‘The world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper’,
wrote T.S Eliot in 1925. He was writing in the aftermath of the First World
War. What would he be writing were he to
hear the dying whimpers and cries of Syrians being systematically exterminated
by their own government? And would these words not also have something to say
to the most powerful governments now in the final stages of making up their
minds to take decisive and targeted action to stop these horrors?
At the heart of the Gospel is the word ‘stand’. It is the
root from which the word ‘stauros’, meaning ‘cross’, is derived. The Cross of
Christ is about ‘standing’ from a position of weakness, including the weakness
which allows fear and self interest to prevent us doing the right thing in
regard to the wholesale slaughter of the Syrian people. We have the technology.
We have the information to precisely target whatever needs to be removed (no
more and no less) for this slaughter to end.
The incarnate God who hung on that instrument of torture cried
out ‘with a loud voice’. That cry was the cry of the victim triumphing over the
forces of evil. In it he held the whimpers and cries of the Syrian
people and our own confusion and fear regarding this conflict and its possible
repercussions should we take direct and targeted action. But Christ’s weakness was
given to us so that it could become our strength, in order that we might act
both with courage and humility when the time comes for acting – and the time
has come.
Humility is essential to doing what is right and
necessary in this situation. It prevents the lust for power, whatever form that
takes, from deluding those who must make decisions, and those who must execute
them, into thinking that they should do more than is absolutely necessary in
order to prevent genocide from being repeated either now or in the future. The
same humility will give all parties the courage to come to the table and talk
the talk that is needed for peace to become a reality, and the reality begins with
everyone acknowledging that no one comes to the table with clean hands. All are
answerable, in some measure, for what is going on in Syria, although it may
take years for the threads of culpability to be unravelled and traced to their
original sources.
All people of faith have a vital role to play in this
process, and in the after care of Syria once a finely tuned surgical operation
to remove all potential for the mass destruction of human beings has been
performed. They must live as well as speak peace. All must pray. By prayer I
mean engaging with heart and mind as a single body which is held in the love of
God, and in the power of his vulnerability which Christians understand to be that
of the Cross. We do this by ‘suffering with’, which is the meaning of the word ‘empathy’.
Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is about getting into another nation’s pain,
not standing by and wondering what to do about it. It means being prepared to make
sacrifices for righteousness’ sake. In other words, for the sake of doing the
right thing. These sacrifices will almost certainly make those who undertake them unpopular,
even hated, so people of faith must pray in such a way as to share in that responsibility. It is surely better to risk being hated than to stand by and
watch the slaughter of innocents for whom we will all be ultimately held accountable.
Would whoever is reading this post, please take the next
minute of your time to pray for Syria and for those governments who can and
must now act. Whoever you are, whatever faith tradition you belong to, please turn
off your computer and hold this situation for a minute in silence before God.
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