetorical. There was total quiet a few minutes.

She chuckled at last: “If some of my girlfriends could see me now… Good-night again, Andy.”

He debated about offering to climb out and onto the stuffed chair for the rest of the night. He was very conscious she was only wearing a bra on top, saw it again in mind’s eye full light blazing, and fleetingly in the moonlight. The room was warming up after all. But they had come this far without mishap. He knew he’d do quite fine until morning. She certainly would. Probably’ll be asleep in just a few minutes.

He thought about those Cathars, or whomever, and drifted back to sleep.

Morning sunlight blazed through the frosted window. Andy rubbed his eyes, and took in the framed snowbound vista. Janys stepped out of the bathroom, hairbrush in hand, fully clothed.

“Good morning, sleepy head. Found this under the bed. After I’d cleaned out the hair, the brush works fine.” She stepped back into the washroom. “Oh, and I guess you’ll be wanting these.,” as she threw Andy his underpants. “They’re dry. So were my clothes.” She laughed at his look of embarrassment. “Thought we got over that last night… I can guess what happened… No need to explain.”

He didn’t. “Look out the window, Andy.”

He gasped.

As fearsome had been the storm of the day previous, as dazzling was its morning afterglow. If the scene was a painted landscape, the sun was the virtuoso artist, enlivening every view with a textured grace irresistibly exquisite. Each point of sight was multi-dimensionally a-shimmer

“Wow,” Andy said simply, after all finding the word still usable. He noted her long hair, almost indeed to her waist, glistened in the dancing sunshine as she looked out the window beside him. Moments later, they headed down the hall towards the dining area, her hair swooshing seductively behind her.

Eventually after breakfast they connected to the tow truck driver. Surely this kind of scene must be back of stories of resplendently dancing fairies, Andy mused. I’d take these arpents de neige any day, he thought, as he accompanied the driver to their abandoned car.

The after-glory of a Great Lakes winter storm is almost ineffable. It evoked associations of a desert traveller’s first happening upon an oasis, or the sudden turn in the fairly-tale (Tolkien’s eucatastrophe) with the sure knowledge that good would ultimately triumph. It was the apotheosis of Bing Crosby’s I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas so lustily sung the night before. If only the world could stay this white, he thought. A sense of deep tranquility settled over him, as he inwardly praised God for this glorious Christmas eve. Surely this must be a taste of heaven, even if there would be no snow up there.

“A mother and her two children are dead, after failing to be rescued last night from their stalled car”, the newscaster officiously announced over the tow-truck radio, “and President Nixon vows more troops for South Vietnam. But first, these messages from our sponsors.” Andy’s reverie was abruptly ended, as his mind instantly turned over the awful tragedy of the night before. How could such radiant whiteness have occasioned such stark misfortune? On Christmas Eve no less? How could anyone near that family sing Joy To the World! ever again at any Christmas? Why? Andy’s mind spun at the sheer gratuitousness of such evil.

And it’s not even man-made. Not like Vietnam, he further thought. He remembered Voltaire’s savaging any Leibnitzian notion of living in the best of all possible worlds, given the earthquake in Voltaire’s lifetime which had killed thousands. How to explain a good God in the face of such a happening? And if there is an omniscient God, mustn’t his switchboard be besieged daily by similar events? Yet he fails to lift a finger to prevent at least the natural disasters – quite apart from man’s inhumanity to man?

An acquaintance had loaned him Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, while he was in university, which Andy had dutifully read. He remembered then how airily he had dismissed Russell’s entire thesis since he only treated of philosophical objections.

“The Christian faith is not primarily a philosophy but a fact of human history – rooted in the space-time continuum we daily encounter”, he had urged upon his friend. No “accidental truths of history” either, he’d forcefully urged. There had ensued a hot debate, which abruptly was halted by his opponent’s searing words: “Then, if God is so good, damn it, why is my sister, who believes in God, dying of leukemia right now?!”

Andy had been taken aback and shaken by the outburst. In the face of such raw emotion, he had fallen silent. He had never discussed the faith with that person again; and once more tasted the guilt of his failure.

He had had no answer then, and felt still at a loss as he absently watched the tow-truck operator hitch up the VW, which, thankfully, had neither been buried, nor run over by a snowplow.

The overworked mechanic laughed at the pulled spark plug wire. “If only all car problems today would be this simple!”, he exclaimed. With the plug in place, and the battery recharged, Andy and Janys finally completed their journey. Hasty phone calls arranged that her brother and dad were to pick up Janys at the Norton’s. And Susan would after all drive to Kitchener, hoping for the best from her Mustang.

Before twilight eased into clear stellar night, they arrived safely in Kitchener. As they neared his home, Andy noticed Janys putting her hair up again, but said nothing. He really liked it down, would have to tell her that sometime again.

“So good to have met you.,” Janys said to Andy’s parents upon departing. Then: “And Andy yesterday and last night will remain unforgettable!” Right in front of everyone. Andy felt a red rush. But nothing was said, perhaps Janys’ very intention. Though Susan did look at him strangely.

Andy finally entered into the warmth and joy of Christmas Eve celebrations at home, feeling suddenly exhausted...

At the first opportunity, they slipped into Susan’s bedroom and Andy asked Susan about Lorraine. “Sounds more like I ought to be quizzing you about Janys, Andy.,” she looked at him sharply. Susan’s bedroom was still like she’d left it, including some of the posters of the Beatles on the wall her mother had always wished to take down, with not a few arguments over “such godless” music. Susan liked soft colours with two-toned upbeat flair. She’d painted the room herself: well, picked out the colours and had done it with her mom. The room really was compact but “Susan” all over. Andy liked her room as he really liked his sister.

Susan asked, “What happened last night with you guys?” There was no red warmth, not a tingle in Andy. He maintained a poker face that amazed him. How could last night seem “normal”, but such it simply did. Objectively, to sleep in the same bed with a half-naked woman (well half the night anyway) and nothing have happened, including no shame, well… His head cross-examined the heart, and the testimony held with not even an “Objection, your Honour.”

“Susan, I really do like Janys. But what happened ‘happened’ by serendipitous… happenstance. Pure and simple. Nothing else. Nothing new. Nothing to tell. No regrets but the obvious: I missed Lorraine!

“Now what to do?”
“I told her,” Susan accepted the finality of Andy’s tone, dropping her own temptation to cross-examine, “that you’d call as soon as you could. But she knew this would show on the phone bill. Instead, she’s agreed to call at 11:00 tonight, sharp! You or I will grab the phone first, wherever we’re at in celebrations. Hopefully we’re done, and mom and dad are already safely tucked into bed. Best case scenario. In that case, you take the kitchen phone into your bedroom, I discreetly close the hallway door, and you keep your conversation short. The only possibility for a rendez-vous is late Boxing Day evening.

“I ended up taking the bus to Kitchener today. My car was so jittery, dad suggested it… I can now say I have to get back to Toronto a day earlier, and you could drive me tomorrow evening to Toronto; stay the night; and pick up Janys at her relatives’ really early; drive here, exchange cars and be on your way.

“But this all seems so ridiculously tight. Though I don’t mind cutting out early after you’ve left. It’ll be a bit rough around here with mom anyway… Can’t you delay by one day returning? It’d be so much better, Andy.”

“Can’t,” Andy said resolutely. He thought that’s all G.E. would have to catch wind of: Congress ’71 in part exchanged for Lorraine… “I have to be back. There’s no give.”

“Okay kiddo! What a sister won’t do for her kid-brother…,” she sounded very magnanimous.

“Oh, give me a break.,” Andy came back, catching the mirth at the corners of her eyes. She’d proven it more than once: she’d do lots for her kid-brother, Andy felt so lucky and proud.

The phone rang sharp on the hour. Parents had gone to bed, Christmas tree enveloped by presents. Andy eagerly caught it, and thrilled at her voice. It would work! The secret could be kept.

Andy already knew this was going to be his best gift.

The concluding words in his diary that night were:

Silent Night, Holy Night,

All is calm, all is bright.

Praise God for answered prayer!

It is 11:45 p.m.

Good night.

He wrote nothing about sleeping with Janys. He only said he’d have more to share the next time he wrote the Professor.

Break-In: A Literal Allegory by Ron Dart

There lived, many centuries ago, a young man. This man had built a large and spacious home, and the home had many rooms in it and much furniture. The fact that he had so many things in his house meant he was concerned that thieves might break in and steal many of his possessions. All sorts of protection and security devices were purchased and installed to insure the place was safe.

The fact the home was so large meant that the man did not have the time or energy to decorate or visit all the rooms he would have liked to. In fact, some of the rooms were quite dark and dank. There were rooms in the basement that had doors locked and nobody ever visited. Some worried and feared what might be growing in such places.

There were a many rooms on the main floor that were well decorated, and guests were invited to wine and dine in such well lit rooms. In fact, the well dressed rooms on the main floor were a place of much merriment and joy for many when the man and his friends were young. Good memories were etched and written in the well carved and crafted walls.

Time has a predictable way of aging one and all, and, predictably so, the young man passed through the necessary stages of life from youth to middle age to an aging old man.

The seasons of transition in the man’s life brought with them new and deeper fears, and he began to withdraw more into his home and house. Fewer people were invited to visit him, and he feared that thieves might break in and steal much of his fine furniture. So, he bought bars for the windows and installed them. He bought better and more sensitive security systems and had them carefully installed.

The deeper the fears, the fewer people he trusted, and less people came to see him. The basement was closed off, and most of the rooms on the main floor were locked. He had not been to the upper rooms for decades. Windows had been closed, shutters locked from the inside and outside. Old friends tried again and again to warn the aging man that his attitudes and actions would cause him great hurt and harm, but the more they did this, the more he interpreted their actions in a negative way. He was sure they were interested in his possessions and property. He stopped contacting such friends, and he rarely left his large home. The once lush garden and fruit laden orchard became thick with weeds.

Older friends did continue to call, and the man would answer some calls, but he feared going out under the blue canopy and the warmth and light from day star.

It happened that in the winter of the year, when the ground was frozen and hard with snow, a call was send through to the old man but there was no answer. A few more friends tried to contact him, but silence was the only reply. Day turned to dusk, and his few remaining friends became quite worried. They went over to the home, and knocked on the door. There was no answer. They waited and waited in the cold not knowing what to do. They finally decided, after much pondering and reflecting, to break in. The locks were broken, the door beaten down and the friends entered the dark and dingy home. They called out to the old man, but there was no answer. They rushed and hurried from room to room. They soon found him in his bedroom, shaking and trembling, hardly any clothes on him. They called the ambulance, but the man insisted he did not want to be taken to the hospital. The first aid worker and the ambulance driver placed the old man on a stretcher and took him in haste to the hospital. The man fought and resisted, objected and protested all the way. He wanted to stay in his home.

The man had had a serious stroke, and he was immediately taken into emergency in the hospital. The nurses and doctors did what they could, and, in time, with much treatment and care, the aging man was put in extended care. His friends came to visit him, and the staff were most kind and gracious to him. He was never able to use his legs again, he needed assistance to dress, eat and go to the washroom. He forgot about his home, and, in time, he made many new friends in the extended care ward.

A Young Boy and His Father by Ron Dart

Once upon a time, many decades ago, a young boy, his father, mother and sister took a trip to the north. It was autumn, and the leaves were brown, red, gold and rust. It was the season of the year when much was dying or going into hibernation. Frost was on the ground each morning. The days were bright and warm. Many a pleasant hour was spent in a canoe on the lake. The eyes of the night were clear and clean, and a full moon offered a well-lit path for night hiking.

A Woman and Her Hawk by Ron Dart

To Karin (Amor vincit omnia).

Once upon a time, there was a woman and a hawk. They lived in a small village, in a smaller Swiss canton, high in the Alps. The village was a quiet and peaceful place. The people worked hard, and they certainly knew how to play and dance after a long season of work and at harvest time.

Karanja's Supper by Kevin Miller

John Karanja was looking forward to supper. It had been a long day in the fields, hot and humid under unrelenting western Kenyan skies, with no one but his cows for company. Karanja had set out early in the morning with his tiny herd of skin-raggled beasts and roamed the hillsides all day searching out the few stray clumps of good grass that the neighbour’s cattle had left behind. His stomach rumbled like thunder now as he walked his animals down the winding trail home.

Breakfast had been a cold affair—a stiff lump of last night’s ugali, a potato-like substance made from ground corn, and some leftover greens. Karanja’s family was low on salt, and the food, which had been just bearable the night before, became a struggle to swallow this morning, even for John Karanja. He was used to hard times, to doing without. His thin, tatter-clad body came from a long line of similarly bony bodies that had tilled the fields in this lush, remote region of the country. Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life had been one big, cold leftover breakfast—someone else’s leftover breakfast. He had gone without lunch.

Life was not easy for anyone in the Western Province of Kenya where Karanja lived. The hilly region consisted of loosely spaced farms where the people tilled corn and raised a few skinny cattle for food. But the red earth never seemed to yield enough, and when the rains came every spring, rampant malnutrition gave way to malaria, and raucous funeral parties lit up the inky night.

At long last, Karanja sighted his thatched hut in the distance. Curiously, he saw no smoke rising from it, as there should have been at this supper hour. He tried to hide his displeasure as he waved a greeting to his closest neighbour, Ben Omundi. Karanja’s insides clenched tighter the closer he got to home and saw that there would be no supper waiting for him tonight. Worse, as he entered his compound he saw there was no fresh wood piled alongside the hut, no wash on the line, and only a few litres of water left in the barrel.

“Martha!” He called for his wife. No answer. “Maina!” He called for his eldest son. No answer. Karanja removed his water bottle from around his neck and took a long drink to calm his rumbling stomach. He wiped his lips and looked around his overgrown compound, clicking his tongue in disgust. “Stupid Mizungus,” he said.

The Mizungus were the white men. They had come to the village three weeks ago from America and immediately started into a flurry of activity. All at once they began constructing a chicken barn, a medical clinic, and a deep well to provide clean water for the village. All of these projects were good, even Karanja had to agree to that. But still, he did not trust these men.

Karanja’s mind flicked back to the last time a white man came to his village when Karanja was still a child. Wilson was his name, and he was also from America. He started a massive construction project, a school, and he told the people about all the great things the school would do for their village. He was right. The half-finished building now provided an excellent shelter for Karanja’s cattle during the rain, and the village children enjoyed playing in its ruins. Meanwhile, Wilson was nowhere to be seen. He had left over 20 years ago after he ran out of money. Before he left he took a collection from the villagers and promised to return soon with more supplies. He was never heard from again.

It seemed Karanja was the only person who remembered that betrayal. The other villagers welcomed the new Mizungus with open arms. Karanja’s own wife had taken a job hauling water and washing clothes for them. When Karanja protested, Martha just told him that if he didn’t like it, maybe he should work harder on the farm so she wouldn’t have to find outside work to support him and their children. “Humph,” was all Karanja said in reply. Now nothing else was getting done. Karanja’s clothes were dirty, but there was no one to wash them, and no water to wash them in, and—worst of all, no supper. That was the final straw. Karanja set out to find his wife.

As Karanja walked down the narrow lanes of his village, he noticed things were quiet everywhere. No fires burned in the huts, as they should at this hour, and no children played in the road. When Karanja drew closer to the village square, he noticed a line of women coming up the trail from the river with water jugs on their heads. His eyes soon caught sight of the familiar round shape of his wife amongst the other women. Karanja waited by the path for Martha to pass by. She talked and laughed with the other women as she trudged up the hill. But when she saw Karanja she fell silent, though the light of laughter still danced in her eyes.

“Well, my wife, it is good to see you finally tending to your husband and family,” Karanja said.

Martha laughed. “My husband, this water goes to the Mizungus, not you. You will have to fend for yourself today.” The other women laughed. Karanja grit his teeth.

“What about my supper?” he asked. Martha didn’t answer. She just kept walking while the women laughed again. Karanja did not want to risk embarrassment by chasing after her, so he fell in line behind the last woman and followed them to the square.

Stupid Mizungus, he thought.

When they arrived at the square, Karanja saw the whole village had turned out to watch the Mizungus work. Fathers, mothers, children, even the old folks, wearing ill-fitting glasses and leaning on sticks, were taking in the action.

“Hey look everyone,” shouted Karanja’s second closest neighbour, Thomas Waruta. “Karanja herds women just like he herds cattle—they lead and he follows!”

Everyone laughed, except Karanja. He tried to hide himself in the crowd and pretended to be interested in what the Mizungus were doing. Just then Karanja spotted his youngest son, David, age nine, laughing and pointing at the Mizungus with his friends. Karanja walked over and grabbed his arm.

“David, why are you here? Go home now with your sisters and cook your father some supper. The day was long, and I am hungry.” 

David twisted away from his father and bounded away, laughing with the other children.

“Sorry, Papa. I’ll come later.” Then he called out "Mizungu! Mizungu!" in unison with his friends. One of the white men turned and smiled at the children and at Karanja. Karanja grit his teeth and ducked back into the crowd.

As Karanja watched the Mizungus he saw that a group of them were gathered around a long silver pipe that was held up in the air by a makeshift crane. The pipe appeared to be sunk deep into the ground. The Mizungus were trying to get in close so they could each take hold of the pipe. Once they all had their hands on it, a man called out a signal and the crane was released so now all that held up the pipe was the Mizungus. Another signal and they began lowering the pipe into the hole, bit by bit. The strain of its tremendous weight showed on the Mizungus’ white faces as they turned red and veined from exertion.

The crowd behind Karanja clucked their tongues anxiously as they watched the Mizungus lower the pipe. If they dropped the pipe, people said, it would sink down hundreds of feet into the hole and all their work would be in vain. If it falls, it’s just as well, Karanja thought. Then we’ll be rid of these Mizungus. He turned and started walking home when a cry of alarm rippled through the crowd.

“Help!” one of the Mizungus called out. Karanja turned back. As the pipe was being lowered, the Mizungus had let go of it one-by-one and backed away, there being no room left to hold on. But the few people left holding it were not able to finish the job on their own. The pipe was too heavy, and it was starting to slip.

“Help!” the Mizungu called again. This time he caught Karanja’s eye. Karanja looked behind him. The villagers all murmured and clucked their tongues, but no one made a move to help. He looked back to the Mizungus. Some were quickly wrapping a chain around the pipe so more people could take hold of it, but they needed help if it was going to work.

“Aaagh!” One of the Mizungus cried out, and fell away from the pipe. One of his hands had been mashed between the chain and the well’s cement pad when the pipe slipped. Karanja knew he must act, Mizungus or not.

He rushed forward and took the fallen Mizungu’s place, wrapping his hands around the cold silver pipe. He saw right away that they would need more help if they were to save it.

“Get over here and help, you cowards!” he shouted to his fellow villagers. Karanja’s words seemed to trip a switch, and they sprang forward as a group, some of them taking up the chain and others taking the Mizungus’ places around the pipe. They all grunted under the strain of the pipe’s incredible weight. Once they had it secure, a Mizungu rushed up with a metal collar to be fitted around the pipe to prevent it from sinking into the ground. He slid it over the top and down past each set of hands until he had it where he wanted it, then bolted it in place.

“Okay, you can let it down all the way!” the Mizungu said. “Slowly! Slowly!” The people eased it down until the collar came to rest on the cement, where it was bolted again. “Good, we’ve done it!” he said. Everyone cheered.

“Asante-sana!” The Mizungu said to Karanja. “Thank you!” He grabbed Karanja’s hand and shook it. “You helped us save the well. Now you can have fresh water to drink and your wife won’t have to haul it so far.” Karanja smiled shyly and nodded at the white man.

Karanja’s friends also came and clapped him on the back.

“Good job, Karanja. Friend of Mizungus now, hey?” They said, and laughed.

Karanja just smiled and walked away.            

“Hey, don’t you want to see the well work?” The white man asked.

“Maybe later,” Karanja replied. “First, I must eat my supper.”

Martha was waiting for Karanja when he came home.

“You didn’t want to see the well work either?” He asked.

“I’ll see it soon enough,” she said. “I thought you wanted supper, my hero.” She gave him a hug.

Karanja smiled. 

Two weeks after the Mizungus left, Karanja was returning from the fields once again, hot and tired from a long day in the sun, when he met his wife coming up the river path with the village women. They had jugs of water on their heads.

“What are you doing?” Karanja asked, and pointed to the water jug on Martha’s head.  “Why aren’t you using the Mizungu’s well?”

Martha looked at the other women and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Karanja asked.

“The children were playing with the well this morning and they broke the handle. Now no water comes out, and no one knows how to fix it.” The women chuckled as they filed past Karanja.

When they were gone, Karanja sat down on a smooth, flat boulder. He picked a piece of grass and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment. Then a huge smile crept across his face as he shook his head.

“Stupid Mizungus,” he said.