Fides Quaerens Intellectum

This past week a 19 year-old student sat in my office troubled by a certain aspect of her past, namely the fact that she descends from a long line of conservative Pennsylvania Dutch pacifists. For a few weeks at IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) we’ve been working through systems and issues in ethics, and it was only natural that the ethics of war should be on her mind–not to mention the fact that she started and ended her high school career during Bush II’s War on Terrorism. She was respectful in the way she talked about her pacifist heritage, but it was clear that she was wrestling in her very soul with the idea of intentional non-participation as a viable long-term solution to international crises. “How can I talk with these people in a convincing way?” she queried. For a few minutes we broke out the ethics text we’ve been using and reviewed St. Augustine’s theory on just-war and discussed its strengths and weaknesses. Eventually I attempted to answer what I thought was the real question she was asking. I told her that my own sense of it is that (and please excuse the unfortunate metaphor in this case) the pacifist will make this issue a hill on which to die. “The only exception to that,” I explained, “is if the person is truly seeking to understand your position instead of just trying to show you why you’re wrong. You have to offer that same respect.”

Several days after that conversation it occurred to me that perhaps this student was trying to dig down deeper than what I had realized at the time. This week in reading the last chapter of University of Southern California philosopher Dallas Willard’s book The Spirit of the Disciplines (HarperCollins, 1991), I paused to contemplate an old ’60’s slogan he poses: “suppose they gave a war and nobody came?” He goes on to explain that “in the case of a complex phenomenon such as war, the righteous must reach must deeper than resistance or noninvolvement.” Here Willard is referring to authentic Christ-followers to are seeking to make a difference in the world. He concludes that Christ-followers “must reach into the dispositions that make war seem a plausible course of action and make people come when the battle cry is sounded. War is not an isolated phenomenon but rides upon the coattails of cultural, economic, racial, and even religious practices, ideas, and attitudes that have their life in the social context. These are the sparks that kindle the raging holocaust of war” (231). The point here is not to determine whether or not Willard is a pacifist or an Augustinian just-war theorist. Rather, his point is simply this: that the world’s seemingly impersonal power structures, independent of any one single person’s will though they may be, are “dependent for their force upon the general readiness of normal people to do evil.”

Further reflection on Willard’s claim regarding our readiness to do evil brings up questions that atheists, agnostics, and even theological liberals are challenged to answer with any degree of intellectual satisfaction. Here’s one: If human nature is basically “good,” then how do we explain atrocities such as those committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and, more recently, the horrendous events in Darfur? The atheist is challenged with the very concepts of good and evil anyway. If he is intellectually honest, he’ll have to say that since there is nothing transcendent we simply make up what is good and evil and then create laws around what we make up. Those laws could and should perhaps change over time, because in the end there is only behavior and survival of the fittest, plain and simple. The theist who tilts to the left theologically of course is in better shape (arguably), but still misses the mark. She acknowledges God’s reality and perhaps even his active involvement in the world. But her assumptions about the nature of humanity–that people are basically good–cause her to explain away such human atrocities as resulting from a lack of education, scarcity of resources, or even psychological disorders caused by brain physiology gone haywire. Not that these cannot be factors, BUT, isn’t the problem running a bit deeper? Is it possible for normal people, as Willard suggests, to have a general readiness to do evil? Could it be that human perversity cannot just be explained away by faulty hard-wiring or improper schooling, but rather is the result of faulty character that actually prefers to immerse itself in the tempting subtleties of a culture deeply pervaded by evil itself? Why is it, Willard asks, that we want to live vicariously through the personalities of “Miami Vice?” (A quick aside to the mosaics out there–if you haven’t seen this show, just check TV Guide for reruns on TBN.) Why is that title met with intrigue deep within us, whereas a title such as “Miami Virtue” probably strikes us as hopelessly dry, dull, and boring?

The Spirit of the Disciplines is Willard’s attempt to encourage Christ-followers to recapture an understanding and regular practice of the spiritual disciplines, which he defines as “nothing but an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his Kingdom” (156). Pacifism on its own is an inadequate solution to war in that it merely solves the crisis of conscience of some via active non-participation. What about this instead: Recapturing the spiritual disciplines can assist us in improving our ability to see evil for what it is in all its cultural subtleties. What if community, national, and world leaders actually believed this? Perhaps that could go a long way in actually addressing the root causes of war itself.