The Friday world of the Middle East at Easter

Violence begets violence in a zero sum world.

Todd Deatherage

Todd is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Telos Group. It forms communities of American peacemakers across lines of difference and conflict, including Israel/Palestine.

A family look at the concrete shell and remains of a bombed building.

Christian Aid.

What do the events of Holy Week and Easter---these seminal events in Christianity-- have to say in a time of slaughter and now starvation in the Middle East? The closer we get to Easter Sunday, the most sacred day in Christianity, the more I’ve wrestled with that question.

I’m neither Palestinian nor Israeli, and so my connection to the historic tragedy continuing to unfold is not as visceral or as obvious as some. But as an American and a Christian, I’m deeply bound up in all of this. The realization of my own implication led me back in 2009 to co-found a nonprofit whose mission is to help Americans better understand the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the American role in it, and to learn about the difficult work of honest peacemaking. These past five months are a nightmare I can’t wake up from, and of course they’re more than a nightmare for the people in the south of Israel and the West Bank, and they’re an absolute hell on earth for the people in Gaza today.

For more than 20 years I’ve lived in a set of deep relationships with both Palestinians and Israelis. The horror and barbarity of the Hamas attacks on October 7th and the horror and devastation of the slaughter and starvation taking place unabated in Gaza even this Holy Week have left me begging God to intervene and begging our leaders to do whatever we can to stop the madness.

Sometimes there’s a lot more of the darkness of Thursday and Friday than the joy and light of Easter Sunday morning.

In most of the 65 trips I’ve led to the Holy Land over the years, after we’ve had our heart broken by the stories we’ve heard and the experiences we’ve shared with people on all sides, we visit the place on the Mount of Olives looking at the Old City of Jerusalem where Jesus stopped, looked at the city, and wept. It is here, just as he entered what we call his Passion Week, that he said “Jerusalem, Jerusalem if only you’d known the things that make for peace.” If only you’d known. If only we’d known. If only we knew.

I need this story to be in the Bible. Many times I’ve had to fall back on Jesus weeping for the mess we’ve made of our lives, the way we allow our fears and our hatreds or our indifference to guide how we treat our neighbors, how often we use violence and power to deny the way they too bear the image of God.

This is one of those times. The worst of those times in all the years I’ve been involved in Israel and Palestine. I’ve found myself weeping privately, in conversations, and sometimes in public places. And I’ve spent so much time asking God to intervene. To comfort the terrorized and afraid, to feed the starving, to silence the guns of war, to rescue and deliver those who are dying.

And the answer I keep getting has felt like silence. Deafening silence.

At times like this, the Christian life feels like a Thursday night in a garden when your friends can't’ stay awake to help you and even God is not answering your prayer. Or it feels like a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem when all hope has died and you can’t imagine how the world will ever be better. Sometimes there’s a lot more of the darkness of Thursday and Friday than the joy and light of Easter Sunday morning.

The work of justice and mercy make for peace. Revenge and violence do not.

But Lent and Holy Week have given me another answer, beyond God’s silence--the reminder that the people in Israel and In Gaza, even those this very night who are displaced and starving, are not alone. God is with them. And he weeps for them. And he weeps for us. If only we knew the things that make for peace. If only we knew how to love God and to love our neighbor and to love our enemies. If only we knew the limits of violence to achieve good ends. If only we knew the connection between peace and justice.

And the fullness of this Holy Week also brings me to this reminder that if God does not seem active maybe it’s because we are not listening to his call. My friend Bill Haley says this:

“The actual invitation of the Christian faith is not just to believe in Jesus or be like Jesus or tell others about Jesus (as right as these thing are), but actually to be the presence of Jesus in the world, our hands his hands, our feet his feet, our heart his heart, our bodies his very body... By this does the reality of the risen, living Jesus continue to be displayed, visibly and tangibly, in and around the world (and yours and mine), day after day.”

To do this we first seek to know the things that make for peace (and equally important is to know the things that don’t make for peace). The work of justice and mercy make for peace. Revenge and violence do not. The embrace of our mutuality and interconnectedness make for peace. Tribalism and dehumanization of our neighbors do not. Justice and respect make for peace. Systems of domination and ideologies of hatred do not. Respect for the sacredness of life and the inherent dignity of all as made in the image of God make for peace. Brutality, murder, and starvation do not. Acts of love and service make for peace. Fear and self-centeredness do not.

The Friday world is zero sum. Justice and peace are separate things. Some lives are more important than others.

In a Good Friday world, to live as if these “things that make for peace” are actually true is a costly endeavor. Jesus paid with his life. Others like Martin Luther King have also. For most of us, it may just be the way our reputation suffers, or how certain relationships are strained. There may be some economic cost or sacrifice of our time and attention required. But if it says anything, Holy Week teaches us that incarnational living is costly. Reconciliation comes at a price. The crucifixion wasn’t just something that happened to Jesus on the way to resurrection. It is central to it.

And yet, believers in Jesus know that Holy Week and the shame, humiliation, brutality and injustice of the crucifixion were not the last word. To borrow from the legendary Black preacher S.M. Lockridge, we live in a Friday world, but we know that Sunday’s coming.

In a world of Fridays, violence begets violence. The Friday world is zero sum. Justice and peace are separate things. Some lives are more important than others. There is minimal cost to looking away from people who are hungry and imprisoned. Religion is used to baptize injustice. We live in a Friday world. But we are Sunday people. And we are called to live as best we can as reminders that in a Sunday world we are responsible for what we know, responsible to each other, and responsible before God. To quote Dr. King again, in a Sunday world, "darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Sunday people are Easter people. And Easter people have a mandate to live as peacemakers in a world riven by conflict. To be purveyors of light and hope in a time of devastation and despair. Frederick Douglass said “I prayed for freedom for 20 years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” As we pray for peace, and we have to be people who pray for peace, let us also be agents of God’s peace. Let us be those incarnational Easter people who pray for peace with our legs. Let us do the urgent work for a lasting ceasefire, for a release of all hostages, and for food for hungry people. And when the guns are silenced and the hungry are at last being fed and the wounded and traumatized are given space to heal, then the greater work begins. Let us learn the lessons of how we got here and let us commit ourselves to a different path forward, one grounded in the sacred dignity of all the people of the land, Palestinians and Israelis alike. Let us support all those who seek justice and peace and security through the path of mutual flourishing. These are the things that make for peace.

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Mental Health

Podcasts

14 October 2024

4 min read

What all those BetterHelp ads say about ourselves

Podcasting and therapy alike scratch our itch to be inquisitive about things, even our own inner worlds.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Associate Minister at Holy Trinity Clapham, London.

A podcaster speaks into a mic before a screen.

Soundtrap on Unsplash.

There's one dominion Amazon hasn't conquered. Jeff Bezos famously chose his company's name, in part, because it's the largest river in the world and he wanted to create the world's largest bookstore. And Amazon has flooded the market. But as the world of podcasting is taking over our commutes and leisure time, Amazon isn't taking it over. That top spot belongs to BetterHelp.

Now that I've mentioned it, you probably know what I'm referring to: the ubiquitous ads offering online therapy, often reassuringly read by the podcast hosts themselves. Although Amazon is the second largest ad buyer on podcasts, BetterHelp spends more. A lot more. In the US, BetterHelp spent $22million in the second quarter of this year, followed by Amazon with $13million. . BetterHelp has pretty much been the top spender on podcasts Clearly, BetterHelp thinks the demand for therapy is right up there with the convenience of getting stuff delivered to your door.

The message of online therapy, and the medium of podcasts makes for a neat match. It seems our wants and needs are more and more solo endeavours. Our desire for entertainment and help are becoming something we access alone, behind headphones and closed doors.

Overhearing people talking about their therapist in a metropolitan café is now as as common as the extra-hot flat whites themselves.

I was stunned when I heard recently that Saturday Night Live celebrated fifty years on TV. It was a reminder of an age when families and friends would diarise prime-time weekend entertainment together in front of the glow of the screen. But common experiences are diminishing. Harvard fellow Flynn Coleman highlights that the third spaces where we have customarily congregated, found community, and ourselves, are vanishing.

She is, of course, right. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the damage our atomised online worlds have created. But where the CDC health report last year tragically detailed the harm social media causes teenage girls, the online space is not without hope. Krish Kandiah writes, 'Instead of demonising new technology as the problem, perhaps we need to find ways to turn it into the solution.'The online world isn't going away, so it must be at least part of the solution. Teletherapy is now available on the NHS, and while there are questions over the affordability and availability of online mental health care, and I cannot vouch for BetterHelp, making therapy more accessible by taking it online plays an important part in winning the battle of declining mental health.

Far from an echo chamber, an online therapist can challenge presumptions at right angles and enable clients to access worlds they previously only dreamed of. And, any good therapist wouldn't encourage you to isolate yourself. We still need community.

Therapy isn't as much a solo endeavour as we might first think. Of course, the therapeutic relationship itself is between two people, however objective one party might be. And just as the old adage goes, 'a problem shared is a problem halved', overhearing people talking about their therapist in a metropolitan café is now as as common as the extra-hot flat whites themselves. Therapy is losing its stigma, and the benefits of it are shared just as we want to share a podcast that's stimulated or amused us.

That elusive arrival at contentment, of happiness, of satisfaction is quite the claim for an online service provider to make.

Some things are sacred, though. James Marriott recently argued in The Times that the burden on those in the public spotlight to overshare isn't always helpful. How, where and with whom we share our inner thoughts matters. The Christian tradition sees that growth happens through relationship, rather than through broadcasting. Spanish mystic St Teresa of Avila wrote almost half a millennia ago about a journey inward, inside of ourselves to a space where only God dwells, if we choose to let him enter. On that journey, she wrote ‘It is a great advantage for us to be able to consult someone who knows us, so that we may learn to know ourselves.’

On that journey of self-knowledge, the online world can enhance our lives, but not replace it. Just as The Rest is History podcast can give you details about ‘greatest monkeys' that your friend can't, specialist help from an online therapist will help you in ways friends won't. But BetterHelp wants to be your friend. The main heading on their website mimics what we've probably all heard from someone we know: 'You deserve to be happy'. They've learnt from the Steve Jobs school of marketing: don't sell the product or service; sell how it will make them feel. That elusive arrival at contentment, of happiness, of satisfaction is quite the claim for an online service provider to make.

Podcasting and therapy alike scratch our itch to be inquisitive about things, even our own inner worlds. Where podcasting has challenged the old powers that sought to control the flow of information, we also do well to listen to external expert help. In this age, the online stream can flow information to us which, like the Amazon, might overwhelm us. It’s worth us asking: is there an external source of even better help available? One that will overwhelm us too – but instead overwhelm with the love we crave in our deepest selves?