Profound, yet shallow; deep but tragically incomplete. Hope divorced from justice; confession, apologies not followed up with restitution and justice.
The latest Christian Century (July 19, 2017) contains a fine article titled "How to live in hope," by Charles R. Pinches. The article begins with this tragically true story:
"Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow Nation guided his people through the deep crisis brought by the invasion of the white man. Shortly before his death in 1932, he said to his biographer: 'When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people feel to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. [think Exodus 6:9] After this nothing happened." Jonathan Lear, author of Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, is haunted by this phrase. What did Plenty Coups mean by 'after this nothing happened'? As Lear interprets it, 'there is no importantly first-person narrative to tell of this [subsequent] period. It is as though there is no longer an 'I' there."
White oppression caused a historical and cultural demise---a destruction of both 'I' and 'We'.
Pinches continues with his commentary:
"While the Crow remained alive after the buffalo went away [killed in mass by whites], their lives had no place in their own history. This is a fitting way to characterize a life without hope: having no place within a history. To find life again, the Crow needed a "radical hope."
"When hope is removed, time is cut off, as for the Crow Nation. Then nothing can happen---unless time's dangling ends can somehow be reconnected. We have a term for life without hope: DESPAIR. Aquinas calls it the greatest sin." Not quite right; oppression, the primary cause of most despair, is the greater sin.
"Despair . . . detaches us from God's story. Despair does not so much deny or oppose God's truth or story directly, but rather says: whatever the truth is, or whatever the story may be, there is nothing in it for me [and my people]."
If a person or a people is in a spirit of despair [Isaiah 61], broken in spirit [Exodus 6:9], they need a believing partner, a lifelong partner, to help them believe, hope, rebuild. Or in other words, despair reigns until doers of justice intervene. [Isaiah 58:6ff and Luke 4:18-19]
"How to live in hope" should be read at the same time as "The People and the Black Book." Both excellent articles begin with the tragic oppression of Indian peoples in America and Canada. Both are written by Christians and published in Christian magazines. But, in the final analysis, both are biblical failures. Neither connects restitution, justice and partnership as the biblical answer to the cultural devastation caused by generations of white oppression. Now we need generations of deep justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom justice, Jesus justice.
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