I'm really disturbed today. Yesterday, inmates at the James T Vaughn Correctional Center, a prison about 20 miles from my home, housing minimum, medium, and maximum security inmates, took several employees hostage and after the building was secured, one hostage was found dead.
I know several people who work in that facility. I don't think any of them were involved in this incident, but it certainly brings things home. I do not condone violence or kidnapping, threats or anything involved in this action. At the same time, it's not so simple as bad people doing bad things. It is part of this vicious circle. People in our society act out; we put them in jail - a system and process designed specifically to dehumanize them; they react, sometimes violently; they are responded to with violence. What I see here is: injustice; injustice; injustice; injustice. No one is right and everyone is wrong.
Prisons, like police, or the military play into a national (and probably human) narrative of good vs bad. The good guys need to beat the bad guys so order can be restored. Now most of the people I know who actually operate within those systems understand the real and structural problems that create this scenario - and if they can't see avenues for change, I don't want to presume to know something from the outside.
I do know it shouldn't be this way. I don't believe people change because they're punished; they change because they're loved. Consequences are a real part of life, society, relationships; I don't mean removing those, but we, as a human race, need to do a better job of addressing the real consequences of bad actions in redemptive ways.
I'm troubled by this because I abhor violence. I'm troubled because these inmates lacked the creativity to deal with their very real concerns in healthy ways. I'm troubled because our society, us, we lack the creativity to deal with anti-social behavior in healthy ways. It's a travesty, but a travesty all around.
I'm most troubled, however, by just how easily I'm willing to ignore the situation. When we first moved to Delaware, I worked to put in place what practices I could to shape and form my life in the image of Christ. Being of the Wesleyan tradition, I tried to use John Wesley's admonitions as a guide. He spoke often of spending time with the poor - for a time, I volunteered in a local organization, working with and for the poor; I need to do better there. He spoke of the importance of education. I've been involved with the local school district in a number of capacities: mentoring, tutoring, serving on committees, even substitute teaching. John Wesley all but demanded his followers go once a week to the prisons, as a way of loving and caring for those locked inside.
I'll admit I tried. I contacted the chaplain, twice, with no response and gave up. I looked for other volunteer opportunities, but the information was difficult to parse and I gave up. I called to see if I could visit inmates, but they don't allow even clergy access to prisoners without some prior relationship. I gave up.
If anything, this experience has shown not only how inadequate our human systems are at dealing with hurting people, but at just how inadequate I am at living the life I claim to live. I'd like to say I will change - that I will find a way to connect with the prison population and be invested, because there is no way to be a part of a change without being present - at the same time, I don't have a lot of confidence I will follow through all the way. I'll try, I'm sure, but will I fight for it? I don't know.
This is one of those times when spirituality makes total sense to me. When human systems and human beings lack the power and ability to do something right, our only hope is something greater than ourselves. I am inadequate. We are inadequate. I believe strongly, though, that the creator and sustainer of the universe longs to do impossible things through us, inadequate or not.
Lord, help my unbelief.
Towards the end of the book there's a little off-handed remark (it might even be in parentheses) that hope and optimism are not the same thing. He didn't even explain it, really, but it struck me as particularly profound. Optimism, as Brueggemann says often, is a pacification technique used by those in power - it is the notion that things will get better (especially if we hold the course). Hope, on the other hand, is a recognition that things, as they are, are broken. Hope looks outside ourselves to something (some one) else to make necessary changes. There is still a belief things will be different (better), but hope builds within us and motivates for change - change within, but change from outside. It is the instilling of hope that helps make the changes in action that lead to a different world.
We should not confuse optimism for hope, for there is little hope in optimism beyond whatever panacea brief, immediate peace may bring.
I'm sure I'll write more about the book as I tackle it a second time, but I'm energized by the notion of being a people of prophetic imagination - both unmasking the failures of the system in which we live and working to present an alternative more in line with God's intentions for creation.
We tend to have a short memory. Our traditions stretch back 100 years, if we're lucky - less than 5% of Christian history. We've all-consumingly bought in to the immediacy of the consumer culture in which we're enmeshed. This shows up in our consumer and entrepreneurial approaches to corporate worship and purpose. We want to be the biggest, flashiest, most impressive thing; we want to be new. We have no memory and, even if we did, no means by which to access it. Conservative may be fine for us, traditional, even (in our own strange definition of traditional), but they must be packaged as new or next. We recycle fads and remain oblivious to context because we have to memory and no way to relive or interpret those memories which might be accessible.
Evangelical America is so thoroughly embedded in the dominant culture there is no possibility of pain. We are largely affluent and white. We are used to controlling the levers of power, be they political or economic. The fact that this may no longer be as true as it once way brings on a sense of false pain. This is not the kind of pain Brueggemann speaks about, a dehumanizing sort of identity loss that can speak for itself to all humanity. This contrived pain, in the form of "religious persecution," is manipulative and self-justifying, an obvious smoke-screen to the outside world. We have no pain, save that to our ego.
We have words of hope (heaven, escape), but those translate into a practice of fear and mourning. This hatred of the world is utterly hopeless. We cannot simply say, "things are bad, but one day we'll escape." This is not prophetic, it's a socially-accepted version of the doomsday cult. We cannot isolate ourselves from the world in expectation of an imminent cosmic evacuation. We see the world around us through a divisive lens, in which we're locked in a battle with "them" for control of our souls. There is no hope here. Even if we claim confidence in a bright future someday, it manifests itself in fear and uncertainty this day.
The way we speak leaves no room for error. The world is entirely black and white, right and wrong, with no room for overlap, no consideration of bias. Our communication is irrelational and depersonalizing, labeling challengers as enemies, worthy of nothing more than vitriol and marginalization. For us, the end justifies the means.
Evangelical America doesn't call the world to an alternative reality, quite the contrary, Evangelical America wants to eliminate the possibility of alternative reality. In this, you can replace "Evangelical America" with "totalitarian power," "unfettered capitalism," "socialism" or "militant Islam." The role of power, whatever kind of power (and saying these forces are after the same thing does not make them equal in value, simply in purpose), is to maintain power. A prophetic voice, a voice of true alternative, cannot speak from a position of power. It can't arise from power or be nurtured through power. It's simply not possible.
Evangelical America, along with the other examples - and many more, represent attempt to control the dominant narrative, not attempts to write a new one. They are not challenges to power, but attempts to co-opt power with a specific set of underlying morals. This will not produce real change, only superficial. The underlying problems remain; the dominant narrative continues.
Brueggemann's contention, then, is that until God's people (or any people) see the world and live in the world in fundamentally different ways it is not possible to live differently or speak prophetically.
If Evangelical America is to ever have a truly prophetic voice (and I'm still a believer that it can), we must build a community capable of nurturing a prophetic voice.
We have to reclaim our memory, both the good and the bad, and not just cling to a convenient narrative we've created to simplify our lives and allow us to fit in. We have to act in hope, re-membering with our lives and actions that all people are God's people, that there is no "us and them," that God loves this world and calls it good, that redemption is our future, not escape. Thus we must also speak redemptively, as if we really believe we're all in this together and peaceful coexistence is possible. We must seek to understand, listen, and love.
We must also embrace pain. I'm a relatively affluent white male. I'm not going to encounter real pain, even if I am entirely committed to living alternatively in the midst of the world (and I'm clearly not always committed). It's essential Evangelical America to stand with those who suffer pain. Even if it challenges our moral perspective, our comfort level, or our "common sense." We have to suffer with those who suffer, those who are left out of the system we've tried to hard to control. This means more than starting charities and volunteering with organizations (although that's a start). Our community must embrace what it means to suffer, we must move into the neighborhood, make ourselves dependent on those who suffer so it becomes our suffering.
Too often we take only those risks we can unwind. I am more than guilty of this. For us to truly have a prophetic voice, pain is essential. It is from pain that hope and a better vision for the future arises. Prisoners, addicts, women, racial minorities, the LGBT community - those who encounter difficulty and marginalization. Those stories must be our stories. That pain must be ours - again, not as tourists, but as people.
The world around us is comprised of people - all good, all broken - engaged in a variety of activities, helpful and hurtful, unifying and isolating, honoring and embarrassing, loving and neglectful. These people are no different than us. But until that sentiment is more than words, until it is backed up with a concrete reality, there will be no prophetic voice for Evangelical America.
