Obama’s Nobel War speech: What if?

jarrodmckenna

Keep watching Mark Van’s “Jesus Manifesto” for the unedited cut but in the mean time,

Over at Jim Wallis blog God’s Politics I’ve been asking “What if” Obama took a different direction at Oslo

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaM94mieeLg]

click on the text to read full article and view Cornel West video:

This got me thinking, “What if.” What if instead of Reinhold Niebuhr being Obama’s favorite theologian, it were Martin King, Dorothy Day, or John Yoder? What if Obama, like Gandhi and King, looked to Jesus’ example not as an ideal but as a practical program for transformation? What if Obama had made a study of the few places nonviolence was tried against Hitler (like in Denmark) and successfully halted Hitler’s armies and saved the lives of 7,000 Jews? What if instead of merely quoting the Balkans, Obama made a real study of the nonviolent movement “Otpor!” that brought down Slobodan Milosevic? What if Obama fought terrorism by taking the billions in his war budget (which exceeds that of George W. Bush), and invested it in grassroots community development, health care, and education in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq (and at home)? What if Obama saw what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the love ethic of Jesus” as the pragmatic and realistic way forward? What if a head of state could risk being guided by Christ’s example embodied by Gandhi and King?

“I will combat it by humble love.”

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Jarrod McKenna

Jarrod McKenna’s Wednesday’s with Gandhi:

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.” –Mohandas Gandhi

I’m off to Indonesia this Friday (forgive me my carbon debts) to the Historic Peace Church Gathering on behalf of AAANZ and Quakers (It will be a bunch of very respectable, intelegent and impressive people from around the world… and this dreadlocked kid from Perth!). So this will be my last ‘Wednesday with Gandhi’ for the year. It’s funny I set out to write about a bunch of stuff that I didn’t get round to but I trust the Spirit will take what I have done and use it to invite and inspire people to know in deeper ways for themselves this Jesus that Gandhi said was the greatest practitioner of nonviolence in history, central to his revolution in India, and the one through whom, I believe, God’s dream for creation has broken into history.

I thought I’d end by letting you in on a little of the life of our community. Us Peace Tree mob can say with our hero Dorothy Day “We have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” As a community we seek to ‘serve in silence’ and not make a big deal of what we do but since the gang fights and the subsequent killing in the street behind ours was so public and made the news overseas, we thought we’d let our light shine in the hope that it doesn’t glorify us but the God who is transforming our world not through force but through a love seen fully in Jesus.

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