A Letter to the UMMC

This isn't an ordinary MC post, but I couldn't resist sharing it out of vanity.

This past April I was obliged to visit the emergency room. A month later, I received a bill for somewhat less than $700; naturally, since I haven't yet taken up hustling, I applied for financial aid. I have since received a letter in reply, and penned a reply in turn, which I haven't yet decided whether I will actually send.

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To the financial offices of the University of Maryland Medical Center:

I filled out an application for financial assistance on account of the $675.07 bill I received for my emergency room visit back in April. Today, I received a letter saying ‘Insufficient documentation—get real and try again,’ or words to that effect. While admitting that more time to either amass the sum or get it reduced is very welcome to me, since the aforesaid bill is nearly as much as I make in a month, I pray you will indulge me in a review of the process to date.

First, with respect to the billing itself. The engagingly mysterious summary of costs includes the items ‘Laboratory,’ ‘ER/EMTALA,’ ‘ER/Beyond EMTALA,’ and ‘Pharmacy.’ I gather that the first of these charges indicates the two blood tests and one urine test, all inconclusive, that were done on the night of the 24th; but, since those tests cost approximately $12 apiece (including the cost of the work itself and a profit margin of about a fifth for the hospital), I am intrigued—not to say disconcerted—that they sum up at $478.89.

Having, to a very limited extent, familiarized myself with EMTALA, ie. the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, I remain mildly uncertain about its presence on my bill. I can only assume that ‘EMTALA’ and ‘Beyond EMTALA’ are cryptic allusions to the two saline drips that I received, couched no doubt in the language of medical ritual. This, however, again results in a puzzle, since a saline drip costs something like a dollar, whereas the EMTALA-related charges come out to $1,371.39, which strikes me as rather a lavish (not to say intemperate) expense for a bag of water, even when divided in half in justice to the fact that there were two; although, if the UMMC is experiencing difficulty in acquiring water, I would be happy to donate almost any amount of it from my own home, since I receive it gratis through the taps.

Of the semi-anonymous billing under ‘Pharmacy,’ it may well be for all I know that the medicine to treat a patient for four hours costs $69.05. Given the previous items, I must confess to skepticism on that point; but perhaps I am only cynical.

How I digress. In any case, taking together the tests, the two (2) bags of water, the medicines, and the payment of the salaried professionals who in fact cared for me, I am finding it difficult to make the cost of service come out to more than about $300 at the absolute outside; and while I am perfectly happy to pay $300 to be well, I would venture to point out that the bill before the insurance contribution came out to $1,919.33—an arresting sum for most persons to consider even before choosing to be sick—and that the insurance company obligingly sent UMMC $1,244.26, thus apparently recouping your actual expenses, vis à vis materials and work, four times over with room to spare.

I understand, from the most elementary reading on the subject, that the standard practice of hospitals is to bill not so much for services actually rendered, as for whatever figure can be put to paper without provoking laughter, on the grounds that this must be the starting point for any discussion with insurance companies (who evidently do not mind provoking laughter). That of course is not my business in itself; but it does seem a little squalid and ridiculous to make it my business when the insurance company stops coughing up, given that the vast majority of these values are produced only for haggling and are, accordingly, entirely imaginary.

Nevertheless, perhaps you need $675.07 on some other grounds, and are too shy to say so; a beloved cat, doubtless, is suffering from ennui, and requires intensive aromatherapy and stress counseling. Let us, then, turn to the application you have provided for financial assistance.

My mother is far more devoted to mystery novels than I, but I dare say I derived as much pleasure from the obscurities of this document as she does from a delicious murder. Beginning at the beginning, as the custom is, the instructions say: ‘Return this application with the following required documentation: Income (including all of the following documents you currently receive): Copy of last 2 pay stubs or copy of W-2 form for most recent tax year. … If you are unable to supply any of the required documents above, please complete Form FAF 116 attached.’

Now, I hasten to admit in simple truthfulness that it was my own carelessness that destroyed my copy of my most recent W-2. Further, I do not ordinarily receive pay stubs, my paychecks being routed to my account via direct deposit. Accordingly, since the instructions directed those who lacked these documents to fill out FAF 116, I ventured to fill out FAF 116, on the grounds that I lacked those documents. Judging from the underlinings and highlightings of the letter that I received in reply to my application, this was the wrong thing to do. I trust you will not take a piece of stylistic advice amiss? If your intention was to require these documents from anyone who is employed, it would be as well to say so. The literal-minded like myself are apt to assume that, if they do not possess some document X, and are told to fill out form Y in consequence, they will not then be met with a reply that they failed to send document X—since their intimate knowledge of this fact was the reason for their earlier decision to fill out and mail form Y. But if applications for financial aid (when made by the employed) will certainly be refused when made without document X, it would again be as well to say so, and thus to save much paper, ink, and aspirin.

Turning to the aforesaid Form FAF 116, how wonderful is life! But that aside: FAF 116 requests only the patient’s signature; the letter I received in reply to my application requests ‘a letter of explanation of your housing situation, stating the amount paid each month, to whom, and have all parties sign as verification.’ Here again, the inveterate habit of the student of the Classics prompts a teacherly thought in me: surely it would be as well to require this at the beginning of the process, rather than while it is underway? It would admittedly be curious (even a kind of solecism) not to request such information and attestation at all, but I can testify from experience that life displays many curious tendencies, and as a rather scrupulous person I usually do not hand out personal information (my own or others’) when it has not been asked for.

Nevertheless, in response to that query which has now been made plain, this: I make somewhat more than $14k per year. I live in a house attached to my parish church, along with a few other impoverished parishioners. In an act of great generosity, my parish charges me very little in rent (while I provide board on my own initiative). My monthly rent consists in $100 cash, plus five hours of manual labor, principally janitorial, per week; ergo, about twenty hours or so per month (reaching an estimated $200 in labor); hence my estimate of $300 per month. Fr Albert Scharbach as head of the parish is my de facto landlord, while Michael Byrd, the church’s sexton and general factotum, usually receives and deposits the payment. You may find their signatures below as requested.

The letter’s final highlighted portion, seeking a proof of additional income, was in its way a welcome moment of levity. I do have one: namely, sponsorship on my blog, which comes out to a little more than $5o extra per month. Thus, even if you should elect to ruin me financially in pursuit of your ostensible $675.07, representing $1,619.26 of fees that remain sacrally veiled from the debtor, you need not trouble your consciences, since I will be able to sustain myself with a bag of water every day of the month and, two days out of three, a nutritious nut bar.

Wishing you a pleasant summer, I beg to remain

Your obedient servant,

Gabriel Ian Matthew Blanchard

La Estrella del Mar, or, Mother of Exiles

Trucks rumble—the hustle and the hum

Of gears gas engine exhaust choke POTHOLE and there’s a cut on the forehead,

Red over the white frightened eyes in the dark.

She bends down over POTHOLE her baby

And she knows what’s coming next but it hasn’t happened yet,

So she cradles and coos and tries not to think

About the kennel they’ll put her son in

With the chainlink door and the concrete floor and the ugly foil blanket made for an alien.

And the dry road south is all sand sand sand POTHOLE sand,

Back down to Sinaloa, the land of the rattlesnake,

Sand in the hair the mouth the eyes, like an itching thirsting disease.

Turn your bodies against the drums, boys:

It’s the I.C.E., it’s the Committee of Public Saftey,

It’s Herod and he means it this time.

The trucks aren’t full of people.

They’re full of MS13 monsters like her,

They’re full of sluts who wouldn’t get an abortion like her,

They’re full of cost-benefit ratios like her,

They’re full of huddled masses like her,

They’re full of not our problems like her.

But her eyes are two thousand years old

And the message of the angel still shines out of them

The mystery the plea the glory the warning

That this is an ikon of the all-consuming Fire.

What will you do when that Fire falls on you?

Turn your bodies against the drums, boys:

It’s the I.C.E., it’s the Committee of Public Safety,

It’s Herod and he means it this time.

So pick up your ploughshares and your pruning hooks,

This is no time for passivity, it’s time for pacifisticuffs:

If what you want is peace then go be peace’s power,

Lift up your voice, your open hands toward that White Tower

And cover it with brown sand.

Hate burns white-hot—don’t be fooled by its easy appeal:

Love is brown like earth and wood and dried blood and Jewish skin

And the eyes of the baby that immigrant woman is holding for the last time.

Call on the mountains to fall on us, the hills to hide us,

For their earth is full of love

And perhaps thus we shall learn to love our brother.

Turn your bodies against the drums, boys:

It’s the I.C.E., it’s the Committee of Public Safety,

It’s Herod and he too will die.

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EDIT: Notes on the Text
Title. La Estrella del Mar. This is the Spanish form of the Latin title Stella Maris, 'Star of the Sea.' This title (derived from a fanciful etymology of the name Miriam or Mary) has been used for the Blessed Virgin Mary since at least the early Middle Ages, and has particular reference to the guiding stars used by sailors.
Mother of Exiles. This is an alternate name for the Statue of Liberty, believed to have been coined by Emma Lazarus in her famous sonnet, The New Colossus.
l.10. Sinaloa. The state of Sinaloa lies on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and is the principal center of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel, considered the single most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world by US intelligence. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines are among their chief wares.
land of the rattlesnake. The Mexican flag and seal feature a rattlesnake being throttled by an eagle, in reference to an ancient Aztec legend. Though its bite is seldom fatal if treated promptly, the rattlesnake is the leading cause of snakebite injuries in the US, and ranges throughout the Americas.
l. 13. the Committee of Public Safety. This Orwellian title belonged to one of the institutions of the French Revolution, and oversaw the Reign of Terror in 1793-94.
l. 14. Herod. Cf. Matthew 2.1-18.
l. 16. MS13. Also known as Mara Salvatrucha, this extensive gang operates mostly in North and Central America, partly under the auspices of the Sinaloa Cartel. It is known for a multitude of crimes, including murder, human trafficking, and child prostitution. Most MS13 members are Salvadoran; the gang was originally founded to protect emigrants from El Salvador who had come to the US after the Central American civil wars of the 1980s.
l. 19. huddled masses. Cf. The New Colossus ll. 10ff.
ll. 21-22. But her eyes ... out of them. Cf. Luke 1.26-35.
l. 24. all-consuming Fire. Cf. Hebrews 12.28-29.
l. 25. What will you ... falls on you? Cf. Matthew 21.42-44; Acts 2.1-4, 15-21, 38.
l. 29. your ploughshares and your pruning hooks. Cf. Isaiah 2.1-5.
l. 32. White Tower. A mashing together of White House and Trump Tower.
l. 35. wood and dried blood and Jewish skin. In reference to the Crucifixion.
l. 37. Call on the ... to hide us. Cf. Revelation 6.12-17.
l. 42. he too will die. Cf. Matthew 2.19-20.

Suffer Little Children

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. —That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government … The History of the present King of Great Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World. 

He has refused his Assent to Laws, most wholesome and necessary for the public Good. … He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither … He has obstructed the Administration of Justice …

—Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence of the United States

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The Trump administration is separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents and keeping said children in detention centers. Some of these children are less than two years old.

This is a gross abuse of human and familial rights—I don't care what your general perspective on politics is. Two things, and two things only, justify ripping a child away from its parents: abuse or neglect that endanger the child's life or health, and incapacity (financial or otherwise) to care for the child. 'Being an immigrant,' documented or not, isn't either of those things.

Also, let's be a little more clear what we mean when we talk about 'detention centers.' They're fucking cages. Like animals. As President Trump said they were. This is no civilized enforcement of federal law, this is ethnic goddamned cleansing.

Oh, but it's not really an ethnic cleansing because it's only of people who came here illegally? Sure. And Hitler protected his old friend and chauffeur Emil Maurice from Himmler, even though Maurice was an eighth Jewish. Racists, it turns out, are not always very consistent. And sure, maybe, maybe, Trump isn't a racist, even though he referred to Latino nations as shitholes and Latino people as animals and neo-Nazis as having good people among them. In all seriousness, a person could do those things and not believe that other races are inferior to theirs—though they would still be doing and saying horrible things. Meanwhile, tearing families apart is still fucking monstrous.

Also, let's park for a moment on the whole concept of legality and illegality. The point of having laws is to enforce justice. Strictly speaking, and following St Augustine and many other doctors of the Church, an unjust law has no force. So it is quite pertinent to ask whether the immigration policies of the United States are in fact just.

They sure don't make sense in the context of the Founding Fathers' writings on the subject, as cited above. Inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e. well-being, both physical and otherwise) don't support the idea of a closed border on the face of it—I mean, insofar as a closed border is literally a bar to liberty and, for the overwhelming majority of the immigrants in question here, also a bar to the pursuit of happiness. The fact that immigrating legally can easily take a few years, several thousand dollars, and a flawless attention to Kafkaesque details is just icing; though this is one of those storebought cakes where the icing is about eight feet thick. And, much like those storebought cakes, a lot of the people who need and want to immigrate the most, due to violence and destitution and a lot of other things, can't afford to spend two years and five thousand dollars on doing so. Which, in practice, makes American immigration law not a ban on immigrants, but a ban on poor ones.

It might be argued that our health care system is overburdened and we can't afford these new people, and so on. I am not convinced of that. To begin with, as of 2017, the IMF rated the United States as one of the twenty wealthiest countries, per capita, in the world. We're ranked with places like Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Hong Kong, and the UAE (home of the cartoonishly affluent Dubai). I can easily believe that we as a people aren't willing to allocate enough of our money to the public good to support an influx of new people; or, more briefly, I can believe that we'd refuse to afford these new people. But I do not believe we can't. And I don't see why our selfishness should be their problem.

Further, there's the fact that our birthrate in the US has declined. In the long run, fewer babies means an aging population; and an aging population does mean a serious strain in our health care system—one that only new workers, both as producers of goods and services, and as sources of tax revenue, could relieve. But neither the prudential nor the legal aspects of this ghastly situation are, to me, primary.

Pilgrim praying in front of icon of Saint Mary, photo by Petar Milosevic

Are you a family values conservative? Keeping kids with their parents is pretty central to family values, and the Trump administration has betrayed that ideal. They are trying to manipulate you. Don't fall for it.

Do you reverence Scripture? Leviticus 19 says, If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the strangeth that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God; and in the same style, Deuteronomy 10 says, The LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: he doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger. The apostles repeat the same principle in the New Testament: the author of Hebrews commands us, Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares; and our Lord himself relates the following, in a frightening parable:

When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, unto everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. —Matt. 25

Christ's teaching was directed to individuals, not to societies? The Torah wasn't. The Torah was delivered only to Israel? Christ's teaching wasn't. And Christ's teaching both presupposed and at times expressly stated the validity of the Torah; and the Torah was made more toweringly perfect and unfathomably pure, not less so, by Christ's own teaching.

Christian, you must oppose this barbaric treatment of immigrants. It's not optional. It's not the difference between being a Christian and not being one; that difference is defined by the creeds. But it is the difference between honoring the Lord whose name you bear by putting his word before everything, and taking that name in vain to protect a President who doesn't deserve even your respect, let alone your worship.

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Whitsunday Eve

Whitsunday Eve: spirits, awake;
The hells beneath their masters shake;
For unmade Love-in-Light descends
On those their Maker called his friends,
To laurel them with stranger fire
Than priest or Levite could ensire.
From Babylon by riven tongue
Across the earth all men were flung
By the one Word, to curb their pride:
Now Zion meets a changing tide,
A living water-wave of speech,
Of strangers singing, each to each,
In words that only angels knew
Until these minds, uplifted, flew
On silver Dove-wings. Lips of gold
(As Hebrew prophets darkly told,
Before they knew or heard the laud
Goyim would offer to their God)
Proclaim the holy, trinal Breath,
He who woke Lazarus from death
At the Word of the Father: now
He makes the whole creation bow,
Entering in a lovelier light
Than yet had graced man's ghostly sight.
The rushing fire-wind-water sound
Makes all the infant Church resound;
Who once on Sinai fell with fear
Rains down in power and glory here --
Our Lord the Spirit, sacrament
Of God's own being. Heaven is rent
With cries of pure seraphic joy
That hell has no power to destroy;
For lo, the Church receives her birth
And call, to be upon the earth
Her Savior's Body, he her soul,
That his life may suffuse the whole
Creation by her agency;
For this was his great mystery,
His being we should share by grace
For that he shared our fleshly race;
His Spirit this great secret plumbs
And triumphs that his kingdom comes.

Men and Monsters, Part II

Anybody can enact that murder shall not be punishable by death; nobody can enact that the swallowing of a tumblerful of prussic acid shall not be punishable by death. In the former case, the connection between the two events is legal—that is, arbitrary; in the latter, it is a true causal relationship … When the laws regulating human society are so formed as to come into collision with the nature of things, and in particular with the fundamental realities of human nature, they will end by producing an impossible situation which, unless the laws are altered, will issue in such catastrophes as war, pestilence, and famine. Catastrophes thus caused are the execution of universal law upon arbitrary enactments which contravene the facts; they are thus properly called by theologians, judgments of God. …  

At the back of the Christian moral code we find a number of pronouncements about the moral law, which are not regulations at all, but which purport to be statements of fact about man and the universe, and upon which the whole moral code depends for its authority and its validity in practice. … If they are true, man runs counter to them at his own peril. He may, of course, defy them, as he may defy the law of gravitation by jumping off the Eiffel Tower, but he cannot abolish them by edict. Nor yet can God abolish them, except by breaking up the structure of the universe, so that in this sense they are not arbitrary laws. We may of course argue that the making of this kind of universe, or indeed of any kind of universe, is an arbitrary act; but, given the universe as it stands, the rules that govern it are not freaks of momentary caprice. 

—Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker

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At first I’d been thinking of beginning with the sociological side of my first post; however, my language of divine judgment provoked more reaction than I’d expected, and anyway, on reflection it makes far more sense to begin with the spiritual. That spiritual side of things is the suggestion I made, or the suspicion I harbor, that the United States is a nation under judgment, due very largely to the war crimes of which we are historically guilty—but that notion needs a lot of unpacking.

To begin with, let’s consider what is meant by judgment. Usually, the image this summons to the imagination is one of God-as-cranky-old-man hitting people with bolts of smite because they’ve annoyed him in some way. This image actually does have a good use, to which we shall return later, but for the most part it’s stupid and terrible, and most of what it says to our minds and emotions should be discarded without hesitation.

A proper understanding of judgment is, rather, grounded in God’s character as the Creator, and the corresponding integrity of creation. In making the universe, God made an ordered reality, a universe in which cause and effect relate to one another in regular harmony. Why he did this is a question I can’t answer with certainty, and I have a hunch that it’s secretly nonsensical, like asking what the shape of yellow is, or whether eleven is solid, liquid, or gas; if God the Son is the Logos, then order is grounded not just in the choices, but in the being of God. At any rate he did make an ordered universe, and creatures like ourselves that not only rely on order to exist, but can’t even really imagine a world without it. The closest we can get is by mixing known elements of our world at random, but even this depends on our understanding of the order and defined things that we know.

This orderly creation in which we live is, also, the prerequisite for free will, which is itself a sine qua non of love. A world of pure chaos would be incomprehensible by definition, and no self-awareness or meaningful choice (which are the things we mean theologically by free will) would be possible. Accordingly, love, which is the most divine choice, would not be possible either.

But if the universe is ordered and governed by cause and effect, and if there are free agents in it, then suffering and evil become real possibilities. Through ignorance or inattention, any free being could run up against the order of the universe in a painful or damaging way; and through deliberate malice, any free being could attempt to violate, break, or circumvent that order. But freelance modifications of creation would require the same power (in the double sense of authority and ability) that the God who made it possesses; and we don’t have that. Accordingly, the effect of such attempts will naturally be as painful and damaging as mistakes made through ignorance, if not more so. And the more a creature perseveres in its error, the worse the consequences will be, until that creature is either destroyed or corrected.

Thus, judgment is not an arbitrary act of God, intruded into creation as a punishment for behavior he doesn’t like. Rather, it is a name for what happens when a creature defies the inner logic of creation, and is met by the self-consistency of that logic, experienced as hostile because of the creature’s own hostility. Judgment may, in that case, sound like a strange choice of name; which leads into the one great advantage of the ‘cranky old man’ depiction of God. By representing the Creator as a Person, this image can remind us that forgiveness, patience, restraint, and mercy are possible, too. C. S. Lewis, in his epistolary on prayer, Letters to Malcolm, wrote:

You suggest that what is traditionally regarded as our experience of God’s anger would be more helpfully regarded as what inevitably happens to us if we behave inappropriately towards a reality of immense power. As you say, ‘The live wire doesn’t feel angry with us, but if we blunder against it we get a shock.’ My dear Malcolm, what do you suppose you have gained by substituting the image of a live wire for that of angered majesty? … The angry can forgive, and electricity can’t. 

And you give as your reason that ‘even by analogy the sort of pardon that arises because a fit of temper is spent cannot worthily be attributed to God nor gratefully accepted by man.’ But the belittling words ‘fit of temper’ are your own choice. Think of the fullest reconciliation between mortals. … Anger—no peevish fit of temper, but just, generous, scalding indignation—passes (not necessarily at once) into embracing, exultant, re-welcoming love. That is how friends and lovers are truly reconciled. Hot wrath, hot love. Such anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it. … Wrath and pardon are both, as applied to God, analogies; but they belong together to the same circle of analogy—the circle of life, and love, and deeply personal relationships.

Fine, fine. But what has all this got to do with describing America as a nation under judgment?

Our nation has, from its inception, been soaked in blood. With the exception of Rhode Island and parts of Pennsylvania, every square mile of US territory was either taken from its indigenous inhabitants by compulsion, or purchased from European powers that had done the same thing—England, Spain, France, Russia. The insultingly named ‘Indian reservations’ (as though they were parks maintained for endangered animals!), whose rights we regularly violate despite their technical status as independent nations, are an embarrassing continuation of colonialism. Our history in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries was imperfect even in relating to other Western powers; but we’ve really taken to war crimes since World War II. Interfering with other countries’ internal affairs, [1] killing foreign soldiers with no declaration of war, killing foreign civilian men, women, and children en masse, torturing prisoners of war … And all this is only about how the US deals with other countries, let alone immigrants and internal injustices like slavery, capitalist oppression, racism, and abortion.

John Gast, Spirit of the Frontier, 1872

I believe that, by this history of atrocities and by our general acquiescence to them (if not in many cases outright, vocal approval), we have invoked judgment upon ourselves. This violence indicates contempt for human life as such, and the nature of judgment is to work backwards, so that contempt of human life falls upon us. It certainly has: in the schools where we’ve taught children that destroying First Nation civilizations and killing or deporting them by the thousands was a historical footnote; at the military bases from which we’ve sent our brave boys to bomb Japanese or Vietnamese or Iraqi civilians with nuclear and chemical weapons, whose long-term effects we could never hope to control; in the office towers where the goods of clientele and employees alike are ruthlessly subordinated to profit.

Does this mean the individuals upon whom these judgments have fallen were the most guilty? No. It doesn’t mean they were guilty at all. Societies are vast webs of coïnherence, and as many people suffer for others’ sins as thrive on others’ virtues. This should be no new idea for the Christian: for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The Last Judgment, the final settling of individual accounts, is yet to come, and while it tarries we still have an opportunity to invoke mercy, both for ourselves and for our society.

What does this invocation of mercy involve? First of all, individual repentance, because nothing can be done until and unless individual people—that is, you and I—own our thoughts, words, and behavior. To the extent that we’ve involved ourselves in social sins, whether by active approval or passive indulgence, we must repent: i.e., say that we’ve done wrong and that we’re sorry, ask for forgiveness from anyone we’ve wronged (God or neighbor), and resolve to do better.

Source

And then, as far as possible, we must participate in societal repentance. Now, maybe our own influence on society is a very small thing. Maybe all we can do is swallow our pride by letting someone win a Facebook argument and switch to fair-trade coffee. But, in truth, those things aren’t nothing. Small decisions to foster peace are where the power to make biggers decisions for peace comes from; it’s like lifting: you don’t start with benching 350 pounds. Then again, maybe our influence on society is a bigger thing than we think. Maybe we can sponsor the education of a child in a war-torn country, or write music that celebrates kindness and honesty, or help organize an anti-war campaign, or all sorts of things. But it’s always those little things coming from us individual people that multiply and grow and finally start moving whole cultures. Bartolomé de las Casas, William Wilberforce, Susan B. Anthony, Cardinal Manning, Eugene Debs, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr made things happen because they did not wait for others to act. They went and did something. It was that which inspired others to do something too.

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[1] I’m not saying that this is never justifiable. I am saying that we are way too ready to dictate to other states what they may and may not do.