OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #107, JANUARY 4, 2023

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #107, JANUARY 4, 2023

Sandra Richter. Stewards of Eden.
Empathy.  Lubna and the Pebble, The Expanding Circle, The Price of Empire

Sandra Richter, Stewards of Eden.
SCOT MCKNIGHT.    “War and the Environment.”  JULY 7, 2020.
“The Bible speaks directly about war and the environment.

If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?

Think about the wisdom of this, and then think about the utter environmental terrorism (her words) of how we have treated war zones. We are looking at a short chapter in the wonderful book by Sandra Richter, Stewards of Eden.  The words of that scripture emerge from a worldview about divine creation, humans as stewards of creation, and our requirement to protect the earth’s sustainability.

The Neo-Assyrians destroyed trees in war. Pictures show this kind of siege warfare. Such actions crippled a people for a decade or more. . . .
What did we do in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and Cambodia? Richter looks at Operation Ranch Hand. We poured out “20 million gallons of chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel over one-quarter of South Vietnam and the bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia.”  25 million acres destroyed. This was Neo-Assyrian. . . .  Abuse of the land was prohibited in ancient Israel. Profoundly prescient.”
Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed Blog.
Sandra Richter is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. Richter earned her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern...  Read full bio

EMPATHY

What kind of individual--an expression of what kind of education and culture?-- is shielded from savagery, destruction of the land, genocide of all species?   Ryan Billingsley owns the children’s book stall at Evelyn Hills, where I bought the splendid refugee story about learning empathy, Lubna and the Pebble byWendy Meddour,shelved in the Empathy section.  Peter Singer in The Expanding Circlediscusses “The Rise of Empathy and the Regard for Human Life,” and contrasts narrow sentimentality with the need for a much larger circle of empathy. We accomplish such an enlargement with others by experiencing them and reading about them, about indifference and cruelty, about widening compassion, about becoming stewards, and moral, social, and political change.  Arkansas’ former Senator J. William Fulbright wrote often about empathy, a foundation of his Educational Exchange Program.  For example, empathy is discussed throughout The Price of Empire, particularly in chapter seven, “Seeing the World as Others See it.”  Had the two main US Parties (the War Party) listened to Fulbright the US would have accepted the 1954 Geneva Accords, negotiated with Ho, and avoided the racist slaughter of three million Vietnam innocents.  (A flawed leader, Fulbright at home was a racist. See Randall Woods’ biography of Fulbright.)  We know how to build a peaceful world, but will we have evolutionary time?