How I wish that no one would suffer and that we would work towards healing what sharply divides us. I think we need to talk about it. “War is what happens when language fails,” Margaret Atwood told us.
But there are those who vehemently disagree. They will shout me down, push me out of the room or worse. “The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout,” Alice Walker concluded.
But with hands covering my mouth or while looking up from the ground, I would still say that suffering is not good for us. I have no interest in conversations about its redemptive qualities. Look at the children. See their small dead bodies.
I don’t need their pain as a lesson. I learn nothing from their deaths. I don’t grow as a Christian because their bodies or any one else’s are planted prematurely in the earth.
Because faith, the ability to believe in the unseen in the world and in the people we bear witness to, is lost in all of it. No war is worth that level of destruction.
from Ceasefire
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Gender-neutral version:
How I wish that no one would suffer and that we would work towards healing what sharply divides us. I think we need to talk about it. “War is what happens when language fails,” Margaret Atwood told us.
But there are those who vehemently disagree. They will shout me down, push me out of the room or worse. “The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for people who shout,” Alice Walker concluded.
But with hands covering my mouth or while looking up from the ground, I would still say that suffering is not good for us. I have no interest in conversations about its redemptive qualities. Look at the children. See their small dead bodies.
I don’t need their pain as a lesson. I learn nothing from their deaths. I don’t grow as a Christian because their bodies or any one else’s are planted prematurely in the earth.
I don’t know what some of us think faith is. But it is not easy to come by—especially after you have suffered. Therefore, I wish that no one would.
Because faith, the ability to believe in the unseen in the world and in the people we bear witness to, is lost in all of it. No war is worth that level of destruction.
from Ceasefire