All You Need Is Love
1 John 4:7-9, 18-21
This week marks the 7th anniversary of the terrorist attack of September 11th. For generations that date will be a demarcation line distinguishing the world as it existed before from the world in which we now find ourselves. We still find ourselves struggling to make sense of such horrendous violence and destruction, especially violence perpetrated in the name of God.
Os Guiness wrote,
"Our challenge today is not to resort to faith as a crutch because reason has stumbled, but rather to acknowledge that reason, in its long, arduous search, has come up short and that where it has stopped it has pointed beyond itself to answers that only faith can fulfill. In the face of the horror of the unspeakable, only such faith can provide the best truths to come to terms with evil, the highest courage to resist evil, the deepest love to care for those caught in its toils, and the profoundest hope of the prospect of a world beyond evil, beyond hatred, beyond oppression, and even beyond tears.
As ever, the choice is ours and so also will be the consequences."
In the face of such overwhelming violence, rage and separation, can faith really make a difference? Can perfect love cast out fear?
Several years ago an experiment was initiated in war-torn Northern Ireland. Bruce Hoffman wrote about this in “The Atlantic Monthly” magazine published just three months after the September 11th attacks. After centuries of ill-will, violence, prejudice, and hatred there seemed to be no end to the common struggle between the IRA and British Loyalists. The prisons were full of terrorists from both sides serving long prison sentences. Was there anything that could heal the rift and give both sides reasons to choose life instead of war?
So prison officials came up with a plan to grant brief furloughs for certain inmates during holiday periods. The inmates had to earn the privilege to participate in this program and were carefully selected. The officials chose men primarily in their ‘30s – a time in life where the perceived immortality of youth has been superseded by the dawning realization that none of us live forever.
Once at home with their families, these men, as the authorities had correctly calculated, saw what they were missing – elderly parents whom they might never see again, children growing up too fast and young wives wasting their lives waiting. When the men returned to prison, they were asked if they would be interested in an expedited release. The Northern Ireland officials relied on a combination of factors to wean these men from terrorism: family pressure to give up violence as a condition of early release and the men having seen with their own eyes how much their nation had changed while they were incarcerated in their state-imposed cells of brick and their self-imposed cells of hatred. To qualify for this form of parole, the men were required to move out of segregated prison wings (no more socializing only with people from your side) and into fully integrated cell blocks, where Protestants and Catholics mixed freely – and nonviolently. This was a critical first step on the road to parole, followed by vocational training (again, training not provided in segregated wings), counseling and more-frequent family visits. Not one of the men who took advantage of this opportunity for early parole ever returned to violence or to prison. The program was very successful but the option could be offered to only a limited number of prisoners. Officials were concerned that the terrorist organizations – fearing the loss of too many senior veterans and commanders – would discourage their members’ participation in the program. To a great extent the climate of peace that emerged in Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s may have owed as much to the creativity and foresight of the Northern Ireland Prison Service as to the political dexterity and visions of Gerry Adams and David Trimble or Martin McGuinness and Senator George Mitchell.
There are a lot of smart people working on the problems of our world today and there are never simple answers to complex international relationships. However, there comes a time when reason alone can only take us so far. At that point, we as humans must risk launching ourselves into the unknown so that only grace might catch us. There are none of the usual safety nets in this unknown grace – no nationalism, no tribal loyalty, no “us vs. them”, only grace. Many will say it won’t work. Northern Ireland has already proved that it does.
Sources:
Bruce Hoffman, "All you need is love," The Atlantic Monthly, December 2001, 37.
Os Guiness, Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005, 238.