Monday Dec 18

“Chinese Banyan”
by William Meredith

I speak of the unremarked
Forces that split the heart
And make pavement toss —
Forces concealed in quiet
People and plants

I take it as a sign of the relative security in which I live that the violence and suffering of the world catches me off-guard. It shouldn’t. Violence and catastrophe have been with us since Cain killed Abel, yet only in moments of fear and grief am I reminded of the fundamental insecurity in which we live. I can recall specific times when this facade of security dissolved like a foundation of sand: getting dragged out to sea in a riptide, a disgruntled driver approaching my car in a fit of rage, a relative’s untimely death, an unforeseen divorce, seeing Palestinian newscasters breaking down on live television. In each of our own ways, we live with a sense that things shouldn’t be the way they are, a sense that can be as overwhelming as a riptide.

I find some comfort that even God seems taken aback by the violence of the world when in Genesis he sees how badly things were panning out. “The earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.” From the start, God took a gamble in giving us free will, knowing full well that, instead of loving one another, we would likewise have the capacity for real harm. Having the freedom to choose love — because love cannot be commanded, but only given freely — was apparently worth the risk of murders, genocides, and nuclear bombs.

When I encounter violence, no matter the scale, I reflexively ask, was it worth it, the gamble? Giving us free will? Why not wolves and lambs living together at ease? Why not just…peace on earth, forever and always? This question is as old as suffering itself, even to the extent that it has its own theological genre, “theodicy,” reconciling a loving God with the existence of evil. Job, maybe the first person to ask God, “Why not otherwise?” is asked a question in return: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” God rebukes him for “obscuring my plans / with words without knowledge.” It’s as though God tells him that we’re fundamentally incapable of understanding how the pain of the world could finally be healed, and that when we try to, we only make things more confusing for ourselves and others.

Like God in Job, Isaiah tells us that this is a question that can only be answered by faith. When Isaiah says that the Messiah “will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,” I take that to mean, in part, that Jesus does not see evil the way we do. He shares in our suffering (“He wept.”) and does not condone it (“Put down your sword”), yet he doesn’t see violence as the final say, even when it seems all-encompassing, definitive, irreconcilable to our eyes. He somehow experiences the suffering of the world more deeply than we do and sees its healing in ways we cannot and will never be able to. Even in the midst of our self-destruction, we are already somehow forgiven and made whole, despite all the evidence to the contrary. We know this not by what we see, because we do not see as he sees. We know it by trusting him that it’s true.

Even with this faith, even knowing that we cannot set the world right, we need to know that we can play a part in bringing peace on earth. Yet, we are not asked to do more than we are able. In fact, much violence comes from those who take the mantle of messiah upon themselves, sowing destruction through misguided campaigns to defeat evil. We cannot eradicate violence. But we can help to heal its wounds in quiet, profound ways, the “unremarked forces” that William Meredith describes in his poem.

It is telling that Isaiah’s vision of shalom is not grandiose, but small, local, imaginable. A child safe at play. Predators and prey lounging around together. The prophet upends our desire for cosmic resolution with mundane scenes of peace. They are reminiscent of Jesus’ meekness before the might of the Roman empire, whom many Jews expected him to overthrow with political might. Peace happens nowhere if not within tiny spheres of influence, individual words and acts suffused with “the knowledge of the Lord,” which isn’t knowledge why things are the way they are, but rather how God goes about the patient, hidden, eternal work of setting things right — and how God invites us to work alongside him.