I had wanted to move on this week from prophetic journalism to something else as a subject for this commentary, but the world is having too many issues right now. As the Australian band Midnight Oil sang in a lovely protest song from the 1980s, “How do we sleep while our beds are burning?” In Palestine, Israel and Ukraine, a lot more than beds are burning right now – not to mention the political fires in the United States, the human rights fires in Iran and China and so many other places, and, well, the apparent absence of any kind of fire in the United Nations.
When flames are everywhere, the source of the fire may not be obvious, but there are hints. The journalist and historian Anne Applebaum wrote an interesting piece in The Atlantic after Hamas’s attack on Israel, about the fading of law as a standard for international behavior. Called “There are no rules,” the article points out that nations in the past – France in Algeria, Britain in Northern Ireland, the US in Iraq – were ashamed when confronted with their own hypocrisy in how they sometimes treated those with whom they fought. In those days, international law was something to be respected, at least in principle.
But shame seems to have lost its cachet. As Applebaum explains,
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli civilians are both blatant rejections of that rules-based world order, and they herald something new. Both aggressors have deployed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed about this at all.”
Applebaum fears that “we are heading into an era when there is no order, rules-based or otherwise, at all.”
Whether or not you agree with her gloomy assessment, you have to admit there are governments, groups and plenty of individuals who are not interested in being held back by rules or laws at all. How is the more measured and perceptive part of the world going to respond? We can’t just retreat into fatalism or complacency or some kind of we’re-better-than-that false pride. Safety will not come from ignoring the obvious or just from the passage of time, and it seems hopeless to expect some kind of new leadership to save the day.
The need is much more basic: We need to plant a sense of morality more widely and firmly in human thought. If you’re tempted to say that that’s many bridges too far, that we should take care of the crises before we get into the long-term stuff, then when exactly do you think we should start addressing the root cause of all this – the belief that it’s possible to flaunt moral laws with impunity?
So let’s think big. Where in your life are you battling right now with selfishness, dishonesty, greed, lust, hatred – the whole lot of twisted thoughts that can seem so satisfying but that often (always?) lead to someone, maybe a lot of people, including ourselves, getting hurt. There’s a religious element to this, certainly, but religion is there for a reason, and it makes our task in trying to help the world stay afloat kind of a holy war.
What does this mean in practice? It means giving attention to morality in everything we say and do, from the encounter in the street to the assessment of breaking news. Help plant moral law and action in the world by establishing it in daily life. Making moral law our own standard, keeping alert to times when we can course-correct and be a little more kind or honest or humble, helps build immunity in the community and in ourselves to hate and fear, cruelty and arrogance. And it helps general human thought to settle down.
My intention is not to preach here, but the world is asking this stuff of us. Make sincere efforts to obey the moral laws, even, especially, the ones you find hardest to adhere to. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go into the world knowing, as the Apostle Paul put it, “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Fight the good fight on the side of morality. It’s the most effective way to defend the rule of law.
Yes and thanks. Beautiful said.
Thank you Gregor. I appreciate having you as a reader.