Quite by chance, I read something that describes the debacle in Afghanistan and America’s lack of credibility with our allies. I have been reading the Roman historian Livy about the enmity between Carthage and Rome, the two dominant powers of the Mediterranean in the third century B.C. The neutral Spanish town Saguntum was about to be attacked by Hannibal and the Carthaginians. Saguntum appealed to Rome for help, but Rome dithered. Saguntum was sacked, 218 B.C. Romans woke up to reality, Hannibal is now coming to kill us, so they go to Spain to rouse allies. Here’s what the Roman envoys were told.
“Men of Rome, it seems hardly decent to ask us to prefer your friendship to that of Carthage, considering the precedent of those who have been rash enough to do so. Was not your betrayal of your friends in Saguntum even more brutal than their destruction by their enemies the Carthaginians? I suggest you look for allies in some spot where what happened to Saguntum has never been heard of. The fall of that town will be a signal and melancholy warning to the peoples of Spain never to count upon Roman friendship nor to trust Rome’s word” (Livy, “The War with Hannibal,” XXI, 19).
A learning moment for faith. “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:10-12).
“The victory of God means our defeat; it means our humiliation; it means the scorn and wrath of God on all human pride, on trying to be something. It means the bringing to silence of the world and all of its shrieks. It means the crossing up of all of our thoughts and plans; it means the Cross, the Cross above the world. It means that man, even the most noble, whether he likes it or not, has to go to dust, and with him all gods and idols and lords of this world. The Cross of Jesus Christ—that means the bitter mockery of God over the height of all human achievements, the bitter suffering of God in all human depths, the Lordship of God over all the world” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in “For All the Saints,” IV, 418).
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