‘Cross the Jordan

When George W. Bush elevated the possibility that a military surge could bring stability to Iraq, his critics mocked his optimism, assuring that his plan would fail. It succeeded. The cynics’ hoped-for failure did not materialize.

When Bush and, later, Barak Obama suggested that government investments into big business and banks could reignite a sputtering economy, their critics cried foul, guaranteeing that the plan would fail. It appears to be succeeding (although a final assessment will come down the road). The cynics’ hoped-for failure doesn’t seem to be materializing.

On my recent journalists’ tour of Jordan, I kept encountering leaders of politics and religion who were filled with hope and optimism. In a land the size of New Jersey, a territory surrounded by conflicted countries, the Jordanians actually have been building a coalition for peace that’s working.

And I wondered if any of this could possibly fly among the skeptics and cynics back home.

The western press doesn’t sell hope very often. Yes, many have bought into the President’s Audacity of Hope, but that hope hasn’t been running far enough to reach the land once flowing with milk and honey.   

In 1948, when western governments sought to expiate their Holocaust-complicity guilt by giving Palestine to the Jews to be their homeland, the one impediment standing in their way was the 700,000 or so Palestinians already occupying that land. The western governments did need to do something. Their guilt was deserved. Their desire to rally support for Israel was right. But one unintended consequence of their efforts was the devaluation of Arabs, especially Muslim Arabs, especially the Palestinian Muslim Arabs.

Through the intervening 60 years, Palestinians’ periodic uprisings against their loss of land and standing have helped the press back home to sell their newspapers and draw viewers — especially so, since we American news consumers simply have not had the stomach for any assessment of Palestinian Muslim Arabs that rises an iota above sheer cynicism.

But to visit with Jordanians, a nation where Palestinian refugees actually outnumber the Jordanians themselves, hope springs audaciously.

Why?

For one thing, Jordanians have cultivated keen memories. They remember that Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived as neighbors and friends in the Middle East for centuries. They remind one another that past coexistence is prologue to future coexistence.

The Jordanians also have been promoting education. They know that a broadened, enlightened outlook among their children and rising adults provides the best hedge against reactionary behavior.

Jordanians also are doing good exegesis of their holy book, the Quran. Yes, the Quran does recount times when violence has been done with the prophet’s blessing. Then again, our Hebrew and Christian Scriptures report the same. But the Jordanians, and, in particular, the Muslims of the Hashemite line are proclaiming with clarity and force that the teachings of the Quran and the commands of the Quran direct Muslims to honor other cultures, races, and religions. They are teaching their children to love and respect Jews, Christians, and all other persons of all other creeds.

And, Jordanians are proclaiming their message as loudly as they can. Which is a problem. Their loudspeakers don’t traverse the Atlantic Ocean. All they say ends up getting filtered by the western media, whose audience members simply have not had the stomach for any assessment about Palestinian Muslim Arabs that rises an iota above sheer cynicism.            

Hence, their voices fall silent on ears.

They need help to broadcast their message. While few of us Presbyterians own TV or radio news stations, and while few of us publish newspapers, all of us can contact our news outlets and ask them to tell the truth that they have been muting. We also can give witness to the fact that grace is abounding in relationships between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.  Indeed, we can cause sedition by rebelling against the cynical spirit of the age, refusing to participate in such cynicism and even proclaiming that — in the name of the crucified Savior and resurrected Lord — hope wins over cynicism.

Let the sedition begin.

 

—     JHH