The questions raised in my mind and soul by the U.S. intervention in Somalia and proposed intervention in Bosnia are not questions about the use and importance of nonviolence. The violence of colonialism and the Cold War, in those areas as in Iraq, has begotten more violence. We have sown the wind, and people are reaping the whirlwind.
The chaos and violent confusion left behind by the end of the Cold War simply affirm again what we already know: Violence doesn't solve problems, though it may for a while control the results or channel the response.
As a faith-based person committed to nonviolence, I have two sets of questions. The first are practical ones: In a country both naive and ignorant about world history and politics, how can we share an analysis of these events that is comprehensible and makes our position understandable? How can we adapt our nonviolence, which is often simply a method of protest, to join others in active global problem-solving?
Is it possible that the United Nations could escape the domination of the Security Council and become a democratic organization? If so, could that organization sponsor a true peace institute for study and for training of nonviolent workers? Could those people then become a peace army that could intervene at the request of the United Nations in world situations?
Is it possible to imagine a U.S. mentality so changed that we would give up our self-assumed responsibility for maintaining order in the world -- particularly when that "order" is our own profit? How could peace activists go about inviting and building such a global change?
To ask that set of questions is to become aware of deeper questions. Is it possible to hope? In what do we put our faith? Do we still have the ability to dream, to give our hearts to the dream, to keep going?
PERHAPS OUR willingness to rely on military intervention comes partly from our bewilderment in the face of all these complex struggles, with the urgency of human life being taken every day. We don't know what to propose that will be more salvific, and isn't something better than nothing?
Dr. King used to say that "the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I find the deep question in my own soul: Is that true?
From the civil rights movement through current nonviolent efforts, we've been part of heart-stopping triumphs and then watched as they were swallowed up in conflict and disillusion or subverted by the powers-that-be. I find in myself a tendency to discount what has been achieved because there is so much still to be done. Do I really have the energy, the heart, the hope to reimagine the world and to venture again on journeys that will be difficult, obscure, misunderstood? Can I bear trying again, being wrong, changing, learning, growing, sacrificing?
In my life the question is not so much what alternatives I can propose to military intervention in Somalia or Bosnia -- or Iraq -- but do I continue to put my faith in those gospel teachings that have always fired me? Do I believe that I'm both called and commanded to love neighbor and enemy? Do I believe that my life and my world are ultimately in God's hands, and that I can trust those hands? If I still believe that, then my answers to political questions will assume those principles, and I will have to invent new ways to live them that make them real in this world today.
The gospel has not changed. We're still called to serve and nurture our sisters and brothers, to give our lives, never to take life. Do we still respond with all our hearts to that call? I wonder where it will take us!
Shelley Douglass was a Sojourners contributing editor and a nonviolent organizer in Birmingham, Alabama when this article appeared.
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