Conversation Point

On Being Called

Our country paused again today, remembering the attacks on the United states that began over our morning coffee five years ago. Most of the talk around this anniversary has centered on how the world has changed since that day. Most of the responses were about airport security issues and practices to which we have become accustomed. There were also references to those who lost loved ones or were in New York or Washington when the planes hit, those who still have personal burdens of tragedy and grief to bear. Some of these stories were brought to us as tributes, particularly those of the fire fighters, and the widows who gave birth to children whose fathers had been killed.

But most of us are still somewhat in shock, not really being able to articulate what is different about our lives, even though we know something is supposed to be. We can point to how our country has responded to these attacks, the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, our invasion of Iraq, the aforementioned airport security measures, the present administration's need to wiretap private conversations without legal authorization, but usually these realizations are followed quickly by assertions that all of these actions were necessary for national security, and the price in freedom lost is well worth the safety gained.

In case we have any doubts about the expense of freedom, President Bush just finished speaking on this very issue. Speaking as one who still believes he was right to invade Iraq even though there was clearly no link between Saddam Hussein and those who attacked us, Bush insisted he was right to go after Saddam Hussein because he was a "potential threat," and we are "safer, but not safe," because of this and all the other decisions made for national security in the last five years. Mr. Bush confirmed that he believes that this war on terror he has been waging on our behalf is an effort we must continue to work on together as "the calling of our generation."

President Bush is wrong. Wrong to defend his personal agenda with lies and misrepresentations. Wrong to include us as supporting him as he claims to lead the country in these actions. Wrong to ask us to give him further support in his misguided leadership. And so very, very wrong to believe that what he is doing is a "calling" for him, or for us. But in his wrongness Bush does raise a question I haven't heard mentioned much in the past five years: How has your faith changed in the last five years? Do you see your calling, as President Bush declared, to be fighting the war on terror?

Have you considered your faith, its shape, what informs and defines it, over the years since September 11, 2001? What questions have you been pondering over, struggling with, since you set down your coffee and watched the second plane tear through the second tower? Those are questions worth asking, questions that are probably not yet fully answered, if they ever can be. But keep asking yourself how it s with your soul in these post 9/11 times, and keep seeking understanding, rather than easy answers defined by simplistic logic based on fear and designed to create more fear. As you consider your faith, remember that God is love, and it takes courage to embody that love in covenant with the life we have each been given.

Now, do you believe, as our president stated, that our calling is to fight this war on terror? I do not, and I am uncomfortable with the President's need to merge faith and violence in such an unholy alliance as this so-called war on terror. Bush implies a crusade of which I want no part. Defending our borders is not the equivalent of invading other countries "just in case" Living our faith is not definable in militaristic terms that defy the very nature of who God is and how we are called to reflect the image of the One who brought us into being. Matthew's gospel shows us the nature of God's call to us through Jesus' calling of his first disciples. "As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea - for they were fishermen. And he said to them, 'Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.' Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father, Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him (Matthew 4:18-22)."

While President Bush would have us believe our generation is called to fight terror with his weapons of choice, our God calls us to something much different. Jesus' call to these his first disciples, and to each of us, is personal, direct and ours to accept or reject by virtue of free will. We do work together as people who share a fellowship of faith, but we must still each work out our own salvation and define our own calling. And, I must add, not accept anyone else's attempts to define that calling for us based on their own agenda. We are called by God to experience the resurrection in our own lives, but we are not called to fight a war against terror for a president who does not seem to understand the difference.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 9:04 PM