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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
stroke reminds us that even the big man with nuclear power and
US backing is mortal. Despite his fierceness, stride, and canniness,
he cannot transcend his bleeding brain. Whether Sharon is the
man of peace Bush and Clinton praise or the butcher of Lebanon
many remember, he is now comatose and out of the daily news-history,
as they say.
De casibus ['concerning falls'] stories
tell about the downfall of proud individuals from high estate;
they have always been popular. Such stories not only bring the
mighty low, they remind us that all fall in time. Poet John Donne's
line "never send to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls
for thee," says it well. Death is a human brotherhood uniting
us; everyone's passing signals the loss before us all. We are
one in a human geography bounded by death and time. This kind
of thinking gentles us-we identify with the lost one, we don't
openly gloat and trumpet that we're different, still alive. Donne
preached that line as a sermon, a devotion.
Other preachers take other
tacks. Pat Robertson, for example, preached that God perhaps
smote Sharon because he had surrendered holy land to the Palestinians.
Even if you think Robertson a conman or unchristian, his reading
that a stroke is a punishment is a frequent religious one. His
interpretation of God as smiter and punisher identifies God and
morality with death. It's a popular analysis in this haunted
country, and, in fact, in much of the world. It is also a human
tack to think we are the reason or cause of things. Perhaps because
then we're in some way in control.( The biblical origin story
says death came into the world because Adam and Eve believed
a snake that said they wouldn't die if they ate of a tree, not
the God who warned them they would. They misjudged and so all
die.)
The great counterstory to seeing
suffering as punishment is Job. His comforters are like Robertson-'something
bad happened to you, you must have done something wrong.' The
'comforters,' like the Satan who starts all the suffering in
Job, are accusers, blamers, projectors. 'Satan' is a not proper
name in Job; it's a title. It means 'the Accuser.' Like Job's
comforters, Robertson rationalizes evil on the sufferer's back.
In the biblical text, however, Job's comforters are nailed as
pious pretenders
who do not speak the truth of God. Those who presume to speak
for God are wrong, they don't know the real story-which in the
case of Job is that God cruelly tests and tortures Job at the
instigation of the Accuser/Satan who predicts Job will turn against
God. Both accuser and comforters are wrong. In the Book of Job,
suffering doesn't equal sin nor does prosperity equal righteousness.
Men moralize that whatever is is right, and men are wrong.
Donne didn't believe death
was godly. In "Death be not proud" he writes that death
keeps evil company, dwells with poison, war, and sickness. Death,
Donne says, "is slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate
men." Donne taunts death as not mighty, not dreadful, not
the all-conquering warrior. "Death, thou shalt die."
he says. Donne believed we'll wake eternally and death will be
no more. Donne believed in Christ and Donne's poetry affirms
human brotherhood and the belief that life or light trumps death
and darkness.
The bell tolls generically.
We shall all die. And Sharon's stroke is about losing power,
falling. He certainly didn't believe in Christ. Christians like
Pat Robertson remind him he's not their Christian Jew, he's useful
only in stirring a war that will bring on their apocalypse. The
general was good for Armageddon. Now he's down and Robertson's
'Christian' judgment conquers him.
How do we mark the measure
of a man when he falls? Like King David, Sharon was a fierce
fighter for himself and for his country. David had given two
hundred foreskins of the Philistines as brideprice for his first
wife Michal, daughter of Israel's first king, Saul. Saul had
only demanded one hundred Philistine foreskins. (Saul had thought
a hundred enough to eliminate David and he underestimated David's
prowess.) When David was dying they brought a beautiful young
girl, Abishag, to his bed to revive him. He couldn't. His son
would then take her to demonstrate his vigor and kingliness.
Men swagger.
It's often an ascetical practice
to contemplate death. At the end of your life will any action
you lust for be worth it? The tack is to make long-range reality
overpower short-range desire, to organize by forethought. This
is what the tolling bell tells. It's coming. But what is it?
Dosteoevsky's Dimitri said
that if God didn't exist everything was permissible, because
there was no ultimate enforcer. It's still a big religious fear.
If you think you're not ultimately answerable, won't you be mediately
malicious?
But even if you believe you
are ultimately answerable, as in the case of Robertson, does
that in fact moderate maliciousness, or empower a crueler kind?
Doesn't Robertson or any god-dealer become the God he threatens-the
smiter and punisher and dealer of death? Job and Donne affirm
a god whose truth is not death. Death is not god, the end, it.
How can you distinguish God
from the Satan/Accuser/Smiter? You distinguish the Satan from
the God only by what you say they do-kill or quicken.
Which is no doubt what you
do too.
Diane Christian is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor
at University at Buffalo and author of the new book Blood
Sacrifice. She can be reached at: engdc@acsu.buffalo.edu
Finally
Available
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The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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