I receive many good, thoughtful letters. Two especially struck me the last few weeks and sparked some responses for "Marginal Notes." One is from an Iowa farm woman who describes herself as a "seeking parent." The other is from another seeking woman, a Catholic sister living in Chicago.
"I am a mother of five (three college students and twins 10 years old). My husband is an Iowa farmer, who works from 7 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. (average) every day, with a main objective of supporting his family and saving just enough money so his children will not have to support us when we are past 65 or so.
We welcomed President Reagan partly because we felt he would stand against communism's march on the free world. You see, even in your recent article, "Against the Consensus," you stated that both governments, the U.S. and Russia, are trying to push their ideas onto other countries. However, I have always felt it was Russia and communism that was coercing and that we were trying to defend nations so that they could choose their own way.
A nuclear holocaust seems inevitable. It frightens me, as a mother especially. My hope is that Jesus will come again and that God will cut short these days of horror.
I have been led to believe that in a battle if one side has guns and the other doesn't, the side without guns will be annihilated. Do you propose that God will defend one side? I'm sure he could, but I'm not certain he would, for Jesus said God's rain falls on the just and the unjust, and I'm not even sure that one nation is more just than the other.
I do not have the ability to put on paper all my questions. I am totally confused. I chose to write to you because your articles challenge me to live the Christian life as Jesus taught it. Can you help a seeking parent and citizen?"
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"This year I received a Christmas card from a young man studying in Moscow. The card has a charming country snow scene filled with playing children. Some are making a snowman, others skating and pushing sleds. Only the postmark on the envelope and the imprint on the card make it clear that these are Soviet children, not American. These are our enemies. In current political jargon, in case of a nuclear attack they are "collateral damage."
The card has brought home to me as nothing else that the arms race is indeed a machine gone mad. How can two "superpowers" continue to point weapons of indiscriminate destruction at each other's children, so fragile, so delightful, so equal in grace and beauty and human dignity, our most precious heritage and the hope of our race?
I'm going to have my own exercise in disarmament. I'm going to keep that Moscow Christmas card in a place where I will look at it every day. Each day I will look at those little Russian brothers and sisters and pray for them and their counterparts all over the world. I will, of course, have to include all their parents. That will mean praying for our enemies.
Enemies? I have a strong suspicion that enemies in prayer do not remain enemies very long. It is a risk, of course. But who knows? Peace is a gift from God entrusted to us, and there is no point in leaving it in the box."
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It seems to me that both these letters have a great deal of integrity, and that the second begins to answer the first. It is indeed the children--ours, the Russians', and the world's--who are most important in all this. Their future weighs most heavily on us as we watch the frightening escalation of nuclear arms. But when we think of "the other side," we seldom think of Soviet children and families. Instead, we've been carefully schooled to think only of "the Russians" and "the communists" as if they have no children. Our enemies become only images--fearful and threatening--not flesh and blood like us, worried about the future of their children.
Of course, the Russian people view Americans in much the same way. If they are the lumbering bear about to devour the world, we are the reckless cowboy willing to start war for a fast buck. Both governments have behaved in a way that often enough adds substance to these caricatures.
But behind the images are the people of both sides--much more alike, when all is said and done, than they are different. That's what both governments want to keep their people from seeing. It's far easier to build fear and justify an arms race when we're facing threatening images of one another. It would be much harder to stir up popular support for increasing military budgets while showing people pictures of their enemies' children.
I'll bet life on a farm in the Ukraine is not much different from life in Iowa. Mothers and fathers probably have the same concerns. Families in both places are likely to be more interested in living and building a better future for their children than they are in taking over somebody else's country.
Yet the farmers in the Ukraine are afraid of American imperialism just like farmers in Iowa are afraid of Soviet expansionism. They remember Vietnam like we do Afghanistan. They are told about U.S.-backed dictatorships in Latin America like we are told about Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. Both Ukrainian and Iowan farmers worry about reports of how the other side is building up its nuclear arsenals and seeking military superiority.
Both look at their children; but what if they could see each other's children? What if they could work in each other's fields, sit in each other's homes, eat at each other's tables? Their governments really wouldn't want them to do that, because if they did, and if they laughed while watching their children play together, they might decide their differences weren't worth killing each other over--much less destroying the whole world for.
Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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