What Jack Bauer Would Say to Stanley Hauerwas

I can hear Jack saying now, “With all due respect professor, I must torture this terrorist in order to save innocent lives.  I’ll kill him if I have to.”  I can see Dr. Hauerwas shaking his head and saying, “We were not created to kill one another, we were created to commune with each other.”  I’ve heard it said over and over from theologians to professors to pastors that we want theology to be accessible to the common man.  Well friend, this is what it looks like – great theological figures in imaginary dialogue with fictional television characters.  I’ll refrain from that but here’s what I am thinking.

At ephiphaneia’s Amidst the Powers Conference, Dr. Hauerwas asked, “What would the pacifists do if they got a world in which they wanted?” I have spent two weeks falling in love with that idea and I like that image more and more.

He also asked, “When was the last time you went to see a movie that was about peace?”  I think for me, it was when I took Susan to see “He’s Just Not That Into You” around Valentine’s Day.  I am grateful he didn’t ask, “What were the last three movies you saw about peace?”  And if I’m being honest (which is one of the vows, I decided not to make for Lent), my first answer probably doesn’t even suffice because that movie is not about peace, it’s a chic-flick void of physical warfare. 

I’ll tell you the truth, though it would mean that I would go to less movies, I would gladly trade my beloved Braveheart and your beloved Star Wars if it meant that we could eliminate the war narratives and their violent results that have permeated our culture.   While I’d like to imagine refocusing our imagination and efforts from warfare to addressing some of our other world crises, I know this is not our present circumstance.  Discovering how it could be is obviously a long unending discussion that I am not ready to dive into here.

The strength of  Dr. Hauerwas’s message was how we as a “civilized” people have moralized war.   It may be helpful to insert here that I am not a pacifist but like most people, I hate war. I do believe there is righteousness in just-war theory.  I do not equate the pre-emptive strike in Iraq.  I do credit the Bush administration with the safety of our country of having no terrorist attacks since 9-11.  I pray against living in a situation like Israel where I would think twice of taking my wife and son out to the grocery store.  This imperfect, self-contradicting reality comes with significant prices and I think all of us need to have the integrity of not over-simplifying the problem. 

While it may bother me that Hauerwas writes these words from the safety of his office at Duke Divinity School, and I get to write these words from the safety of my home and you get to read these words in the presumed safety of your workplaces and coffee shops, this is where we should remember Jack Bauer.  Jack Bauer makes it possible for us to believe in pacifism.  Further, I am not sure one can truly be a pacifist if they live in the safe police-protected middle class American suburbs.  The point of this post is not to give license of who can and who cannot be a pacifist under what circumstance.  That would be even more self-righteous than I already am (and I am trying to cut back on that).  But seriously, if a Palestinian citizen tells me he/she is a pacifist, I’ll listen.  

To be fair to people like Dr. Hauerwas, it is that Palestinian or that Rawandan that he’s speaking for but here in the West it’s become too convenient to identify with being a pacifist.  Would we be pacifists though if the opposite views were not symbolized by characters like George W. or Jack Nicholson’s’ Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men?   Would we be pacifists if our enemies were attacking our soccer games on Saturday mornings? Would we be against all forms of torture if we had a terrorist in custody that admitted to planting a bomb in our elementary school but refused to disclose its actual location.  Meanwhile our children are learning their multiplication tables … perhaps for the last time.  On that day, I am praying for Jack Bauer. 

Again, I mention this because if we are being honest, it’s easy to be a pacifist today here in the West in 2009.  I want to know if you’re still one when the serial killer is trespassing through your home and is not interested in your material wealth, he just wants to see you and your family suffer.  On that day, I wish I was Jack Bauer.

This season on 24  has been entertaining.  Hauerwas’ words echo as we watch Jack suffer and lament the many people he has killed and the person he has become.  As I think about this, I think it’s just as fair to ask what if Jack became convicted at Stanley’s lecture during “Amidst the Powers”.   What if Jack Bauer became a pacifist?  (If this has already happened, know that I haven’t’ watched every season.  If it did, umm, he’s regressed).   I can picture him sitting in between Evan and I hanging in his head as Dr. Hauerwas told the story of his friend Roger who explained that killing and then being asked to return to normalcy was the hardest part of war. 

What would it look like if Jack Bauer became a pacifist?  It’s almost comical because I cannot divorce the violence from him.  He’s a one-dimensional character. I cannot see Jack taking up gardening and discussing Wendell Berry with Thom.  I am not even sure he can enjoy going to a baseball game for the paranoia of vulnerability would drive him crazy.  Nor could I see him opening a coffee shop with Tony Almata.  They would have a back up in line and Jack would yell into his Bluetooth, “Chloe I need more espresso beans NOW!”  

This is Hauerwas’s point.  War robs too much from men and women.  Survival, though obviously significant, is only part of them dilemma, re-acclimating is truly another part. That is something that we can agree on, pacifists and non-pacifists.  Some days, I am not sure if there can be a compromise between the two.  Being “only a little violent” or “non-pacifist when necessary” are among the reasons for the creation of just-war theories.  Perhaps another post, I’ll speculate on what Dr. Hauerwas means when he says, “The Christian alternative to war is worship” and “Because of the cross of Christ, war was abolished.”  It seems we can learn a lot from Dr. Hauerwas and even Jack Bauer but I find it difficult to think of one and not the other.  Who knows, maybe Jack would be relieved by the ideas that people like Hauerwas promote and maybe he’d say to Stanley, “Thanks.”

Stanley Hauerwas at Amidst the Powers Conference #ep09

Just like the last post, these are just rough notes taken at the Amidst the Powers Conference.  I hope to reflect on them later.  Here’s the twitter feed if you are interested.

Stanley Hauerwas at #ep09

War is a moral practice.

By no means am I saying it is a good thing.

(Rightly suggests that such powers are perversions …)

If war is not just, what is it?  Let’s call it slaughter.

For many war is a great profit…

Everyone professes that war is horrible but we continue to have war.

Sometimes we must be willing to go to war, it’s when you know you are in the midst of a power.

We cannot get rid of war because it has captured the habits of our imagination.

When was the last time you went to see a movie about peace?

War is a power that inhabits our lives making it impossible to imagine a world without war.

What would the pacifists do if they got a world in which they wanted?

Pacifisms and non-violence are inadequate positions in the Christian life.

Peace is a deeper reality than violence but if it’s true, we need to locate the peaceful practices in our lives. 

William James : if it is to be abolished we need to find a moral equivalent to war

            His position is inadequate.  There are virtues of war …

The Christian unease of war is liturgical.

War is the alternative church.  (TG – I wish he would have spoken more about this).

If Christians are serious, we are the alternative to war.

Christians believe that the cross is the end of sacrifice.

The enduring attraction to war is this – it can give us what we long for purpose meaning for living.

Trivia dominates our conversation and airways, war is a great elixir.

It gives us a reason to be honorable.

“One bloody death – Christ – must be accompanied by others like it.”

Southerners were so desperate to kill, they even did it in WW1 for the Yankees.

If you want to know what being controlled by a power looks like, it’s revealed in this statement, “I now belong to the flag”.

The more sacrifice is made, the more sacrifices that must be made – that is the moral logic of war.

It also requires that we sacrifice our normal desire to kill.

Grossman noted that some soldiers have more intimacy with each other after killing than they do with their wives.

Killing is more intimate than sex.

War is about killing others …

The language of war helps us deny what war is really about and helps us make it morally palpable

Soldiers need to be re-entered into society.  They need to be told they did the right thing (the practice of doing the right thing)

Return to some kind of normality.

Veterans seldom want to talk about war. 

No sacrifice is more dramatic than the sacrifice of those being sent to war.

That is the sacrifice of asking them to kill.  Even more, those who have killed being asked to return to normalcy.

If you want to know why modern, industrialized Christianity is declining, it’s not because of Darwinism, the rise of science, it’s because we don’t die for what we believe.

The Christian alternative to war is worship.

Christians called to non-violent not because it’s a strategy to end wars but instead we are called to be non-violent because we cannot imagine being anything other and that may make the world more violent.

We were not created to kill one another, we were created to commune with each other.

Even when we kill in a just war, our bodies rebel.

Those who kill being reconciled with those that they killed.

The sacrifices of war are no longer necessary.

Christians must be free of killing from where the powers rely

Because of the cross of Christ, war was abolished.