This is one of the most powerful movies I have seen in recent years. Ben Affleck and Samuel Jackson play two men who are both decent and flawed. In short, they are very much like you and me and everybody else. Both are on their way to important appointments for which they cannot afford to be late. They have a fender-bender. After the accident, they are both courteous and inquire of the other’s welfare. Doyle Gipson (Jackson) wants to “do it right” and exchange insurance cards. The lawyer in the other car, Gavin Banek (Affleck), doesn’t have time for all that and offers Gipson a blank check (which he refuses) and drives off leaving him stranded with a disabled car. In his haste, Banek has dropped some important papers that Gipson retrieves. Their run-in results in Gipson losing his family and Banek facing the loss of a lot of money if he can’t get his papers back.

For the rest of the day, the men are locked in a struggle of strike and counterstrike. Both men are wronged and wrong. Ultimately, both men don’t just have to face one another but themselves. Each has to come to grips with his own values and his own life. This is not a pleasant experience.

All of this happens on Good Friday. At one point Banek asks, “What’s good about it?”

Ah, there’s the rub! The film is not an explicitly religious film, although Banek asks the above mentioned question and even has a conversation with a priest in a church to which he has ducked in hopes of finding some “meaning”. But the question of Good Friday hangs all over the film. How can a world populated with seemingly decent people be so filled with hatred and violence and suffering. Despite the best intentions (or at least pretty good ones) the world has gone terribly wrong. It is the question which confronts the world on Good Friday, on September 11, with the D.C. area sniper, and the seemingly endless struggle in the Middle East. For most of the film (and indeed as we face the real world), things just seem to get more and more hopeless. Solutions are offered but found empty. (There’s a great scene in which Banek interviews a prospective lawyer for his firm. The interviewee indicates that he wants to be a lawyer because he views the “law” as the ultimate hope in saving humanity. Banek, who is all too familiar with lawyers and the law, laughs derisively and sadly.

But the movie does not end in despair. Both men’s souls and values are stripped bare. Each comes face to face with himself. Salvation (not easily or cheaply) comes when both men are scared more by themselves than the other guy. Each recognizes that the road he is on is leading him to destruction. They recognize that their only hope is in “changing lanes.” Of course, the Bible’s word for that is “repent.” The men found that their salvation lay not in the law of “tit for tat” and that brand of justice, but in repentance and mercy. Our world, and you and I, need that message as much now as on Good Friday. Indeed, that is the message of Good Friday.

 
©2002 C. David Hess

(I thought it would be helpful to share and expand in this column some thoughts I related in a recent sermon. In the sermon, I specifically addressed a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq. My argument then and here is against the claimed right of any individual nation to make a unilateral pre-emptive attack on another nation. The issue of whether to invade Iraq as it relates to the enforcement of international agreements and law is a separate matter. The new U.S. policy is a broad one and is not limited to any one nation.)

The United States government has announced a new policy of “pre-emptive” military strikes against “emerging threats before they are fully formed.” We will not wait until our enemies strike first. I cannot overemphasize the shift this represents.

The debate among Christians (and within ourselves as individual Christians) in regards to war has always involved the tension between the Mosaic law, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and the command of Christ to move beyond the law of Moses, and “turn the other cheek” and “return good for evil.”

To claim a right to “hit first” is not only contrary to the teaching of Christ but to the law of Moses. Indeed, it is a return to the law of the jungle. What if every nation claimed such a right? What kind of world would we live in? This is not a prescription for greater security but for even more chaos and insecurity.

Of course, we are proposing such a change because we are afraid. This is understandable, but let us not let our fear lead us into foolish actions that will only make us more insecure.

The Bible is right when it says, “Woe to those...who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the LORD .” (Isaiah 31:1)

Military might cannot guarantee our security. Certainly we must know that. There has never been a nation in the history of the world with military might as great as ours. Indeed, we spend more on military might than the next fifteen nationscombined. With all our might we are still vulnerable and afraid.

A very real danger is that our policy of eliminating “rogue nations” by striking first will only cause others to cast off all restraint and to create and inspire more terrorists. And even if we are somehow successful in eliminating all weapons of mass destruction in the hands of all potential evildoers, who needs weapons of mass destruction? The destruction of 9/11 was caused by 19 hate filled men armed only with box cutters. We will not be able to destroy all hate filled men nor keep box cutters out of their hands.

In the past, while I have always recognized the need of law and of the exercise of force for the restraint of evil, I also have always recognized its limitations and its hopelessness as an ultimate solution. As Gandhi said, “An eye for eye leaves the whole world blind.” It shows to what a depth we have fallen when I find myself wishing for the “good old days” of “eye for eye.”

 ©2002 C. David Hess