|
“Black and White": A sermon on guns,
Taoism and Afghanistan
Rev. Brian J. Kiely, Unitarian Church of Edmonton,
September 10, 2006
Reading
There was once an old man who had one son and one horse, both
of whom he valued very highly. One day the horse ran away and
his neighbors came over to console him. "Oh what great misfortune,"
they said, "your horse is gone! How will you ever afford
to get another?"
The old man sat and smoked his pipe and only said, "I don’t
know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing."
Then, a few days later, the horse came back, accompanied by several
wild horses, tripling his herd. Again the neighbors visited, this
time to congratulate the old man on his great luck. Again he merely
sat and smoked and said, "I don’t know if that’s
a good thing or a bad thing."
A short time later, his son was thrown from one of the wild horses
and broke his leg in several places. The neighbors all arrived,
calling out, "Ah great misfortune, your son will never walk
again!" But again the old man merely sat quietly in front
of his house and, between puffs of his pipe, said, "I don’t
know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing."
Some time after that, the army came through the village, rounding
up all the young men to press them into service and send them
to the battlefront far away in the frozen north. But with his
crippled leg the old man's son was left behind. Though crippled,
he managed to care for his old father until his death many years
later.
— Lieh Tzu in Tales
from the Tao: Inspirational Teachings from the Great Taoist Masters
Sermon
I have never owned a gun, and never will. Until August I had never
fired a weapon of any sort except in video arcades.
I suppose that most would therefore look at my profession and slot
me in the anti-gun and anti-violence camp and expect that I would
sign any petition designed to ban weapons. Mostly, that’s
correct.
But this summer while attending the bachelor party of a much younger
friend, I found myself as one of a gang lining up at West Edmonton
Mall’s “Wild West Shooting Gallery”. Here were
these eight young men…and me… queing up to shoot the
lights out of paper targets adorned with monsters. “Why not?”
I thought. First hand experience can only help me understand the
question better. There is a passionate debate about guns in this
country. Perhaps this will help me understand better.
Besides, I even got to shoot Dirty Harry’s legendary .357
magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, punk.”
It turns out I am a pretty good shot. I was once a professional
photographer. Tripping a shutter and squeezing a trigger require
the same touch. If ever attacked by a paper monster, I should be
able to protect my family.
Afterwards, the younger men were just plain pumped by the experience.
Me? Not quite as much. I was just happy that all my various parts
were still in the same places. Certainly there was power in firing
weapons, and that can be intoxicating. I would probably do it again
if a similar situation arose. It was fun.
Does that mean I am softening on gun control? Had this event ‘greyed’
the previously black and white issue for me? Not really. I have
signed another anti-gun postcard today. “Guns don’t
kill people, people kill people,” say the lobbyists, but without
guns, people can’t kill people as easily or as quickly. But
I am happier for having the personal knowledge. I am beginning to
understand the passion of guns as I had not before. In fact I feel
even better about my anti-gun views. I know now the feeling of dominance
they give, and I know just how easily they can go off. Once again
I am impressed by the usefulness of personal experience. It gives
a better ground to stand on when forming opinions.
I am often saddened and surprised by Letters to the Editor in various
newspapers. Some writers seem to have little need for personal knowledge.
Too often they are written from places of anger, hatred or bigotry.
And so often those letters (even the seemingly reasoned ones) are
the product of the closed minded who have not or will not consider
– really consider – opposing views. By ‘really
consider’ I mean truly listen to those viewpoints and then
pause to reflect, instead of spending the listening time marshalling
their counter-arguments. They write with a kind of religious fervour
and a deep conviction that there is only one ‘Truth’
(capital T) and that it is on the writer’s side.
But can truth be so easily captured and confined? Jesus claimed
to Pilate that he had come to, “testify to the truth.”
Pilate responded, “Truth? What is that?” A good moral
relativist it seems, Pilate understood that what was unshakeable
belief for one group of people might be leave others unmoved. As
a Unitarian I often find myself having to deal with the certainty
of other people’s truths. Some of those are religiously and
philosophically more conservative than mine. Others are more liberal.
For the most part, I have found that people who ‘possess
the truth’ – as opposed to those who hold an opinion
– have too short an understanding of history and too are limited
a view of the present. There is always another point of view to
be considered, a longer view to be taken, an alternative context
in which to understand an event. And we never can predict the long
term consequences of our ‘good things”. This is especially
true when it comes to war.
In North America we generally look back at the Second World War
as the last ‘good war’. Good and evil were clearly defined.
“Hitler had to be stopped”, and, “We had a job
to do,” are the kinds of things I have read and heard from
veterans and from those who held down the home front. But 42,000
Canadian soldiers died. 11 million Chinese soldiers and civilians
died and 25 million Soviet citizens perished. The Encyclopedia Britannica
lists total loss of life in WWII at 59 million people. The ‘last
good war’, the one that a majority of westerners supported
killed millions and caused unimaginable devastation to hundreds
of millions more.
I want to say that’s not a good thing, but a bad thing…but
… it also gave birth to two major superpowers, allowed modern
day China to take shape and produced, in the enemies we crushed
(Germany and Japan) two of the strongest economies of the last half
of the 20th century. It indirectly caused the creation of Israel,
the first Jewish state in almost 2,000 years. It led to the founding
of the United Nations and ended the Great Depression in North America.
It provided amazing and sometimes frightening technological and
medical advances. That’s just part of the list.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
As I look back with a mixture of horror and fascination, I can’t
see a way that the war could have been avoided, or even should have
been avoided.
Looking at history from a variety of viewpoints can easily cause
headaches, and heartaches, and soul aches. We stand in the face
of such things and are challenged to our very philosophical cores.
The issues which once seemed so black and white seem to melt into
uninspiring and foggy shades of grey.
So what do we do as we stumble through these mists? Seek cover
and wait for them to go away? That has merit. It requires one to
leave the decision-making to others. Sometimes the decisions will
seem good, other times bad, but if history teaches anything it is
that today’s good choice is tomorrow’s questionable
one, that well-meaning actions often have terrible unintended consequences.
Someone is always hurt by any big decision. On the macro scale of
world politics, there really is no ‘win-win’ answer
that keeps all individuals safe and prosperous. The grey mist seems
unending.
So what to do? I can only give a personal answer.
Violence and war fascinate me. I have long since outgrown any boyish
love of glory and heroism, but having grown up during two full generations
of peace I am curious about this immense thing I have never personally
known. Like my pre-gunslinging days, I have no desire to participate
in war, but having no personal knowledge makes me curious about
it. I have for example, a collection of over 125 videos of war films,
everything from the most obscure quicky propaganda movies to the
most vehement anti-war treatises ever made, and every sub-genre
in between. Why people fight fascinates me, because I have never
fought. Violence fascinates me because, aside from high school football,
I have never known violence.
You see, I don’t believe in grey areas. A number of years
ago I discovered that I was philosophically a Taoist. That’s
the ancient Chinese religion based on the Tao Te Ching, a short
book of verses about human and natural virtue. Over centuries Taoism
has been a religion, a martial art, and the quasi-medical practice
promising very long life. Today, it is best known as the philosophical
basis for T’ai C’hi, that system of slow movements designed
to bring health and strength.
The symbol of Taoism and T’ai C’hi is the ball featuring
black and white swirls. Notice the dynamism. There is no grey here,
only black and white locked together in a perpetual ebb and flow
of power. The thrusting ‘yang’ energy is eventually
absorbed and weakened by the receptive ’yin’ energy
and then given back again. The world of the Tao is about seeking
harmony and balance between the two. But what makes it come alive
is the recognition that in the black are seeds of the white, and
in the white there are the seeds of the black. There is no grey.
The positive and the negative, the thrusting and the receding are
distinct, the giving and the taking, the warring and the peacemaking
are distinct and yet, eternally bound to one another. Peace, sadly
is not everlasting, only the quest for balance of forces is perpetual.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Peace at all costs leaves us ill-equipped to face genuine evil.
As a boy my Catholic father used to say that Hitler was the very
incarnation of Satan. Few would disagree, even those who don’t
believe in Satan. And how should we respond to evil when it rises
up to devour us? How do we face an all consuming sociopathic evil
that cares not for protests and embargos, that will not negotiate
and that is willing to destroy itself and everything else in its
quest? How would you respond when the monster is not just on a paper
target, but when it is rising up and threatening you and your children
for real. Would you shoot? Would you shoot? And if you would shoot
to save your family, what about your neighbour’s family? And
after that, where would you draw the line?
Some would stick to their pacifist beliefs no matter what, and
I have deep respect and admiration for that. But I have searched
my soul and know deep inside, that I would risk taking action.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Taoism implies that there comes a point, only known in the individual
soul, when the time to yield should come to an end, when for the
good of self and society it is right and proper to assert, to advance
and even to strike with enough resolve to deter the threat. There
is no grey, just seeds of black in the white and seeds of white
in the black.
These days I feel trapped in the middle of a hot topic: Canada’s
role in Afghanistan. Our government has shifted policy away from
nearly two generations of peacekeeping. Our soldiers are warriors
once more.
Most people agreed in 2001, that the Taliban were religious fanatics
and among the worst abusers of human rights in the world. Their
subjugation of women was an affront to our sensibilities, although
not unique in the world. But somehow the west became aware and grew
increasingly appalled at females turned into the virtual slaves
of their fathers, brothers and husbands. To our eyes brutally enforced
laws about who could speak and what could be said, on how people
had to dress and wear their hair and beards, on the heavy censorship
of all media stirred our revulsion and imagination. Something had
to be done.
And then came 9/11 and a designer of terror who could be traced
to the Afghan mountains. Evil had a face again and a name.
There, viewpoints diverge. When the Americans first went in under
NATO’s banner, there was widespread support in the west. Nearly
90 percent of Americans and about 70 percent of Canadians approved
the invasion. The swift removal of the Taliban brought cautious
celebration around the developed world. Our own Unitarian leaders,
unwilling to support violence, and yet happy with the ouster of
the Taliban, largely remained silent. I was silent too, for I am
not a pure pacifist. I wasn’t sure that going into Afghanistan
was the right choice, but I could see the value of the goal. It
seemed to be time for the aggressive ‘yang’ action.
Five years later, and it is Canadian troops on the front line and
coming home in coffins, 33 so far. Our ardour has cooled. A recent
Angus Reid poll suggested that Canadians wanted our troops home
by a margin of 52-41 per cent. What lies behind that number? Anti-American
cynicism? Genuine pacifism? A dawning understanding that Afghanistan
is aperpetual war zones with no real hope of peace? If reports can
be trusted, it seems that our soldiers with boots on the ground,
still believe in their mission. It also seems that they are welcomed
by a majority of Afghani people who still have hope for their ravaged
land. I was struck at Heritage Days by the Afghani pavilion that
offered half price food for any Canadian soldier and that proudly
sported signs thanking Canada for its help. For now, I am willing
to accept that belief and that vision. I cannot yet speak out against
our involvement in this war. In fact I would rather see the soldiers
of a peace loving nation like Canada taking the lead than our American
cousins.
It seems reasonable to assume that if the west leaves, the Taliban
will reassert themselves and that evil we sought to remove will
be back. We will have nothing to show for the hundreds of western
soldiers and the 10,000 dead Afghani citizens. How will that sit
on our consciences a year from now?
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Friends, I do not have an answer to this question, only some partly
formed ideas and some deeply felt fears and concerns. I hold our
Unitarian Principles dear. I affirm the worth and dignity of every
person, but not so naively as to allow myself to stand helpless
or hopeless before those who respect none and would destroy and
demean all in the name of some twisted and perverted ‘Truth’.
For now, I stand with the decision to have Canadians fight in this
war. It is an anguished choice and one that I fear will not be popular
this morning. I may well come to regret it. Hindsight and the passage
of time makes us all wiser. But each one of us has the right of
conscience and the responsibility to find and follow the dictates
of that conscience. Mine says it is time for war.
We may not know if our choices will ultimately be good things or
bad things. In a way, it doesn’t matter. All we can do is
wrestle in good faith and make the choices that seem best at the
time.
May our actions lead to better things for all.
Back to Sermon Archive
|
