Jihad

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Our Impress on the Earth

Teaching teachers has many days of gratification when your students or advisees tell you in so many words. “I want to make a difference.” Actually you can “make a difference” in most professions, but teaching is one you can not claim to be “doing it for the money.”  You can claim, however, to make an impact on young people or explain something in a way that suddenly makes sense to a struggling learner.

But the words “making a difference” have lost their currency. It sounds naive coming from the mouth of an adult. People who claim to “make a difference” are often discredited for all the ways they have failed. For every student who goes on to college or graduate school, there may be an equal number who become dropouts or stumble into a dead-end career.  Our culture wants to undercut those who are “making a difference,”  because those differences are not measurable, enduring, or incorruptible.

But what if you are a “jihadist”? The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria actively recruits young people who want to make a difference, whether by violence, terror or forced conversion. What the recruiting videos demonstrate is that ISIS is making a difference in heart of the Middle East and has the resolve to change society by uncompromising force. They promise that on Day One you will participate in a movement that is not only teaching a religion, but enforcing it.  This has undeniable attraction to young recruits in the United States and Europe, where reform is always fraught with opposition and non-compliance.

“May our impress on the earth be kindly and creative,” states the creed from the New Zealand Prayer Book. If we adopt this resolve we abandon methods of jihad while aspiring to “make a difference.” We want to “impress” the earth, which suggests changing it, but we want to be “kindly” and “creative,” which suggests restraint and indirect influence. This is probably not the right pitch to lure the would-be jihadist.

It is curious that one meaning of “impress” is ” to take by force for public service, as men or goods, especially as formerly done by the British navy”.  Closer to the meaning implied by the creed might be ” a mark made by or as by pressure” (Random House).  All the options employed by the jihadist and the community organizer are enclosed in one word. The word itself is fraught with conflict.

But if we take a more humane view of “impress,” how can we do it with kindness and creativity? Can evangelism be kindly and creative? Can we expect with kindness and creativity to make a restorative impression? Is creativity linked to ineffectual change? What kind of “impress” should satisfy us?

These are my questions as I recite the creed weekly in church. There is a part of me that wishes for the impact of a jihadist, sending teachers into the world on a ruthless mission to change education. Yet I know they enter a profession with a steep learning curve ahead of them.  They can protest the short-sighted goals of their school or district, but they have not yet proven they can manage a classroom, motivate students or expand their literacy. Their “impress” must be creative in the sense that students are achieving academic as well as social goals.  So they are compelled to learn teaching while reforming it. Like rebuilding the airplane while flying it.

We “impress the earth” as we learn how to impress with kindness and creativity. We “make a difference” in ourselves, while we make a difference in others. We have the focus of a jihadist, but we are kind to ourselves as we are kind to others.  The only certainty is that we will have an impress, whether for success or failure. Our choice is to respond to success or failure with creativity or with manipulation. And that response is also our impress on the earth.

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Defy the American Jihad!

All the loose talk about shutting down the government this fall gets some politicians and voters excited, because they are convinced that the federal government is an absolute evil, and that programs that help the poor, such as Food Stamps and Affordable Health Care, are targeting their hard-earned savings.  You might say it is the flowering of conservatism in America, but you might as easily say it is an attempted coup of the will of the majority. Some might even call it “jihad.”

We have come to a strange turn in American history, when those aspiring to the highest offices in Washington are campaigning to destroy it.  It has become a popular theme in some parts of the country, but it has crossed the border of healthy argument to sinister subversion.  If the leaders of this movement had Arab or Russian surnames, people might be whispering about “propaganda” or “terror,” but with names like “Cruz” and “Rand” and “Rubio”  and “Boehner” we have given them a pass and called them “patriots.”

As Gail Collins pointed out in her Thursday column (“Politics of a Screeching Halt,” N.Y. Times, August 1, 2013), the three loudest naysayers are relative novices in Congress, but they have discovered the fastest route to power is declaiming against most of the legislation on the floor and some legislation that has long since passed (the Affordable Care Act).  They have discovered that they can make it impossible for the party in power to govern and subsequently campaign on the claim that nothing has been accomplished.  For lack of stimulus, the economy will falter, and for lack of implementation, the Affordable Care Act will not reach expectations in 2014 and 2016.

The strategy of sabotage did not work in 2012 and it will not work again in 2016, but in the meantime it is undermining the economy and the struggling middle class.  While larger numbers of the unemployed and the underemployed fall below the poverty line, the right-wing demolition crew  fire-bombs the programs that could save them. It is a national tragedy that “Immoderates” are able to control the flow of legislation in Congress without a majority mandate.

The silent majority of Congress needs to step up before the fall rendezvous with government shutdown. Regardless of all political differences there ought to be a hidden consensus that government should act and pass legislation, because the majority of Americans believe this.  To allow a few vocal saboteurs to control the flow of legislation and its economic consequences is a sign of moral apathy.  Above all, this moral apathy is what stirs Americans to give Congress its lowest favorable rating in history. That apathy must be challenged.

We have already seen p0liticians break ranks over issues like immigration and privacy.  It would be more noble yet to break ranks over the integrity of government. Already there has been dissension in the Republican Party about the Draconian budget-cutting measures placed on the House floor.  Before the federal government is brought to its knees again by fiscal hostage-takers, the conscience of Congress needs to stir and take a stand.  It would send a message to our friends and foes alike that America still has an active core and a heart for the majority of its citizens. It would revive our pride in democracy.

Before another budget is taken hostage or another vote against the Affordable Care Act is perpetrated, the coalition of the reasonable must step up!  If there is a conscience still alive on Capitol Hill, let it speak against the few who wage sabotage and destruction.  Death to unprincipled legislating!  Death to obstructionism and opportunism!  Death to the American jihad!!