Democracy as a World Mission

It is reassuring that experts on Iraq are questioning whether ensuring open elections is the best way to begin rebuilding the country. A lot of other things must happen first, especially along the lines of building an infrastructure with the kinds of checks and balances that have proved indispensable to democracy's successes world-wide.

The checks and balances recommended by our own Founding Fathers rightly presupposed that left to their own devices, most people will subordinate the public good to their own self-interest, and therefore need a system that makes it difficult for any one person, group, or arm of government to gain inordinate power over the others. You just can't trust anybody for very long, not our legislators, courts, and presidents, and not Iraq's tribal chiefs, her clergy, or even her people en masse. If there is ever going to be a strong democracy in Iraq, it will be because the Iraqi people learn to protect themselves from each other while still working together for the common good.

This rather somber assessment of human nature goes all the way back to Plato's late dialogue on the Laws. It is also solidly grounded in the Christian tradition, from Paul through Augustine all the way to Calvin and beyond. It is ironic, of course, that Calvin in particular, who of all theologians should have known better, set up a theocracy in Geneva, apparently excusing himself and his closest associates from the consequences of the original sin he taught about so well.

Even more ironic than Calvin's Geneva is the idea of a democratic nation imposing on a ruined dictatorship, as an alternative to a theocracy, a political system whose premises reflect an unashamedly Christian understanding of human existence in the world. It worries me what might happen when more of our leaders wake up to this idea. President Bush, of course, already gets it and is asking us, in effect, so what's to worry? For him, disseminating democracy to the ends of the earth does not seem to be all that much different from carrying out Jesus' Great Commission to take the gospel to everyone. The fact of the matter, however, is that there are very large differences between the two. It won't work to demand --- and here I borrow some words from a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. --- that all the different factions in Iraq simply sit down and work out their differences like good Christians.

If democracy in Iraq is to be something better than rule by random majorities, we are being told, the process of creating it will require will power, a lot of time and money, and the patience to cope with unanticipated dangers at every step. The primary reason given is that democracy is inimical to the history and mind-set of Middle Eastern peoples. I think the work ahead is going to be difficult for a different reason: as managers of the process, we do not now seem disposed to maintain a sufficient amount of mistrust toward either the Iraqis or ourselves.

What is especially striking about Iraq right now is the degree to which its various constituencies arrogate evils of every sort to people who are not like them, and reserve claims of righteousness only for themselves. In a word, they are especially adept at projecting onto others what they refuse to acknowledge in themselves. It's going to be a rough go persuading people to accept a checks and balances system of government who are unwilling to concede that anyone else might need some protection against them.

And what of mistrusting ourselves? We seem bent on creating a new Iraq in our own image, without factoring in all there is about our image that may not be worth perpetuating. Our greedy consumption of the world's resources, for example. Or our assumption of a Messianic role toward just about all the world's peoples. It's going to be a rough go granting Iraqis the major responsibility in rebuilding their own nation when we are unwilling to concede that they might need some protection from us.

It's hard to determine just how close the Mizpah of Genesis 31:49, whether it was a pillar, a town, or both, might have been to places we have been hearing about recently in Iraq. The covenant that Jacob and Laban entered into there, though, is very close indeed to the heart of the issues both we and the Iraquis must face in planning the country's future, together. The KJV got the meaning just right: "The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another." Otherwise, Laban's daughters, and the boundaries between the two mens' territories, will be perpetually at risk! Now that's the kind of thinking that may just get us somewhere after all.