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Whirlwind
Twister Visualization
Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him.
… For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
– Hosea 8:3, 7, NRSV*
For all its anachronisms, the Hebrew Bible – what we Christians have called the Old Testament – carries timeless wisdom. Chief among its lessons: actions have consequences, and sometimes terrible, unintended consequences.
Political actions with spiritual consequences may well prove to be behind this week’s attack on Republican congressmen and friends as they practiced for a baseball game at an Alexandria, Va., park. A 66-year-old white male, James T. Hodgkinson, opened fire on them with a rifle and a pistol, wounding four people before police fatally shot him.
Hodgkinson could easily be dismissed as just another kook with a gun, judging by his political rhetoric against Presidential Donald Trump on his now-removed Facebook page. The fact that the shooter apparently targeted Republican congressional representatives tells another tale, however. As one Facebook comment put it, “… the underlying cause, the minimization, marginalization, and discrimination of large chunks of the population is a major contributing factor.”
Observers are surprised that it took as long as five months into the chaotic Trump Administration for violence to erupt. Beyond marches, petitions, letters, and telephone calls, omens have been unmistakable: vulnerable people who saw their social and financial foundations being ripped away were poised to lash out because they could find no alternative.
Political scientists and economists have seen signs of today’s turmoil coming for some time. Wages have been stagnant for 35 years and jobs have disappeared, while taxes have increasingly burdened the middle class as the cost of living rose, particularly for health care. Yet power-hungry forces have successfully turned responsibility for these situations away from those who actually caused them, manipulating the public into seeing “government” as the culprit. Thus, we’ve had the Tea Party and the Trump election, the scapegoating of immigrants, and the rollback of civil and human rights. All these symptoms signal the equivalent of a political coup d’etat, resulting in the concentration of power in the hands of those already powerful. Those without money and influence are left to be exploited until they’re no longer useful – or until they crack, like James Hodgkinson.
No, there’s no justification for violent attacks on anyone. As individuals, not one of those wounded June 14 deserves their injuries. Yet the injured and their killer remind us of what our leaders have unleashed: a whirlwind of unbridled power that could destroy us all. As the prophet Hosea put it, “with their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction” (Hosea 8:4b).
This whirlwind marks the difference between an action focused on a narrow goal, such as reshaping a society to benefit a few and an action that seeks the most good for the most people. The proposed and enacted changes pushed through our government in these past months reflect the first goal, and the consequences of those actions show we must pursue the second action, and quickly.
For Christians and Jews in America, reading Hosea might be a good but uncomfortable corrective, like a chlorine “shock” to a swimming pool to stop bacteria. Israel in Hosea’s time had become fat and feisty, willfully ignoring the damage its war-mongering and wealth-gathering were doing to its people and its neighbors. It’s not hard to draw a spiritual parallel between Hosea’s Israel and today’s America. That analogy would at least give us a way of thinking about what to do next.
Longer-term actions on which to build a more lasting society will require two character traits not common among Americans today: repentance and fortitude. We must repent for our civic failure to educate citizens on how to uphold our democratic republic; carrying our own copies of the U. S. Constitution in imitation of Gold Star father Khizr Khan would be a start. Then we must have the fortitude to keep pushing for a society that genuinely enacts government of, by and for the people. We must knock on those closed congressional doors until our knuckles bleed, and keep knocking until they open to those who truly “own” the government.
What’s at stake here is nothing less than America’s soul. We have failed to foster the better angels of our nature, and we must do better. We must lament publicly every time the most vulnerable among us commit a horrific act against another, whether they be leaders who delight in exercising raw power or men with guns at a ballfield. We must stand up for the greatest good, but we must do so with compassion and humility, recognizing that we are the same flawed humans as our “enemies” and “adversaries.”
Somehow, we must feel one another’s pain and resolve to ease it. Only then can we build what theologian Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King Jr. after him, called “the beloved community,” where no one need resort to violence to be seen, or heard, or respected, or embraced.
*New Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible, copyright 1989 by the Christian Education Committee of the National Council of Churches, USA. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor and Founder of United Methodist Insight.