No Time for Yawning

We live in a society of unconfessed despair. Very few of us need to be convinced that nuclear war easily could be our future and that, should it happen, if we didn't die in the first few seconds, we would wish we had.

But a great many people are silent about this appalling, numbing prospect, and struggle not to give it thought. Imagining the death of everyone you love and the destruction of everything you find wonderful—that kind of meditation is self-inflicted torture. For a great many people, any kind of protest seems absurd and years or decades too late. It is as if we were watching a bomb that is already falling, but in very slow motion. No picket sign will break its fall.

Study after study confirms this: the great majority of people are waiting for World War III. Insofar as the peace movement spends its energies trying to convince people that such a war could happen, it is wasting its time. The problem we face isn't ignorance. It's despair. We generally bear it as politely, and as secretly, as possible.

For some, World War III has turned God into a kind of Hitler in the sky. Others don't bother to discover or explore their creative energies: why build a house that will be burned next week? Still others are filled with rage, and take it out on the world with their own small acts of violence and vandalism: if heads of state can destroy cities, I can destroy at least a piece of the city.

In fact World War III has been blasting away at our lives for a long time. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world without weapons of mass destruction, a world not awaiting holocaust. Just try to imagine some of the things you would do, choices you might make. Imagine holding a newborn child in your arms without dread of what the future may hold for the skin and eyes and fingers of that child—something I think about often since our daughter, Anne, was born last May.

It's important to know that the effects of World War III on our daily lives are not necessarily destructive. A great many people are more aware than ever that God really does love the world and isn't a torturer or a terrorist. And they know that Jesus, when he looked at Jerusalem from the distance, didn't take grim satisfaction in its impending destruction, but wept and said: "Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace!" (Luke 19:42). Perhaps in no other generation have so many people been trying to learn the things that make for peace.

Nothing livens one up like the possibility of untimely death. It really is an interesting time to be alive, after all. Whatever is painful about the time we live in, it isn't a time of yawning. Whatever we die of, it won't be boredom.

What about the work of peacemaking? If we don't need to convince people that we're all standing on top of bombs, what do we need to do? The simplest answer is: to open a way of hope. Realize that this first requires admitting that hope isn't cheap. We need to admit the despair we struggle with ourselves and not pretend it isn't there. Realize that the despair touching your life is also touching the person you are talking to. You are not the only one living very close to tears. Talk about it. Confess it. The odd thing is, the despair that frightens us so much can also become part of the glue that holds us all together, across every border and division.

Please notice that we aren't dead yet. We could have died yesterday, or in 1963. Yes, we could die tomorrow, or in ten minutes. But in fact, just now, we are alive. And some marvelous things are happening this very moment.

Jim Forest was general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and a Sojourners contributing editor when this article appeared.