Double Or Nothing

There used to be a terrific program on PBS called the Religion and Ethics Weekly. They covered everything from Pentecostals to the Pope. I’ve seen programs on Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Islam. One time they reported on a rise in Hindu fundamentalism. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have, and so I don’t know how widespread it was, or even whether they were talking about Hindus in the U.S. as well as in India. The ones I heard talking had to be in India, I’m sure... They were talking about the ancient practice of suttee - that is, the custom of having a woman join her husband voluntarily on his funeral pyre after his death. The practice was outlawed by the British government sometime in the 19th century. And, of course, we Christians hear about this sort of thing with utter horror. And we think to ourselves what a good thing the British did in outlawing it, and how grateful the women must have been.

But not so fast. On this particular program the reporter was interviewing a woman - actually several women - who approved of suttee. One woman said, “Our husbands are our Lords. They are like gods to us. I have no life without my husband. It is unthinkable to marry a second time, and why should one wish to go on living?”

At around the time I watched this particular segment, Sallie Barbara Dixon mourned her husband of 57 years, who died that week at 86 of a ruptured aneurism. Walter, one of the finest men I have ever known, was my god-children’s grandfather, my friend Caryl’s father. He was a career naval officer and was buried at Arlington with full military honors. I drove down that day to take care of the children while Caryl looked out for her mom. If this were India 200 years ago, or India today as these women wanted, they’d be saying good bye to Miss Sallie as well. I don’t even want to visualize mentally what that part of the ceremony might look like. But I suspect that in the last few days she has been wishing that she had gone first. She was lost without him for many years after, as he would have been without her.

We all know people like Miss Sallie - men and women alike - who have lived their entire married lives in such unity that they are utterly bereft without their spouses. We know that such grief can be deep and enduring. But I cannot imagine a world-view which says that the proper thing - the right thing - the loving thing - is for widows to be burned alive. And yet these women believed that suttee was right and good.

You probably find it hard to believe. I did, too. But then I started thinking about how immersed we are in Judeo-Christian presuppositions - even if our society is no longer sustained by the faith that generated them. It’s been 2000 years since the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob began spreading his commandments into the Gentile the world. And we’ve forgotten - if we ever knew - how revolutionary it was to value every human life alike as “image of God.”

Most sermons on this famous passage on “The Greatest Commandment” focus on how genuine love for God must necessarily be lived out in loving your neighbor. And that is important. But in our society, where people think that just “being a good person” is enough for salvation, we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that loving your neighbor has to be grounded in love for God.

It all begins with God.

In the beginning ... God. Creation begins with God. Who God is, and how God has created us and the world, is the foundation on which everything else rests. And so of course morality also begins with God. It’s just as much part of the created order as the laws of gravity or thermodynamics. It is because we are made in God’s image that murder is forbidden. It is because God freed Israel from slavery in Egypt that we are to give the weak and oppressed the same respect as the rich and powerful. And I think most people understand that. That is why “compassion” has such a powerful hold on our political imaginations, why it has been so easy for us as a country to fall into the “entitlement” trap... We feel that it is morally right for society to care for the poor, and of course it is. But think: Is society the government? Or is it us, you and me?

Anyway, without God’s law to ground us, all the good feelings and wishful thinking in the world cannot create justice. Communism, in fact, had such a powerful hold on people’s political imaginations precisely because people wanted to create a just society. They saw the rich getting richer by exploiting and mistreating the poor, and believed that if only the state would require everyone to share equally in both the work and the rewards, then everyone could reach their full potential and paradise would be just around the corner. But it didn’t work, because the truth about human nature wasn’t figured into the equation.