SPF Blog

Winning the War on Terror

Keith McCrory — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:32:51 GMT

Blog Series: General

(This entry was submitted as a letter to the editor of the Irish Times on May 3rd 2011)

Observing the euphoric celebrations that followed the death of Osama bin Laden, I was reminded of the opening paragraphs in Dexter Filkins’ “The Forever War”. Reporting from his experiences in Afghanistan in September 1998, the then New York Times correspondent describes the day he was taken to a ‘show’ at a football stadium in the capital city, Kabul. Four hooded men drove onto the pitch in a Toyota Hi-Lux van and proceeded to drag a fifth, blindfolded, man from their vehicle and throw him into centre stage. This blindfolded man - Atiqullah - had apparently killed another man in an irrigation dispute and both their families had now been brought to the stadium to face one another and resolve their family troubles.

The family of the accused hoped to offer compensation in lieu of judgment but the murdered man's family insisted on their rights to justice. As a result, the dead man’s brother was handed a rifle and, there and then, allowed to shoot the guilty party three times in the head. As Atiqullah’s lifeless body fell to the ground, his victim’s family raised their arms and voices in triumph, his own family wept in grief and anger; and in the background, through the stadium’s loudspeaker it was declared to those present: "In revenge, in revenge there is life." Given the scenes reported in recent days, it seems that many in our western culture have come to agree with this pronouncement. I am wondering about that, and I am fearful.

Like most, I am certainly glad that bin Laden has been tracked down and can now no longer participate in terrorism. But how we have chosen to celebrate his demise has made me worry that we have forgotten the very great, and very important, difference between the seeking of justice in our world and the quest for revenge. As we have learned ourselves (or at least we hope so) in Ireland, the path to peace in our modern world can never be laid by force of arms and the vanquishing of our foes. Even without the irrefutable examples of Iraq and Afghanistan, if forced settlement through armed struggle could not be accomplished in the mico-setting of our island how could it ever be accomplished in any larger setting? We must face it. The days where there could even possibly be a Pax Americano or a Pax Nato are long gone. Any enduring resolution of conflict requires a breaking of the cycles of enmity, a moving away from the blanket despising of the ‘other’ and a movement towards the promotion of justice, equality and freedom for 'all'. History has more than adequately demonstrated that such negotiation and reconciliation are the only ways to bring the sort of peaceful world we are all dreaming of.

To win the so-called ‘War on Terror’ it would seem to me that we must seek the ending of our own terror as much as any others; We must not only advocate the values of our culture we must determinedly stick to them; We must realise that our sophisticated weaponry and determined armed-forces can ever achieve their end in a context of reciprocated hatred. So my basic reflection is this, even if such action as that taken by seal team six is necessary, our response to it must exclude any triumphalism or tribal gloating. To those outside our culture or group, our reactions in these moments, perhaps even more so than our actions, are what reveal our true values and our true motivations and thus will have the far more defining impact on our future relationships. In the words of the US Army’s World War II memorial in Washington, our goal, even against terrorism, must be to liberate and not to conquer. It must be to bring into freedom and not to destroy. The title of Filkin’s book points us very well to what has happened, and what will continue to happen, when any other approach is followed.

Your fellow traveller who is so grateful that it is in forgiveness that we truly discover life.

What Patrick has to teach us about Reconciliation

Keith McCrory — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:13:22 GMT

Blog Series: Lessons from Patrick

If good intentions are not enough, what is it we need to be doing if we are to see reconciliation happen in our communities and nation? Well, as I ask that question, I’m reminded of the old saying that goes: ‘for every complex, difficult to understand problem in life there is a simple, easy to understand solution that is entirely wrong!’ How true. There are no simple or easy answers to the problems violence, hatred and desperate pain create. But that doesn’t mean there are no answers. In SPF we are convinced that Patrick’s legacy has enormous potential to help our nation and every other one to find such answers. In the way our Patron Saint choose to live his life we believe we can discover at least five effective though deeply challenging insights into what is required to see hatred overcome by love and alienation overcome by restoration.

These are:

1. The conviction that reconciliation is always possible.

2. A clarity about the enemy to be overcome.

3. The willingness to pay the price that is necessary.

4. An understanding that reconciliation is incremental.

5. A determination to keep acting first.

Examining each of the elements above will be a challenging and fruitful discussion on this immense and vital task that faces us all…

You fellow traveller who wishes reconciliation was easier.

The Fallacy of Intentions

Keith McCrory — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:52:43 GMT

Good intentions are way over rated. Let’s face it, when heading off somewhere new it makes absolutely no odds how sincere we are in our intention to get there. If we turn left when we needed to turn right at a crossroads, we are going to end up lost. Plain and simple.

During my days in computing and electronics at Durham University I spent a morning climbing the 3209 ft (978 metres) of Scafell Pike, in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, with a friend. It was quite a climb. When we finally reached the peak, however, it was rather disconcerting to notice a higher peak about a mile away and to see what looked like the colours of lots of people ascending and descending it! Early in our walk we had veered west instead of east with the result that we had still not climbed England’s highest point! Likewise, in my days as a student pilot at Aldergrove Airport, one of my cross country runs (cross sea runs really) was to the Isle of Man. I was flying the owner of the Pilot training school to a meeting at the airport there and, to save some time since he was running late, he just guessed the wind speed and direction from observation rather than get them from the met office. Imagine our surprise when we arrived at our destination only to discover that the Isle of Man wasn’t there! “Had it sunk?”, I hear you say and I must admit for a brief moment I wondered that myself. But no, it had not become a British Atlantis. The reason it wasn’t there had to do with us not the Island. Despite the hurry and the best of intentions the wind speed and direction we had based our course on were incorrect and thus so was our course. We flew in the wrong direction and so we ended up in the wrong place! (You’ll be glad to know we made it eventually!)

All this is not rocket science, if you’ll excuse the pun, but as individuals and as a nation we seem so easily persuaded to ignore this simple fact when it comes to facing and overcoming the problems of conflict that ravage so much of our personal and cultural landscape.

If we do what is necessary to deal with poverty, racism and sectarianism in Ireland then poverty, racism and sectarianism will be dealt with. If we choose not to, or if we content ourselves with just doing a little tokenism or letting our so-called good intentions be the engine for our moves towards reconciliation then we will never arrive at the destination we say we want to reach.

In dealing with anger and hurt, with fear and distrust; in combating hatred and prejudice, racism and sectarianism it is not the thought that counts. It is what we do and how we deal with these issues that will determine our destination.

Your fellow traveller who is grateful for true north.

Enmity is the Enemy

Keith McCrory — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:43:40 GMT

Amidst all the variations of source and degrees of severity within human conflict there is one aspect that is virtually always uniform. No matter where or over what the conflict has arisen, once hope for resolution fades the core of the problem is almost always personalised. Whether our conflict is over a family dispute, a political divide or one community's actions against another, the root problem almost always becomes diagnosed as 'him', 'her' or 'them.' 'He is the problem!', 'They are the problem!' 'They will always be the problem!' are absolutely commonplace statements amongst the divided. Where such conflicts escalate to violence the word 'problem' makes an equally uniform transition to become the word 'enemy.' Now our mantra of response, whether articulated or not, becomes 'He is my enemy', 'They are our enemies', 'They will always be the enemy' and thus our focus amidst our hurt turns to how we can we protect ourselves and those we love from 'them'.

How is it possible for two such hopelessly divided individuals or communities to ever be reconciled? Well, in Patrick's life and in the teaching of Jesus, what I have found surprising is that the first key move towards finding a new future is not actually that we should 'love our enemies'. This is unquestionably what lies at the heart of the message of both of these great teachers but such 'love' is only something that can come after we make an initial and vital first step. That first step, and I would argue the most important one, is to recognise the mistake of our usual thinking. Instead of yielding to personalisation, our great need is to recognise that our real 'enemy' is never 'him', 'her' or 'them'. The real problem that faces us in conflict is the brokenness that divides us. It is our enmity that is our enemy not 'them'. Remove the enmity and couldn't our families find a way to be restored? Remove the enmity and couldn''t our communities find a way to live side by side in peace? Such depersonalising of our contexts is no simple panacea, of course, but as in the field of medicine, personal and community healing is enormously helped by beginning with a proper diagnosis.

Your fellow traveller who is seeking to keep his eyes on the real problem...

Yearning for Vision

Keith McCrory — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:41:22 GMT

“Before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in a deep mire, and he that is mighty came and
in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall.”
from Saint Patrick’s Confession

Reading through the story of Patrick, I have always been struck by the fact that though his life was incredibly hard and demanding it was always resplendent with vision. Despite all his sufferings and setbacks, his viewpoints on life, Ireland and especially on people are among the most radically positive I have ever encountered. No matter how many times he experienced failure; no matter how many times he was let down by his peers, his church, his nation; no matter how many times people turned away from him or the message of reconciliation he proclaimed; no matter how many times he had to flee for his life or even get himself out of imprisonment, Patrick did truly seem to be able to see 'beyond what was to what could be.' He was utterly convinced that the sacrificial love he had encountered could change anything and anyone if only they could experience it too and he viewed all of his life through this inspiring lens. As a result, in every encounter he saw not only what was currently true of people but what might one day be true. He saw not only the hostility and conflict that presently divided families and communities, he saw the possibility of them one day living together in harmony. He saw not only the hurt and the anger that tore people apart but also the hope for their healing and forgiveness, for the rebuilding of their lives.

How we need people with such vision in Ireland today! How we need those who are likewise empowered to see beyond the legacy of the troubles, the problems of racism, the fears about their own clans' prospects and future! How we need people who will continue to see not only what is but what could be and to cast the vision for that in their homes, in their communities, in their businesses and in their assemblies! For those who feel like they are lying in a deep mire, and the number is growing, the hearing of such vision - maybe from someone like you - might make all the difference in the world!.

From your fellow traveller who is very familiar with mud...

Whose Side is God on Anyway?

Keith McCrory — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:21:33 GMT

The Imperial War Museum (North) is about two miles outside Manchester City centre and just a stroll from Old Trafford. It is well worth a visit if you are ever over at United-land. The facility was designed by Daniel Libeskind, the Jewish American architect who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and, in 2003, won the competition to design the masterplan for the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site in lower Manhattan. The IWM is an impressive, award-winning modern building designed around the idea of a globe broken into fragments and now put back together again. It tracks the events, people and equipment involved in modern warfare from 1916 right up to the present day.

The Imperial War Museum (North)

Over the years I’ve read quite a bit about the events of the two world wars, especially the second, but I’d never come across, or at least noticed, one particular detail concerning the German Army until my visit to IWM (North). Apparently, every German soldier in the Second Great War carried a slogan on his belt which boldly stated, ‘God is with us.’

‘God is with us.’ I don’t know why this detail took me so completely by surprise. Through all of history kings, emperors and armies have been making exactly that claim. Today, there are many political groupings and warring factions all around the world in which this same belief is held. Some of them here in Ireland. But for some reason I found myself particularly repulsed at the thought that God had been Emmanuel with the Nazis as they invaded Poland and began their quest to conqueror the world; that he was really with them as they set up the Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps; that he was truly for them as they forced an armed struggle that would cost the lives of around 72 million people - many of them women and children. How could God have been?

Well, IWM (North) has some very clever technical stuff going on as you walk around it and as I stood there reflecting on this disturbing new detail, listening to some of Hitler's hate filled rhetoric blasting from hidden speakers and watching as images of war and death were flashed upon the walls by modern projectors, I realised that many of us make exactly the same mistake as that revealed on the belts of the German Heer.

Loud and clear, the events of Christmas do indeed resound with the news that God is 'with us’ and ‘for us’. It was in this wonderful and life-giving truth that Saint Patrick found the only real captivity of his amazing life. But we are very deeply and gravely mistaken if we ever allow ourselves to presume that this is the same thing as God being 'on our side.'

God is always also 'for them.' Every person we will ever meet is made in the image and likeness of God and His love is offered to all irrespective of race or creed or political ideology. Enmity is our enemy. It is never 'them.' The moment we forget this we are no longer following the God of creation but instead an idol of our own making, a god fashioned in our own image, designed to reflect our needs and serve our agenda rather than His. As Karl Barth put it, God is not man writ large - no matter how grand or perfect we believe our particular version of manhood to be.

Freeing White People from Apartheid

Keith McCrory — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:17:28 GMT

Looking back I think my own journey to the Saint Patrick Foundation began in September 1989 in a corrugated tin classroom in downtown Kingston, Jamaica. I was on the island for a gap year in the midst of my theological training and based near the University of the West Indies campus at Mona to the east of the city.

Jamaica is a truly beautiful place and for good reason its inhabitants are known around the world for their laid back nature and relaxed approach to life - that and the fact that when a gun goes off they run faster than anybody else on the planet! But behind their celebrated national characteristics there is also a cultural toughness that has been birthed from the soil of hardship and suffering in which the island state has grown. It is only when you come to understand this that you can begin to properly understand the true nature of the infectious and resilient good humour for which the island is famed.

No doubt partly because of this very fact, in September 1989, Kingston was chosen as the venue in which to present an international peace award to Archbishop Desmond Tutu the well-known Bishop of Johannesburg. Apartheid was still in place and thus Tutu could not be there to collect it himself. The South African government had revoked his passport. Instead the award was to be presented to a white South African involved in the anti-Apartheid movement who would receive it on the Archbishop’s behalf.To be honest most of us were a little skeptical about our guest lecturer for the day. He was, after all, a South African white guy! And so it was with some reluctance that I attended this impromptu lecture at which my understanding of the Gospel would be so radically changed.

It was his very first words that shook me to the core and they have never yet lost the power of their impact on my personal thinking. “Let me begin by stating,’ he said, ‘that one of the primary reasons black South Africans feel they must oppose this terrible sanction on human existence that exits within their nation, is so that their white brothers and sisters can be freed from the tyranny of Apartheid.’ I was in a class of about thirty students where I was the token Caucasian. As I did my own double take, I could see it echoed in the faces of every single student around me. Had he really meant what he had just said? It was not the whites who needed to be freed from Apartheid. They were the beneficiaries of it! It was the blacks who needed to be freed! And just as we were all gearing up to raise our hands and correct him, he quickly followed by saying, ‘You see, the gospel proclaims to us that you cannot hold someone in the gutter without being there yourself. Thus the liberation we are advocating in South Africa is a liberation needed by us all. It is out of love that we call white South Africans to dismantle and free themselves, as well as black South Africans, from the Apartheid regime.’

For ten years I had been struggling with how to respond as a Christian to the sectarianism that was rampant within my own land. Because of my own experiences growing up in Derry, I was all too aware of the impact of the troubles. I so wanted to see peace, to know freedom for my brothers and sisters who had suffered so terribly in my country. But what was I to say as a Christian? How should those in positions of influence and power be responding in the face of such brutal killings and ongoing community strife? What did the gospel have to say in the midst of our three decades of division and pain? It seemed all too clear to me that in Ireland it was every tribe for themselves. Protestants were advocating the rights of Protestants. Catholics were advocating the rights of Catholics. Unionists were fighting on behalf of Unionists. Nationalists were doing the same. But how could we, as followers of Christ, think and speak, act and respond to this systemic alienation that was tearing our nation apart in a way that would adequately bear witness to the gospel and to the Kingdom it points us to?

Well, right there and then, I knew that I now had an answer to my questions. I remember almost nothing about the rest of what my lecturer had to say but I will never forget what I learned in those few opening sentences.This was what I had been missing in the Gospel message! This is what I had failed to properly see in what Jesus was doing as he breathed his last on that forsaken hill. On the cross Jesus was dying not only for his friends but for his enemies – for the ones who hated him, for those who despised him, for those who did all they could to destroy him – so that they, too, might be freed from their captivity. In South Africa, Christians suffering under Apartheid were doing exactly the same. They were giving their blood not only for their friends but also for their ‘enemies’, that their white brothers and sisters could be free with them. This was the secret that lay behind their Christian response to Apartheid and I immediately understood that it would be the secret that lay behind the Christian response to any oppression, any conflict, any apartheid-like situation that existed within our world. Sitting there in the light of this new revelation, I suddenly saw for the first time that it was not Christianity after all that had led to the bitter divides and hatred within our land. It was the absence of it. These centuries of strife and hurt, and all the broken and destroyed lives that had resulted from them, had come about not simply because Christians here had failed to live out the gospel – which is what I had always thought. They had occurred because Christians here had lost their understanding of what the gospel actually was and had instead been duped into accepting something that was merely a shadow of the real thing – a gospel that was only for themselves.

Sitting in that corrugated, tin-clad classroom in downtown Jamaica, that day, I finally understood that God’s underserved grace is offered just as freely to those who are ancient Hibernian as to those who are Ulster Scot, to nationalist as to unionist, to protestant as to Catholic. From God's perspective it matters not one tiny bit which 'foot we kick with', which football team we support or which way we pronounce the letter 'h'! And for us to ever act or speak as if it does is an utter denial of all that Jesus has done. In the shadow of the cross there is no black or white, no Jew or Arab, no Muslim or Christian, no male or female, and most definitely no Catholic or Protestant. Easter has no exclusion zones or restricted seating areas. Jesus carried the cross for all and so must we. Self-interested, discriminatory, tribal advocacy might be all around us but as followers of Christ we can have no part in it. In carrying the cross, we too must be seeking justice and equality as much for those different to us as for those who are the same, as much, to use the terms of occupation, for the oppressors as for the oppressed. We too must be seeking the liberation of all parties and peoples, of white people as well as black, of orange as well as green, wherever the sickness of Aparteid might rear it's ugly head. Anything less denies the inclusivity of the cross. Anything less reduces us to caring only for ourselves and places us on the inevitable slide towards the oppression of others. We can never settle as emissaries of the Kingdom of God for anything less than the establishment of peace and freedom for all. For as Jesus saw so clearly, and as his followers in South Africa advocated so courageously, none of us can ever truly be free until we all are. We cannot hold anyone in the gutter without remaining there ourselves.