According to news reports, Sunday was the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Yesterday I read a 1985 speech given by George Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain of the Enola Gay’s airmen. He had initially blessed the attack. Yet after hearing from his troops of the living dead staggering around the city, seared flesh hanging from their bones, he became convinced that this could never be compatible with Jesus’ message of peace. He later became a pacifist and peace advocate until his death in 1992, a man who challenged the church to return to its early history of nonviolence in the face of political power.

Perhaps ignorance truly is bliss. Because when you truly know, when you begin to see something from the side of the other, you begin to see the blood on your own hands. There are people who will tell you that they have an entirely clean conscience about the world and their own lives. Those people haven’t seen the real world, in my opinion. They don’t know how we’re all part of it, from the bombings we bless to the places we shop to the people we yell at in the workplace. We constantly engage in devaluing the lives of others, whether we really intend to or not.

An example—yesterday David started his new job with General Electric’s aircraft division in Boston, building the casings for turbo-prop jet engines. I’ll tell you right now that I’m proud of him. It is a great job, with a great future. As someone who spends a lot of time in the air traveling, it amazes me to think that David has the ability to design and produce those amazing machines. I can write about them, fuel the imagination with my words, but he can actually create something that will improve life for people around the world. It is a different calling than mine, but one with amazing potential for good.

Some of you might remember that I went to Jerusalem over a year ago for a conference on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There I met many Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, who were suffering because of the continued military presence of the state of Israel on land promised to them by United Nations resolutions. The people I met didn’t want to drive Israel into the sea—they just wanted an end to the checkpoints, an end to the house demolitions, an end to the missile attacks and firefights in their neighborhoods. They wanted peace with their neighbors, a peace that they felt the current Israeli government, not Israelis themselves, largely prevented by their policies.

So when I heard that activists were calling the Presbyterian Church (USA) to look into divesting itself from General Electric stock over the Israel/Palestine issue, I felt compelled to know more. A quick Google search told me that GE’s aircraft division, in addition to their commercial operations, also produces and sells engines to the Israeli military for their Apache helicopters. In fact, GE once received an award from the Israeli government for 50 years of partnership, largely a result of its military contracts.

Does David want to aid in destroying the lives of Palestinians with his God-given talents? Of course not. And if I believe that God opened the door for David to take this opportunity, that it truly was a case of calling, how can God put one of God’s chosen in a position ethically contrary to God’s will? Particularly if David does end up designing Apache helicopter engines that will be used against Palestinian civilians? What does God call him to do? What does God call me to do? What love does God offer all of us in the face of sins we don’t mean to commit?

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” --Romans 3:23-24

Kelsey

PS—I found out last night that the PC(USA) has released the list of companies that we will begin “progressive engagement” talks with regarding Israel/Palestine at www.pcusa.org/mrti/actions.htm. GE is currently not on that list. David also tells me that he won’t be working on GE’s military engine design, so that is a relief.