“Gaza Doesn't Need Our Tears, It Needs Our Anger”

Recent U.N. reports about extensive starvation and incipient famine in Gaza spurred me to write this article about the current crisis there and to suggest how we should respond.  

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian journalist and political commentator. Last week, I happened to come across her August 14 newsletter with the heading that I have used for the title of this blog post.**

A year earlier (on 8/18/24), Johnstone boldly posted this statement with which most USAmericans will strongly disagree:

The US is the single most murderous and tyrannical regime on the planet and retains its power by creating a mind-controlled dystopia where the public is brainwashed with propaganda, and its politicians fearmonger about the nation falling to "communism" or "fascism" if you cast the wrong vote.

Granted, Johnstone’s statement is somewhat exaggerated, but Israel’s war against Hamas occurring in Gaza, which has led to the worsening of the chronic hunger/malnutrition situation there, is due partly to the multifaceted U.S. support of Israel and its Prime Minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

The U.S. has provided substantial financial assistance to the State of Israel since its formation in 1948, as well as additional funding and military support since October 2023. In contrast to most current issues, especially on the U.S. funding of Israel’s warfare in Gaza, I stand in opposition to both political Parties.

Perhaps now Johnstone’s 2024 statement could/should be updated to refer to fearmongering about the U.S. falling to radical Islam (such as is seen in Hamas).

The famine in Gaza is due to genocide, not war. Some news sources, such as BBC and Al Jazeera, refer to what is currently going on as the “Israel-Gaza war.” But that term has been rightly rejected by theologian Miguel De La Torre in “This is Not a “War,” his perceptive August 14 essay.

The designation which should be used is genocide, for as De La Torre asserts, “Israel, with the military backing of the United States, is engaged in the genocide of the Palestinian people—wiping out those who refuse to self-deport so settler colonialists can complete the full occupation of Palestine.”

A week after De La Torre’s essay, “The Conversation” posted, “Israel’s plan for massive new West Bank settlement would make a Palestinian state impossible,” (see here).

 “Israel’s razing of Gaza is … about the erasure of a people, a culture and a history that expose the lies used to justify the Israeli state.” This is the sub-headline of Chris Hedges’s hard-hitting article in opposition to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people from 1948 until the present.

Reflecting on the way the Palestinians have been mistreated by Israel for more than 75 years now, Hedges expresses the type of anger that Johnstone calls for in her lament, and at the head of his August 22 “report,” Hedges uses the following image of “Beelzebibi” by Mr. Fish (cartoonist Dwayne Booth). 

“Be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). Yes, the New Testament admonishes us to be angry, and the genocide-induced famine in Gaza is an appropriate target for our anger as Johnstone asserts.

As a pacifist, I do not agree with the concept of just war, for I don’t think one can participate in war without sinning. How can killing people be sinless when Jesus commanded us to love our enemies? But I think there can and should be what can be called just anger.

Many of us want to show concern, sympathy/empathy, compassion, and so on to people in need. But in many cases, anger is more appropriate than merely expressing shared grief and shedding tears.

Sympathetic tears are appropriate when there are natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and the like. But when widespread suffering is deliberately caused by humans, anger is the better response.

That is Johnstone’s point: the death and destruction in Gaza is entirely human-made. That is the reason the dire situation there elicits our anger rather than our tears.

If there is any hope for Gaza, it will come by increasing numbers of people heeding the words of theologian Augustine of Hippo: “Hope has two beautiful daughters, their names are Anger and Courage. Anger that things are the way they are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

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** Here is information about the three articles I cite in this blog post:

Gaza Doesn't Need Our Tears, It Needs Our Anger (Aug. 14) by Caitlin Johnstone (b. 1974), an Australian journalist and activist.

This is Not a “War”: Israel and Hamas by the Numbers - Good Faith Media (Aug. 14) by Miguel De La Torre (b. 1958), a Cuban American who is a professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. (I am pleased that he is also one of my Thinking Friends.)

Israel’s Assassination of Memory - The Chris Hedges Report (Aug. 22) by Chris Hedges (b. 1956), a USAmerican journalist, author, and commentator. 

Original Sin and the Supreme Court

Miguel A. De La Torre is an acquaintance with whom I have had delightful personal conversations and whose written work is always thought-provoking as well as (to me) questionable. “Rejecting Original Sin,” his article posted on Good Faith Media (here) on May 13, is no exception.*¹ 

“We must reject the heresy known as ‘original sin’.” Upon reading those opening words of De La Torre’s brief essay, I decided to write this blog article about it, but last week I altered considerably the content of what I planned to say in the envisioned article.

What Miguel rejects is primarily the traditional interpretation of original sin by Augustine in the early part of the fifth century and then by the Protestant reformer John Calvin in the sixteenth century. Both believed in the historicity of a literal Adam and Eve and the biological transmission of sin.

I agree with Miguel’s rejection of original sin as propounded by Augustine and Calvin. However, he did not deal with the neo-orthodox theologians such as Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr. They affirmed original sin but rejected the idea that it is a hereditary trait passed down from Adam.

Niebuhr emphasized the paradox of human nature, where humans are both created in the image of God and yet profoundly flawed. This duality explains why humans are capable of great good and great evil. I think that is a correct assessment—and it may not be so different from Miguel's point.

“I argue not for human depravity but simply for their stupidity.” Those are the striking words with which De La Torre ends his essay. Upon reading that, I wrote in the margin of my printed copy, Is he replacing original sin with original stupidity?

Perhaps we humans are not born sinful as declared by traditional Catholic and Calvinist theology nor born “righteous” (basically good) as asserted by much contemporary liberal theology. Maybe we humans are just born stupid.

Just as original sin doesn’t mean that all humans are equally sinful in how they manifest their sinfulness, neither does acknowledging “original stupidity” mean that all humans are equally stupid. Rather, we are all prone to think, say, and do stupid things.

And that is what led me to think seriously about the U.S. Supreme Court. Back on April 30, my blog post began with the adage called Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” I conjectured that many of Trump’s followers may not be guilty of either.

But in analyzing the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, perhaps they were made not because of malice stemming from “original sin” but because of stupidity.

A “dangerous political heresy” were the words used by the new Republican Party regarding the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision issued in March 1857. That ruling by Chief Justice Roger Taney is widely regarded as the worst Supreme Court opinion ever.

In recent years, though, the Supreme Court has made a series of “stupid” decisions, beginning with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). Jimmy Carter called that ruling “the most stupid decision that the Supreme Court ever made.”

Back in November 2022, the eminent Robert Reich posted a Substack article titled ”Why I still think John Roberts is the worst Chief Justice since Roger Taney.”*² He says that Roberts was “the moving force” behind Citizen’s United.*³

Last month, on June 28, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that overturns Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. That same day, environmental journalist Jameson Dow (here) wrote, “Among many incredibly stupid opinions the court has issued recently, this is among the stupidest.”

But just three days later, Donald J. Trump v. United States, a stupider decision was handed down, and especially because of that ruling, Roberts may well replace Taney as the worst Supreme Court Justice ever.

Decided by a 6-3 vote on July 1, Roberts wrote the majority opinion, holding that presidents could expect absolute immunity for acts related to key powers granted under the Constitution.

If because of the desire for power (an aspect of Eve’s “original sin”) of political agencies, domestic and foreign, and because of the ignorance of the voting public (“original stupidity”) of U.S. citizens, Trump is re-elected President, the nation will most likely soon see the disastrous effects of the Court’s ruling.

May it not be so!

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*¹ For biographical information about De La Torre, see this helpful Wikipedia article. As noted there, Miguel completed his Ph.D. at Temple University in 1999. My daughter Karen was also doing graduate work in religious studies at Temple at that time and received her Ph.D. the following year. It was through her that I first became acquainted with him.

In a December 2018 blog post, I was somewhat critical of De La Torre's emphasis on hopelessness. I was intrigued, then, by Brian McLaren’s quite positive reference to De La Torre’s ideas about hope/hopelessness in “Hope Is Complicated,” the fifth chapter of Life After Doom, which I wrote about in my June 29 blog post.

*² Reich (b. 1946) worked in the administrations of presidents Ford and Carter and was a Cabinet member of presidents Clinton and Obama. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century. His Substack post can be found here.

*³ In 2013, Roberts wrote for the court’s conservative majority in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting the Voting Rights Act’s requirement of prior federal approval for voting changes in states with a history of discrimination. For those of us who believe that voter rights should be protected for all, that also was a “stupid” decision. 

Embracing Hopelessness???

Advent Decoration
Rainbow Mennonite Church

This past Sunday, Dec. 2, was the first Sunday of Advent in the liturgical calendar of the Christian Church. All around the world churchgoers were challenged to think deeply about the theme for that significant Sunday. That theme was hope. 

De La Torre’s Emphasis on Hopelessness

In recent blog articles, I have mentioned Miguel De La Torre’s 2017 book titled Embracing Hopelessness—most recently here on Nov. 25. This seems to be an appropriate time to consider—and to question—his main point.

De La Torre (b. 1958), professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver (Colo.), is an accomplished scholar, prolific author, and one recognized by his peers as a notable leader in the field of social ethics. He was elected President of the Society of Christian Ethics in 2012.

Early in his book on hopelessness Miguel starkly states his pivotal idea:

Hope, as a middle-class privilege, soothes the conscience of those complicit with oppressive structures, lulling them to do nothing except look forward to a salvific future where every wrong will be righted and every tear wiped away, while numbing themselves to the pain of those oppressed, lest that pain motivate them to take radical action. Hope is possible when privilege allows for a future (p. 5).

From that perspective, Miguel is quite critical of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s emphasis on the “theology of hope” as well as of the philosophy of progress as seen in Hegel’s dialectical idealism or Marx and Engels’s dialectical materialism.

“Hope, and the historical progress upon which it rests,” Miguel argues, “fosters a demobilizing conformity” (p. 64). By contrast, “The hopelessness I advocate,” Miguel writes, “is not disabling; rather, it is a methodology propelling the marginalized toward liberation praxis” (p. 139).

Thus, he avers, “It is not hope that propels people [such as the Central American asylum seekers] to the desert where more often than not death awaits; it is desperation. . . . Hopelessness is an act of courage to embrace reality and to act even when the odds are in favor of defeat” (p. 140).

What Can We Say?

De La Torre’s rhetoric, it seems to me, is quite extreme—and perhaps it was his intention to use such rhetoric in order to draw attention (and perhaps to sell books). Consequently, I have serious questions about many of his contentions.

His ideas, however, must be taken seriously.

For example, it seems to be quite clear that in the past, touting the hope of Heaven was used as a means to pacify people in the present who longed for a better life on earth. The primary example is, undoubtedly, the use of “pie in the sky” promises to enslaved people in the USAmerican South.

And if one believes that the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, as MLK and President Obama believed, perhaps that belief spawns a hope that stifles action. If things are going to get better anyway, maybe we don’t really need to do anything.

Does that kind of hope impede the struggle of or for those at the bottom of societal structures? Perhaps.

Still Embracing Hope

Nevertheless, I cannot embrace hopelessness.                                  

I agree with Miguel’s contention that hope should never be allowed to blunt social consciousness or countenance inaction in the face of injustice.

But more often than not, surely, hope spurs people to action in the face of despair, to active endeavors toward betterment instead of acquiescence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.   

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Precisely!

Let’s remember those words as well as these from Romans 15:13. 

Questioning Salvation History

Last month (here) I made reference to the second chapter of Miguel De La Torre’s disturbing book Embracing Hopelessness (2017). This article is about a theological problem I encountered in that same chapter.

Accepting Salvation History

One of the first theological German words I learned in seminary was Heilsgeschichte; I never understood why it was so often used in place of the English equivalent: salvation history. Then, the year I finished my basic seminary degree and entered graduate school (1962), Dr. Eric Rust, my major professor, published a book titled simply Salvation History.

While I mainly wanted to study Christian philosophy under Dr. Rust, I also studied Old Testament theology under him—and at that time I had no trouble accepting the basic ideas presented about salvation history—which still seem to be used in Christian colleges/seminaries, as is seen in the following diagram: 

(This diagram is copyrighted by Marion G. Bontrager (b. 1936), retired professor at Hesston College, a Mennonite school in Kansas.) 

Questioning Salvation History

I first began to question the validity of the concept of salvation history I had learned and accepted when I read books by Taiwan theologian C.S. Song, whose writings I studied and wrote essays about in the 1980s and ’90s.

In his seminal 1975 work Christian Mission in Reconstruction, Song (b. 1929) proposed the doctrine of creation rather than salvation history as the starting point for doing theology in Asia.

Japanese theologian Ken Miyamoto has a helpful section in his book God’s Mission in Asia (2007) titled “The Problem of Salvation History” (pp. 168~170). (My review of Miyamoto’s book was published in the January 2010 issue of Missiology: An International Review.)

Much more recently, as mentioned above, I read De La Torre’s rejection of salvation history. That stringent criticism is largely based on how he sees that idea linked to the notion of “manifest destiny,” which was so disastrous for American Indians.

In relating the horrific story of the Sand Creek Massacre, which occurred on November 29, 1864, De La Torre declares: “Sand Creek marked the start of a catastrophic collapse of the Plains Indians’ way of life, an unavoidable consequence of the reigning salvation history of the era known as Manifest Destiny” (p. 40).

In a way, the ideas of salvation history, American exceptionalism, and manifest destiny have been intertwined from the beginnings of the British “invasion” in the 17^th century of what is now North America —even though those connections have seldom been sufficiently recognized.

Thanksgiving Day, which most Americans have just celebrated and during which many recalled the so-called “first Thanksgiving” of 1621, is by no means a time for remembering a glorious past for those who are not white.

A few days ago I read the following hard-hitting article written by Glen Ford, the Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report. It is titled, “American Thanksgiving: A Pure Glorification of Racist Barbarity”—and it is quite different from what we usually read about the beginnings of Thanksgiving Day in this country.

Read it here, if you dare.

Affirming Salvation History

Questioning salvation history has led me to the following conclusions:

** The concept of salvation history has sometimes led to a destructive triumphalism among some Christians, and that is unacceptable. De La Torre’s criticism must be taken seriously. But that misuse of the concept doesn’t call for rejection of the idea. Rightly understood it can still be affirmed.

** Salvation history recounts important matters regarding God’s work in the world—but not all of God’s work. C.S. Song’s criticism must also be taken seriously. Affirming salvation history does not necessitate denying God’s grace that has operated and is operating outside the confines of that framework.

Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples' Day?

This coming Monday, October 8, is Columbus Day, a federal holiday in the United States. However, only about half of the states observe that day, and four states as well as many cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead.

The Issue

Columbus Day was first celebrated in the U.S. in 1792, and 100 years later President Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to celebrate the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the “new world.”

Then in 1937 President Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day as a national holiday, largely as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, the Roman Catholic fraternal service organization that was founded in 1882 and named in honor of Christopher Columbus.

In recent decades, though, there has been growing opposition to Columbus’s undeniable connection to the oppression of indigenous peoples and the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade.

Beginning in 1992 (in Berkeley, Calif.), an increasing number of cities—as well as the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota—now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the place of Columbus Day. (In S.D., though, the day is called Native American Day.)

So, which holiday should be celebrated next Monday?  

The Issue Intensified

There are those who see the mistreatment of indigenous people and slavery as two aspects of “America’s original sin,” in the title words of Jim Wallis’s 2016 book.

Wallis asserts that “the near genocide and historic oppression of America’s Native American peoples and the enslavement and debasing of African peoples for profit were both sins—America’s original sin” (p. 57).

True, the activity of Columbus in the last part of the 15^th century may not be directly related to what happened in British North America beginning in the first part of the 17^th century—but the latter is definitely rooted in the ethos of Columbus with regards to both the treatment of indigenous people and the enslaving of both people of the new world as well as of Africa.

In a previous blog article (see here) I introduced Miguel De La Torre, an acquaintance for whom I have great respect, even though I sometimes disagree with him. One of the most challenging books I have read in many years is his book Embracing Hopelessness (2017).

In the Introduction, De La Torre makes this hard-hitting assertion:

Christians are behind all of this nation’s atrocities—the genocide of the indigenous people to steal their land, the enslavement of Africans to work the stolen land, and the stealing of cheap labor and natural resources of Latin Americans under the guise of “gunboat diplomacy” to develop the land (p. 4). 

Then in his second chapter De La Torre writes compellingly about his visit to the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. That tragic event was under the direction of U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington—while the Civil War was still being fought!

(When Chivington, 1821~94, was a young man, he was ordained to the Christian ministry and even served briefly as a missionary to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas—of particular interest to June and me since our church is in Wyandotte County.)

Responding to the Issue

Reading De La Torre’s chapter about the Sand Creek Massacre strengthened my resolve to push for the observance of Indigenous People’s Day in the U.S. on the second Monday of October from now on. 

People of goodwill need to work diligently to rid society of the highly detrimental results of America’s original sin, striving to combat the evil effects of white supremacy both with regard to the indigenous people of North America as well as to those who are the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Sorry, Miguel, But Jesus Was a PaciFIST

Miguel De La Torre is Professor of Social Ethics and Latino/a Studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. He is a brilliant scholar, prolific author, and past president of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Mainly because he was a Ph.D. student at Temple University at the same time as my daughter Karen, he has become a personal acquaintance and Thinking Friend. (Karen’s essay “Feminist Theology” is one chapter in Handbook of U.S. Theologies of Liberation, a 2004 book edited by Miguel.)

Last month Miguel wrote an opinion article for Baptist News Global (see here) entitled “Jesus, The Man of Violence.” In the first paragraph he writes: “. . . intellectual honesty forces me to recognize that Jesus was no pacifist.”

I’m sorry to say, though, that I found Miguel’s arguments for Jesus’ non-pacifism unpersuasive. I agree with his saying that “Jesus was a troublemaker, instigator or conflict, disrupter of unity.” But is that antithetical to his being a pacifist?

A few weeks ago my pastor spoke briefly about this issue in a sermon. She emphasized, that pacifism does not mean, or necessarily embrace, passivism. She used her former church’s basketball team as an example.

PaciFISTS was the name used by the women’s team of Bethel College Mennonite Church. Here is a picture of her jersey:  

Pacifism does not mean passive resignation to an undesirable status quo. (Somehow, Miguel seems to have overlooked that point.) Pacifists can, and should, stand up and “fight” against opponents—just like Pastor Ruth’s energetic, competitive basketball team, the PaciFISTS, did.

This stance hasn’t always been emphasized in Mennonite churches. But what some call (correctly, I think) Neo-Anabaptism has made an important shift from traditional passive non-resistance to active, non-violent resistance. The latter is the position of paciFISTS.

And that seems to be the stance Jesus took.

Last month the second edition of Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context by David P. Gushee and the late Glen H. Stassen was published. (It is now a whopping 550 pages.) They state, “For the first three hundred years of the Christian movement, the church was almost unanimously pacifist” (p. 317).

Why did Christians take that stance for so long, if they didn’t get it from Jesus?

Miguel says “it would be simplistic to argue that [Jesus] was a pacifist.” But isn’t it historically inaccurate to argue that he wasn’t? Or was his position just misunderstood for the first 300 years?

Miguel also says that “pacifism seldom works in the schoolyard.” Well, it didn’t work for Jesus either. And it didn’t work for the many martyrs in the early decades/centuries of Christianity.

But the blood of the pacifist martyrs became the seed of the church. On the other hand, the violent rebels in the Roman Empire in those years (such as Barabbas and his cohorts) were annihilated.

I fully agree with what Miguel says about the need to oppose and to “disrupt structures that support and maintain oppression.” Thus, arguing for pacifism must never support suppressing legitimate cries for justice by the marginalized and/or the oppressed.

For that reason, I agree with what Miguel says about “the need to joder,” although I don’t know enough Spanish to grasp fully what he means by that. I think it is consistent, though, with what I am saying about Jesus being a paciFIST.

Those of us who identify as pacifists need, like Jesus, to be paciFISTs, seeking to do what Miguel says needs to be done: “upsetting the prevailing social order designed to protect the power and privilege of the few.”

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Combating Racism/Sexism

The Society of Christian Ethics (SCE) held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., last week, and I was happy to be able to attend it again, as I did last year in New Orleans.

One of the enjoyable things about going to academic meetings such as the SCE is seeing old friends and acquaintances, even though since I spent most of my career in Japan I don’t know very many of the people at such gatherings here in the U.S.

Two of the people I did enjoy seeing again this year were graduate school friends and colleagues of my daughter Karen. Miguel De La Torre and Stacey Floyd-Thomas were in the Ph.D. program with her at Temple University, and both of them were speakers in the same session I attended last Friday.

Miguel De La Torre

Miguel is a Cuban-American, and he talked at some length about the prejudice and mistreatment of Cubans-Americans (and Latinos/as in general) in the U.S. Stacey is African-American, and she talked, also at some length, about the prejudice and mistreatment of African-Americans in general and especially of African-American women. But in spite of the odds against them, Miguel and Stacey have become two of the most prominent members of the SCE.

Those who attended the SCE meeting this year, as every year, were perhaps close to 80% white American males. But Miguel, who is a professor at Illif Theological Seminary, was elected president of the SCE for the coming year. And Stacey, a professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, is currently serving as the Executive Director of the SCE.

In spite of their minority status Miguel and Stacey are in positions that by far most of the “privileged” white males will never find themselves in. And they are certainly deserving of the positions they hold in the SCE, for they are outstanding scholars—and outstanding human beings.

Thus, it is obvious that some people can and do rise above the discriminatory structures of society. Miguel and Stacey are prime examples of that. Miguel shared some about the struggles of his mother, an illiterate Cuban woman, in this country. But he has become a widely respected scholar and ethicist, attested to by the fact that he is now the SCE president.

I certainly agree, though, with Miguel and Stacey in what they say about the entrenched prejudice against people of color, against people of recent immigrant families, and against women. And I appreciate the work they are doing to combat that prejudice.

In spite of people such as Miguel and Stacey, why are there a disproportionate number of the homeless, unemployed, and financially struggling people in this country people who in race, gender, and ethnicity are the same as these outstanding scholars? The lingering deep-seated prejudice toward Blacks, Hispanics, and women is, no doubt, one of the foremost reasons.

Can only a very select few, people with outstanding intellect and character traits such as are evident in Miguel and Stacey, overcome the odds against them? Perhaps. That is why we need to join them and other like-minded people in continuing to work against the entrenched racism and sexism in a society that continues to be characterized by white (and male) privilege.