Today I was invited to speak to a Seniors group about the importance of getting involved with the community. I encouraged them by telling them that apart from performing various tasks with different agencies, volunteering can also be a way that they can establish new friendships in the community and sharing their valuable life experiences. Many of the seniors live lonely and isolated lives and I tried to encourage them to never think they have nothing worth contributing.
I concluded my speech by sharing this photograph, which I called “Waiting”. I shared with them that when I look at this photograph, the tree looks so lonely. It was as if he is standing alone, staring at the barrenness of winter, just standing there, waiting…but not even sure what he is waiting for. But then I told them to look closely at the tree, (you can’t see it very well here). If you look closely, you will actually see that even though the tree looks lifeless and bare, on the branches there are actually small buds…quiet signs of new life.
After the talk, the lady who was in charge of the program came up to me and shared with me her own experiences and struggles in life. She thanked me for the words and the picture and said she was encouraged to “keep waiting”. She wasn’t even supposed to be there today, but had to cover for another colleague who had been transferred to another job. I couldn’t help but think that perhaps she was “meant to be there”. Even though she was not religious…perhaps Someone was looking out for her just the same…
That night, my wife shared with me a funeral service she attended during the day. The minister spoke from Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd…” The first thing the minister said was “This psalm tells us that the Lord is our shepherd. But he is not everybody’s shepherd. He is only shepherd to those who are Christians…”
Today I looked at the work of an award winning photographer who “specializes” in war photography. In one collection of images he captured the brutal execution of a government soldier in the midst of the conflict in Burma, home of the longest running civil war on the planet.
The man who carried out the execution was an 18 year old young man who had joined a guerrilla army that was waging war against the government. Listen to the way his (brief) life was described by the photographer:
“when he was 12 years old, Burmese government troops came into his village and killed his mother and father right in front of him… they then bashed him in the head with a rifle butt and left him for dead… the boy survived this ordeal, but suffered the loss of his right eye – and the loss of his childhood… by the time I photographed the executions, he was 18 and a member of a special commando unit… his superior officer told me that the young man often had to be restrained after an engagement with government troops, to keep him from sneaking back to the corpses and eating body parts… when he carried out the executions, it was unimaginably savage and shocking – much of the worst of it I did not capture on film… he was oblivious to the horror, lost in a haze of hate and revenge… each stab of the blade was a way to get back for the loss of his parents, his eye, his childhood… A few months later, this same young man – who had both endured and caused so much suffering, was dead at 18, killed in a clash with government troops…”
When I looked at the images, two thoughts came to mind: First, from a photographer’s eyes I felt as though the photographs gave voice to a person who had no voice, one whom the world had “left for dead”. It fueled my conviction that art is important, because it helps the world to see the unseen and hear the voices of the muted. Secondly, as a person of faith, I asked “Does the brand of “Christianity” we preach and practice make any sense in that dark corner of the world?” How do we take our favorite lenses of “Right” and “Wrong” and view what was going on in the images?
As Christians, we have been conditioned to shrug our shoulders and say “That’s a result of sin.” We have developed an eschatology that conveniently offloads our moral responsibilites in the present by saying, effectively, “God will fix everything one day“. We have built an entire religion on teaching people how to get to heaven one day in the future. But what about the present? What do we have to offer to the 18 year old commando, and others like him?
More and more, I have come to understand that the Bible looks at sin from a historical, generational, communal, macro and global perspective rather than simply as a list of thou-shalt-not-do’s. Again, from a photograher’s eyes, that means when I look at an image depicting the evils of the world, whether it is a brutal act of terrorism across the oceans or an episode of violence here on my streets, the question to ask is “Where is my hand in this?” I have learned that if we look carefully and thoughtfully enough, it’s always there. Perhaps that’s what Jesus meant when He said to those looking at the woman caught in sin: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
For those who are interested in seeing the work of the photographer mentioned, go to:
(Warning: some images contain graphic violence)
