I want you to for a minute think of Jesus of Nazareth. Not Jesus our Lord and Savior, deity to more than a billion Christians around the world, but Jesus the carpenter, activist, revolutionary, the human being. It is thinking of Jesus in this sense, removed from his Godly nature, where I find much insight into both my faith and my life.
During this Holy Week, as in every Holy Week, the minds of Christians and non-Christians alike are drawn to reflect on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Every year, I focus much attention on one of the most fascinating individuals in the Bible - Pontius Pilate. Pilate is the notorious Roman governor of Judea who condemns Christ to death on the Cross. His notorious washing of his hands prior to giving into the will of the crowds calling for Jesus's crucifixion and inability to stand up for the law and his own beliefs in the face of the overwhelming opinion of the crowds facing him have condemned Pilate to eternal infamy in the annals of history.
But, should we not have sympathy for Pilate? Are we not surrounded by Pilates every day of our lives? Do we not ourselves give into the crowd and public opinion and authority rather than speak the unpopular or harsh truth?
My view on this, as with many things spiritual, is influenced greatly by my parish priest growing up. Father Tom's favorite and probably most profound sermon was on Pilate. He ended it in his usual crescendo and dramatic effect by saying "I know Pontius Pilate. I see him in the mirror every day." I keep coming back to this view of Pilate as my spirituality and reading of the Gospels grows within the Episcopal Church.
Pilate's ultimate failure is cowardice. It is clear from the Gospels that Pilate did not believe that Jesus had done anything to deserve death. He repeatedly states that he has no basis under the law to put him to death. He tries to foist Jesus off on the Jewish authorities to no avail. He does everything he can to clear himself of the responsibility for this rabble-rouser who is brought in front of him. Yet, ultimately, he accedes to the cries of the crowd to crucify Jesus and against his own judgment and belief, sentences Jesus to die.
When looking at the circumstances, if we are honest with ourselves, it's really not all that difficult to understand why Pilate would do this. After all, here he is in God-forsaken Judea, probably the least attractive of all of the far flung assignments for a Roman bureaucrat. He is constantly dealing with insurrections, revolts, someone or another claiming to be the Messiah, and an unruly foreign group of people over which he was given rule. What would be the harm to him of sending another trouble maker to be hanged on a cross? It might even help him politically, after all.
Unfortunately, we have seen this act repeated throughout history right up to today and we will continue to see it in our future. How many people who, like Jesus, stood up for what is right and speak the truth even when it is unpopular end up meeting a similar fate to that of Jesus. Just in the last century, the list is frighteningly long. Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu who followed the radical life of Christ forsaking his wealth and standing up to the greatest Empire of his time, assassinated. Martin Luther King, who in the face of the most vicious violence and racism refused to back down from his enemies while at the same time refused to give into violence, assassinated. Robert Kennedy, who dared us to see a world without poverty, without discrimination, without inequality, assassinated. Nelson Mandela, who stood up to one of the most evil governments of our time, challenging racist Apartheid through the use of law, imprisoned for 27 years. Even today, those that speak truth to power, Thomas Drake prosecuted for blowing the whistle and bringing attention to illegal wiretaps; John Kiriakou currently in prison for standing up to the government and exposing the horrific use of torture against prisoners at Guantanamo; Bradley Manning, facing life in prison for exposing U.S. military misdeeds and illegalities during the Iraq War; Julian Assange, who has become an international pariah and is stuck in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, due to his wide scale exposing of illegality around the world and publishing the truth for all to see.
I'm not saying that any of these people should be compared to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, King of Heaven and Son of God. Remember, I'm asking you to look at the human nature of Jesus - the man courageously standing against the authority of his day both politically and religiously, professing radical truth to those who refused to hear it. What I am saying, is that for each of these individuals, there was at least one Pontius Pilate who refused to do the right thing and allowed their persecution or death to occur.
What's worse is how many times have we ourselves refused to stand up in the face of overwhelming opposition to do the right thing, to stand up for the person being treated unjustly, to voice the unpopular opinion, even though we knew doing so would be the right thing to do?
This is what we are called upon as Christians to do. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to do as he did, to stand up for the downtrodden, to voice the radical truth to those in power, to express the unpopular opinion because we know it is right, even though we may suffer persecution, ostracism, or even in extreme cases death.
This Holy Week, we must dedicate ourselves to act more like Jesus and act less like Pilate. Our world could use a lot more truth, and a lot less cowardice.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Steubenville and What We Haven't Learned
Like many who were following the situation in Steubenville, Ohio involving the rape and horrific mistreatment of a 16 year-old girl by two high school student football players and their friends, I was relieved by the guilty verdict handed down by the Judge in the case. Relieved because this case and the attention it received could have served as a serious set back for victims of rape and sexual assault in the future, much like the tawdry William Kennedy Smith case in the early 1990s served as yet another disincentive to women to come forward to report their rapes and risk having their reputations, life, and even name dragged through the mud (remember NBC inexplicably published the name of the victim in the Kennedy Smith case for no good reason).
What I was not prepared for was the intense backlash against the victim coming from seemingly every direction including a mainstream television network, CNN, who when reporting the verdict lamented what the effect would be on these young boy's promising futures. When was the last time we saw someone convicted of murder or robbery have the type of sympathy that these young men were shown for their horrific and nearly inhuman acts they committed.
The internet, and especially Twitter, was awash with the most unbelievably violent, uncaring, and quite frankly insanely dumb attacks against the victim that you could imagine. If you want a nice collection of the worst of the tweets, please check out Matt Binder's twitter feed @MattBinder. Most of these were the usual, blaming the victim for getting drunk, saying what did she expect, so on, so forth. But an alarming number of these attacks seemed to go further than that. They seem to endorse a rape culture which accepts rape as a normal part of life. The attacks seem to say not only that if a woman gets drunk she should expect to get raped (an argument that is unbelievably stupid and scary in its own right), but that if a woman gets drunk (or dresses provocatively, or has had sex before, or engages in kissing or petting, etc.) that it is OK to rape her. An alarming number of these attacks came from women.
I'm tempted to just throw up my arms and say our society is going straight to Hell (which it may be). But to do that would be to ignore everything I've done in my adult life to combat rape and sexual assault. So, instead, I and everyone else who cares about this issue, and cares about each other and humanity in general have to rededicate ourselves to combating rape in our culture and the best, most effective way to do that is through education.
Recently, Democratic strategist and rape survivor Zerlina Maxwell went on Fox News and made a statement that instead of arming women and telling them how to avoid getting raped in order to prevent rape, perhaps we should teach men not to rape. I don't know how this was such a controversial statement, but it was. Immediately Maxwell was deluged with death threats and attacks for daring to suggest what seems to be, to me at least, a rather obvious statement.
The reason that it is an obvious statement to me is that teaching men not to rape, and moreover teaching both men and women not to accept a culture in which rape is acceptable is something I've been doing for more than twenty years. When I was in college at Syracuse University, a group of students formed a group called Students Concerned About Rape Education (SCARED), of which I was proud to be a member and in my junior year its President. In addition to speaking out against campus rape and forcing the administration of the university to stop sweeping the problem under the rug and adopt actual policies which dealt with the problem, we embarked on a very successful and groundbreaking educational program. In it we simply spoke to both men and women about the crime of rape: what it was, how it affected us and them, how to prevent it (which included nothing about not wearing short skirts) and what changes we could implement in our lives to prevent rape from happening.
What amazed me then and what amazes me now is how many people (including both the defendants and the victim in the Steubenville case) don't know what rape and sexual assault is. Robin Warshaw wrote a revolutionary book called "I Never Called It Rape." I recommend it for every person reading this. It should be mandatory reading in every high school orientation in the country. Warshaw's work was the foundation for our programs at Syracuse. In it Warshaw calls out actions which then and now are all too accepted for what they are -- rape. Whether it be an unconscious victim, a dating situation in which one partner forces himself on the other resulting in unwanted sex, whether a victim has been promiscuous in the past, etc, it is rape.
What happened in Steubenville is all too common and I think it is a pretty safe bet to state that the same thing has probably happened in your community as well. Alcohol is a part of high school life. It always has been. It was when I was in high school and it is now. Overly privileged athletes who are held up as heroes in their towns are especially at risk for committing rape because of a culture which tells them the rules don't apply to them, and will help cover up the crime afterward in order to protect their futures, or more realistically, the fortunes of the current sports season.
The prosecution in Steubenville is one way to combat this. But, the more effective way to combat it is being open and honest with our young people about sex, relationships, respect for one another, and rape. I have to think, that had the young men and women at that party had the same kind of educational program that we did back when I was in college, that the chances of there being at least one person who would have stepped in and said "Enough!" or "Stop!" or "This isn't cool," would have been better. I have to believe that had the parents and educators in Steubenville, or Syracuse, or Shelby, NC educated their children about these issues better that this rape and the many, many others which happened across our country that very same night might not have happened.
And for those of you out there who are lamenting the "tragedy" that happened to these good young boys and how their future is destroyed, had we educated them about the law, and sex, and sexuality, and responsibility, and respect, they wouldn't be waking up each day for the next several years in a youth detention facility (i.e. jail for kids).
I used to be asked the question when I was serving as President of SCARED "How many rapes have you really prevented?" I always answered that question without fail with "You can start with the one that I could have committed." Although that answer was intentionally provocative, it does have a central truth about it.
We can teach men not to rape. We can save lives. We can learn to treat each other with dignity and respect. We can destroy this culture of rape that is all to prevalent in our society.
Will you join me in seeing that this happens?
What I was not prepared for was the intense backlash against the victim coming from seemingly every direction including a mainstream television network, CNN, who when reporting the verdict lamented what the effect would be on these young boy's promising futures. When was the last time we saw someone convicted of murder or robbery have the type of sympathy that these young men were shown for their horrific and nearly inhuman acts they committed.
The internet, and especially Twitter, was awash with the most unbelievably violent, uncaring, and quite frankly insanely dumb attacks against the victim that you could imagine. If you want a nice collection of the worst of the tweets, please check out Matt Binder's twitter feed @MattBinder. Most of these were the usual, blaming the victim for getting drunk, saying what did she expect, so on, so forth. But an alarming number of these attacks seemed to go further than that. They seem to endorse a rape culture which accepts rape as a normal part of life. The attacks seem to say not only that if a woman gets drunk she should expect to get raped (an argument that is unbelievably stupid and scary in its own right), but that if a woman gets drunk (or dresses provocatively, or has had sex before, or engages in kissing or petting, etc.) that it is OK to rape her. An alarming number of these attacks came from women.
I'm tempted to just throw up my arms and say our society is going straight to Hell (which it may be). But to do that would be to ignore everything I've done in my adult life to combat rape and sexual assault. So, instead, I and everyone else who cares about this issue, and cares about each other and humanity in general have to rededicate ourselves to combating rape in our culture and the best, most effective way to do that is through education.
Recently, Democratic strategist and rape survivor Zerlina Maxwell went on Fox News and made a statement that instead of arming women and telling them how to avoid getting raped in order to prevent rape, perhaps we should teach men not to rape. I don't know how this was such a controversial statement, but it was. Immediately Maxwell was deluged with death threats and attacks for daring to suggest what seems to be, to me at least, a rather obvious statement.
The reason that it is an obvious statement to me is that teaching men not to rape, and moreover teaching both men and women not to accept a culture in which rape is acceptable is something I've been doing for more than twenty years. When I was in college at Syracuse University, a group of students formed a group called Students Concerned About Rape Education (SCARED), of which I was proud to be a member and in my junior year its President. In addition to speaking out against campus rape and forcing the administration of the university to stop sweeping the problem under the rug and adopt actual policies which dealt with the problem, we embarked on a very successful and groundbreaking educational program. In it we simply spoke to both men and women about the crime of rape: what it was, how it affected us and them, how to prevent it (which included nothing about not wearing short skirts) and what changes we could implement in our lives to prevent rape from happening.
What amazed me then and what amazes me now is how many people (including both the defendants and the victim in the Steubenville case) don't know what rape and sexual assault is. Robin Warshaw wrote a revolutionary book called "I Never Called It Rape." I recommend it for every person reading this. It should be mandatory reading in every high school orientation in the country. Warshaw's work was the foundation for our programs at Syracuse. In it Warshaw calls out actions which then and now are all too accepted for what they are -- rape. Whether it be an unconscious victim, a dating situation in which one partner forces himself on the other resulting in unwanted sex, whether a victim has been promiscuous in the past, etc, it is rape.
What happened in Steubenville is all too common and I think it is a pretty safe bet to state that the same thing has probably happened in your community as well. Alcohol is a part of high school life. It always has been. It was when I was in high school and it is now. Overly privileged athletes who are held up as heroes in their towns are especially at risk for committing rape because of a culture which tells them the rules don't apply to them, and will help cover up the crime afterward in order to protect their futures, or more realistically, the fortunes of the current sports season.
The prosecution in Steubenville is one way to combat this. But, the more effective way to combat it is being open and honest with our young people about sex, relationships, respect for one another, and rape. I have to think, that had the young men and women at that party had the same kind of educational program that we did back when I was in college, that the chances of there being at least one person who would have stepped in and said "Enough!" or "Stop!" or "This isn't cool," would have been better. I have to believe that had the parents and educators in Steubenville, or Syracuse, or Shelby, NC educated their children about these issues better that this rape and the many, many others which happened across our country that very same night might not have happened.
And for those of you out there who are lamenting the "tragedy" that happened to these good young boys and how their future is destroyed, had we educated them about the law, and sex, and sexuality, and responsibility, and respect, they wouldn't be waking up each day for the next several years in a youth detention facility (i.e. jail for kids).
I used to be asked the question when I was serving as President of SCARED "How many rapes have you really prevented?" I always answered that question without fail with "You can start with the one that I could have committed." Although that answer was intentionally provocative, it does have a central truth about it.
We can teach men not to rape. We can save lives. We can learn to treat each other with dignity and respect. We can destroy this culture of rape that is all to prevalent in our society.
Will you join me in seeing that this happens?
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