InConversation 6-18

Photo: A student at Eastern Menno-nite University in Virginia remembers September 11.
Photo by Jim Bishop

I’ve been thinking a lot about my wedding anniversary. I think it’s important to honour anniversaries and so I have this annual ritual of rereading our marriage ceremony, the vows we made. It reminds me of all the things we hold dear.

The thing is, our anniverary was forever changed last year because it falls on September 11.

So now this date demands my attention in a different way. And it’s left me with questions. How do I reconcile the devastation of 9-11 with a celebration of commitment? Will we forever feel uncomfortable at having a “happy anniversary” on the day that others grieve the loss of loved ones?

Last year, I had done my annual review before September 11. This year I avoided it. Finally I got out the wedding stuff and it got me thinking.

Why do I have this ritual? I believe that love and deep relationships are at the centre of meaningful life. And that these relationships demand maintenance. So this ritual is a small part of keeping our relationship on the right track; it’s an accountability thing.

Can I apply a similiar ritual to the anniversary of 9-11? Is there a covenant between nations? Maybe the words of Isaiah apply here: “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

Last year, I read an article by Arundhati Roy, called “The algebra of infinite justice.” (Roy is a writer from India who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things.)

“It will be a pity if, instead of using this as an opportunity to try to understand why September 11 happened, Americans use it as an opportunity to usurp the whole world’s sorrow to mourn and avenge only their own, because then it falls to the rest of us to ask the hard questions,” said Roy.

“Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and...for heaven’s sake, rights.

“The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden...but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America’s old wars. The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel—backed by the U.S.—invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm.... And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador...at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms.

“For a country involved in so much warfare and conflict, the American people have been extremely fortunate,” concluded Roy.

This seems overwhelming, but it’s essentially about relationships—U.S. self-interest out of control and relationships gone bad. Do we mark the anniversaries of these events? Do we ask why they happened?

I hope people are still asking the difficult questions of why September 11 occurred. I feel a responsibility to mark the anniverary of 9-11, but it’s hard to know how to respond.

I do find hope in what Canadian Mennonite is publishing, such as the articles on Christians and Muslims (Aug. 26 and Sept. 9). This is the stuff of better understanding, of building relationships.

—Barbara Burkholder

The writer is advertising representative for Canadian Mennonite and offered the above as a meditation at a recent staff meeting. She and her husband, Steffen Pauls, served with Mennonite Central Committee in Vietnam from 1994-97.

In the days following the Canadian Mennonite publication of “Muslims and Sikhs in Mennonite schools” (August 26), I received an array of responses. Amidst affirmation and encouragement, I have been criticized for the fact that a Christian and Mennonite school such as Rockway Mennonite Collegiate would welcome students from other faiths.

I have heard the voice of judgment from Christian people who are critical of a school stance that welcomes and gives a place and voice to students of Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Jewish traditions.

On September 11, our entire school gathered in chapel to remember and offer prayer for victims and events linked to 9-11. It was a moving worship experience in which students and teachers reflected eloquently on events one year later. Amidst the calls for peace and a new way for our world was the voice of Mojtaba Daneshvar, a grade 11 Muslim student from Iran.

“Everybody is saying that the world changed after September 11,” said Mojtaba. “I think a more insightful view is that September 11 didn’t change our world so much—rather, it unveiled the reality of our world. It clearly showed that many things are going on beneath the safe appearance of our world which can, at any moment, lead us to disasters. It showed that something is deeply wrong with our world.

“For people like me from the Middle East, a world full of disaster and dangers, September 11 disclosed this reality. War is not the solution to the problems uncovered. It is our job as young people, from many traditions, to not misuse this event to create an even bigger problem. To do that we need to share feelings with one another. More importantly, though, we must build an accurate understanding of our world together.”

On that morning, Christian and Muslim students together offered an important gift to our school community. Building bridges of understanding and relationship across differences of faith, race, economics and politics is God’s way among us. Thank you Mojtaba.

The writer is principal of Rockway Mennonite Collegiate in Kitchener, Ontario.

We should celebrate
Pope’s visit to Canada

Thank you for the informative and insightful Canadian Mennonite. It was especially enjoyable to read Karen Martens Zimmerly’s address in the August 5 issue.

What was surprising and disappointing was that a mention of John Paul II’s trip to Canada in the same issue included a negative news brief (page 26) that spoke of a “Catholic festival” swamping the media. The piece bemoaned government support of the events and “gleeful media coverage” surrounding the visit.

When is the last time a Christian whose aged, broken body humbly spoke a simple message (“Be not afraid,” “You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world”) that stirred hundreds of thousands of youth from a variety of Christian denominations from across the globe? Most of the tone of the media coverage was delightful—what a refreshing change!

This was not an empty facade that we so often experience in secular media but a sincere man with a light-filled message. The media was undoubtedly touched.

Here we have the head of the Catholic Church sharing with thousands the simple and profound message of the love of Jesus Christ. Let’s unite and rejoice in this enthusiasm and witness to Christ in our own neighbourhood. Let’s read about how seeds of faith were scattered among all Christians by the Pope’s visit to Canada this summer.

—Cathy Craig, Regina, Sask.

Literalist reading
of Bible is absurdity

In his letter on biblical interpretation (Aug. 5) Alvin G. Ens says: “Taking the Bible literally is the first principle of biblical interpretation.” I’m not sure just what Alvin means with this sentence, but it is clear that a literalist reading of the Bible is a reductio ad absurdum.

Our Anabaptist forefathers and mothers knew that Jesus’ statement: “This is my body” was not to be taken literally but figuratively. Es ist ein geistlich geschrift (spiritual writing) they said (Ausbund), recognizing that Jesus did most of his teaching in parables, images and metaphors.

At a recent ministers meeting one preacher insisted that we do away with figurative language. “Jesus is Lord,” he proclaimed, apparently not realizing that he was himself using metaphoric language.

We should probably do more language teaching from the pulpit or in the Sunday School classes, so that our reading of Scripture will do justice to the richness of the text. Literal reading is a dumbing down of Scripture.

—Vic Doerksen, Kelowna, B.C.

I read with interest the review of Nino Ricci’s book Testament (Aug. 5), as our Sunday school class had used that book and articles about it as discussion topics for many hours. I would like to share some of our findings.

Ricci says he wanted to try to understand Jesus “outside of the religious tradition of seeing him as divine....” Ricci says he doesn’t have much of an investment in Christianity, “but I do have an investment in western culture and the Christian tradition obviously has influenced everything about western culture. In the 21st [century], it’s hardly a revolutionary statement to say that Jesus is not divine, it’s an attempt at understanding.”

This statement is absurd. It is the fact that Jesus claimed divine authority and that his followers through 21 centuries have believed it, that it has influenced western culture to such a degree. Ricci is fooling himself by thinking we can better understand Jesus by stripping away all things divine. By doing so Jesus only becomes another great moral teacher alongside Buddha, Confucius, or Mohammed.

Jesus stated, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Testament is just another book that denounces the divine Christ and dismisses the biblical record of Jesus’ nature as revealed to those who lived with him. Ricci did not do his homework. Sure, he has captured life in Palestine during that era, but by completely doing away with anything miraculous or divine, as the “Jesus Seminar” has done, he has gone the way of a very small percentage of biblical scholars. The vast majority of scholars have given support to the orthodox view of the Gospels.

Much better reading would be writers such as Lee Strobel or Charles Colson, who rationally and forcefully argue for the truths of the Bible.

Books like Ricci’s do, however, challenge Christians to re-examine the foundations of our faith. They give us the responsibility to counterchallenge people who would do away with the divine Jesus, to show that the biblical account is factual.

I look forward to teachers from our schools writing articles on current cultural themes where they impact our faith. However, it seems to me that Arthur Boers is very soft on Nino Ricci. We need tools to assess what is truth and untruth in the light of the ultimate truth in Jesus Christ as recorded in scripture. Please help us do this.

Power lifters
from ‘mini-me’

First things first. Our eight-year-old, Michael, who inspired this column, is anything but a mini-version of yours truly.

For one thing, he’s consistently cheerful and outgoing. For another, he’s athletic and, for his age group, handy around the home. Finally, he has that administrator’s touch—the knack of knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to phrase what he says to build up “his people.”

Three examples come to mind. (You can tell I’m getting back into high school teacher mode).

A few weeks ago, Michael was over at the neighbours’ place, where a good friend and colleague was building his sons a tree house. Michael observed intently, then said, “You know, you should ask my dad. He’s not much with tools, but he’s great!” I couldn’t remember when last I’d been so blessedly and backhandedly affirmed.

Just hours after the aforementioned tooltime confession, Michael sized me up again. “You know, Dad, you’re not great with tools because you didn’t learn about them when you were growing up. But that’s okay. You did all that Wiebe stuff—you know, writing, music, and like that. Nowadays, we do different things—like skateboarding.”

He followed up this genial compliment/critique session with a bone-crushing bear hug and went on his merry way. Unsure whether to laugh or cry, I tried a little of each.

A few days later, it was just the two of us at the Bargain! Shoppe in town. Michael had allowance money to spend. To ensure good stewardship, he said, “Dad, help me with what I get, okay? I don’t want to buy anything dumb and you know about good deals and stuff like that.”

Michael’s purchases offered a new “take” on the “swords into ploughshares” scripture, but that was okay. He’d already won me over, big-time, with the peaceful power of a little boy’s love.

—Tim Wiebe, Winnipeg, Man.