A couple years ago, I ran across Tyler Wigg-Stevenson in an article he wrote, “A Merciful White Flash.” Tyler recounted the amazing story of his post-grad years, living under the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge (hilariously, living under his desk) and working for an advocacy group committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons. Tyler was not religious by any means, far from it. But the evil he encountered – and the dire prospects for a world binging on nuclear weaponry – led Tyler to faith. As he said:
Before I became a Christian, I had the worst lunch breaks in the world. They went like this:
Every day I would take my bowl of rice and beans into the noonday sun and sit on the tailgate of my ’87 Ranger, which commanded a billion-dollar view. Armed with the painfully earnest idealism of a new college graduate, I had scored a job at a nonprofit organization located in a house-cum-office just off the southern foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d sit there in the parking lot, humming Otis Redding, literally at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. As I ate, I’d take in the bridge, the Marin headlands, Alcatraz and the East Bay, and the stunning Mediterranean sweep of the San Francisco skyline.
And every day the scenery was swept clean, in my mind’s horrified eye, by the merciless white flash of a nuclear airburst.
.
I like Tyler. I like his work. I’m thankful for his voice. We’ve traded books (you should check out his recent title on consumer Christianity, Brand Jesus
). Now, Tyler leads Two Futures Project, which “dreams a noble dream of reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons from our world.”
Today, he has an opinion piece in the Washington Post. I support Tyler and Two Futures and prayerfully hope for the day when nuclear arsenals will be no more.
Here's an interesting article I found on this topic: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-not-nuclear-disarmament
Thoughtful article. It will be a long and complicated extrication, no doubt.