Sometimes Nothing Is a Real Cool Hand

Last week, I was shocked and saddened by the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl from Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out in favor of education for girls in Pakistan.  She had become something of a celebrity in the cause of Muslim girls struggling to be treated as equals, at least when it came to education.  The Taliban labeled her as a disruptive peddler of western ideology, who was obviously trying to destroy the morals of the entire Islamic world.  Did I mention she was fourteen?  Did I mention that a Taliban gunman stopped a bus full of school children and shot Malala in the face?
I'm no expert in Islam, but I'm thinking that, if Allah bears any resemblance to the God that I know through Jesus of Nazareth, someone is really on the wrong track.  In my earlier blog entry I wondered how there was not outrage among Muslims everywhere.  Well, it turns out, there is, it turns out that people everywhere are rallying around Malala and turning against the hatred and fear of the Taliban and others like them.  You may offer thanks to God, using whatever name you prefer.
Once, when I was going through a trying time, my Dad said something regarding the spiritual conflict between good and evil that usually proves true: "the Devil always overplays his hand."  Evil sometimes seems to be holding the best cards, but if you play it right there will always be a mistake, it will always reach too far.     Evil is perhaps most dangerous when it masquerades as something other than what it is.  When the Taliban can pretend they are freedom fighters battling the great Satan, they have the support of many people and perhaps some sympathy from those who have suffered under the boot of a colonial power.  But when they start shooting 14 year old schoolgirls in the face... their friends and cheerleaders get awful scarce.
I don't fully understand Islam, and I can't really wrap my mind around what it's like in Pakistan or Afghanistan at the moment, but what I do know is Christianity, America and Cool Hand Luke.  The title of the movie comes from a scene where Luke bluffs the other inmates in the camp at poker.  He stares down his opponents with a hand that is absolutely worthless.  He wins, not because he has the best hand, but because he has more guts and more patience than his opponent.  The courage of the man with the stronger hand fails and Luke says: "Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand."
Jesus, very dramatically, told his disciples that they ought not to resist the evildoer and that when someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other.  Christians have applied that standard with varying degrees of faith, and with varying degrees of success.  Mennonites and Quakers (among others) have adopted the strict code of pacifism, which most of Christendom has often found cause to abandon.  Sometimes that abandonment seemed necessary or even unavoidable, but it has always required a rather sophisticated theological jog around the block.
However, I think it would serve us well to remember that Jesus understood the real world circumstances that faced his followers quite well.  Usually, when people have taken up arms, even in the cause of justice, peace and freedom, even when it was to protect the innocent, a lot of evil has ensued.  Violence is a card that the Devil always has in his hand and we usually find ourselves trying to stare down his pocket aces with a King-8 off suit.
I'll take, as an example, the KKK, which is the American equivalent of the Taliban.  An organization founded on hatred and fear, which liberally uses the name of God to justify their atrocities.  At one point in our history (and it wasn't really that long ago) the Klan had influence and power, they could inflict terror with near impunity.  Then it all went too far, racist terrorists started blowing up churches and killing little black girls.  They weren't just lynching big strong black men who most white Americans were secretly afraid of anyway.  Now there were little girls in their white Sunday dresses on the news as the latest victims of racism and hatred.  Fairly suddenly racism and hatred didn't sell so well.  The Devil had overplayed his hand.
Now the KKK is silly in the eyes of most people.  We let them have their parades, because we support free speech, but those hoods no longer strike fear in the hearts of too many people.  Now they're just an ugly reminder of a dark time.
I hope, for the sake of girls like Malala Yousafzai, that this is the start of something similar in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It would prove Jesus absolutely right, because the ultimate demise of the Taliban would not be the United States Military and all their guns and bombs, it would be a defenseless fourteen year old girl who just wanted to go to school.  She had nothing, she is one of the most vulnerable people in the world, and now she's got the world on her side: sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.