"So much has been destroyed"

"...My heart is moved by all I cannot save;

so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those

who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,

reconstitute the world."

-Adrienne Rich

I think all of the doubts and questions and frustrations that I’ve been wrestling with all month finally boiled over on Saturday while we listened to a man named Rogelio share his testimony about a massacre that he survived which happened near his village in 1983.  He was nine years old at the time and he shared with us multiple stories about his time in the hands of the military.  He talked about how mothers who had their babies with them didn’t have food to give them and so their babies would cry.  The soldiers would tell the mothers to keep their kids quiet or else they would kill them and so many mothers put cloths in the mouths of their babies to try to quiet them, but by doing so ended up suffocating their own children.  He told us that one day the soldiers came in the room and asked the people if they were hungry and when they responded yes the soldiers took a bag of bread out of their backpacks to show the people in the room and then leave without giving them any so that they could go eat it.  Then they came back and asked if they were hungry again and again the people responded yes.  Rogelio and one other child were given permission to find some leaves for the people in the room to eat but because the people had not eaten in so long the leaves caused them all to vomit.  Then the soldiers laughed at them and told them, “You’re going to die of hunger because we’re not going to give you any food.”  Rogelio told us that a few days later he found his sister and aunt and their first thought was, “If they’re going to kill us, at least they’ll kill us together." But then his aunt and his sister were killed and Rogelio was alone again. 

As I listened to his story I just began weeping. I wondered what kind of God would create a world in which these kinds of things could happen.  I started thinking about how life often feels like some kind of sick game where some are winning, some are dying and the rest of us are caught in between.  Are we being tested? Does suffering exist as a test to see if we’ll respond?  When will this test end because I think we proved a long time ago that we fail?  How many more people are going to have to die? 

 Because while so many of the things we are hearing are stories of the past, there are still people dying from hunger and from diseases of all sorts. There are people still being tortured and killed.  Innocent civilians being caught in the crossfire of wars between nations.  And I thought about how I don’t know if it would be worse for there to be no God at all—for this whole world to be an accident.  Or for there to be a God who isn’t weeping at the condition of the world.  A passive God who is sitting in the clouds watching all of this pan out.  And finally I wondered about the faith and unconditional love of the people here. Rogelio told us about one man in the military who gave him a plastic bag and a water bottle and in that moment Rogelio realized that maybe there were good men there too. Even after seeing the horrific deeds done by this man, Rogelio was able to still see his humanity. After Rogelio’s testimony, Mercedes, a woman from the community, had us all stand together in a circle and pray.  How do they still pray? How do they still believe that there is a God and that he is good?

It’s sometimes embarrassing to identify myself as a Christian because so much of what Christianity has been is a justification for oppression and violence and discrimination.  And before this class I often attributed these things to the work of humans, the work of the Church.  But this class has challenged that in multiple ways, specifically through our reading of Native American interpretations of the Bible.  In one article  that we read titled, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians,” the author talks about “God the conqueror.”  He writes, “As long as people believe in the Yahweh of deliverance, the world will not be safe from Yahweh the conqueror."  How can we reconcile the God of the Exodus, the God who commands the Israelites to “mercilessly annihilate the indigenous population” with the God who is Love, with the suffering, persecuted Christ?  The day we discussed this in class, we also discussed that because of this, the Native Americans cannot accept the same liberation theology.  And I started wondering if we all have our own theologies and if that’s okay.  Am I creating my own version of God that makes me happy?  Is God thus becoming an idol of some sort for me?  But then I thought about how I don’t know if I want to believe in a God who conquers.  A God who glorifies some and destroys others.  Maybe I'm picking and choosing. Maybe that's dangerous. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I hope I'm just not getting something. 

While I’ve been wrestling with all of these things, I’ve also experienced a lot of hope and a lot of resurrection.  I think that’s one of the beautiful things about liberation theology—it is painful and challenging but it’s only in embracing death that we are able to experience resurrection.  Another article we read titled, "Women and the Theology of Liberation” reminded me that though I cannot understand the God of the Old Testament, I can look at the example of Jesus.  As I struggle with the oppression of women in society, I find hope in the reminder that “Jesus’ attitude toward women was never discriminatory, however radical a break with the traditions of his time he saw this to be."  And again, “Those Jesus calls to build his reign are in the first instance the disinherited, the marginalized, the excluded.  Among them are women, children, pagans, and sinners.  Jesus prefers hem because he discovers unknown, neglected values in them. It is a simple fact, attested by all four gospels, that the good news of Jesus includes women in the community called to build his reign."  And so I have also been affirmed in my understanding of Jesus as a loving, radical human being who came not just to die but to show us how to live.

I worship a suffering God.  A God who was thrown on the cross because of his commitment to love and justice and equality.  This class has challenged this belief while also affirming it and in the midst of my doubts and questions, I’m discovering what it means and looks like to be actively broken-hearted.