August 2006

The Middle East on Nukes

The photograph was horrifying. In the smoke of browns and grays, the vibrancy of color noticeably absent. How could life have emerged from this place? In the center of the ruin, stands one figure—a man who is on the move, pictured just above the words, “The Way Out.” The cover of TIME magazine greeted me with a punch at the mailbox last week, while televisions and radios across the globe poured forth their own concoctions of images and sound bytes to describe the madness in the Middle East.

As an American, I am deeply saddened that our leadership did not step forward to call for a ceasefire in the midst of such senseless bloodshed. Oh, I know full well the arguments about why such violence is justified, but as an expectant mother for the first time in my life, the bottom line for me is that babies and children and young people and elders are being killed on both sides. Violence got us into this mess and I’m not counting on it to get us out.

As a person of faith, a Christian, I pray each morning to a God who is always bringing life out of death. The grass pokes its head out of a crack in the sidewalk, stretching for the sun. Each spring the trees emerge from the dead of winter, breathless with new life as buds burst into color. And mothers continue to birth babies in seeming defiance of the death rattle of violence in places like the Middle East. Christian mystic Henri Nouwen said that bringing a child into this world is saying loudly, “For us life is stronger than death, love is stronger than fear, and hope is stronger than despair.”

If Nouwen is right, then I count myself a conspirator in such acts of resistance, defiantly birthing new life into the world. Because, in case no one’s mentioned it lately, we live in a nuclear age, with the total destruction of God’s creation as a distinct possibility. On August 6th, we will again round the bend on another anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Perhaps I remember this anniversary so well, because it’s just a day before my wedding anniversary. One is an anniversary marked by death, horror, and sorrow. The other is a witness to the life giving power of covenant-making between human beings and God.

The photograph of the ruins of Beirut, Lebanon could be mistaken for those snapped in Hiroshima, just hours after the bomb dropped. The same browns and grays. There is a unique character to devastation that renders images of it quite universal. One looks at the ruins, and it’s impossible to know whether you’re staring at Beirut, Hiroshima, or New Orleans. Culture and nationality have cracked and crashed with the buildings, and all we see is the ruin of human cities.

The stark similarities between the photographs of Beirut and Hiroshima mask one unmistakable difference—the irreparable damage of radioactive nuclear weapons. In Hiroshima, the bomb reverberated like a pebble dropped in a pond, its effects traveling out from one generation to the next by way of disease and malformation, radiation breezing across borders with the casual passage of wind.

I look at that photograph of Beirut and remember the childhood anti-drug commercial that quipped, “here’s your brain…here’s your brain on drugs.” I think, here’s the Middle East…and I hope I never have to add the phrase, here’s the Middle East on nukes. As tragic as the violence in Lebanon, Israel, and Gaza may be, I thank God that it’s not gone nuclear, that we are not bearing witness to the birth pangs of humanity’s collective suicide.

I believe it’s time that Americans, mothers, and people of faith call upon our leadership to set the example when it comes to these dangerous, death dealing weapons. Instead of funding the research and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, let’s set an example by condemning all development and use of nukes. Whether Iran, North Korea, India, Israel, or our own nation uses nukes, it’s God’s creation we are destroying. May this anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima serve as an opportunity to bring life out of death, to say never again to nuclear destruction, to honor the lives of the youngest and oldest among us by seeking a way out of this warring madness.

Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss is the Faith Communities Coordinator of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND).

Amanda Hendler-Voss Faith Communities Organizer Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss is the Faith Based Coordinator for the Women’s Action for New Directions Educational Fund and the Minister of Christian Education at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Asheville, NC. She is a graduate of the master of divinity program at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, where she received certificates in the Black Church Studies and Church and Community programs. Her studies have taken her to London, England and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Amanda serves as a member of the Wellspring Clergywomen’s Alliance of the Black Church and Domestic Violence Institute. She has a background in case management and experience working with people with HIV/AIDS and single parent families. Amanda is ordained in the United Church of Christ.