My last three columns

Learn to share the road on life's highway

In 1991, the term road rage wasn't widely used, but the man tailgating me through work traffic on Interstate 99 south of Sacramento, Calif., early that year could have been the prototype.

In thick traffic that left little room for weavers, we were close enough to exchange glances in my rearview mirror. I could see his reddened complexion, and he could read the smirk on my face as I gloated over my strategic position ahead of him.

When traffic finally allowed me to move into the right lane, I displayed an upturned palm that invited His Excellency to proceed. But appeasement was too little, too late.

He initiated aggressive movements, dropping back and speeding past and changing lanes. I answered his vulgar hand signals with moronic smiles and have-a-nice-day waves until he flashed a doubled fist, suggesting a roadside fight.

With evasive maneuvers exhausted, I finally led our rage parade onto the highway's shoulder hoping to sucker him into exiting his pickup. With him afoot, my plan was to floor my Hyundai to escape velocity.
I knew this was a bad plan when I noticed he was searching for something behind his seat.

Being a smart aleck to a danger stranger is wrong, but my problem really began when I made the assumption that most of us make when randomly targeted by rage. I assumed this man's anger really was about me.

You've probably made the assumption, too. It happens when the guy flips you off on the road or the woman screams at you for taking her parking space.

While it's natural for you to go into a defensive mode claiming your righteous innocence, it's best to remember that their rage isn't really about you. In fact, it's even a little self-centered to think it is about you.
The reality of these rages is that we merely are collateral damage for folks like these.

Occasionally, I'll receive a caustic e-mail from someone with a minute grammar correction, or they'll send me something Anne Lamott aptly calls, "Orwellian memos detailing my thought crimes."

Most of the time I know that, like the freeway driver, their anger isn't about me; they are fighting battles I'm not privileged to see.

Recently, I got an e-mail from a road rager careening down the information highway. When I replied from a defensive mode, he escalated our discussion by calling me every synonym of idiot. Recalling the road-rage incident, my second reply took a reconciling approach.

The reader sent a confessional apology adding details of his wife's terminal illness and children who weren't talking to him. Just like the interstate guy, this reader's rage wasn't about me.

It never ceases to amaze me that when I remember to squelch my defensiveness and respond in a caring manner, I often will get a sincere response. My smug attitude toward the driver only stirred his rage, but my soft answer to the reader turned away his wrath and made a friend.

Short of a soft answer on the freeway, I sped back into traffic, spitting gravel on the man's truck. After another 10 minutes of cat and mouse, I took the freeway exit labeled, "Galt Police Station." Amazingly, the man followed me into town, but finally broke off his chase when I entered the station's driveway.
At the end of the day, the best answer to road rage on life's highway may be contained in the sacred proverb that suggests, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh answer stirs up anger."

After all, we are all on a journey, so maybe it's time to share the road.



What price for vengeance?

If you read last week's column, you'll remember me saying I don't own a gun because I never could take the life of another human being.

But make no mistake; I am glad we have people who are trained to put double-tap shots in the demented brain and evil heart of someone like Osama bin Laden.

Maybe you are saying, "Oh, my, chaplain! Doesn't Scripture teach that you are supposed to love your enemies?"

Yes, it does. But Scripture also records that people became hopeful after the death of diabolical despots like King Herod, who instigated the genocide of thousands of baby boys during Jesus' toddler years.

And while Scripture says vengeance belongs to the Lord, I won't hide the satisfaction I felt May 1, when vengeance belonged to Navy Seal Team 6.
But before we ice the drinks for the wake party, there are three other points to consider.

First, Osama's death brings important closure for our country. But if we celebrate and rejoice over his death, we prove we aren't much further up the evolutionary scale than those who rejoiced over the events of 9-11.
Second, I'm glad the Wicked Witch is dead, but it doesn't end anything. There will be more terrorists who will take his place.


The analysts who say we are facing a 100-year war with radical fundamentalists likely are correct. The problem is, we'll be out of money in half that time, because Public Enemy No. 1 probably is the federal deficit.
Finally, reprisal, no matter how righteous it seems, comes at a much bigger price than the federal deficit. Revenge will only beget more terror.

When Judas led Roman soldiers to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, a disciple resisted the detainment by slicing off a soldier's ear. While brutal, it probably was the most righteous blow ever struck by a man in defense of a deity.

Yet, after the blow, Jesus reattached the ear in a maxillofacial miracle, and reproached the disciple saying, "Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

This truth has played out innumerable times in the bloody cycle of vengeance in such places as India, Ireland and Israel. And it will be our truth, too, if we don't take the initiative to reverse the vengeance cycle.

The terrorism of today really is no different than the radical fundamentalism of the Klan that firebombed churches filled with children in the 1960s.

Amid the violence, Martin Luther King cautioned his followers: "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

The cycle of revenge was reversed with his strategy of nonviolent resistance, and it didn't take 100 years.

I'm relieved bin Laden was assassinated.This is not a time, however, to celebrate.

The heinous suffering he caused can't be overstated and, as one of my Florida readers points out, "Osama has left us an enduring legacy of self-sustaining terrorism that continues to be evident every time we board an airplane. He changed the way we live in this country, forever."

At the end of the day, I don't feel sorry for bin Laden, but I will feel sorry for our country if we don't take pause at this juncture to consider, with somber reflection, the cost of vengeance.


Faith, military obligations sometime conflict

Four years ago, after a long day in Marine basic training on how to kill someone from 500 feet, my son sent me a question: "If I have to kill someone, will I go to hell?"

My first impression was to tell him to talk to his chaplain, but then I figured, duh, maybe he was talking to his chaplain.

His letter enlarged my heart with pride, but it also gave me an indescribable ache. I was proud to know that he was seriously examining such a powerful question. Yet my heart ached knowing that we live in a world where he was forced to examine these questions at only 18.

Personally, there are two reasons I've never really had to struggle with the question. First, I made a choice a long time ago never to own a gun. I suppose my choice makes me a marginal pacifist.

I say pacifist because I could never use a gun to take the life of another human being.

I use the modifier marginal because I have no hesitation to defend myself (plus, I like the word better than hypocrite).

Intruders be warned: I have a heavy flashlight beside my bed with which I'd readily whap the living daylights out of you if you arrive uninvited.
Second, the Geneva Convention dictates an unarmed pacifist stance for those of us who wear the chaplain's cross.

Not everyone understands this. I once had a National Guard commander who encouraged me to qualify on an M16 assault rifle. When I demurred by telling him that this would be a violation of the Geneva Convention, he balked.
"Do you think those insurgents know anything about the Geneva Convention?" he asked, with that commanding voice for which he was highly paid to inflect.

My nervous laugh egged him on.

'"Are you telling me that if your convoy suddenly found themselves in a firefight, you don't even want to know how to fire a weapon?"

My commander's quandary easily was answered by producing a letter from the Air Force chief of chaplains stating that any chaplain who violated Geneva Convention policy by becoming weapons qualified would be dismissed from service.

My son's question also is easily answered.

No, son, you won't. Christian Scripture reminds all faiths that love wins when in declaring, "No power in the sky above or in the earth below -- indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God . . ."

Still, the heart of my son's query should give people of faith and ethics pause. It certainly begs more questions: how can people of faith be a part of the military? Even more so, how can people of faith and ethics support a government that trains an army to kill?

These are issues with no easy answers. Killing in self-defense is permissible in nearly all faith interpretations, but beyond that, our own political interests and selfish causes entangle the answer.

All other questions aside, I do think we are stuck with a tougher one. How much more killing will we sponsor in the name of a war on terrorism? We are good at declaring that our freedom is worth dying for, but we remain perplexed by the question, "What is worth killing for?"