Cynicism and Hope

From Harold A. Penner, in The Mennonite:

If Obama is right, then Mahatma Gandhi and King were wrong. If Obama is right, then the nonviolent Jesus is wrong. But no, Obama’s stated support of war is wrong. Jesus’ followers must insist on the Way of nonviolence.We need to teach and practice love for enemies. We need to renounce the just war theory. Morally flimsy from the start, it is now absolutely inapplicable because its conditions cannot be met. The fire power of modern warfare has made the theory completely obsolete. More so, it is inadmissible because Jesus commanded otherwise.

In response to President Obama’s ironic, in many places wrong-headed, and in other places beautifully wrought Nobel acceptance speech, I offer the text of the speech (you really should read the whole thing) and a nonviolent perspective on Obama and war that was posted a few days ago: Now that President Obama has decided on Afghanistan, what will YOU do? by my friend Heidi Unruh of Evangelicals for Social Action.

Heidi suggests five actions:

1) Pray
2) Continue to educate and advocate for global alternatives to violence
3) Be the change
4) Consider withholding or redirecting taxes that pay for war
5) Support relief and development efforts in Afghanistan

Heidi supplies resources to help you do each one.

. . . were recorded last July in my preface to Cynicism and Hope the book:

We hope, of course, that the 2008 election season brings about a restoration of what has been lost and the possibility of gaining what never was before, but a healthy cynicism tells us that even the best we can hope for from politics will not be enough. Whoever wins the presidency will be commander in chief of the most powerful killing machine in history; whoever prevails in the congressional elections will be bound by the necessities of politics. Elections are important, but their results are finite.

So what now? The preface continues:

The people who first heard the message of God’s kingdom and prayed for it to come on earth were living under the oppressive rule of an imperialistic power, but they would not realize God’s kingdom by taking up the sword or voting their oppressors out of office. Rather, they prayed and broke bread together; they shared their goods and loved their enemies and welcomed their neighbors who had been cast aside. They were a foretaste of the kingdom for which they hoped.

Ed Gilbreath over at Reconciliation Blog is thinking what I was thinking about what President Obama might have been thinking when he learned that he had won the Nobel Prize (after an initial “Yeah, I got it goin’ on”): “Dang it! It’s a great honor and all, but I really don’t need this right now.”

When I turned on my computer this morning, I was greeted by the news that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Is the award premature?

Well, after I read that news I opened a day-old email from Just Foreign Policy that points to this blog post, which opens, “All hands on deck, Obama Nation. The ship of state is turning.”

I’m too cynical to believe the ship will turn all the way around, but the president’s careful deliberation and consultation of an Afghanistan expert who specializes in conflict prevention seem to bode well for a less belligerent foreign policy.