By William B. Refvem

Guest Writer

The difference between a tyrant and a saint is that a saint is opposed at every turn while a tyrant is universally lauded.

I suppose there are two sorts of people in the world, those worth writing about and those who do the writing. Not that the two groups are all inclusive, but they are mutually exclusive to some extent. Writers, especially this one, can be dreadful bores when they believe people who tell them they're great. All the truly interesting people I've known know they're nothing to get stuck on, and they're usually right. Nobody is worth thinking or talking about in a vacuum for very long. And yet, so many post-moderns seem obsessed with talking about themselves as solitary creatures, not realizing that the person who truly achieves something like monastic solitude (that is, acommunal solitude) has been stripped from a relational matrix essential to who God has created her to be.

Western monasticism started in the aftermath of the collision of Hellenistic and Semitic thought patterns in Pauline Christianity. A dialogue started about what it means to be ``in the world but not of it,'' and the early monks responded by getting out of sin-laden Dodge. Their heresy was that they thought civilization made you sinful, which is absurd. Adam did it, and we aren't promised deliverance from it in this life. Too much solitude can make one feel victorious over sin, however, which is why it's so attractive. But as anyone who has spent any long period of time alone will attest if they're being honest, you're still a sinner when you're alone, you just tend to forget the fact. Community has the annoying habit of bringing your sin to the vanguard of your consciousness and reminding you of your daily need to settle accounts with God.

That is why we do cross-cultural ministries in other countries and urban ministries in our own. It isn't because we are the Great White Hope, but because we are both designed and commanded, in very plain language, to love our neighbor, who, we are told in not-so-plain language, includes untouchables (check out the parable of the good Samaritan).

Since we are promised a never ending series of frustrations and futilities (including our own battles with sin) eventually culminating with our bodily demise, we do an injustice to God and the world by withdrawing from community life. If there's one message that all the gospels cram down our collective spiritual throat, it's ``don't be like the Pharisees.'' They thought they had made great progress on the sin front and set themselves up separate from the rest of their community; thinking they were above it, they withdrew from it, spiritually if not physically.

Withdrawing into a Christian community can make us think the same thing, that we're making progress. Maybe we are, but that isn't the point. Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations, to go into all the world and preach the gospel, not to move to the 'burbs for a well manicured, sin free life. We must be fearless ministers: ``My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'' Paul adds: ``Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.''

America got a unique opportunity on Sept. 11. The sacrosanctity of this blessed country, of this gorgeous and incorrigible adulteress of a nation, was challenged, and we had the chance to be humble, to be weak and childlike before God. As usual, our government, whose daily bread, like any government's, is strength, lashed out. Now our flag is being burned in Afghanistan, and this wounds something deep in my soul.

How could our beautiful flag, a symbol of a history full of glories and blunders, acts of unspeakable cruelty and heartbreaking self-sacrifice, a symbol of a nation that isn't perfect, but a living organism, be co-opted by something so crude, so base, so amoral, so much like spiritual duct tape and so little like anything worthwhile as our bloated national government? Why have these out of touch, well connected white guys we've elected been allowed to tarnish the name of America all around the world while lying and avoiding our scrutinous gaze with clever sophistries and circumlocutions back home? And why do we empower them with all of our watery, thoughtless patriotic babble that makes a mockery of true patriotism and tempts ordinarily honest politicians to a deceptive tyranny?

George W. has his work cut out for him now that everyone loves him. I like the guy, but the Englishman in me is always wary of people whom everyone likes; even the best can become tyrants.