Power with Peace: If the Church Were Christian #6

 Ms. Anne Lynch

“What is Power? What is Peace?”

For the record, it’s really mean to do that to a person right before they have to give a sermon on the topic in question, especially when that person thought they knew what they were going to talk about. I was getting coffee with a friend a little while ago when he asked me these questions. And for that reason, I hope you forgive me for going in a different direction than originally planned.

In the summer of 1971, a psychology professor by the name of Philip Zimbardo started a two-week experiment. College students volunteered for the two-week study, and were randomly assigned either the role of “prisoner” or “guard.” They made the basement of the psychology building into a little prison with barred doors and a closet for solitary confinement. The “guards” were instructed to keep law and order, and to not use physical violence. Things quickly deteriorated. Within just five days, the study had to be scrapped.

On the first day as the college students were “admitted” to the “prison,” they were stripped so as to be cleaned, but were met with a barrage of insults regarding their nudity. After the first day, “prisoners” barricaded themselves inside their rooms, so “guards” took away their beds. The more upset the college “prisoners” got, the more reactionary were the “guards.”

They started waking their fellow students in the middle of the night to do menial work, even scrubbing toilets with their bare hands. The “prisoners” were put into stress positions or made to exercise. Of course, they were in the basement, so really they had no idea what time of day it was anyway, and it began to mess with them. One student approached Zimbardo about exiting the program, but left the conversation with the impression that he wasn’t allowed to leave. He started to become enraged. Finally the professor let him go and brought in a student on the wait list. Not realizing how seriously the others took the simulation, the new student started a hunger strike. “Guards” attempted to force feed him, and when that failed, put him in solitary confinement and took out their frustrations on the other prisoners, thereby pitting them against each other. In five days, the prisoners had lost their individual identities and meanwhile, so had the “guards.”

They became the uniforms they wore, the prison walls they watched over. They became convinced that this prison they themselves had created was real. The power of their positions had taken over. Thankfully, one of Zimbardo’s colleagues told him she was appalled by how he was allowing fellow students to treat each other, and the experiment ended.

Later, however, the students were invited back without their labels to have a face-to-face conversation about what they had experienced. A particularly creative “guard” said that he didn’t see himself as responsible for his actions. He was simply playing his role. Other “guards” admitted to feeling guilty for following his lead, wishing he would not behave as cruelly as he did, but instead of calling him out, they had kept their heads low and stayed out of trouble. The “prisoners” resented the way the “guards” tried to escape blame. In the end, there was agreement that both groups had been dehumanized—the guards by their ability to control and torment, the prisoners by the abuse they had been through.

         This is not a new tragedy. It happens everyday, from between individuals to between nations and cultures. I personally think it’s the source of the phrase “Power Corrupts.” The soldiers at Abu Ghraib probably found themselves in a similar situation where things seemed to tumble out of control so quickly that they lost perspective on what they were really doing. We all do that, from time to time.

         Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we are all one tiny slip away from becoming the hands that destroy fellow children of God. But it’s not hard to lose perspective, to get so wrapped up in a situation as to lose sight of the big picture. And I don’t know about you, but in my experience, those situations tend to leave someone hurt. If it isn’t someone else, then it’s probably myself.

         They say religion (and usually “They” are Westerners and “religion” means Christianity) is the cause of all of the world’s problems. War, genocide, rape culture, hunger, underpaid public school teachers, terrorism, human trafficking, I could go on. They could be right. I mean the Crusades were fought in the name of our savior, Jesus the Christ. So many lives were lost, we can scarcely imagine. Women have been made to feel inferior for a good long while in the habitats of Western Christianity. Devout Christians defended slavery, one of the most degrading situations imaginable for a human being. In our country still today, someone will proclaim themselves a follower of Christ with one breath and with the next deliver the most horrific slurs imaginable to someone who is different. Worse yet, they might even have the audacity to call this despicable behavior something worthy of Jesus’s approval. So maybe “They” are right.

         At least, that’s what I used to think about Christians.

         There’s a story in the Gospel of Matthew (and a similar one in Luke) about a Roman centurion and Jesus. In fact, there are two. Now, in all likelihood if we’re talking historical accuracy, these two separate stories about a centurion crossing paths with Jesus Christ are probably not talking about the same Roman. But hey, we’re talking about a Gospel, not the newspaper; we’re not here to debate the what-when-where’s, we’re here to wonder at the “What could it mean?” So work with me here.

         Relatively early in Jesus’s ministry, a Roman centurion comes to meet him. Now, this is no casual encounter. Certainly Jesus would have encountered Romans a fair deal in his time: they occupied his country. His people hated the Romans. And for good reason. Romans were not very nice. Sure they built bridges and aqueducts. They also crucified hundreds, thousands of people on a regular basis, just to prove a point. Where there were Romans, there was economic stratification and violence.

         So a centurion begs Jesus that his slave be healed of illness. A centurion? A man in command of a hundred Roman soldiers? The backbone of the Roman military machine? Begging to a homeless Jew that worships just one god? You’re kidding me, right? This has to be the start of a joke.

         It wasn’t a joke. Not only was this centurion desperate to save the life of his slave—not a common sentiment, by the way—he was so convinced of Jesus’s ability to heal, he insisted that Jesus need not even look at the invalid. All Jesus had to do was say the word, the centurion thought, and it would be done. Jesus’s response? “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

         The next time we hear of a centurion in the Gospel of Matthew is at the scene of Jesus’s death. Keeping watch over the belittled man dying the death of a common criminal, a centurion says, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

         The powerful man, the man of honor in the military of the world’s greatest empire says this at the scene of perhaps the saddest thing imaginable: the public torment of a powerless man abandoned by all his friends. What is going on here?

         Two different groups of people come into contact. Arbitrarily one has control over the other, and with very little direction, power infects people, with tragic results. Who’s to say this won’t happen again? In fact, this happens every day from the jungles of the DRC to the hills of northern Burma to the plateau of Tibet to the streets of the United States. It is bad news, the worst news. But this time, this time is different.

         You see, I don’t buy it anymore. I don’t think religion is the cause of all the world’s problems, and I’m going to tell you why (feel free to disagree). For four years I made it my business to know way too much about the world’s major religions, and now I’m a geek. Guess what? Yes, every single one of them has adherents that have done despicable things I wish I could undo for the pain and suffering caused. But usually, I’ve found there is someone in that same place and time, equally dedicated to the same religion, saying “Enough.” And they aren’t alone.

Christians said the Bible supports slavery in the United States. Last time I checked, Harriet Tubman was also a Christian, and you know what? She not only escaped slavery herself, she went back to save fellow children of God from the horrors of slavery 19 times. Oh, and she’s a woman. Oh, and she had a lifelong medical condition that caused her extreme pain. Oh, and she never learned to read and write. By all accounts, Harriet Tubman was a powerless human being. But people to world over knew who she was, still know who she was, powerful people, too. As I heard it said this morning, if it isn’t good news to the marginalized, it ain’t the Gospel. Well folks, as far as I can tell Harriet Tubman knew what the Gospel really is.

         It’s important to acknowledge the pain we can cause to others. It’s arrogant to think we never could or would. To think that way denies our own vulnerability, our own flesh. We humans are complicated, capable of great good and great evil, and I think the centurion accepted this about himself and others. I think that’s how he could see what was so miraculous about a man like Jesus, a man who saw the suffering of everyone around him and sought to relieve that pain. That’s not common. Seeing that in action changes a person, it changes how you see the world. At least it changed me.

         I’ve met truly peaceful Christians. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some Christians who are arrogant, power-hungry, manipulative, and occasionally violent. But the moment I first met people that lived out that image painted in Acts, where everyone is welcomed as they are and invited to share in the feast, I was hooked. And to think, I met them at college of all places.

These people were humble, they accepted the frailty of their humanity, as well as that of their fellow students. And humility—the ability to approach a Jew you’re supposed to be oppressing and instead beg for his help; the ability to look at a man as he dies and proclaim his life is sacred beyond measure—that’s not passive or meek in any way. It requires an ability to have compassion for the other. It requires an ability to admit that we can cause harm. But also that we can create redemption. That’s peace, I think.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the willingness to look beyond the immediate division to see our common humanity, even when faced with absolutely no other common ground. That kind of humility leads people to seek not power over others but to empower others. This is the power of God, now and forever, by way of steadfast love. God seeks that we come together to create a totally different kind of power: The power to heal, the power to feed, the power to transform individual lives and whole societies, to become a movement for peace. This is the power of movements. This is the power of change. Change so big and radical, it could make the church Christ-like.

         There’s a catch, though. We can’t have a movement if no one moves. We don’t have a community if few contribute and few care. Far more powerful than that of empires and corrupt institutions is the power of Indifference. It takes guts to stand up to oppression, bullying, violence, manipulation, discrimination. Remember the “guards” in the prison study, displeased with their peer’s behavior but too apathetic to confront him. Keep my head down, watch some TV tonight, ignore the plight of the destitute, don’t make trouble, and I might get to lead a comfortable life.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate wrote, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. The opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” Apathy is the scariest thing on the face of the planet in my opinion. It is a weight on the soul that tells us we don’t need to care. It makes possible the powers of dictators, the tyranny of the majority over a minority, the manipulation of honest people, the genocide of our siblings on foreign soil. It’s not easy to shake off the bonds of apathy. But it is so worth it.