From the issue dated September 28, 2001
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A Complex God
By STANLEY HAUERWAS
Even if the culprit is Osama bin Laden, and we track him down, and we kill him and destroy his network, he's won.
That's because he is ready to die, and the people who support him are ready to die. Americans aren't ready to die. Under those circumstances, you begin to see some of the cracks in a determinedly bourgeois civilization, which is basically about securing safety rather than securing goods. This situation holds a deep moral challenge for us.
The events of September 11 have brought home to America that war is about dying. I'm not quite sure how that will be received. I suspect it will produce a more repressive politics than we already experience. Americans have no sense of how it is that we can be this hated. It never occurs to them that our country's actions have terrible results for other people around the world, and that they blame us. I have a friend who pointed out that September 11 is the anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile and the beginning of a regime of torture there, and of course that was U.S.-sponsored. Why shouldn't people be mad at us?
We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Of course, it was a rabbi who raised that question, but Christians took it up as their own. Have you read the Psalms lately? We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit for.
Stanley Hauerwas is a professor of theological ethics at Duke University.
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Section: The Chronicle Review
Page: B6
Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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