Do Not Put Your Trust in Princes, or Dictators

 

                       Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima

Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortals, in whom there is no help.

When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
    on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God,

who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever; 
    who executes justice for the oppressed;
    who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
     the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the Lord loves the righteous.
 The Lord watches over the strangers;
    he upholds the orphan and the widow,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin...

                                                          Psalm 147:3-9 NRSVue 

Will the United States of America invade Canada, or work toward regime change in this country, or impose on us the status of 51st state? Even asking this would have seemed absurd a year ago but as the US takes over Venezuela for its own interests and threatens to do the same with Greenland we have to wonder if we are on the agenda. 

When Donald Trump campaigned on an "America First" plank in the last election it was assumed that the United States would step back from intervention in foreign countries. He described himself as the "Peace President."  Well, the US military has bombed targets in Iran, Syria, Nigeria, and Yemen and deposed Maduro (a dictator) in Venezuela by force. Boats have been sunk by the American navy in the Pacific and Caribbean. Not exactly peaceful actions. This is the "Donroe Doctrine" of the supposed leader of the free world. 

Yesterday I listened to an interview with the always thoughtful Janice Stein from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She suggested that we are in a rapidly changing global scenario where the post-WWII rules-based order is in question. 

There is a sense that autocratic empires are moving to the fore with the United States, China, and Russia asserting power with diminishing constraints. This picture of "might makes right" empires ruling the world (my assessment) certainly seems regressive and bleak. Are any of these nations democracies?  Some are suggesting that NATO and the United Nations are in peril. 

I take some solace in the knowledge that the story of my Christian faith, as told through the two Testaments, is with the backdrop of many empires: Assyrian, Persian, Babylonian, Greek. Jesus was born in Bethlehem because the occupying Roman Empire ordered his family there for a census. Jesus died brutally  in Jerusalem at the hands of that same empire. Yet all those empires have come and gone, as all do. I'm old enough to remember the world wall maps in grade school classrooms with swaths of pink to remind us that we were a part of the British Commonwealth. 

I'm not preparing to join the resistance just yet, but I am rummaging around for my beret. God of justice, help us all