Jamal Khashoggi and the Christian concept of time
Last Sunday, a person in the adult discussion group that I have
been leading in the parish where I am a priest associate outlined the traditional
Christian view of time as a line with Jesus as the decisive inflection point. I
disagreed, even though the linear conception of time, with God existing outside
of time, was what I had been taught in seminary.
Time is more helpfully conceived of as a bumpy spiral. The
bumps are reminders that history does not proceed in a smooth pattern. Spurts,
plateaus, and fallbacks are all part of time. The spiral is a reminder that
history does repeat. There are multiple inflection points: Jesus, Buddha, Lao
Tzu, and many others. These are people who have altered the direction of history.
Insistence on a single inflection argues for Christian exclusivity: Jesus is
the only path that leads to salvation.
Whether the spiral, unlike the linear view of history, is
going somewhere must remain an open question. One can make an optimistic case
(Martin Luther King, Jr., famously remarking that the long arc of history is bending
toward justice (c. the Ethical Musings’ post Finding
genuine hope in Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead)) or a pessimistic one
(e.g., human destruction of the earth through climate change and, more broadly,
the consequences of entropy). As emphasized in process theology, God is not
outside of time but enmeshed in the very fabric of creation.
Debates about Saudi Arabia and the role of its crown prince,
Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, repeatedly
evoked memories of that discussion. The U.S. has a history of supporting
dictators who support U.S. policy goals while those dictators both suppress
internal dissent and enjoy great wealth at the expense of their people. In the
Middle East, the prime example of this type of policy was in U.S. support for
the Shah of Iran, ignoring the gathering storms of dissent and unrest. In spite
of a notorious internal security apparatus with few if any legal curbs on its
power, the Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah and established a dictatorial
Shiite state that routinely vilifies the U.S. as the “Great Satan.”
Is Saudi Arabia the next Iran? The House of Saud rules
through a combination of religious rhetoric, giving its citizens economic
benefits, and a far-reaching internal security apparatus that operates with few
legal or ethical limits. Saudi Arabia is unmistakably a kingdom and not a
democracy. Meanwhile, internal dissent grows. Dissidents often cloak their activities
in a religious fundamentalism, which, although Sunni rather than Shiite in its
theology, has political ramifications striking similar to those of the Shiite forces
behind the Iranian revolution.
Successful foreign policies look beyond today’s arms and oil
deals to ascertain potential long-term benefits of supporting the hopes of other
people for genuine peace, i.e., the fullness of well-being consonant with the
word’s meaning in the languages of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy books.
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