Kakistocrat

You may have noticed that two weekends ago President Bush was greeted like a rock star in Albania. (The rock star comparison breaks down if Bono is seen as the star and Prime Minister Harper as the audience). Fushe Kruje is the name of the small community near the airport where the President stopped. The National Post reports that American flags were everywhere, and people wore cardboard Uncle Sam hats. The American President was awarded Albania’s highest honour (the Order of the Flag), and soon his face will appear on a new set of commemorative Albanian postage stamps. Bush clearly enjoyed the attention: He even kissed a woman on the cheek, posed for photographs and signed autographs.

Albania is 90% Muslim, and is the only majority Muslim country in Europe. The Post asks sarcastically: "Haven’t these people gotten the memo from Hamas and Hezbollah–the one about Mr. Bush being a warmongering satan out to kill Muslims?"

Perhaps they have and rejected the notion, since it was American initiatives (and not Hamas ones) that twice intervened to save Muslim populations in the 1990’s (first in Bosnia, then in Kosovo).

Albania also supported the not so recent invasion of Iraq, as did every other country that existed for decades under Soviet dominance (that to me is a powerful argument in favour of the invasion), and while some of this support must be seen as financially beneficial, just as many supported it on principle, recognizing that brutal dictators should not live comfortably simply because the world around them, that could do something, remains apathetic.

Some wars take a turn for the worse and its dishonest to suddenly oppose the War in Iraq simply because the coalition’s casualties flow past a number we originally anticipated. Twice external forces intervened to save European Muslim populations in the 1990’s that were being killed, and the invasion of Iraq, even if regime change wasn’t the most celebrated reason for promoting the war originally (Weapons of Mass Destruction, which are a threat to the world, tend to trump dictatorial cruelties, which is usually only a threat to a country’s people), has given a people a chance to live better. The Albanian’s see this.

K.

Faced with unanswered prayer we may believe that we didn’t get what we asked for because

-we didn’t deserve it

-we didn’t pray hard enough

-God knows better than we do

-someone else’s prayer for the opposite result was seen as more worthy

-God doesn’t hear prayers

-God doesn’t exist

It is easy not to be satisfied with these answers. Rabbi Harold Kushner who offers them as potential reasons claims that ultimately none are satisfactory and suggests that we need to change our understanding of what it means to pray, and what it means to be answered.

He highlights James Frazier’s distinction between religion (the attempt to serve God) and magic (the attempt to manipulate God) and suggests that instead of attempting to manipulate God (by seeking from him riches or health or love from others) we should instead take comfort in the fact that he gives strength to cope with problems that we originally, mistakenly believed (and prayed that) he’d alleviate.

Jean Vanier writes:

I remember April, a very beautiful black woman in a Cleveland prison who came up and asked me if I could pray that she not be sent to a certain penitentiary, well-known for its brutality and harshness, both between prisoners and between them and the administration. I told her that it would be hard for me to pray that she would not go there; that all I could pray was that she would receive the strength, the light, and the love so that she might radiate love wherever she was. Then if she went to that prison, she could give solace and strength to the women who were there and needed her. I said ‘If people like you do not go there, who will give strength and peace to the other women?’ I asked if I might pray that she go where Jesus wants and that wherever she may be, she might be a source of hope for others, and she said ‘Yes.’ She said it with great freedom, and I sensed that she would be a very beautiful source of peace in that prison, if she went there.

Jean Vanier, Be Not Afraid (Toronto, ON: Griffin Press Ltd., 1975), 41.

When we ask for something and don’t get it, and feel we didn’t deserve it or pray hard enough for it, we can feel guilty. If we think we didn’t get it because God knows better than us, or because someone praying for the opposite result was more worthy, we can feel angry. If we feel we didn’t get what we asked for because God doesn’t listen to prayers, or because he does not exist, we can feel hopeless.

Had the woman Vanier speaks of only been concerned about her next location in prison, and had she been sent to the place she didn’t want to go to, she may have felt guilty, angry or hopeless. When we instead see God as the one who gives us the strength to cope with the problems we originally believed he’d alleviate, we do not feel anger, guilt or hopelessness.

A man who has just been interviewed for a good job stops off at a church on the way home and prays that he gets the job. A woman visiting her husband in the hospital stops off at the hospital chapel to pray for his recovery. Do we really want to think of God as a God who has the power to grant these wishes, and chooses to give us or deny us what we ask for? Do we want to measure the usefulness of prayer on the basis of whether the man gets the job or not, whether the husband survives his heart attack or dies?

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He might say to the woman in the hospital chapel, "I can’t guarantee that your husband will survive this crisis. If I could no one would ever die because every patient has someone who prays fervently for his recovery. But I can assure you that you are not as alone as you feel you are. Friends are calling you, people are praying for you, offering to help you. It may well help your husbands chances to know that so many people are rooting for him to pull through. And when you do feel alone and frightened, know that you can always talk to me, a God who stands for life and healing.’

And he might say to the man that is on his way home from the job search, ‘I hear your prayer, your fears and your hopes. I can’t arrange for you to get this job. That’s not My role. But I can tell you this: I cherish all of my children, no matter how well or how poorly they do in the business world. My way of measuring success has nothing to do with the amount of your salary, the size of your office or the impressiveness of you job description. And the members of your family, the people who matter the most to you, see you the same way. For Me, that person is successful who has learned how to love, to share, and to master his impulses. I can’t give you a job, but I can help you with a sense of humility if you do get it, and the gift of resiliency and self-respect if you don’t, with the reassurance that I am near and that I think well of you in either event."

Harold Kushner, Who Needs God (New York, NY: Pocket Books, 1989), 156-57.  

Philosopher Peter Kreeft never misses an opportunity to belittle Kushner’s belief that God cannot do certain things (i.e. he cannot take away our problems). Kreeft suggests that such a God is hardly worth believing in, though interestingly it was Kushner (not Kreeft) who was forced to reformulate his own understanding of God and prayer after the death of his son, and it was precisely this conclusion (the "not-worth-believing in God," according to Kreeft) that Kushner came continue his faith in. Certainly to Kushner and many others, God was still most certainly worth believing in. This God that Kreeft mocks, was the one that allowed Kushner to remain faithful to. Would Kreeft instead have Kushner feel anger, guilt or hopelessness (because his prayers that his son not die weren’t answered) or perhaps wouldn’t one think that Kushner’s reformulated concept of prayer (which places more emphasis on allowing God to help us through the tough times, because he can’t take them away for us) would be preferable to losing faith completely? Doesn’t it help alleviate anger, guilt or hopelessness?

K.