Swords into ploughshares contd.

Below is an article by Jeph Mathias published in the NZ Christian magazine "Tui Motu", which contains the compelling arguments I mentioned before. Feel free to comment. I've put it here with his permission, to help in our discussion.

International air travel, just like hitchhiking, tins you like a sardine: the doors close and you're packed beside another body fished from the human ocean, rubbing shoulders and breathing the same air. Even if you are from very different walks of life you might identify commonalities and intersecting interests, exchange what is in your head and occasionally your heart. Destination reached the door peels open like a lid, your canned-fish camaraderie is broken and you never see each other again. It doesn’t always work but 'sardine tin' conversations can be the best.

On my way to the health project we work on in a tiny Himalayan village the eleven hour Christchurch-Singapore sector put me next to Steve, a Central Otago grape grower and vintner off to peddle his wares at an international wine fair. We started with the Crusader’s chances in the super fourteen, the pleasures of parenthood, the world price of oil and the arcane science of turning thin sun, dry soil and cold air into fine wine. The harsher the conditions the finer the flavour Steve reckons. Then I opened the magazine section of the Sunday paper and found a large picture and long interview with Peter Murnane, the Dominican friar who broke into the US spy base at Waihopai with two others, popped a balloon and set up a shrine. Only the ‘balloon’ was an information collecting satellite worth $1million and they had illegally entered a national security installation. Cutting a 40,000V security fence to find it turned off no doubt has embarrassed somebody powerful.

“What d'ya reckon about these guys” I asked Steve.

He replied in a crisp end-of-matter tone “We'll just have anarchy if we don't lock their type up”.

He didn’t add “and throw away the key” but made it clear that for him it would be no bad thing if the key were somehow mislaid. I tried various angles to tease out the nuances of the issue, for instance

“D’y reckon it can be right to break the law if it is a wrong law”

“Dunno mate” he said “but those guys knew the rules and broke them. Lock 'em up.”

He turned on his monitor and started surfing the in flight movies, leaving me to ponder it all myself. Anarchy seemed to be central and “The Second Coming”, was it by Yeats?, came to mind. As best as I remember it goes:

Turning and turning

in the widening gyre

the falcon cannot hear the falconer

Things fall apart,

the centre cannot hold

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

“Things fall apart... mere anarchy is loosed up on the world.” Don't we all, at some level, fear the uncertainty that things might fall apart, our things… our safe thing-filled lives? “Anarchy” is derived from Greek an (without) and arche (rules). We want, need, no crave rules- glue to hold our centres together.

But turning and turning the word anarchy around in the gyre ever-widening inside my own head I began to doubt that a safe, predictable rule based world is necessarily a good world. When legal and moral diverge being a good law abiding citizen may be wrong. Take South Africa in the bad old days of apartheid. Most citizens, white and black, chose the legal, complied with immoral laws, kept their heads down and looked after their families. Yet they were grateful to Mandela and others who chose truth over the law. The centre, trying to hold itself together, gave Mandela “the terrorist” 23 years on Robben Island to ponder the nuances of legal and moral. When apartheid finally fell apart the Oslo committee gave Mandela the Nobel Peace Prize. We cheered and told ourselves we too would have chosen moral over legal.

Now let's consider the economic rules of the world in which we participate. These rules allow some people to fly around the world to visit health projects or sell wine for delicate palates while, debarred from most of the world’s resources, others live in villages and watch their children die of TB or malnutrition. Through that lens we see ourselves unquestioningly complying with an immoral global economic apartheid. Shouldn’t we resist, be a little anarchist?

The gospels often push me into the grey zone between legal and moral. I’m in the crowd around the adulteress turning and turning a heavy stone in my hand while some hippie talks of not following the law. And I’m a good temple-on-the-Sabbath Jew with my wife and children feeling things falling apart when a ranting madman appears, turning over tables and swinging a whip. When a paralyzed man gets up and walks would I have been with the Pharisees or the long haired guy? Time and again Jesus shows us how to choose rightly when the paths of legal and true diverge. And notice his answer when someone tossed him a coin. The moral dimension was not clearly identified, the question was simply about political power so he said “Rend to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is Gods” Great answer. Hard to live, the second bit at least.

But back to Peter and Co in front of their burst balloon and their shrine. I hadn't told Steve-the-vintner but I know Peter well. Long ago he was a priest at my church, visiting prisoners and refugees and quietly inspiring us to higher things. He married us, Kaaren and me but when I moved from Auckland I only heard of his more spectacularly news-worthy exploits: protesting the Iraq invasion by daubing a cross in his own blood (clandestinely secreted in a bag strapped to his leg) on the carpet in front of the gaping US consul, cycling from Canberra to Uluru to urge the Australian government to apologize long before Kevin Rudd’s famous “Sorry” and mot famously offering a home and support to Ahmed Zhaoui as the NZ government bent to the powerful world centre. They said “We’re breaking the rules to keep order but anyone else who does is a terrorist”. As yet another person was detained without trial most of us just looked on because the centre held us in its thrall. But Peter, again, tested the ice most of us blithely skate over by saying “He is a human being”. We need his type, prophets who fly falcon-like, shake the centres we crave to hold and loosen things we strive to keep together. Now he’s popped a balloon used to help USA's war of terror and he’s looking at me out of a Sunday newspaper.

Suddenly all was clear. Peter’s action/prayer is not in that fraught space between legal and moral where we sometimes find ourselves. The invasion of Iraq, lies about Sadddam's weapons, the coalition's own grotesque weapons of mass destruction, Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay ... these are all illegal and immoral. If Peter and friends get time behind bars it will be for going into the still more slippery underground room of our world. The room under the cellar door which most of us keep firmly bolted while we continue neatly ordered lives upstairs. The scary room. But we’re meant to go down. All my heroes did. Mandela got 23 years, Jesus got a cross. Gandhi, Luther-King and others died trying to bring light to where power grapples with truth. And there it was! Jesus’ message soft and clear: Love and Truth are your rules. Follow them. Live them. No matter what. If you meekly do what you’re told, go where you're pushed the terrible anarchy of unresisted power will be loosed upon the world.

Beside me Steve was asleep, head back and mouth open.

I reached my hand up to shake him awake, ready to say “Steve, Steve! Not breaking immoral laws- that’s what leads to anarchy.”

But I didn’t.