Henry Kissinger’s death at the age of 100 has occasioned obituaries and retrospectives attempting to encapsulate his very long career at the seat of power and his global influence. Reading his long obituary is like a walk through Cold War history.
Among the thousands of words I’ve read and heard about Kissinger in the last several days, what struck me most acutely was an exchange recorded between him and some Bronx high school students in 1999. One of the students asked the obvious question one would ask a controversial figure like Kissinger: “Looking back, is there anything you would do differently?”
His answer to this question was a well-rehearsed justification of his actions. He summed up his answer this way: “Looking back on it, I have no second thoughts.”
No second thoughts on the illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos with more explosives than fell on all of Europe during the whole of World War II.
No second thoughts about the abandonment of the Bangladeshi people to genocidal violence.
No second thoughts about the fate of the people of Timor-Leste who were brutally subjugated by Indonesia with his consent.
No second thoughts about his role in the overthrow and death of Salvador Allende.
My outrage over the brutal power politics of Henry Kissinger is not the point of this reflection. My judgment of these things is irrelevant to the judgment he and all of us will face, whether our actions make their way into history books or not.
When I heard his self-justifying answer to school kids from 1999, I didn’t feel outrage. I felt sad for him. Imagine an interior life so shallow as to allow no reconsideration of past actions, an ego so fragile as to refuse the possibility of error.
No second thoughts. No reconsideration. No regrets.
Each year in Advent we hear John the Baptist calling people to repentance. The most common Greek word in the New Testament for repentance is metanoia, which means to think again or to change one’s mind. To repent is to have second thoughts. There are other aspects to repentance, but they are all premised on the ability to have second thoughts.
As we begin this season of Advent, I urge you to take time for reflection, for second thoughts.
Second thoughts don’t require wallowing in self-loathing for our past misdeeds, but we have little hope of doing better or healing relationships if we refuse to think twice about what we have done. The purpose of thoughtful recollection — of second thoughts — is not merely to see our mistakes. We think again to see where God has been present in our lives, where love has shaped us, healed us, and filled us with hope.
We can entertain second thoughts about God, setting aside long-held images of a God who is indifferent to us or hostile to us. Instead, we can dare to think about a God who comes to us in utter vulnerability, under the sign of something as ordinary as the birth of a baby.
We employ second thoughts to train our hearts and minds to be aware and awake to the loving presence of God whose Advent is not just in long ago Bethlehem or a faraway future, but in our daily life.
Prayer: On second thought I see more clearly. Help me to have first thoughts that are more like my second thoughts.