Against All Odds

I remember reading an interview with Edward Teller, proud father of the H-bomb, in which he ridiculed the logic of a disarmament movement, saying it made as much sense as clamoring to freeze or reverse time itself. His glib, self-styled realism is thin disguise for a desperate sense of historical inevitability. The bomb is glorified with a metaphysical birthright: the one which is and so forever shall be.

Some, in the service of community and the disarmament movement, make it their business to read diligently the scientific trade journals and the reams of congressional testimony. They trace technological timelines, charting the trends and calculating the point-of-no-return date for first-strike capability. They publish dire warnings, count the days and machines, and accordingly set the hands of the infernal clock closer to midnight. Some of them, I know, suffer dark moods and are subject to seizures of deep depression.

Me too. Sometimes that clock hand goes to my heart like a cold, sharp knife, taking away my breath and, momentarily, paralyzing me. I want to weep, but often cannot. I want to run or sleep, and sometimes do.

Nevertheless (let my thoughts turn on that word) I take renewed heart and hope. Here's why. History is more than meets the eye, far more than projectable trends. God, against all odds, has gotten into the mix and is at work, mostly hidden and underground, but often breaking out unexpectedly. So says the biblical witness. And I am willing to stake my life on such good news.

One evidence of these "things not seen" is the freedom that people declare, first of all in their own hearts, from these weapons. It is a freedom (by grace) that breaks the death grip. What a multitude of forms it takes! It finds expression in bread and wine, tax forms, sermons and leaflets, hammers, acts of humor or memory or imagination, simple vows of fidelity, kitchen table conversations, letters of resignation, silent prayer vigils, poems and tears, lines crossed, walked, or sat upon, diligent study and research, courtroom testimony, and more. These are gestures, modest and costly, that nourish one another. I honestly believe that history turns on stuff like this.

Moreover, I am blessed, as more and more of us are, to live in a community where such acts of freedom are becoming commonplace. I suspect, from their timing and accumulation, that these acts appear to be a great, global conspiracy. In a way they are.

But—and this is what I like most—even if these actions were never to add up to some wide effectiveness of the Spirit, my friends would still do it all, declare it all, live it all, nevertheless. That is simply who they are and who they yet shall be. They are amazing, and I love them.

Let me add a further amazement. Some of these folks, who are neither naive about the cataclysmic drift nor prone to domesticated escapism, are having children. I think about some of them now: Anna, Noah, Nathan, Andrew, Emily, David, Anne, and more on the way. They are received in divine trust and offered as human promise. They are signs alive. The biblical begats capture my attention anew.

A community against the odds is being called forth, a community with God's freedom, and with as many (eventually) as the stars of heaven. People are getting born. Maybe me too.

Bill Kellermann, a Sojourners contributing editor, was a United Methodist minister in Detroit, Michigan when this article appeared.