two questions

What are you willing to die for?

It's strange. That question used to flit around in my head a good bit, especially when I was in Uganda. It hasn't for a while. Maybe I've been too busy. But it was back last night, whispering and rattling and generally just making too much a ruckus. I saw a movie last night called Little Town of Bethlehem. It was about three men, an Israeli Arab, an Israeli Jew, and a Palestinian Muslim, and their different paths to nonviolence.

A lot of people are willing to risk their life, to die, in war, if they have the shot to also get someone else. They die in defense of their country. I think that can be brave.

There's not so many people willing to die to defend not just their own, but someone else's...what do they call it? their humanity. As if our humanity is some purely good thing. But they're willing to die to defend that goodness, that purity, both in themselves AND in those who are attacking them. To show to themselves and those with the guns that they can both move beyond the violence. That's brave. More than that, that's love.

I was thinking about the question, what am I willing to die for. Or maybe it should be who? For myself, my interests, or for others' too. But it began to seem a strange question for me to ask. As a Christian...we were dead, but now we're alive. And that's not gonna change when our bodies pass away. At least, isn't that what we're supposed to believe? And if we do...then the question has to be changed. No longer what am I willing to die for, but what - and who - am I willing to truly live for?

But when I ask myself that question, it's like a pebble into a pond: silence, but all these tiny ripples.

Because all of a sudden there's more than two questions - I'm playing twenty questions trying to figure out who ME is. Would I stand in front of a bullet? Or would I edge away, or pull out my own gun? I recall when I went to Rwanda, and I was talking with my politics professor about how during the genocide all but one of the Americans was whisked away on a bus like the one we were in, and he asked if I thought I would be the one who stayed. And I said I didn't know. And he laughed. And so I ask, would I stay or would I go? Am I brave? Do I really love, love like that? Would I let Jesus love people through me, like that? Or would I be afraid?

What and who do I live for? I think there's silence when I ask that cuz I don't want to hear my answer, I know what it is and I don't like it. But I want it to change and I think it can. Because I don't want to live for myself.