The power of Love among nations
Scott Davis | from The Christian Science Journal
Peace will much more likely result when we turn to our own and others’ essential spiritual identity.
A few weeks after the September 11 attacks in the United States, I was talking to my friend Jamal Gabobe in a cafe in Seattle. We were trying to understand the implications of these attacks for ordinary people in the United States. Jamal is a black East African born in Somaliland, and grew up in the Middle East. And he’s Muslim. He has a broad world perspective. Still, his most pointed remark was domestic.
“Just like that!” Jamal said. “The public dialogue has shifted. For the last 50 years in the US, we have been talking about race and equal rights. Our primary focus has been on African-Americans. Now, however, we are starting a new conversation. And the spotlight is on Arabs and Muslims.”
What was Jamal talking about? Within a society, as with individuals, most of our work is devoted to accomplishing tasks—activities that are practical in nature. To succeed, we need to be more efficient, more precise, more energetic. We need to be “self-starters,” and we also need to be “team players.” The tasks themselves are assumed to be of value, because we have been assured by our employers, our supervisors, or our clients that accomplishing these tasks will lead directly to what are, without doubt, valuable objectives.
Spiritual concerns trump small-scale human work.
We are like the Bible figure Martha, who put all her efforts into the hard work of preparing for guests (see Luke 10:38–42). And like Martha, we, too, are often self-righteous in our furious, though small-scale, efforts. When Jesus arrived at the gathering, Martha’s sister, Mary, sat at his feet and listened as he spoke. Martha complained and asked Jesus to send Mary back to help with the preparations for the meal. He rebuked Martha for her complaining and noted that Mary’s attention to the spiritual message was more important than busywork. In so doing, he showed that spiritual concerns trump small-scale human work, however demanding, worthwhile, or well-executed.
My friend Jamal recognized that the 9/11 attacks had challenged citizens of the United States to rethink priorities and move beyond an attitude of “business as usual.” Many living in the US had been lulled into thinking that turmoil and violence abroad could not touch us at home. Although the World Trade Center had been attacked in the 1990s, an attack by a foreign enemy of the magnitude of which happened on 9/11 had not been made on the continental United States for nearly 200 years. Jamal argued that the 9/11 attacks required a complete rethinking of American concepts of who we are, our place in the world, and our obligations and responsibilities toward other human beings on this planet. Jamal felt that public dialogue, soul-searching, earnest debate, and thoughtful probing would be necessary. We had been called to pursue something deeper, larger, and perhaps not so easy to define. Really, he was talking about the need for healing.
All of us at one time or another face difficulties in our personal lives that require special insight and probing. The same is true of societies. Recent news from the Balkans (the independence of Kosovo) and from Africa (violence following the elections in Kenya) shows that ethnic, class, racial, and tribal conflicts can’t be overcome when participants and even good-hearted observers simply pursue their normal everyday activities without a radical change in thinking.
We need to spiritualize our concept of identity.
Imagine two tribes who are still fighting, years, even decades—centuries?—following an insult or provocation of some kind. What needs to happen here? Not more fighting, certainly. Rather, the long-standing emotions of fear, pride, anger, and revenge on both sides need to be dropped from everyone’s thinking. Likewise, if we are involved in or even if we’re just bystanders to a conflict, we need to let go of our conception of the individuals involved as fighting, contentious mortals. We need to spiritualize our concept of identity and rise above the belief that all of us are relegated forever to a material world where life is one struggle after another to secure material existence, to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. We need to see beyond commonly held perceptions that we’re imprisoned or oppressed by strong opinions and overwhelming emotions, such as bitterness, regret, and revenge.
Specifically, we need to lift our thinking to spiritual reality, which is no part of the material world. Stated another way, instead of reasoning from the imperfect human scene up to spiritual truth, we need to understand that our source is the one infinite, perfect, and all-powerful God. Further, we need to see that God’s perfect creation lives and functions in total harmony.
This way of spiritual thinking is not simply blind denial of the sometimes grim human situations in which no good outcome appears possible. Rather, healing requires something more. While we must show compassion for those suffering, we also need to look beyond the human picture to keep our thinking focused on spiritual truth.
Until this change in perspective happens, we won’t be able to find a clear path for action among the many human possibilities. Until we spiritualize our concepts about true identity and the God-inspired purpose for every individual, even talented, energetic, and fair-minded human work is unlikely to bear lasting fruit.
Jacob had a past that he needed to heal.
One illustration of the power that a change in consciousness can bring occurs in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Jacob spent many years away from home, among “the people of the east,” working with his uncle to raise and sell livestock. This was a complex business that forced Jacob to master the intricacies of sheep breeding and animal husbandry. Eventually, he became successful and prosperous. In all of these years, however, he never came to terms with a more profound and complex problem that blocked his spiritual progress. He had a past that he needed to heal.
According to the Scriptures, Jacob was a twin to Esau, who was older by a few moments. As the two brothers grew up, their differing natures became apparent. Esau excelled as a hunter and outdoorsman, favored by his father Isaac. On the other hand, Jacob was “a plain man, dwelling in tents,” which perhaps points to the contemplative and profoundly spiritual character that the Scripture reveals in Jacob later on. Jacob became his mother’s favorite (see Gen. 25:27–28).
Yet both Jacob and his mother, Rebecca, resented Esau’s status because in those days it was the custom for a father to give a blessing to the eldest son. This blessing not only passed along a material inheritance, but also anointed the eldest son with special advantages (see Gen. 27:28–29). This seemed unfair to Jacob and especially to Rebecca, because during her pregnancy with the twins, she had received a revelation from God that the elder would serve the younger (see Gen. 25:23).
Jacob had to wrestle with his own sense of right and wrong.
The problem Jacob faced was of a different sort than the ordinary challenges posed by his semi-nomadic life. And it demanded interior dialogue and soul-searching. It required that Jacob stretch himself and wrestle with his own sense of right and wrong.
Jacob needed to grasp the fact that it was his own inability to understand his spiritual identity as God’s beloved son—rather than his brother’s position as the eldest—that prevented Jacob from assuming his own unique role in history. Instead of relying on his spiritual intuition to lift his prayers to heaven and to listen for God’s instruction, Jacob used his limited human reasoning, and at his mother’s urging carried out a duplicitous solution to his problem. He deceived his father into granting the blessing to Jacob that by tradition rightfully belonged to his elder brother. Jacob’s scheme, however, gave little attention to the consequences. When Esau realized that he had been deprived of the blessing, he was angry, and therefore Jacob feared the wrath of his brother and had to flee for his life.
We then read that two decades later Jacob—knowing he must finally face his brother—retraced his steps, traveling from east to west, from Mesopotamia to the Jordan River and into Canaan, to face his destiny with Esau. Would Jacob’s life end in an act of vengeance on the desert? As Jacob neared his childhood home, a messenger told him that Esau approached with 400 men. Jacob feared for the lives of his large, defenseless family—the children and the flocks with young—who traveled with him. So he divided them into bands, in the hope that one group would survive if the other were attacked. Also, he sent messengers ahead with gifts of cattle for his brother. These precautions complete, Jacob went forth alone.
For a long night Jacob waited in the desert, wrestling with “a man” until daylight (see Gen. 32:24). As the early morning light began to appear, Jacob’s opponent begged to leave. But Jacob insisted that he not leave until he had given Jacob a blessing. At last, the man pronounced: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen. 32:28).
Jacob called the place Peniel, which means, “the face of God,” for, as he said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:30).
Science and Health explains the spiritual meaning of this great struggle: “Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains ….
“The result of Jacob’s struggle thus appeared. He had conquered material error with the understanding of Spirit and of spiritual power. This changed the man” (Science and Health, pp. 308–309).
When the day dawned and Esau approached, Jacob bowed to the ground against the oncoming forces. Rather than facing an angry brother seeking revenge, Jacob found that Esau had been transformed as well. The two embraced and shed tears. Jacob rejoiced, saying, “I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou was pleased with me” (Gen. 33:10).
These same issues and the need for forgiveness can divide whole nations.
The story of Jacob and Esau is a memorable tale of reconciliation between brothers. But the Bible suggests that the conflict between Jacob and Esau also mirrored later conflicts between nations. According to the Scripture, just before their birth, Jacob and Esau “struggled together” in their mother’s womb. In response, Jacob’s mother prayed and received the answer, “Two nations are in thy womb” (Gen. 25:23). When Esau grew up, one of his wives was a daughter of Ishmael, the son of Abraham by his maidservant Hagar. Traditionally, Arabs trace their lineage to Abraham through Ishmael. And so Esau’s connection to Ishmael through marriage hints that the conflict with his brother may have foreshadowed larger issues than just their own personal conflict—that these same issues and the need for forgiveness can also divide whole nations.
In our contemporary world, we see the fragmentation suggested in the Bible text playing out. Since 1948, Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been fighting in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Within Islam there are divisions as well. For example, in contemporary Iraq, Sunni Muslim militia war against Shia militia. And there are also divisions within these two branches of Islam. Although Pakistan is predominantly occupied by Sunni Muslims, its inhabitants are divided by geographic regions. Each province has its own predominant ethnic and language group. It sometimes seems that Pakistan’s Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochs, Pastuns, and other social, regional, language, and tribal groups partition the country rather than unifying it as a single nation—an issue that has come to the fore since the recent Parliamentary elections.
The attacks in the US on 9/11 present a challenge for all of us to oppose the division and fragmentation that sets individuals, tribes, and nations against one another. My friend Jamal believed that 9/11 requires us to step outside the carefully defined boundaries of our busy lives of work and family. He felt that we needed to “struggle” within ourselves for right answers and to engage in dialogue with others, especially those of other nations, religions, and races. I listened to this Muslim’s clear, perceptive words because I knew that Jamal had experienced many languages and cultures, including those of the area where Jacob made peace with his brother Esau.
Later, I took Jamal’s words to heart and asked myself how each of us can heal ingrained materialistic thinking. I realized that it isn’t necessarily helpful to dive deeper and deeper into human thought. Instead, healing will much more likely result when we turn away from the material narrative—to our own essential spiritual identity and to that of others.
We are all ideas that exist in the one divine Mind.
Viewed spiritually, we are all ideas that exist in the one divine Mind. Our identity and actions are governed by divine intelligence. Our tribe? We belong to God. Our brothers and sisters are spiritual children of the same Father and Mother. There is one tribe and one nation—a vast universe of spiritual beings governed by a single Principle, embraced and upheld in Love. This is the Truth, presented in the Bible and explained fully in Science and Health that lifts us out of emotions and perspectives rooted in material assumptions—the light that links us forever to our spiritual source and universal harmony.
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