There is a lot of anger in the world today.
All across the Middle East and North Africa particularly,
rioting and burning and killing over a video offense against the faith of some,
added to a long litany of oppression, occupation and poverty. Cultures crossed with severity and insecurity
have exploded into war and bloodshed.
This is not new, of course.
And, I wonder, how much anger must lie behind the deliberate
creation and promotion of a video designed purely to insult in the greatest way
possible an entire religion, a whole people.
How much disconcert over acts of terrorism, how much grief over real and
imagined suffering, how much contempt, determination to pain, to rile, to
agitate.
Yes, the world is full of anger today.
And, of course, the anger of politician and pundit over responses
to such events, to over-soft answer, to imagined apology. To be weak, to be sorry, to offer aid or
comfort to one’s enemies surely is to invite more violence, more terrorism,
more death.
Which is not so.
Let no evil talk come out of your
mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need,
so that your words may give grace to those who hear. … Put away from you
all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all
malice, and be kind to one another.”
Ephesians 4:29-32
In an angry world what greater weapon do we possess than our
ability to apologize? Do we truly
believe that we can outshout one another, are we only able to match our enemies
temper with our own, to meet their violence with our violence, to spill their blood
for ours? How will that change anything
for the better? How will that bring life
to worlds caught in a mutual dance of death?
No! Let us speak
clearly that the end to anger is found only in a kind word, a gentle word, an
outreached hand, a heartfelt apology.
The exit from this endless cycle of anger will not be found in more
anger, we cannot judge the world into submission by our self-righteous sense of
superiority. We cannot change the world
by being exactly as it already is.
We need apologies if we are to survive. We need them because they are true.
Every angry word carries within it a lie, a denial of accountability
even in a small way to the world which we have all helped to build. No problem is truly one-sided, no resentment
is completely undeserved, no hand is untainted with the blood of injustice in
this world. Apologies are, by
definition, the truest words we utter, even if we are not fully aware of our
own culpability. The cross of Christ reminds
us daily of the cost of our culpability.
Our unwillingness, our failure to apologize merely drives the nails in a
little deeper.
To refuse to apologize, to speak against apologies, is
the greatest sin of all, and the risk of even greater destruction. For which we should all be certainly sorry.
