On "Farewell to Mars"

When I interviewed Brian Zahnd earlier this year, he very kindly gave me an advance copy of “Farewell to Mars”, his book against violence and, especially, the militarization of the Christian message.

I read it with great interest. By nature I am not a tremendously peaceful person. Like so many others, I am attracted to violence be it in film or in real life and have had to curb my own violent impulses, with difficulty, over the years.

The radical call to peace is something that, as a Christian, I struggle with, but which I have hardly any intellectual doubts about.

Let me put this into a context that might be more understandable. As I read “Farewell to Mars”, hundreds of thousands of Christian Assyrians were being expelled from their ancestral homelands in Iraq, by a terrorist organization which I truly believe represents pure evil, in its ideology as well as its motivations and above all, its methods. Women were raped and sold as sex slaves, men were summarily executed, entire families expelled from their homes and forced to trek through the desert to relative safety.

The Yezidis had it even worse and as a reporter I covered, from the safety of my city, the horrendous suffering of the men and women starving and dying of thirst on mount Sinjar, to the point of throwing their children off cliffs so as not to watch them die in agony before their eyes.

Faced with this, my first and very powerful impulse was only one. Go and fight these evil men. If I did not have a wife and four young children to care for, I might have done just that. The second impulse was to celebrate the airstrikes that were finally ordered against the Islamic State. That they should all be killed.

It has been a constant struggle of the mind to look at the terrorists who are killing the innocent, beheading aid workers and raping teenage girls, and come to terms with the fact that these men too, are my brothers. That they too, are created in the image and the likeness of God. It has not been easy, and I confess that when I heard, just yesterday, that the first of about 12 Portuguese members of IS had been killed, my first thought was “great, only 11 more to go”.

So reading Zahnd’s book was a welcome challenge, one I knew would do me good. In “Farewell to Mars” he does the important work of deconstructing the militaristic version of Christianity which so easily glorifies war and violence, condemns the “enemy” and heaps praise and glory on those who are supposedly killing in our name.

Monument commemorating the Portuguese discoveries
Note the cross shaped sword

It is true that he is responding to a reality which is more familiar to American Evangelicals than to this Portuguese Catholic, but there is enough of that sort of thing in our history for me to relate. Just a few hundred meters from my house is an enormous monument commemorating the discoveries, part of which is a huge cross shaped sword, just like the one which makes him feel so uncomfortable in the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel.

Too easily, indeed, we forget that Christ calls on us to love our enemies, not to rejoice in their deaths. The fact that Zahnd reminds us of this by confessing to us that he too, at one point, led prayer services of war, makes the tone less preachy and more of a wake-up call.

So before I get on to things I am unsure of, or with which I disagree, let me say clearly that this book is a service to true Christianity, whether reformed or unreformed, and that its message is sorely needed today, as it always has been, even though it is likely to shock us and make us uncomfortable, as it did 2000 years ago. Thank you, Brian, for your effort and for the courage it takes to do what you did in “Farewell to Mars”.

But here is where I become the skeptic who you have no doubt met so often. I know you’ve met him, because you say so yourself here: “They begin to say what Jesus did not mean by ‘resist not an evildoer’ and when this teaching does not apply. (By the way, Hitler always shows up in these discussions).”

But, Brian, there is a reason Hitler always shows up in these discussions, as I am sure you know. He represents that type of absolute evil which many people believe can only be stopped with violence. And by many people I do not mean “hawks”, I mean many good, godly men and women. Men like Boehnhoffer. How can you mention Boenhoeffer in a book such as this without mentioning the fact that he was killed precisely because he was implicated in a plot to assassinate Hitler?

But it doesn’t have to be Hitler. It doesn’t even have to be the Islamic State. We could boil it down to the typical example: There is a man with a knife in a playground, starting to stab children at random. You have the opportunity to kill him, what do you do?

Because I understand and relate to the idea that we should turn the other cheek, when it is our cheek to turn. But what do we do in the face of other’s unnecessary and pointless suffering at the hands of an evil we can stop, even if only at the cost of violence? I don’t think that case is quite so clear.

In “Amish Grace”, a book I know you are familiar with, as you quote from it in your previous book about forgiveness, there is the story, told to generations of Amish families, of a man who’s house was attacked by native Americans and who forbade his sons from fetching their hunting rifles to defend the family, even though that meant that he and his children would be killed. So I am not saying the answer is simple. There are good Christian men and women who would hesitate even in these situations to use force against evil. But I am not convinced this is the right thing to do.

Dietrich Bohnhoeffer

I believe Boehnhoffer was right to try and have Hitler killed. I believe it is right to bomb Islamic State positions in defense of the innocent and I think I would take the shot in the playground scenario. I hope I would not feel any satisfaction in the death even of the evil, but that does not mean it isn’t the right thing to do.

There are other examples in the book which I have trouble with. The criticism of the Vietnam war is a case in point. Let’s leave aside the possible other motivations for that or any other war. Let’s take it on face value, even if we are being naïve, that the war was indeed fought to try and spare the South Vietnamese the horrors of life under communism. You say the following:

“The argument was that we had to combat atheistic communism by stopping its spread in Southeast Asia … But how did that work out? Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in Vietnam. The war was lost. Vietnam became communist. Yet somehow the dominos did not fall. Soviet bloc communism ran out of steam and collapsed under its weight a couple of decades later. The fall of communism had more to do with prayer meetings in Poland than bombs dropped on Cambodia. War is, among other things, impatience”.

True. But Vietnam was not the whole story. Thousands died in Korea as well, and effectively managed to stop the advance of the communists across the whole peninsula. The result was not useless, there are millions of South Koreans now who live in freedom who would otherwise have had to live under the insane regime of Pyongyang. If it had taken an international intervention to stop communism from sweeping across Cambodia, would it not have been worth the price, rather than having had to bear the genocidal Khmer Rouge?

Which brings me back to the Islamic State. As we “speak”, a few hundred brave men and women are defending the city of Kobane from a group of fighters who will massacre them all if they fail. Is it not only right, but an obligation, to come the aid of these men and women, militarily? It certainly seems that way to me.

Please, I urge you, don’t get me wrong! I am not picking a fight over a book about peace! I repeat that I fully agree with almost all you have written and I too deplore the fact that Christianity is so often co-opted by those looking to justify their personal vendettas or economic interests. I too agree that there is no “other”, there is only “us”. What I regret, though, is the way you simply brush aside the “Hitler” argument without taking it on, I would, genuinely, like to know your answer.

Thank you for your book, for your thoughts and insight, and for being an apostle of peace which the World so badly needs. God bless you!

“Protestants went too far in ridding themselves of beauty”

Full transcript of an interview with Pentecostal pastor Brian Zahnd, about his recent book “Beauty Will Save the World”. The article, in Portuguese, can beread here.

Transcrição integral da entrevista ao pastor Pentecostal Brian Zahnd, sobre o seu mais recente livro “A Beleza Salvará o Mundo”. Areportagem pode ser lida aqui.

What is this new book about?

It is called “Beauty will save the world”, the phrase comes from a Dostoyevsky novel, The Idiot. He has this phrase in there a couple of times, and it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said, well that's not just an enigma, it’s a kind of prophecy.

                                                                                                           

What I am doing is looking at the Christian faith through the lens of beauty. The ancient Greek philosophers talked about the true, the good and the beautiful. And Christianity has a long history of trying to defend itself by claiming that it is true or by claiming that it is good. So we talk about Christian apologetics or ethics. But I am saying let’s look at it a different way, because we live in a secular age that is very suspicious of any claim to absolute truth or a superior morality. What if we approach Christianity aesthetically? Looking at it through the lens of beauty? So that is what the book is about, and that is how I approach that. I do it in a lot of different ways, but that is the basic thesis and the idea.

There are many different forms of beauty: Poetic beauty, physical beauty… Are you speaking about a specific form of beauty?

Beauty is a strange word. We all use it, we kind of know it when we see it, or hear it, or we think so anyway. But it’s hard to define. If you look it up in the dictionary you go yeah, ok, but beauty has to be a lot more than that.

I think beauty is related to form. You mentioned poetry, that's the form of words, or a painting, the form of colour, sculpture the form of shape. There is something about the form that is intrinsic to the nature of beauty and so people say: "If you are going to talk about Christianity, what is the form of beauty?" And I think that is what we call the Cruciform, the Christ crucified form.

This is a very odd claim to make, because in its original intent, Crucifixion is a form of psychological terror used by the Romans to control an oppressed people, and it was intentionally designed to be hideous, repulsive, ugly, and yet, somehow, the Cross has been re-appropriated in the Christian faith to be something beautiful.

Can people who follow Jesus Christ posture themselves in the world in such a way that it replicates the Cruciform and is beautiful? In other words, Christianity has a long history of really trying to present itself with a clenched fist, or a furrowed brow, or a wagging finger, none of which is beautiful, it’s all ugly. And I'm suggesting that possibly our posture in the world, as those who would follow Jesus, should be one of arms outstretched, in offered embrace, and simply responding to whatever we perceive as a wrong against us with those beautiful words, "Father forgive them".

In one of the stories you relate we hear about the conversion of the Rus people by Prince Vladimir. Now, the Prince's emissaries were struck by the visual beauty of a celebration in Constantinople, which brings us to the idea of liturgy and its beauty. As a reformed Christian, a Pentecostal, what does this say to you about the Protestant tradition of having stripped away most of the visual beauty of churches and liturgy? Did it go too far?

That's very perceptive, and yes I think it has gone too far. I would be regarded as one of the voices in a new movement in America, among... I hesitate to call myself Protestant, but that's probably the only thing left to me. The reason I hesitate is because I don't feel like I'm protesting, but certainly I belong to that tradition. But there is a movement to reclaim liturgy and, specifically, beauty.

I have a lot of Catholic friends, and I have become close enough to our Catholic friends to know what they say behind our backs. And what they say is "my, their churches are so ugly!", and I have to say "Yeah, you're right".

We are trying to reclaim beauty in all sorts of ways, in liturgy, in our worship space, in how we sing, what we do... I think the Protestant church has gone too far, and in an effort to reform, also ridded itself of all manner of beauty, and that's why, when I'm in Europe I always make a point of visiting as many Cathedrals as I can, because I love the beauty.

You say when you're in Europe, so I presume you've been here before...

Many times. I've been to Portugal once before, and to Europe many times.

So being familiar with European Christianity, at least from these visits and you're friends and contacts here, do you feel that your ideas also make sense on this side of the Atlantic?

I think so, that's what I'm told. When I sit down to write I think it's inevitable that I am going to write primarily to an American audience, because that's probably who I'm talking to, but I'm told it resonates with Europeans as well.

I read very widely, many of my influences are European theologians, especially European Catholic Theologians, like Hans Urs Von Balthazar, Gerhard Lohfink, people like that.

Going back to your book on Forgiveness, how important is forgiveness in the life of a Christian?

I think it’s at the very centre, it’s not at the periphery, it’s absolutely at the centre, and that book would be another example of really writing for an American audience, but I may possibly gain a European hearing. I think most people are aware of the culture wars, in America, where different groups fighting for their rights within this democratic system that we have. I am thinking that that is not how we want to present the Gospel, it is not a fight for our rights, but a continual offer of forgiveness.

I'm saying that if Christianity isn't about Forgiveness, it’s about nothing at all, and yet I fear that at times it looks like it’s about moralism, about finger wagging, about keeping the rules, about how to behave yourself, and so those two books, "Unconditional" or "Radical Forgiveness", and "Beauty will save the world", they're both really saying the same thing. One looking at Christianity through the lens of forgiveness, the other looking at it through the lens of beauty, but it's the same thing. I'm using different metaphors, but it’s the same message.

Speaking of the culture wars, the way you put it, it almost seems like Christians have been on the offensive, wagging their fingers and being moralistic. Now, however we are seeing the opposite, Christians losing their jobs for expressing their opinion about things like traditional marriage... So when you say that Christians have to engage their adversaries with open arms, isn't there a risk that they will open their arms and get crushed? Because it seems like the secular culture has really gone on the offensive and is trying to push Christianity out of the public square.

I think the risk of, as you say, getting crushed, is always present. Jesus says take up your cross and follow me. And what is He doing with that cross? He's not going on a crusade, He's going to His own death, and we have to be willing to do the same thing.

A beleza do Cristianismo

In other words, Christianity is intelligible only if God raises Jesus from the dead. There are times when we simply must trust our fate to the God who raises the dead. And if resurrection is not possible, then Christianity is unwarranted and the only defence I can offer is that I believe in the God that raised Jesus from the dead, and that if we follow Him, the Father of Jesus will act on behalf of truth, beauty and goodness.

You mentioned the Cruciform, and you obviously don't only mean the Crucifix as an adornment. But speaking of the Crucifix, we have 2000 years, specifically in Orthodox and Catholic traditions, of embellishing the Crucifix and turning it into a beautiful object, some would say that the embellishment has whitewashed all the gore and hideousness of the crucifixion out. Is there also a place for that hideousness, as you called it?

I think so. I am coming from a Protestant background, where Crucifixes were absent. So I want to embrace the Crucifix more and more, as the posture of Christianity in the world. On the other hand, a Crucifix that is constantly adorned with gold, and gems and jewels, may also be missing the point: That Jesus died an ugly death, but what he did was a beautiful thing, and that it becomes beautiful in Resurrection. But it is possible for the Crucifix to then become the service of Empire, of interests of wealth, and begin to be symbolized that way, where everything is overlaid with gold and we begin to miss the point.

So it’s always this tension we are living in. On the one had the Cross is originally an ugly thing, it’s the torturous death of a Human Being, on the other hand it's where God is revealed in Christ as forgiving, so how do we express that artistically?

I think a lot of the medieval artists, in the Renaissance, did a good job, where they are depicting a violent death, on the other hand it is undeniably beautiful. And I think they are rendering a good service to us, in that in the midst of what truly was ugly, a violent death by torture, God was being revealed as beauty. As Hans Urs Von Balthazar, one of my favourite theologians says, being disguised under an ugly crucifixion and death, Christ upon the Cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is. So we are living in that tension of the paradox, its ugly but it’s beautiful.

Are you married?

Yes, and I have three children and three grandchildren.

What have you thought of Portugal?

I love it! We came a year ago, spent two weeks, went back home, had saudades and had to come back. We love Portugal!

A Beleza Salvará o Mundo é uma edição da Letras D'Ouro

"Incondicional?", de Brian Zahnd: Meio livro bom…

Em 2006 estava sentado num hotel no Vietname quando vi, num canal de notícias internacional, a notícia da matança numa escola da comunidade Amish, nos Estados Unidos. Nessa mesma noite surgiram as primeiras notícias da reacção da comunidade, que tinha feito questão de ir ter com a família do assassino para lhes dizer que não guardavam ressentimentos e que perdoavam. O próprio assassino tinha-se suicidado.

A partir dessa altura fiquei fascinado pelo tema do perdão.  Esse fascínio resultou primeiro num texto e eventualmente numa tese de mestrado.

Foi por isso com o maior interesse que soube da publicação de “Incondicional” de Brian Zahnd, um pastor pentecostal americano, que foi publicado em Portugal pela Letras d’Ouro, que muito simpaticamente me ofereceu um exemplar.

Tendo feito a minha tese sobre este assunto conheço já os principais trabalhos que foram escritos nos últimos anos sobre o perdão. Zahnd fala de pelo menos três deles, incluindo um que foi escrito sobre o caso dos Amish, e sustenta grande parte da sua argumentação nessas obras. Para quem não os conhece isso é uma forma boa de apanhar uma síntese, mas para quem os conhece bem, e serão claramente uma minoria dos leitores portugueses, o autor traz pouca coisa de novo.

O principal propósito do livro, contudo, é conseguido nas primeiras 150 páginas, isto é, realçar que o perdão não é um acessório bonito e secundário do Cristianismo, mas sim um aspecto absolutamente central. O perdão é uma das grandes novidades que o Cristianismo introduz no mundo e ainda hoje é algo que o distingue das restantes religiões. Isto é frequentemente ignorado por quem fala de valores judaico-cristãos, como se fossem todos comuns.

Zahnd é convincente ao estabelecer que o perdão é central para o Cristianismo e que um Cristianismo sem perdão não o é verdadeiramente. Daí lança algumas das questões importantes, como por exemplo, até onde se deve ir? A dúvida é tão pertinente, que foi precisamente a pergunta que São Pedro fez a Jesus. Quantas vezes devemos perdoar? Jesus foi claro, 70 X 7, que é como quem diz, infinitamente. É nesta altura que me lembro da frase de um simpático mas simples padre que confrontado com a passagem do Evangelho em que Jesus diz que se deve oferecer a outra face, começou a homilia dizendo: “Nem tudo o que Nosso Senhor nos diz é para se levado a sério”.

Mas não, este assunto claramente é para se levar a sério. Tão a sério que as últimas palavras de Jesus na cruz são para enfatizar este ponto: “Perdoai-os porque não sabem o que fazem”.

Zahnd faz pontes interessantes e desconhecidas da maioria entre o perdão proposto por Jesus e o antigo testamento. Mas como é hábito neste género de temas o mais interessante são mesmo os casos pessoais apresentados, como o da holandesa Corrie Ten Boom, que perdeu a família toda no holocausto e foi torturada por guardas alemães, que depois da guerra andou pela sua Holanda natal e pela Alemanha a pregar o perdão, até ao dia em que foi confrontada, no final de uma palestra, pelo seu carrasco no campo de concentração, que lhe tinha vindo pedir perdão pessoalmente. A sua explicação de como ultrapassou a resistência interior para estender a mão àquele homem é uma das maiores lições sobre o Cristianismo que já li.

Zahnd apresente muitos outros exemplos, todos inspiradores, e usa-os para tentar explorar também a complexa relação entre o perdão e a justiça, concluindo, correctamente, que perdoar alguém náo equivale a livrar essa pessoa da justiça civil.

Amish, exemplos de perdão cristão

Infelizmente, contudo, Zahnd deixa alguns temas por explorar, ficando só pela rama. No caso dos Amish, que ele apresenta como o protótipo da prática do perdão cristão, baseia-se muito no livro “Amish Grace”, mas ignora totalmente os trechos desse livro que falam de como para alguns membros da comunidade, sobretudo vítimas de abusos sexuais, o facto de haver tantas expectativas sobre o perdão pode tornar-se um peso, causando traumas quando este não surge de forma espontânea. Nada disto invalida a importância e a pertinência do perdão, mas ajuda-nos a compreender que o tema nem sempre é simples.

Zahnd faz outra conclusão particularmente importante, que levanta dúvidas a muita gente. Perdão e reconciliação, são a mesma coisa? A resposta é não e a consequência dessa resposta é que é possível perdoar um infractor que não se arrependa, na medida em que é possível perdoar sem reconciliar, pois a reconciliação, essa sim, exige o arrependimento do infractor.

Temos então, até este momento, meio livro bom. O problema começa a partir daí, até ao fim da obra, com Zahnd a lançar-se no que parece ser uma interminável homilia, dirigida sobretudo a um público-alvo americano e evangélico com o qual poucos leitores portugueses se identificarão. O seu objectivo é convencer-nos que é preciso viver o Cristianismo de forma mais radical, algo que se pode aplicar tanto ao tema do perdão como a muitos outros, e de facto, pelo meio, o autor mete referências ao perdão quase que a martelo, como se lembrasse de vez em quando de que era esse o propósito do livro.

É pena, porque chega-se ao fim do livro a pensar que metade do tempo que despendemos a lê-lo foi um desperdício, o que era desnecessário, tendo em conta a riqueza do tema.

Se recomendo o livro? Recomendo sobretudo para quem quer uma introdução ao tema e para quem não tem facilidade em ler inglês e que por isso não se pode lançar a ler obras que são, para dizer a verdade, substancialmente melhores, mas estão por traduzir.

Filipe d'Avillez