The Question
When I have a nagging question, I like to go and pull favorite books from the shelf in search of answers. Usually, my questions are rooted in literary musings: Was that story in first person or a close third? How many characters are there in As I Lay Dying and are they first person or third? Am I imagining it or is Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s structured very similarly to The Great Gatsby when you consider the pivotal scenes? And so on. Sometimes the question is just one of curiosity, or sometimes I am seeking inspiration from what others have done well. What is the first sentence of this or that favorite novel or story? “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” (James Agee, A Death in the Family). What is the last sentence? “It’s time to go home, and all the way home they walked in silence.” Or Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Some people have suggested we not begin a work with the word “it” and yet, I have done it and seen it done. “It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old.” (McCullers). “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Dickens). “It was late afternoon, with heavy silver clouds which looked bigger and wider than cotton fields, and presently it began to rain.” (Welty).
Sometimes I am preparing for a class, or sometimes something just gets stuck in my mind and I have to look it up. For instance, I have often referred to the opening lines of Tillie Olsen’s famous Tell Me a Riddle and yet, find it impossible to quote it correctly even though I have used it many times over the past forty years. “For forty-seven years they had been married. How deep back the stubborn, gnarled roots of the quarrel reached, no one could say—but only now, when tending to the needs of others no longer shackled them together, the roots swelled up visible, split the earth between them, and the tearing shook even to the children, long since grown.” Such a fine example when explaining the importance of “telling” to people who have heard way too often “show don’t tell,” instead of “show and tell.” All of the above questions and musings can be answered and even bring great pleasure in the whole process: pulling the book from the shelf and flipping through, revisiting, sometimes getting lost all over again in the created world.
But lately I find myself with other, perplexing questions and the need to seek words that best express the shock and confusion I am feeling. The question—one I have had for a long time now, perhaps always will, is this: how does one reconcile the claim of a belief deeply rooted in kindness, compassion, empathy, forgiveness and service to those in need, with acts of greed, revenge, cruelty and targeted hatred for particular groups? And of course here I am talking about our current political climate and the whole puzzling use of the terms “Christian Right” and “Christian Nationalists,” with words and acts that I find in complete opposition with what Jesus taught.
The words I found are from the great writer, Wendell Berry in his small, powerful book, Blessed are the Peacemakers, as he responds to this very question. Although the question has existed for centuries and no doubt will continue, I found it helpful to read words that state so clearly a moral split that I find logically impossible to blend. This book was published twenty years ago but could not be more timely.
“Any observer would have to say that Christianity is fashionable at present in the United States. This might be a good thing, except that the observer, observing more closely, would have to conclude that, to the extent that Christianity is fashionable, it is loosely fashionable. It seems to have remarkably little to do with the things that Jesus Christ actually taught.”
Then Berry goes on in the introduction to discuss history and the survival of the world, musing over the absurdity of: “the proposition that war can be made to serve peace; that you can make friends for love by hating and killing the enemies of love.”
He ultimately completes the introduction with this final, all too timely paragraph, before chronicling the words of the Gospels attributed to the teachings of Jesus.
“Christ told us how to survive when He answered the question, who is my neighbor? In the tenth chapter of Luke He tells the story of a Samaritan who cared for a Jew who had been badly wounded by thieves. As we know from the preceding chapter, in which the Disciples suggest in effect the firebombing of a Samaritan village, the Samaritans and Jews were enemies. To modernize the story, then, and so to understand Christ’s answer, we may substitute any other pair of enemies: fundamentalist Christian and fundamentalist Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli, captor and prisoner. The answer: “Your neighbor is any sufferer who needs your help.”
Certainly, that one question answered unleashes a wealth of other questions about how mankind might accomplish such a mission. How do we protect those in need? How will the world survive when faced with the numerous challenges that threaten lives—environmentally as well as politically? There are endless questions that no doubt will always keep us searching for answers and hopefully a little compassion and hope will be found along the way as well.