“Will you end wars by asking men to trust men who evidently cannot be trusted? No. Teach them to love and trust God; then they will be able to love the men they cannot trust, and will dare to make peace with them, not trusting in them but in God. For only love - which means humility - can cast out the fear, which is the root of all war.”
Thomas Merton
“The [Old Testament] Israelites were trusting in military might so they wouldn't have to trust in God. Chariots and warriors were a substitute for faith. Their faith in God could have made them great among the nations; their faith in militarism would result in devestation.” Eugene Peterson
MIDDLETOWN, NEW YORK - Between bites of roast chicken and curried fruit, they say they want to turn this night into a tradition.
Reporters from the Times-Herald Record gathered at the Press Club on Sunday night for an early Thanksgiving dinner. They had to wait until almost 11:00 at night to partake, but it was worth the wait.
Most of the usual suspects were there: Kristina, sans her black cloud for a night. A-James was in good spirits after impersonating "Newburgh's finest." Brendon was, as always, the consummate guest, bringing the wine, the music and the Borat poster. And of course, there was Ramsey: The father of our feast and the presiding resident manager of the Press Club.
Ramsey had worked late that night covering a nasty traffic accident. He was forced to walk a mile into a hard wind to get a couple of quotes his editors would later jettison. But tonight his doggedness, as in many times past, would not go unnoticed by his peers. They insisted on waiting for him, and when he arrived the feasting, storytelling and laughs rolled on into the night.The dinner was provided by Ramsey's older brother Omar, who was visiting from Kentucky, and had planned the dinner because his little brother would be working and not able to visit the family at Thanksgiving.
Omar spent most of that day installing routers and computer software for the Press Club, but the evening was spent creating a dinner of rosemary roast chicken, curried fruit, marinated green beans, and garlic mashed potatoes. Christina and A-James provided the pumpkin pie.
Earlier in his trip, Omar and Ramsey spent the night in New York City with their cousin Ali, who was born in Iraq and grew up in Scotland. "Ali is a fantastic person," Ramsey remarked, "and an amazing example of what an Al-Rikabi can accomplish when the apply themselves." Ali took good care of the brothers, and was rewarded with a large brunch and his first mimosa. "Oh! It's so good on my lips!" he giggled in his thick Scottish brogue, placing his fingers on his mouth.
After a wonderful four days together the brothers parted ways. They will meet up with each other and their families at Christmas somewhere in the Middle East. "I have never had a bad trip to New York," Omar exclaimed as he packed his bags. "I love my brother, I enjoy the Press Club, and I can't wait to come back in the spring." He also added that if anyone wants the recipe for the curried fruit, he's happy to write it down, "...because we all live here."
John The Roommate contributed to this report.
Reporters enjoy an early Thanksgiving at the Middletown Press Club. Photo by Omar Al-Rikabi
Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:42-45
One day I was looking at a friend's away message on Instant Messenger. The first lines, typed in a soft blue, were devoted to a classic hymn of her faith:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face. Then the things of earth Will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace.
Below those lyrics was an image of that infamous bumperr sticker:
A good while back I was on a camping trip with some youth from my old church, and the youth pastor asked the kids to name people who they thought were good examples of the Christian life. The first name called out in the forest silence was George W. Bush.
This past summer President Bush again showed his stance as a "Christian" leader when he vetoed a bill on stem-cell research. He said he vetoed the bill because it would take innocent human life, and to allow the bill to pass would cross a moral boundry. He then posed for the cameras with babies who had been adopted using frozen embryos, all scripted to show his "Christian" belief in the sanctity of human life... all life, as he put it, is important, and as President he would not allow for the murder of innocent life.
But there was another contrasting photo published that same day, this one of a baby killed by an Israeli rocket.
While the President proselytized about the importance of innocent life and how he would defend it, he intentionally refused to call on Israel to stop their disproportionate and officially illegal attacks on civillian targets in Lebanon and Gaza which killed over a thousand innocent people . For all of his rehotoric as a "Christian" President, I find very little of his policies that actually seem to follow what I read in Scripture.
There are, of course, his economic policies that have a negative impact on the poor and his response to the Katrina disaster. But nothing has been more telling than the war in Iraq.
But then - in sad reality - George Bush is simply a mirror of the Evangelical Protestant Church that has elected him. Their theology is one of the American Dream over the message of the Suffering Servant. This became most real to me three years ago at the Passion One Day worship event in Sherman, Texas. Beth Moore (a prominant Evangelical teacher) stood up before 40,000 college students and declared that she was thankful to live in a country where her President began each day reading his Bible. Her comments were received with thunderous cheering. Later in the day, the fervor was gone when Heather Mercer (the missionary who had been kidmapped by the Taliban) called for prayer for the country of Iraq. Her words were met with tepid applause.
I am constantly confronted by well-meaning Christians who declare to me that, "The Bible says to pray for our leaders, and so I pray for my President!" Of course, these are the same people who refused to say one nice thing about Bill Clinton. And I always want to ask them that if our leaders are to be obeyed as "God's appointed man of the hour" then what should we have done with Sadaam Hussain?
The truth is that political leaders are supposed to be God's instruments of Scriptural mercy and justice in the world, but more often then not they fail with this charge. George Bush is really no different.
His fiscal policies hurt the poor, the very ones for whom Christ took great care. His environmental policies destroy the very creation of God, of which He commanded us to be good stewards. But most telling are his forign policies... specifically his war in Iraq.
Forgetting Christ's call to forgive our enemies and work for peace, he created an enemy out of Iraq, then lied and misusued facts to stir up fear and support for an illegal invasion. Then forgetting the call to humility and confession, he has continued a failed strategy that has lead to the deaths of almost 3,000 soilders and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, as well as the destruction of millions of lives in the wake of destroying Iraq's infastructure and it's falling into civil war.
And in fighting his "war on terror" the man who stumps on the sanctity of life has lead the way in supporting tourture, ignoring the fact that most of the world condmens his tactics and ignoring the fact that all life matters to God. We must remember that the enemies of the United States are not necessarily the enemies of God.
I am a Christian and an American, but I am tired of having to defend my faith and my country because of my President, and I refuse to sit in idle submission while the world goes up in flames in the name of God and Country. Let us be honest and admit that the President and his advisors manipulated well-meaning, faithful believers to gain power. But what is most aggravating is that such a large majority of Christians in this country literally abdicated to the President to be the "Christian-in-Chief." And in doing so we lost an amazing opportunity after 9-11 to impact the world for the Gospel rather than the self-serving interests of the United States.
As a Christian, my citizenship ultimatly is not American, and my Leader and Example is ultimatly not a politician. When we turn our eyes to Jesus, we see a radically different mode of being that does not fit in any way with the actions and poltics of the world. It is far past time for the Church in this country to live more like Christians, and less like Red or Blue State Americans... to repent and follow the policies of Christ, not a President.
Will you end wars by asking men to trust men who evidently cannot be trusted? No. Teach them to love and trust God; then they will be able to love the men they cannot trust, and will dare to make peace with them, not trusting in them but in God. For only love - which means humility - can cast out the fear, which is the root of all war. Thomas Merton
Wilmore, Kentucky… a city of about 5,000 people nestled just 15 minutes southwest of Lexington. This tiny little college town has two traffic lights, one gas station, a small grocery store, little post office, and a few shops up and down Main Street. Wilmore is not a town you drive through, but drive to. You have to want to go there, because the only thing past Wilmore is the Kentucky River. We are surrounded on all sides by old horse farms, so we don’t have the pollution of the big city lights.
I never have to drive around here. I walk everywhere: To campus, to the bank, to the coffee shop. While making your way through town the question is not if you will run into someone you know, but how many. They call this town “the holy city” because both Asbury College and Asbury Seminary are here, but I think it has more to do with the giant lighted cross on the top of the water tower.
Wilmore has two big parades down Main Street every year: The 4th of July and Memorial Day. The street is blocked off in the fall for the big arts and craft fair, and for the “Christmas in Wilmore” celebration. Right before the rail-road tracks, in the police department parking lot, the local farmers set up their tables every Saturday morning to sell tomatoes, carrots and strawberries.
This town is Mayberry, or a Norman Rockwall painting, or a postcard. Cities like ours usually only exist in the movies, or fifty years ago in a memory. For the first two years I lived here I didn’t even have a key to our house. My roommate and I never locked the door once.
Yesterday afternoon my wife said we needed milk. So I walked out of our apartment, past Harriet downstairs (who has the most amazing garden out front), past the drug store and soda shop (waving at Dennis behind the counter), and up towards the grocery store. I got the milk and a few other things, talked for a minute to Leonard (the store owner), and headed back home. On the way I saw a friend from school, stood in the middle of the street talking with her for bit, and headed back home. That was it. So uneventful. So mundane. So normal.
And then I began to think about Baghdad. So many bombs going off, so many being shot in the streets, so many being taken from their homes. The morgues are overflowing with civilians being killed by civilians. This was after they were overflowing with civilians being killed by the military.
I thought about my family. My cousin Mohammed murdered in his car in front of his house, and buried before the sun went down. No room in the morgue. No safe time to have a funeral. His wife didn’t even get to see his body. This is routine now. This is mundane. This is the new normal.
Baghdad, and indeed most of Iraq, is lost. Civil war. Literally hundreds are dying every week, and thousands are leaving every day. Mohammed’s widow and daughters are now in Jordan, and the rest of the family is planning their exodus as well, joining the over 1.5 million Iraqi refugees this year.
My family had been doing their part to try and rebuild Iraq. Mohammed was an engineer working with the power company. His older brother is an officer in the army, and another brother is an officer in the police force. Since my cousin’s death, everyone in the family has crammed into one house. It is the safest way. There are no trips to the store, or to school, or to work. They are under house arrest as they wait to follow the masses leaving for Jordan or Syria.
Many who would read this probably expect me to move now into a few words about how I am proud and thankful to live here in safety instead of over there in danger. But this is a piece about lament, not thankfulness.
I mourn my cousin’s death. I mourn that my family lives in the very real grip of fear and death every minute. I am sorrowful that I can walk down the streets of Wilmore without a care, and they cannot walk through their neighborhood of Yarmook without being shot at. I wonder, why am I here and they are there? My father almost moved us to Baghdad when I was just one year old. But instead, I grew up in America. So, I run for milk… they run for their lives.
And I lament that the United States did this. I lament that politicians lied and said that for me to be able to walk to the store in Wilmore, we had to “take the fight” to Baghdad. I lament that, for the first time in our nation’s history, we attacked a sovereign country that did not threaten or attack us, or invade another country. I lament that the powers that be did not plan for what to do after the troops pulled down the statue of Sadaam.
I grieve that there was a small window to do something great in the Middle East, and instead we lost an entire country. I grieve that there are literally millions of people who are physically, emotionally, economically and spiritually scarred for life because of my President and his administration.
And finally, I grieve that still, even after three years, many in the church still don’t get it… still don’t seem to believe or obey what their Savior taught. “Better them than us,” I hear them say, “because God has blessed America.”
This week the Seminary held a forum titled, "War and Peace: The Iraq War Case Study."
On Tuesday my friend Dr. Jerry Walls presented the pro-war side, and today my friend Dr. Chuck Gutenson presented the pro-pacifist side.
And on Wednesday, between the two polar opposite arguments, I was asked to share my story. Honestly it has been an intense week leading up to this moment. This message has been in labor since the war began, and this week I finally had the chance to deliver.
I also need to say publically that while I do not agree with Jerry's argument, I appreciate the time we have spent together trying to fiqure all of this out, and for his comments at the beginning of his talk. I also want to thank Chuck for being a friend and mentor to me.
It is a funny thing that Jerry was a mentor to Chuck, and Chuck has been a mentor to me. Jerry and Chuck could not be further appart in their theology on this issue, but I witnessed a Kingdom moment yesterday when, after my talk when the community was celebrating communion, the two of them stood side by side serving the bread and wine to the people, both of them in tears.
I will be back tomorrow with a tribute to my cousin Mohammed.
My name is Omar. Since the days of the Bible, one’s name in the Middle East can tell you the nature of the person. Omar is Arabic for “first born son” and is the root word for “one who builds.” In Hebrew it means “gifted speaker or storyteller.” My father is a Muslim from Iraq, my mother is a Christian from Texas, my wife is half Jewish, and I am a Methodist minister. To that end, First Born Son seeks to tell stories that help build bridges of understanding, repentance, reconciliation and peace.
