Nations Rage

Why do the nations rage, and the people's plot in vain?

-Psalm 2: 1

I did a Hebrew Exegesis paper on Psalm 2 in Seminary, which means that I took the thing apart and looked in minute detail at every word choice and alternate mode of interpretation.  I looked at the history of interpretation and the ways in which this Psalm might be read and understood, from the traditions of the Rabbis to liberation theology.  After what I'm pretty comfortable calling thorough study, I still don't know the answer to the question posed at the beginning.  I know that God is going to have the final say in the matter, but I really still can't figure out why we insist on so much greed, violence and lust for power.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was half napping in front of the TV,  a CNN segment by a reporter on the ground in a Syrian Refugee camp caught my attention.  It started with survivors of the Chemical attacks on Douma that have precipitated our latest outburst of "moral" bombing.  They had a shot of a washtub where some children's clothes were soaking to remove the residue of the chemical irritants.  A child's backpack that had an acrid chlorine smell.  Two little girls, possibly twins, about four or five years old in matching Minnie Mouse T shirts that were probably taken from a relief stockpile.  The girls were alternately seen gleeful about their Minnie Mouse gear and huddled up against the legs of their mother in her full black burkha.  The mother described from behind her veil, the experience of dragging her two little girls up out of a basement where they were hiding from bombs and gunfire, as the chlorine gas started to seep in and suffocate them.  She said something like, "death above, death below."  Then there was an old woman, stooped over and moving slowly with a cane.  She described her despair, and she was not fully veiled so you could see it in her face.  She said she can't even think about the times past, when her children and her family were all together, safe at home.  She has no home now, nothing to hope for, children that are lost, a country that is in ruins and a life that has essentially ended before she actually dies.

The little girls are a sad picture, but you can see hope in their lives.  They might, if the rest of the world comes to their senses, yet find a home where they can grow up and have something like a normal life. The old woman will probably live out her days in a tent city, where everything from blankets to the shelter is not hers but the provision of an aid agency.

I have read a lot about Syria, and nothing seems very clear to me about what the solution might be.  It seems that both intervention and non-intervention are equally bad options.  It seems that, no matter what we do, these people and others like them are going to suffer.  The complexity of the situation glares at you from every dark corner: little children who try to protect their dolls from chemical weapons, and yet can play in the relative safety of a refugee camp, but they live with such minimal comfort.  A mother who bravely tries to put together life for her family, but who is forced by her religion to wear a full lengthy, heavy black robe, and is perhaps even convinced that she wants to do so. A man who won't even admit how badly he has been damaged by chemicals.  An old woman who has nothing left but to simply try and forget the life she will never see again.

These are tragedies that can be easily forgotten as the talking heads muse about geopolitical realities and conflicts between nation-tribes.  I am thankful for the one thing that television news really does fairly well, it lets us see the faces and the despair in the eyes, it lets us see these little ones and these others who we would too easily dehumanize in order to feel right about laying waste to their homes. I cannot do much of anything to help those people, maybe give a little here and there to help those groups that put up those tent cities, but what I would really like to know about is a way that we can give that old woman back her home and her life.

It's a terrible reality to see, when you know that if we don't go to war, a monster might continue to commit genocide, but if if we do go to war we might just become part of the monster that destroys and decimates the same people we are trying to "help."  Yesterday, I preached about Peter and John in Acts 3, they encounter a man who is lame from birth and they have no alms to give him, they can do nothing charitable for him, but they can give him the name of Jesus, and that name can make him walk.  They have to look him in the eye and he has to look at them, they have to show him what Jesus looks like.  The seeing is important, the encounter with the suffering is important, they have learned that much from their Lord.  Healing happens when they give what they have, even  if it is not what was expected.

I don't know exactly what we can give the people of Syria right now, but I know one thing for sure, we have to really start seeing them.  We have to see the little girls in their Minnie Mouse T shirts and the old woman who will hobble her way through what is left of her life in a camp, never again to have her kitchen filled with the laughter of grandchildren.  We have to see that this is a tragedy that cannot be solved with "beautiful, smart" missiles or arrogant posturing.  The nations raging and the peoples plotting is what has gotten us to this point.  It doesn't really matter why, but if we see it with the loving eyes of God, we must know it has to stop at some point.