Terrorism and Playing the Game

What is terrorism?

In the dictionary sense, perhaps "the use of violence and threats to intimidate and coerce, usually for political purposes." Another definition might be the use of violence to create an atmosphere of fear to further political goals. The argument over a precise definition continues. But in this post I don't want to talk about what kind of act can be labelled terrorism, but about what other labels can given to acts which have been labelled terrorism.

Please now imagine a historical act which you believe to be an act of terrorism.

What you saw in your mind was probably the consequences of terrorism, the scene after the act was complete, painted with emotional reactions as well as visual: pain, loss, anguish, fear, anger. Perhaps there was dust, or smoke, or fire, or only a human being now dead when previously they were alive. What is important is the emotional response.

It is quite possible you were imagining the September Eleven attacks upon the United States, which I will be using as my chief example. What I wish to argue from this example is that one of the main reasons why you find terrorism objectionable is not the death or destruction but the fact that the terrorist does not play by the rules. I mean by this the rules of safety: if you join the armed forces you may die in warfare, but ordinary citizens do not die in war. The fact that this has been true of only a handful of conflicts very recently in history in very specific circumstances does not diminish the fact that it is the rule in which people believe. And it is a very pleasant belief.

One reason for the strong emotional response which terrorists elicit is that they do not play by the rules. Acts of terrorism show that the accepted rules are not rules at all. They are temporary conventions which are sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected. Ordinary citizens often die in war. And what is more, they often die in wars which have not been declared by their own side, or even by the other side - there may not even be a readily identifiable 'other side' at all. The conflict which causes death may be entirely incomprehensible, even to a careful observer.

This is not because terrorists are playing a different game to armies. In fact, they are playing the same game. They are pursuing political goals through violence. What they are doing is examining the state of the game and doing what seems most effective to them. They simply reject the fleeting convention which you embrace. You are the scrub: the player - or component of a player - whose ability to play the game is limited before you ever consider what your opening move should be.

Terrorists, in other words, acknowledge no automatic or inherent restraints on what constitutes legitimate violence. Terrorism makes you tremble - in fear, anger, grief, confusion - because it reminds you that even the moral restraints which seem obvious and mandatory to you are in fact personal to you. The natural tendency of humanity is not towards good but towards evil. Nowhere is this more clearly shown to you than in the willingness of people - of brothers and sisters and parents and lovers and poets and students - to kill other people they have never met and cannot possibly hate in any individual or comprehensible sense. All of this in pursuit of an atmosphere of trauma and fear in order that certain political goals might, possibly, maybe, be furthered.

All this is not monstrous. It is as human as any act of love. And the reminder of this, the upsetting of the rules for not only warfare but your understanding of humanity, is what disquiets you so about terrorism.

Injustice and Suffering

H L Mencken, whom I respect in the same way that a woodcutter respects the tallest eucalypt in the land, once said that "injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice." And this is very true. I don't mean in the physical sense. A year in jail is not any shorter if you are innocent or longer if you are guilty. A slap does not hurt more if you really made that offensive joke, or less if some other person made the joke but slipped off before the target turned around.

What I am talking about is the ability to endure the suffering: to fix your attention on something beyond it. This is straightforward (though certainly not easy) in the case of injustice. The person suffering injustice, if they know that it is unjust, can see that it should not affect their view of themselves. The authority which dispenses unjust suffering has proven itself no authority at all and its opinion of you can be safely ignored. Almost all suffering is considered by Australian society to be unjust and therefore uninformative - it shows you nothing about the world or yourself.

If you take this point of view then you learn very little from looking at the world. Consider what is humorously called the justice system. Even the energy of a great many dedicated people can do no more than make this system less unjust than the usual chaos of the world. Any decision of a court will contain injustice because it will not be perfectly just. In the case of murder, what would be perfectly just would be to restore the dead to life, perhaps by using some portion of the killer's life force. This is quite impossible.

Instead the usual decision is for the killer to be deprived not of some of their time alive, or some of their capacity to enjoy life, but of their ability to dwell with society while living. How curious. If you want someone to realise that killing is wrong, depriving them of liberty and joy is an odd way to go about it. Many people have preferred death to captivity, and a murderer sent to prison might easily decide that they did their victim a favour in booting them off such a constrained and twisted mortal coil. I am not saying that I know a better decision for the court to make, or that there is one (though I hope there is). I am saying that the manifest injustice of the world should cause a thirst for true justice. But because this injustice is seen as uninformative it is not really processed by society or by the individual.

And because it is not processed by the individual, it is more difficult to endure. It is more difficult to fix your eyes on something beyond the present suffering when there is no reason for the suffering to ever end, because there was no reason for it to begin. Unjust suffering is a trumpet played (badly) at random in the night: you do not know why it began, and you do not know when it will end, so you do not know whether you should simply plug your ears for a few moments or find and admonish the trumpeter.

A Christian, if they are aware of their own sin, has no such trouble. A Christian knows that they are a sinner and that they deserve suffering - an eternity of suffering. I am not saying that there is a causal connection between an individual's sin in this world and their suffering. It is transparently obvious that that is not a general principle. But a Christian knows that sin in general is what caused and continues to cause suffering in general, and that the one cannot be abolished unless the other is as well.

And since a Christian knows that through faith in Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, their sin has been taken away, they can fix their eyes on the day when Jesus will return and abolish further sin and further suffering. Being a Christian does not shield you from suffering. But it gives you the knowledge that suffering in this world is justice, nor injustice; and being justice, it is purposeful; and being purposeful, it will end when its usefulness is at an end. When Jesus returns the usefulness of suffering will come to an end. I can fix my eyes on that while I suffer.

Virtue and Vice

When I did Intro to Philosophy at university, the moral system which appealed to me the most was virtue ethics: the idea that you should make decisions that exemplify the various virtues. Recently I was thinking about virtue theory again, and about how it seems much less wholesome only eighteen months later.

The virtues as patterns of behaviour - love, loyalty, courage, and so on - are not in themselves good. Virtues must be directed towards good objects to be good. Love of something which does not deserve or return love may be in some ways good, but it will not produce good. Loyalty to an untrustworthy or wicked cause can be the source of great evil. In fact, these classical virtues are integral to the functioning of systems of evil. No systematic evil larger than the basic conspiracy can perpetrate evil without virtues being involved. Criminal organisations are built upon fear, but also loyalty and trust. War, just or unjust, requires vast depths of courage, loyalty and love on the part of the aggressor as well as the defender.

Cultivating virtues does not create a good individual. It is the prevailing attitude - at least in Australia - that a person who does good things is a good person. You would never think of saying "That Felicity, she's brave and loving and courageous - and evil!" Not seriously, at any rate. But the truth is that virtuous people can do terrible things because of their virtues rather than despite them. People may be intelligent and loving and courageous, and quite wrong. Evil is not the absence of virtue but the absence of a worthy object.

I take comfort in the unquestionable worth of the object of my virtues, Jesus Christ. I am loving and faithful and courageous in service to him - in fact, I model my practice of those virtues upon his. Humanity was created to be virtuous, and to exercise those virtues in the magnification of God's glory. Fulfilling that purpose is the ultimate, and only, good.

A Candle Is Not A Conflagration

Should Christians oppose the legalisation of same sex marriage?

The answer to this question is inextricably linked to another, equally complicated question: what should be the relationship between church and public life? My own answer is that the church should actively inject Christian values into public life, but should not project Christian expectations. Values such as compassion, mercy, justice, truth and integrity can do nothing to harm society; they are invariably positive for society, and for the gospel. Injecting these values into society through involvement in public life - specifically in the political process - is one means by which the church can be a light to the world. These are our values, both because they are good and because Jesus commanded them, and we should not hide them. We should inject them into all that we can: not hiding the lamp that is Jesus' church, but putting it on a lamp-stand. 

Truth is one of our values, and we must always preach the truth about the gospel and God's commands. It is clear from Paul's writings that homosexual lust and-or romance is inappropriate for a Christian. We must not hide or soften that. 

But we must be wary of projecting Christian expectations alongside our values. By this I mean the expectations we have of fellow Christians. Homosexual romance is outside God's plan for humanity, and so it is a form of disobedience, of the rebellion which is endemic in all humans. The church should expect Christians to turn away from their sins. But we should not expect or require society to do the same before they have put their faith in Jesus. It is important to consider what spiritual effect actually results from opposing same sex marriage in the political process.

It is more godly to abstain from homosexual romance. But the question of godliness means nothing for a life if it does not follow on from faith in Jesus. It is particularly hollow when godly behaviour, or avoidance of ungodly behaviour, is required by law rather than caused by deliberate choice. Without Jesus, an individual has neither the motivation nor the ability to live for God rather than in rebellion against God. Requiring that they act as if they were living for God will have no effect on their inward attitude, and likely negligible effect on their behaviour. The church should be a light to the world, but it should not set the world on fire to provide better illumination.

I should also raise the point that if the church wishes to legislate against ungodly behaviour, opposing same sex marriage is only the beginning of its pushing for legislation. The majority of heterosexual romance will also have to be banned, as well as most divorces and almost every aspect of the Australian economy. Perhaps this does not seem unappealing. But I find it relevant that Paul instructs the Corinthian church to resist the social norms of ungodly behaviour and speak against them, but not to stamp out those norms. Sin is a part of living in this world. Earthly laws are for maintaining order, not for building up each individual's faith and love for God. And I would argue that projecting Christian expectations into legislation is in fact a subtle form of rebellion against appointed rulers and authorities: rather than trying to build the kingdom of God within petty mortal kingdoms and democracies, the church sometimes tries to create the kingdom of God top-down through mortal legislation. This will never work.

The principal task of the church is to spread the gospel. A significant part of this is, in gentleness and love, making people aware of sin; of their rebellion against God. Ideally they then put their faith in Jesus and live for him, which necessarily involves some changes in their lives. But when the church tries to skip to the end, to push non-Christians towards Christian living (in this case by opposing same sex marriage) it is confusing at best and appears bigoted at worst. 

I do not think the church is bigoted. Most Christians who oppose same sex marriage do so because homosexual romance is a form of rebellion against God. But it is impossible for people who do not trust in Jesus to understand that motive, or to differentiate it from hatred and prejudice. This is particularly the case for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) couples and individuals, who continue to experience significant discrimination in Australia. Non-Christian LGBT individuals do not understand where the church is coming from and so they quite reasonably associate the church with the general stream of hatred. So the church, as it tries to project Christian expectations into society, ends up associated with hate rather than love. 

This is a real issue for spreading the gospel. It presents the worst possible view of Jesus' church to not only the LGBT community, but to all of society - particularly youth. Young Australians react badly to what they see as blatantly unfair laws. No defence can be made for the church's position without first delivering the gospel, which can never be done effectively in a political context. I believe the church should not oppose same sex marriage. It should continue to make it clear that it does not believe homosexual romance is appropriate. But it must do this in the context of the gospel, not in the context of divisive politics. This will make the difference between the church and society clear, and allow a non-Christian hearing the gospel to subsequently consider same sex marriage in light of the gospel. 

The church can and should help care for society through involvement in public life. But it cannot reduce or prevent sin through such involvement; dealing with sin is God's domain. And the church must do nothing to inhibit the proclamation of Jesus' glorious work on the cross to wipe away human sin.

The Hunger Games Freaked Me Out

After its summer hibernation, the common or garden coffee-snouted blogging bear emerges into the light, snuffling the air like an X's Got Talent judge scenting a comeback tour.

It's not the softening of the

I hadn't seen a movie for some time, so the degree of audience involvement in the wrong way totally

I feel that the film-makers made some choices which rendered the intended message

MY RAGE REJECTS YOUR HUMAN CONCEPT OF COHERENT BLOGGING

What is the sound of a moral flying over the head of a cinema full of teenagers?

All the girls going "awww" when the two main characters kiss because they need to have an engaging romantic arc in order for their audience to send them medicine so they don't die of infection. Or, perhaps, half of the cinema applauding when one of the 'bad people' - a teenaged girl - is killed by a teenaged boy to avenge the murder of another girl.

The audience certainly engaged with the story. But they engaged with it as separate from them, created for their entertainment, to satisfy their expectations. They never considered that the rich and corrupt Capitol audience in the movie might be them. It was quite disconcerting, watching the audience respond only to the predictable (and predicted) beats of a movie about how an audience's expectations can create predetermined and constricting roles for those required to entertain them.

I could also feel the other message, about the banal destruction of violence, straining to emerge from the movie - held back by the rating. The shaky hand-camera work during the fight scenes - particularly the multiple-death opening of the contest - disguises the pain and fear that should permeate the cinema. Death occurs at a careful distance from the viewer. I think it is more than a little ridiculous to make a movie about teenagers killing each other and then do your best to avoid showing teenagers killing each other. It also makes no sense within the movie's world; it is obvious that the contest area is covered in fixed cameras, so the footage should not be shaky or blurred.

I haven't read the books. Considered only as a movie, Hunger Games is not even a swing and a miss. It fouls the ball off. Wait, that's a baseball analogy that no one outside the US and Japan will get. Let me think. It's the cinematic equivalent of rolling the last ball along the ground so the other team can't possibly hit the improbable six they need to win: it avoids defeat, but also avoids success. This movie ate the poisonous berries.

Devotion #004: Justified Before God

Luke 18: 9-14

Romans 7: 13-25

What does God want from us?

We can never live up to the standards he requires of us. The only way for us to escape our just punishment is to accept God's mercy through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But having done that, what should we do? We have acknowledged God's authority over us. We want to obey him. But our sinful hearts make it impossible for us to obey and please God the way Jesus did. How are we supposed to deal with God after being saved when we know that we can't ever be what he wants us to be?

Context is important for this. We are not removed from God. He is not a legislator who sits far away and hands down stone tablets chiselled with arcane regulations. We are in a loving relationship with God. For Israel, the Mosaic law was a way to demonstrate and reinforce their commitment to that relationship. It was also a way to make Israel aware of their own perfidy and sinfulness, to make them realise that they had "the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out".

We wrong God. When we sin against him we wrong him, and that has consequences for our relationship. There is always more forgiveness - God's grace and love are infinite. But we can only come back into right relationship with God when we acknowledge that we are not there at the moment. If your best friend stays overnight and drinks all your milk, you will forgive them - but things will become much more fraught if they refuse to acknowledge that anything improper has occurred.

Consider the story Jesus told about the Pharisee and the tax collector: a man who held to every iota of the Mosaic law compared to one of the lowest classes of sinners in first-century Judea. But it is the sinner who goes home justified because he acknowledges he needs to be. The Pharisee thinks that his actions make him righteous, and he fails to see that like all human beings - save one - he has wronged God.

We can maintain a loving and close relationship with God despite the knowledge of our inability to properly obey him. But we have to remain active within that relationship. God is always reaching out to us, but we still have to reach back.

Best of the Best: Digital Mumbles

Digital Mumbles got me excited about music. Until recently music was only background noise to my attempts to build a cultural identity for myself, or white noise used to blot out distractions when I was writing an assignment. Sometimes I used it as a means of expression - playing sad music when I was sad, all the classic music tropes - but I didn't get anything out of the music. The flow of emotion and intellect was outwards rather than inwards, and quite shallow.

Mumbles has a fierce love of music, but what inspired me was her taste for music: refined but not pompous, earnest but considered, willing to make value distinctions without losing enthusiasm for the subject. Reading her blog ensured that I was listening to inspiring music - not always to my taste, but always presented with context and guidance that illuminated what made me like or dislike a track.

Good places to start are her recent hour-long radio special or her Alignment Week, in which she matched tracks with the Dungeons and Dragons alignments.