Faith Works 9-23-17
Jeff Gill
A place that is more than a place
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Already it has been an occasion for some interesting conversations as the first episodes of Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's "The Vietnam War" have aired on PBS (It continues through Thursday, Sept. 28, then will re-air on a weekly basis through Oct. and Nov.). With those who remembered it all too well, and those who are just now coming to realizations about how and why that "land war in Asia" had the impact on our country that it did . . . and in so many ways, didn't, as we have repeated what seem to have been stark, unmistakable lessons in our national affairs.
I was in 7th grade when the draft ended; I was in 9th grade when Saigon fell and the truth that we had lost in Vietnam became an unmistakable national reality. I went through grade school with maps of that elongated nation on classroom walls, with those place names so oddly accented in the air and on our lips, and into junior high with the POW bracelets and the awkward memorial services for the dead and the protests all very nearby. There was an assumption in the environment that many of us (the boys, at least) would soon be in the service, and most would see that place across the Pacific at one point or another.
And then, it was gone. For those of us who were too young to have been caught up directly in it all, it was an odd and resonant silence. Vietnam became an idea, an issue, a cause but not a place or a people. Other than the occasional flurry of MIA debate, it was not a location that the USA had anything to do with, but a word we often mouthed.
Vietnam is not back with us, because it never left: we're still working at seeing the nation, her people, and our ambivalent relationship with her, with honesty and accuracy. I have spoken to a dozen or more people who have been there in the last decade or more, and they all speak with tones of wonder about the kindness, good cheer, and welcome the Vietnamese people offer to visiting Americans. I look forward to the last few episodes of the PBS program, in hopes that Burns & Novick help us understand what that new relationship does and can mean, as we try to figure out as a nation what our relationship to global conflicts should be to get to such a place with other countries without going through the pain we have received, and inflicted, in Vietnam already and in other drier and dustier spots around the world.
What stands out to me in the initial stages of the re-told story is how one religious minority tried to dominate another religious majority, and where the pent-up frustrations turned to violence. Perhaps even more sharply, I noticed how our own American ignorance of history and religious community values not our own led our leadership to blindly take the side of the oppressive minority.
Which we did again in Iraq, and which has hobbled our ability to figure out our own national interests nearby in Syria and Lebanon. It's like we just have trouble learning this lesson.
And this is also why, as a committed Christian and leader in my own religious community, I get so incredibly frustrated when people resist learning about other faiths and different cultures. Pluralism is not universalism, let alone relativism; we can honor and value the truths we hold dear, but understand better how other beliefs function in their own contexts.
To be fair, there's often anxiety around the idea that pluralism is being presented as an end in itself, that all views are relative, and that to understand is to accept. I think that mature believers can handle new ideas and different faiths, but it's easiest to just avoid the whole thing and sit in a warm bath of the familiar, and call everything outside of your door "different" and therefore strange.
That's how we go astray, I believe. Not all differences are equally . . .different. That's true geopolitically, and ecumenically, too. We can compare, and contrast, and advocate, and listen. If our faith is so shallow, so fragile, that learning how other believers think will damage our own thoughts, they weren't all that robust to begin with.
Blessings to all who served in Vietnam, and may they and our entire nation be blessed by this time of reflection.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's curious to hear what any recent visitors to Vietnam have learned. Tell him what you heard there at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
