War and Peace

It's been so long since I've written I realize. Life has been crazy with graduate school. And then I got overwhelmed with the different thoughts and ideas in my mind over the last few weeks, that I could not even approach my blog. So much has happened in the last few weeks...Iran, Michael Jackson, North Korea... It's sometimes too much for me too handle and I end up closing myself off from news, from people. I just can't take how much we, society, allow to take place in our world. Especially, how many people we end up hurting, whether through physical beatings, verbal banter, or silence.

I don't know why, but one particular issue compelled me to write something this morning. I am currently reading a book that was released last year by Ishmael Beah entitled A Long Way Gone. It's an autobiographical account of life as a boy soldier in the Sierra Leone rebel army. I've rather randomly ended up having lots of conversations about soldiers and wartime lately. A few of my friends are dating/engaged to soldiers who will soon be going out into the field, and, of course, there's the whole issue of the fact that the U.S. is fighting multiple wars right now. So, perhaps it's not all that random. Nonetheless, it is not a topic that I would LIKE to discuss in-depth. I do not say any of this with an anti-American mind. If anything, my love of people makes me hate war, and those who enable such atrocities - not my beliefs about nationalism and nation states (which I can go into further in another blog post).

I've been thinking a lot about pacifism and how many attack individuals who hate the military and hate the war as somehow anti-American. Reading Beah's touching and disturbing story confirms in my mind that there is nothing radical and extremist about pacifism. It is not anti-American to wish that individuals and the government would stop insisting that war is the only solution to our global problems. Why is that mentality not regarded as radical and extremist? In our society we think that those against war are foolish, yet we do not see the lack of logic in solving disputes with amunition. Soldiers, too, end up becoming tools of the ones who started the fight in the first place, and who instead of carrying it out verbally, decide to risk others' lives to win a battle of muscle-flexing. Wars are really, then, more like a children's fight blowing way out of proportion. And while lives are destroyed and families torn apart, everyone begins to forget why the fight started out in the first place.

Why has this extremist means of resolving issues become status quo in our society? Why has our society driven individuals to voluntarily agree to risk their lives so that they can kill others and supposedly protect our nation (even though none of these wars comes anywhere close to American soil...and all the fighting does not seem to do much to quell terrorist attacks globally)? Why do we consider blowing anything or anyone up in the "name of the U.S.A" a noble and heroic task?

I do not believe that it is because somehow we have some innate evil in us that drives us to kill others. No. I do not believe that there is very much about our behaviors that is innate, if there is anything at all. There is nothing natural about war. I mean, most animals do not kill their own species as much as we do. War is a social construct, just like gender and race...and pretty much everything else in our world. The notion that war is the only solution to trans-national problems, then, is also a social construct and not one that we have to accept. Instead of talking about blowing up people and killing others as something we have to do to maintain security, cannot we start talking about how we should care about everyone's lives, not just our own? Cannot we recognize the hypocrisy of assuming that somehow mass murders lead to peace, and subsequently demand alternative means of communication? Just because we've been doing it for so long does not mean that we have to keep solving disputes this way. There is ALWAYS another way. And wishing that thousands or millions of people did not have to die for a cause they barely understand does not make anyone anti-Uncle Sam. It just makes them pro-humanity.

faith, freedom and fasting

Faith has always been a central part of my family's life, at least as far back as I can remember. Of course, like any other family that believes, our faith as a unit has wavered back an forth. Additionally, individual members of the family, myself included, have felt confused, pulled, unsure, and confident all at the same instance. Over the past few years at Brown, I definitely felt more convicted in my faith. That was until this past year. During my semester abroad at Korea, I was drawn to more charismatic churches and experienced things I never knew even existed in this world. I met people who quite literally gave up every second of their life to the Lord and who inspired me to want to do the same. Pastors preached with vivacity, praise leaders sang til tears ran through the room, and believers raised up their hands and shouted to the Lord for joy, forgiveness, and love~ This way of worshiping the Lord moved me in ways I can't explain. Yet, along this journey, I forgot many of the fundamental principals that make me love Jesus and want to be like him.

See, along with this firey faith comes a great deal of judgment and legalism. "You have to act in a certain way to earn God's forgiveness, and if you don't act in that way, you are at-risk for condemnation and an eternity in Hell. Furthermore, all of your friends who are non-believers will be condemned unless you try to help them..." This was, and is, a rather popular undertone in many Christian churches. I am happy to say that I did not grow up in such a church and I do not condone this more hateful and exclusive kind of faith. It feels so contradictory to me: how can you claim to love the only one who knows how to truly love, but then turn around and be so judging of your neighbor. But then, I suppose scripture itself holds many contradictions that leads to an amalgamation of variegated faiths and traditions.

Needless to say, I felt rather trapped within this means of faith and found myself oftentimes self-loathing. I dwelled on my guilt for my sins daily and thought that a deliverance prayer alone would save me. It took months of first talking to God, then taking a break, then reflecting a GREAT deal to finally develop my own faith relationship with the Lord. And now I believe that the only way to believe God and worship his is just to do that: believe God and worship the way that you know how and the way that works for you. It doesn't have to be in the way that someone tells you. Faith is about finding freedom for yourself.

Well, I am still in the process of loosening my chains. I do recognize more and more though what is truly important to me, and that is to love everyone around me as much as I can. I hate on anything that tries to stand in the way of love: murder, domestic abuse, sex trafficking, socieconomic inequality, racism, Prop 8, and even Christian fundamentalist exclusion. I stand by the belief that God loves all forms of love and hates all forms of hate. Pretty simple principal to stand on, but it's actually rather difficult to live out. Especially since so much of the more hateful, exclusive practices are condoned by large segments of our society.

As complicated as all of this may seem, or as overly-simple, who knows, this is how I see practicing faith for me to be. I just want to promote God's love and practice loving others the way the Lord does. I seek to learn more and more about how to do so by developing a relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And I pray that the Holy Spirit will move me in ways that can improve the world so that hatred no longer has to be central to all we do.

I am fasting this week for my older sister who is taking the boards on Friday. I am not fasting because someone else told me that doing so would help me pray and would help her (though it is true that someone did tell me these things long ago). I am fasting because I love her and because I know that God will see how devoted I am to that love. I believe He will smile upon this act and give her strength to study hard and perform well. I am so proud of her; this is the biggest, most loving gift I know how to give to her right now.