The Sure Road • 01.03.08
The seemingly inevitable recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan has set me into deep contemplation about the course of certain lives and nations. These words from modern day apostle Carl Jung resonate clearly.
“When one lives one’s own life …there is no guarantee – not for a single moment – that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril.”
Ms. Bhutto knew the stakes were high. When she returned home from exile last October she publicly stated that retired military officers aligned to Islamic extremists could be plotting her assassination. Bhutto’s family history didn’t bode well for her survival either. Her father was executed and her two brothers also suffered violent deaths.
I live under no illusion that Ms. Bhutto and her family were holy innocents. Beneath all the power jockeying and money temptations however, they did seem to have a core commitment to democracy.
Benazir’s father was prime minister of Pakistan in the early 1970s. His government was one of the few in the 30 years following independence that was not run by the army.
Ms. Bhutto was imprisoned just before her father’s death and spent most of her five-year jail term in solitary confinement.
During stints out of prison for medical treatment, Ms Bhutto set up a Pakistan People’s Party office in London. She returned to Pakistan in 1986, attracting huge crowds to political rallies. Two years later she became one of the first democratically elected female prime ministers in an Islamic country.
Benazir Bhutto could have lived a safe and comfortable life in London with her family, teaching at a university and lecturing around the globe on democracy. Instead, she continued the costly calling of living democracy.
I recall the timely and moving words from the Jesus lexicon. “If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save her life will lose it, but whoever loses her life for me will find it.”
We walk a line with Bhutto and people of her lineage between glorifying and honoring martydom. I would love nothing more than for Benazir Bhutto’s death to birth a phoenix of democratic decency. History’s record is mixed at best.
There are things worse than physical death. In the recesses of my eternal gut I believe that living in sych with our integrity will never die. Apostle Jung continues his revelation.
“We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer – at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.“
