Volatile, Yet Momentary Affairs

At the forefront of the news this week is, of course, the Trump administration’s bombing of Iran. The move follows decades of unrest in the Middle East, and in some ways it is a shocking and apparently reckless act of force, while in others it is an unsurprising intervention in a region that’s already endured many such interventions.

It’s been a tangle of conflict and turbulence that has been almost impossible for leaders to see a best way through. And part of the difficulty for the Western mind has been fully appreciating a political and, especially, religious context that so differs from our own. It isn’t even just that our increasingly atheistic society is having trouble understanding a far more religious one; it’s also that our primary religious touchpoint – Christianity – is an entirely different kind of religion. Islam isn’t just one aspect of cultural life for places like Iran. It is, in many ways, a legal religion itself. In other words, its point is to establish itself as the governing force of a given society, imposing its laws and customs as the laws and customs of the day, regardless of the interior conversion of the people it’s ruling. There is no notion of a separation of church and state. Gaining more and more political territory is a matter of religious zeal, and for a territory to be returned to the hands of “infidels” is a great affront.

This isn’t, of course, the religious-cultural experience of Christians. Christianity is a religion of underdogs. “In the world you will have trouble,” the Lord says; “My kingdom is not of this world.” But Islam has been a religion of winners. Allah is a God who brings victory. And the way one knows that Allah is with them is by way of securing victory.

But part of the crisis point for Islam in recent years has been that its winning streak has been met with some bumps. Leaders and regimes who had been venerated as those whom Allah is “with” have been destroyed; territories that once "belonged" to Allah have risen up in religious and political dissent; and Western powers have proved not easily conquerable – in fact, they’ve risked conquering.

…None of which makes for an easily soluble situation in the Middle East. Political convictions are hard enough to negotiate; religious ones, even more so.

So, we can probably expect that the current media blast of breaking news and high level analyses and talking head speculation will continue for some time. And for a state of affairs as complex and volatile as this one – involving nuclear power, no less – it can be easy to feel like this is the situation that the whole world is turning on. That this is the only thing we need to be thinking about. That this is sure to determine the fate of humanity.

But, of course, we know that’s not true. The circumstance requires great concern and intent prayer. But it also doesn’t prevent us from attending to the things that the world actually does turn on, with the same level of care and devotion. “The nations count as a drop in the bucket, as a wisp of cloud on the scales,” the book of Isaiah says. There’s a lot at stake in what’s going on in Iran. But there also isn’t. However important the events of history are momentarily, they’re always secondary. And as one day passes into the next we are still invited to remain faithful and steady in our obligations to prayer and charity and vocation, even with such havoc happening in the background. Indeed, our mind’s gaze is invited to stay fixed, and at ease, and leaning on the promises of that kingdom – that kingdom that does count as far more than a drop in the bucket.