THE VIOLENCE OF VOCABULARY: LANGUAGE AND MANIPULATION

Dear Reader, be ware the violence lurking beneath the trap of my honey coated words.

Precious Listener, be ware of my manipulative story, crafted to force my perspective on you.

I've been thinking about the covert violence that motivates some of my writing. I am reminded of lines from the Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da".

"Poets, priests, and politicians

Have words to thank for their positions

Words that scream for your submission

And no one's jamming their transmission

'Cause when their eloquence escapes you

Their logic ties you up and rapes you."

I have a whole cupboard of rhetorical tricks to manipulate you, to force my perspective on you, to cudgle you with persuasive words, and to force you to ammend your narrative of the world, or force you to surrender it completely, in favour of my own.

I'm not a total monster. No. I'm giving you advanced notice of my tricks, so you can defend your point of view, build walls against my sticky sweet persuasive arguements.

I also have moments of reflection and remorse where I question, if, "the ends justify the means". Does the "righteousness" of my cause, the "importance" of my perspective,  justify the conscious manipulation of others?

Some of my manipulation tactics include:

● Carefully choosing adjectives that colour the facts in my argument so as to make my point seem self evident.

● Personalizing my writing by addressing the reader:  Precious Listener.

● Asking for a Favour.

● Speaking under the assumption that we are part of a shared group, that my argument is an extension of this group's beliefs.

● Using the word "We" a lot.

● Appealing to assumed joint identities, such as: Nationalism, Regionalism, and Religion.

● Appealing to Authority with quotes from famous persons.

● Humility and self deprecation: I tell you the weaknesses in my arguements and employ reverse psychology to get you to defend my side, where you think that, "if these are the only weaknesses, the main thesis must be sound."

● An extended vocabulary and technical terms to cast myself as an expert and baffle you with bullshit.

● I am scrupulously honest about the facts, so that you have no reason not to trust me.

● I write civily, politely, and with respect for other points of view: no ad hominems, or slurs against those who hold differing perspectives.

● Careful editing and correction of my grammar as an indication of education, expertise, and consideration to the reader.

● Tricks of poetry: alliteration, parallelism, repetition, rhythm and meter, to hypnotize my prey.

● Breaking my writing into single lines or small paragraphs to emphasize the importance of certain points and so you, my reader, will not feel overwhelmed with a bulky text, and be seduced into looking at a single line or paragraph, that may suck you in.

All these tricks I employ to "scream for your submission" to my world view and my cause.

So, gentle reader, "gird up your loins" and "stand your ground" against the torrent of my words. Learn my tricks well,  so you can think critically and see past them to the meat of my arguement where you can judge its merit impartiaty by your own terms.

I Could Be Wrong

Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?  Snoopy raises an important point here.  As it is for all beliefs and assumptions about the world, doubt is an important part of an honest assessment of our concept of God.  It is also essential for any growth in our personal knowledge and relationship with God.

I listened to a podcast a number of years ago of a Christian speaker on the importance of doubt in developing true Christian faith.  Doubt, he contended, is the very pinnacle of faith and trust in God as Truth.  The man was from Scotland and had a thick Scottish accent.  He recounted how after giving this same speech in America a person approached him who told him that he had spoken beautifully, but he had one question, "What's Dooot?".

I started thinking about this subject recently after reading an article on rational thinking and logic fallacies, ways we are less than honest with ourselves in our arguments for a particular viewpoint or belief.  The article looks at strategies for cutting through flawed assumptions and false beliefs including one's own.

http://discovermagazine.com/2015/july-aug/16-user-guide-rational-thinking

One of the logical fallacies discussed is confirmation bias, the tendency to focus on evidence that supports our preconceptions and ignore those that do not.  We all do this to some degree, but to be intellectually honest and open to truth we need to be aware of the fact and make an effort to seriously examine information that contradicts the way we would like things to be.  In other words, in order to be faithful to the truth we need to be skeptical and doubt what we already believe to be true.  


Another good articles with references to research  on cofirmation bias can be found at the following link:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13718636/donald-trump-psychology-confirmation-bias-truth-backfire

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

John 4:24 

Doubt, as an act of faith, seems to be a paradox.  However, what should be noted is that what is being considered and weighed is not God, but our concepts and understanding of God.  Scrutinizing our beliefs about God recognizes that God is greater and more than just our limited understanding and concepts.  It is also an act of trust that states that if God is Truth, truth is no threat to a real understanding of God.  As well, it states that we place gaining a more accurate concept of God over that of maintaining our current entrenched views.

In a previous post, A God With No Name; The Problem With Personification, I discussed how the Ancient Hebrews rejected the Hubris of trying to put God into too small a box by imagining that God can be totally defined by human understanding.  Surrounded by cultures with multiple gods and idols, they were aware of this danger.  This may have inspired their concept of "Yahweh", the God with no name. In the Exodus story, the writer has Moses ask God who it is that has sent him and God replies, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”. It is from this phrase that "YHVH",  or "Yahweh," became the personal name of God in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures. Later, in the Priestly Era, even this was replaced with the title, "Jehovah", meaning, "The Lord", with the personal name seen as too Holy for anything but very special use

____________________________________________________________________________

"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."

-Paul Tillich

_____________________________________________________________________________

In most cases, our beliefs about God, like most of our ideas and views of the world, are not "ours" at all, but are a reflection of the social or cultural groups that we identify with.  Most people do not work out a personal stance or viewpoint on very many things and instead trust in the wisdom of authorities and tje leaders of their own social or cultural group.  This is further complicated by the fact that most people do not choose their social and cultural groups, or faith community, but, adopt the ones they were born into without question.

Much of our thinking on contentious issues is influenced by our pre-established social or cultural groups.

According to Kahan, Law Professor and Science Communication Researcher at Yale Law School, when our beliefs and views are tied into our associations and support networks, questioning those dogmas becomes problematic, even threatening.  

Holding a certain view of the world and a shared understanding of "what's true" can become a matter of faithfulness to the cultural, social,  and religious groups that form the basis of our self identity.  To question these shared perspectives can be viewed as withdrawing one's allegiance, being ungrateful, or even traitorous.

Once a certain idea or stance becomes associated with a group we belong to (part of what Kahan calls a cultural identity), we become more inclined to adopt that position; it’s a way to show that we belong.

Our understanding or assumptions about the world and about God are further conditioned and set beyond our specific social, cultural and religious groups by our wider culture.  The view of "reality" and "what is true and real", that is set by our wider culture (the nation/society), is all the more insidious, because it is what we take for granted is true" and because it is, "what everyone knows" and therefore, "the way things are".  If we all share the same view and understanding, we take it for granted that it must be "right" and an accurate accounting of reality.  However, even a cursory look at the history of thought will tell us that what society believes as "what is" changes.  We no longer take for granted that the earth is flat and the sun and planets revolve around us.  Most of us no longer assume that certain racial groups or castes of people are inherently inferior to others and require moral guidance. It is difficult to seriously question ideas that you do not even realize are just a perception when our shared acceptance casts it as reality.

Questioning and examining these assumptions and beliefs is not only NOT a betrayal of Christianity, it is exactly what Jesus taught and encouraged his listeners to do. In another post in this blog, "Is Following Jesus About Turning Off Your Brain?", I argued that Jesus could be considered the poster boy for free thinking and critical reasoning.  He used open ended teaching devices like parables to encourage people to look beyond the assumptions of their culture. Jesus was no fan of accepting the authority of past knowledge as truth over reason and inquiry.  He opposed allowing authority and literal interpretations of laws and rules prevail over the understanding of broader principles of Love, Justice,  and Mercy.

Given all this, let me now apply the subject of this piece to myself.  Am I wrong?  Am I wrong in my current views and concepts of God?  To begin with, Yes, Yes I am.  This question assumes that there is a "right" view that holds a level of truth above all others and is perfect in itself wherein no further development and growth is needed. However, all concepts of God miss the mark.  All words are metaphors and all metaphors are imperfect as they are not the things they seek to describe.

To ask the question differently, "Are my current views further from the truth than my former?"  In my youth I would have described myself as an "Evangelical" and a "Biblical Literalist."  There are many people in the "conservative" Christian organizations that I belonged to at that time who would say that I have strayed away from the truth.  

In High School I was a member of an Evangelical organization called the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship and was president of my school's chapter of the Interschool Christian Fellowship.  I convinced the school administration to have a reformed career criminal named Ernie Holland give his testimony of conversion to a school assembly.  I was also struck by the message of David Wilkerson's book, "The Cross and the Switchblade", and organized a public showing of the film based on the book through a joint venture with the ISCF group at our town's other High School.

I became an intended candidate for ministry with my home church and felt that God was calling me to help bring a wave of Evangelical revival to what I felt was an apathetic main line denomination.  At University, while working on the Bachelors of Arts that was a prerequisite to a Masters of Divinity, I took the advice of my conservative friends and stayed away from the theological students and took part in the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.  Despite this, I found my preconceptions challenged in University and sought to find a more personal communication with God and way to discern his will that would counter these influences.  To this end, I joined a fledgling Sect led by a man ordained by the United Pentecostal Church that many in leadership with Queens Christian Fellowship were attending.  During that time, I had the first major occurrence of an ongoing struggle with cyclic depression.  A number of the members also had problems with depression, and it was interpreted as an act of God, tearing down the old in order to establish the new.  After having to drop out from my studies and a number of years "Pursuing God" in this fashion, I finally realized that this was not brining me closer to life or to God and actually left town to reframe my direction.  To give myself credit, I did not view this as giving up on Faith and told myself that I didn't want to, "throw out the baby with the bathwater".  However, I knew that I needed to look at my faith in a very different light.

When my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer a number of years ago, my family and I moved to my home town to be closer to her and started attending the Evangelical Church she belonged to.  My wife and I knew that this church held a very different view of God and Christianity than our own.  We soon learned that this community did not respect dissenting views and, that if we wanted to remain and not create a disturbance, we needed to keep our mouths shut about ideas we disagreed with, or held different perspectives on.  I made no mention of the fact that when we were directed from the pulpit to write "Pro Family" letters to our Member of Parliament encouraging him to oppose same sex marriage legislation, that I wrote to both my MP and the Prime Minister to express my support for it.
http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/advocacy/letters_pm.htm

A couple of years after my mother died, we left that Church to find a Faith Community that tolerated a wider range of thought and faith.  Feeling freer to express my opinions, those friends from that Church, who I had social media connections with, were dismayed to learn some of my actual faith views.

The direction of my current faith views and some of my current opinions were formed or came together during my time at that church.  In many cases they were a reaction to theology and dogma that did not sit well with my heart, and didn't match the Spirit of the words and actions of Jesus I read in the Gospels.  They were also a reaction to the spirit of intolerance, pettiness, and self-righteousness I witnessed this theology foster in this community.  I felt that some of the ways that the Scriptures were viewed and approached were less than intellectually honest, and that there must be a more Truthful perspective for gaining what they have to offer.

My current faith journey has led me to a place where I have a less literalistic interpretation of images of God as a sentient being.  I have a more metaphorical view of God and see these images as an anthropomorphism of what is truly legitimate and greater than our individual selves.  I also view, "the kingdom of god", and the use of images of an afterlife in the New Testament, in a different light.  Instead of taking the concepts of an afterlife, Heaven and Hades, literally, I have come to interpret them as referring to the way our influence extends beyond our lifespan in our contribution to cycles of violence and hate, or love and compassion.  I have written about this in the blog posts, The Gospel Is Not About What Happens When You Die, and, What Does Jesus' Death Mean To A Non-Literalist?

So, what if I am wrong in the direction of my Theology?  What if I am straying further from a more accurate understanding of reality and truth?  What if God truly is a sentient being who determines the fate of your existence in an alternate reality where your consciousness and awareness of self continue after death?  

I can only express my Faith that, if this is the case, that an honest and open search for Truth will lead me to that outcome.  I also have Faith that setting one's sights on exploring and emulating the nature of God, as portrayed in the Gospels, is at least as important as what doctrines have my intellectual assent.  I believe that what I am persuaded to to take as factual or agree with intellectually, is not nearly as important as allowing my heart and attitudes to be transformed by the message I find in the Gospels.  One of the ways I strive to do this is through my study of the Gospels in my other blog, A Literary Look at the Gospels.

I will continue to doubt, reconsider, and readjust, both the views and opinions presented to me and especially my own because I trust in God as Truth.  None of our concepts or theology is perfect and I will continue to hold that doubt is truly the pinnacle of faith.

Hierarchical Priority Lists and Order of Love

There is a popular Christian school of thought that one's priorities and duty should reflect the importance of the persons or things involved in a correct order.  For example, a hierarchy of priority would be:

1. God
2. One's children
3. Spouse 
4. Home 
5. Job 
6. Extended family and friends

I would like to explore this idea, its strengths and weaknesses as a helpful model and tool, and what other thinkers have written about this subject. First off, for this process, I’m going to talk about priority and love interchangeably.  One’s priority is where one’s heart is, and is an expression of one’s love/care/responsibility/duty

A hierarchical priority list model makes me think about St. Augustine’s “ordo amoris”, “order of love”, and of the recent public disagreement between J.D. Vance and Pope Francis on how to interpret it.  This made me want to do some research about “order of love” and the debate to see if it would enlighten me on how to view and implement something like a priority list.

Augustine’s key idea was that virtue consisted in loving things in the right order.  This to him was:

• God is loved highest
• Human beings are loved as persons made in God’s image
• Material things are loved as lesser goods

The “order” is not mainly about who gets loved first, but about what is ultimately more important and how intensely or appropriately we love different things. He was not talking so much about “circles of people”, as much as a hierarchy of goods and relationships.

Vance, I read, based his interpretation on a simplified version of St. Augustine’s teaching which consists of a “concentric circle” model of love/care/responsibility/obligation;  (family → neighbor → city → nation → world).  Vance used this model to argue that one’s compassion “belongs first” to one’s own group.  According to him, the United States should therefore love citizens first over immigrants and refugees for which they have a lesser obligation.  He takes this to the point of denying immigrants and refugees completely.  Under Augustinian thought we do have stronger responsibilities to those closer to us.  Augustine wrote that we should give “special regard” to those closer by circumstance. However, Augustine never reduced love to a moral priority system that justifies neglecting distant others.

Pope Francis corrected Vance saying, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests…”.  Pointing to the Good Samaritan, Francis explained that, the true model consists of a form of love that creates a “fraternity open to all, without exception”.  Love, and with it our establishment of priority, according to Francis, is not a widening circle of partiality.

I find Jesus’ teaching on the idea of priorities of love or obligation as different in degree from Augustine.  Where Augustine talks of giving “special regard” to those who by circumstances are closer, Jesus consistently widens the circle of who we should define as close, who should be shown no lesser love than family, tribe, religious group, or due to status, wealth, or nationality.  

Jesus’s teaching points to expanding non-preferential love.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?

Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?

Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:43–47)

“even sinners love those who love them.” Luke 6:32–34

I explored some of these ideas a number of years ago in the blog, I Like Rules and Jesus Scares Me.  I wrote about how when I was in High School, the staff advisor for our Interschool Christian Fellowship group taught us the hierarchy of Christian duty he had learned at his Church.  Our first duty and allegiance is to God, then one's spouse and family, then one's job, employer, and nation.  I argued that this would make the difficult choices between competing concerns much easier, but it is not the teaching of Jesus.  

Often our most difficult moral choices involve two legitimate demands from different people or groups that are mutually exclusive.  To show your love and give your assistance to one means withholding them from the other.  Whichever side you pick, someone is going to get hurt or neglected.  A system like the one above allows you to make some of these choices in a way that absolves you from responsibility and guilt for your harm or neglect of the side not chosen and see yourself as "in the right".  One can appeal to the authority of, "family comes first", to justify a decision and still appear righteous.  Again, this does not follow Jesus' teaching.

… Without absolute law and authority to make our decisions for us, how do we decide when to put the interest and needs of ourselves over others and to what extent?  The Gospels tells us that Jesus has sent us his spirit to guide us.  This is the spirit behind the principles of the Law, "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23).  It is also the spirit of love, compassion, and inclusion demonstrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus and his parables.  We are called to make the best and most balanced decisions we can by the prompting of this spirit with grace both for others and ourselves. It is messy and filled with uncertainty and lacks the assurance, self justification and lack of moral responsibility one can find in Law and authoritative directives.  However, it is a path of maturity, of accountability, of truth and integrity, the path of the Way of Jesus.

Leo Tolstoy, in his book, “The Kingdom of God Is within You”, argues that Jesus’s teaching about expanding love of the other is realized through movement towards an ideal, that we will never be fully there, but it is through the ongoing expansion that we become Christ like.  He also stresses that this expanding love comes not through adherence to rules and systems, but through personal growth and the expansion of love in our own hearts.

Life, according to the Christian teaching, is a motion toward divine perfection. No condition, according to this teaching, can be higher or lower than another.

It is natural for any one to love himself, and every person loves himself without any special incitement; to love my tribe, which supports and defends me, to love my wife, the joy and helpmate of my life, my children, the pleasure and hope of my life, and my parents, who have given me life and an education, is natural: and this kind of love, though far from being as strong as the love of self, is met with quite frequently.

...the recognition of self as this son of God, whose chief quality is love, satisfies also all those demands for the widening of the sphere of love, to which the man of the social conception of life was brought.

There, with a greater and ever greater widening of the sphere of love for the salvation of the personality, love was a necessity and was applied to certain objects,—self, the family, society, humanity; with the Christian conception of life, love is not a necessity and is not adapted to anything, but is an essential quality of man's soul. Man does not love because it is advantageous for him to love this man or these men, but because love is the essence of his soul,—because he cannot help loving.

The Christian teaching consists in pointing out to man that the essence of his soul is love, that his good is derived not from the fact that he will love this or that man, but from the fact that he will love the beginning of everything, God, whom he recognizes in himself through love, and so will love everybody and everything.

This brings me to another concern I have with the hierarchical priority/love model, and that’s the definition of what it means to love or prioritize God and how it screws up the order below.  I think of the Shema Jesus quoted saying, 

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  

The two commandments are linked and synonymous.  To love and prioritize God is to love and prioritize your neighbour, as defined in the story of the Good Samaritan as including those of different tribes and religions.  Not your family first, your employer, your tribe, your nation.  There are no levels in Jesus story. There is no hierarchy in 'my neighbour'.  I explored this theme in the blog Jesus Was Not "Pro-Family" Or "Pro-Nation".  

The problem that I mentioned earlier about prioritizing loving God over family is that, by the definition above, loving or prioritizing God means loving and prioritizing the rest of humanity and by making a hierarchy of priority where God is above family and others you are then saying that you should make humanity as a whole a higher priority than your family, job, or friends.

Another concern with this specific hierarchical model is that it doesn’t have a place for self.  “love your neighbor as yourself” implies that you can’t love others any more than the love you put into yourself.  And that’s where I think the hierarchical model is only useful if you follow it loosely and allow the priorities to change and ebb and flow with need.  There are times when you have to surrender your obligations to others, even family members, to look after yourself.  Sometimes the good of the few outweigh the good for the many.  Sometimes the interests of someone “lower on the list” needs to take precedent over someone higher” Family may be more important than your job/employer, but neglecting your obligations to your employment over family can lead to you not advancing in your job and affect your ability to meet your families needs.  In extreme cases it could mean losing your job and forcing your family into unpleasant circumstances.  In this way meeting the interests of your job, while maybe not to all the short term immediate interests of family, gives precedence to their greater interests.

Now that I’ve explored these different viewpoints, what do I think about how to apply a hierarchical priority model?  First, I have to say that as I respect Jesus’ teaching as foundational to Western thought and my cultural heritage, I see the deification of him and his teaching as metaphorical, not literal, so that Jesus can be wrong or too extreme in some circumstances and questioning him is valid.  And who knows if his words around family were hyperbole, meant less as a literal guide, but as a shock statement to turn the thinking of the times on its head and make people question.  As well, the figure of Jesus is portrayed as a young single man with no wife or children, and no teaching or example on how those relationships should figure into the lives of those who follow his teachings.  Those who wrote the Gospels were also not in a position to give guidance on family relationships except to encourage those who joined their communities to break with families that did not support them.  There was also a stream of apocalyptic thinking that removed priority from establishing families. 

Although there is a stream of thought in the Gospel that interprets the Jewish contemporary idea of the “age to come” in a metaphorical sense, where “the Kingdom of God is within you” and is where/when God’s will is done, there is also what seems to be a more literal stream where it was expected in the writer’s lifetime that Jesus would return to usher in the new age where creation would be renewed with heaven and earth re-born and the resurrection of the dead.  All three synoptic Gospels have Jesus stating, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”  (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36).  The views on marriage and family relationships and priority/duty of a people who thought these institutions would soon pass away and were a distraction to preparing for that time should be taken with a more than generous helping of salt.
 
That said, I would have to find most honest and useful a modified model based on Pope Francis’ interpretation of St. Augustus.  That model would give precedence to the interests of those “who by circumstances are closer” including spouse and family.  However, this is not a rigid hierarchy and ebbs and flows with the need of those close to us including our own needs.  Making those judgement calls relies on our understanding and gut feel for “"justice, mercy and faithfulness".  It also means there is no easy or “right” answer and that accepting that is part of maturity and a measure of grace for our inevitable mistakes or the hurt feelings of those who do not feel rightly prioritized.
 
In figuring out how to balance the love given to those close to those remote I also need to acknowledge that love involves change and effort and that the extreme of preferring those furthest away over those closest risks a more superficial kind of love.  It is easier to love the child of Ethiopia or Gaza who’s need is obvious and great where what is asked for is limited and remote.  Loving the child near at hand is messier, calls for more intimate contact and getting one’s hands dirty.  It means loving not only those you find deserving whether close at hand or further away.
 
I also have a hard time with a hierarchical model of love/priority in that it would seem to imply that these are a limited resource that must be carefully metered out following strict rules, a scarcity mindset rather than one of abundance.  The hierarchical model also would suggest that love/priority is a zero sum game, where one person’s gain is exactly balanced by another person’s loss.  Instead I see it not as a competition but as more synergistic and a positive sum experience where the total increases so that everyone benefits.

I Like Rules and Jesus Scares Me

I have to admit that I like rules.  I'm the kind of guy who comes to a full stop at intersections and uses his turn signal even when I know there is no one else around.  I like clear expectations around responsibility and being able to appeal to authority on what the limits of my obligations are and what's "right". 

I particularly like to have well defined requirements and expectations that can be clearly and unquestionably met and finished.  This orientation is reinforced by my job.   I am employed in engineering at a chemical plant where part of my charge involves the maintenance and testing of safety interlocks and other measurement instruments involved in a protective role.  As you can imagine, the process for manufacturing chemicals has the potential for dangerous conditions with risks of toxicity, fire, or explosion if not managed properly.  To safeguard against this we use a system which is agreed upon as best practice by the chemical industry.  

First, we perform a regularly scheduled analysis of all the potential hazards at each step of the process using an accepted methodology involving a multidisciplinary team and led by an engineer trained in this practice.  In this analysis we consider every possible outcome.  "What if" the pressure, temperature, or flow were to increase or decrease at each point and would that create a dangerous condition?  The severity of the consequence and the likelihood of it occurring are ranked and the number of safeguards or "IPL's", Independent Layers of Protection, required are determined using this same practice.  Once this PHA, Process Hazard Analysis, is complete, it is reviewed and signed off by those in authority.

Some of these protective layers are instrumented, using measurement and control instruments like pressure switches and automatic valves.  This is my specialty, instrumentation.

To ensure these instrumented layers of protection function as intended when we need them, this discipline also sets testing, calibration and maintenance plans with intervals based on industry practice and the mean time between failure data for that type or model of instrument. Maintenance plans for IPL identified instruments are ranked with the highest priority in the work schedules.  If we are unable to meet the set due date, there is a rigorous deferral process where knowledgeable people (of whom I am sometimes one) assess whether we need to shut down the process or if we feel justified extending the deadline to a determined date taking into account the maintenance history of the instrument or other temporary safeguards being put in place. This evaluation then has to be reviewed and signed off by those with the proper authority.

This whole system is audited, both internally and by third parties, to keep us accountable.  So, at the end of the day, we can feel pretty good. No one can suggest that we needed to do more, or that we haven't met our obligations.  All the requirements have been carefully considered following authoritative regulations, reviewed and approved by those in charge, implemented, documented, and audited.

I would like to feel a similar security in my personal life, to know that everything has been done that I'm obligated to do, that it's all been paid, all the conditions have been made and I don't owe anyone a thing.  The most comfortable state is one with no anxiety about needing to do anything else, no slightly guilty feeling about whether I've done enough.  I've figured out the rules and even gone beyond what is required so that I can feel justified and secure with no fear of anyone calling me out or thinking me a slacker. That's why I find this Jesus guy so upsetting. 

There was a religious group in Jesus time that felt much the same way as this part of me does, the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were the most prominent sect in Judaism at the time and pretty much set the tone on what it meant to be faithful to God.  To them it meant being ever more specific and rigorous in how one met the letter of the requirements of the laws of Torah. 

Judaism at that time was primarily modeled around the idea of a legal contract, the Covenant the Hebrew people held with God.  God is basically beyond our compression as is the nature of our relationship with God, so we use concepts we are familiar with as analogies to try and get some sort of handle on the whole thing.  The model the early Hebrew people used to explain their relationship with God was a covenant of the type that some neighboring nations had with their king, or which potentially hostile parties of the time created to keep the peace and form a basis for cooperation. 


This covenant was portrayed in the Hebrew  Scriptures as originating with Abraham:

I will set up my covenant with you and your descendants after you in every generation as an enduring covenant. I will be your God and your descendants’ God after you.8 I will give you and your descendants the land in which you are immigrants, the whole land of Canaan, as an enduring possession. And I will be their God.” (Genesis 7:7-8)

The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, was written during the Babylonian Exile when the nation of Israel had been conquered by Babylon and much of the population had been taken there as captives.  In an environment of slavery and oppression, they told a story of a compassionate, loving, and just God in the exploits of Moses and their people being rescued from another enslavement in Egypt. In this story, they used the Covenant motif to offer a way of life and treating each other that was in contrast to that of their oppressors.  God was holy, loving, and fair.  The Covenant required them to emulate this God and treat each other in the same way.

As part of the renewal of the Covenant with Moses, the Law was portrayed as a concession because the people were unwilling to bear the direct presence of God in order to follow his ways in spirit. In the renewed Covenant, the Law  was seen as the terms and conditions of what was pictured as a contractual relationship with God.

In the time of Jesus, Israel had again been conquered, this time by Rome.  Israel was occupied by Roman forces and was ruled by a client king.  The Jewish people interpreted these events in terms of Covenant.  God wasn't following through on God's side of the agreement.  This must mean that they had not fulfilled their side.  They must not be doing it right, or meeting the requirements to the extent and precision necessary.

Following this view, the Pharisees were particularly zealous in following Torah to the letter.  They created numerous regulations and requirements on how to put Torah into practice.  Much of this legalism was based on the Mishnah, a redaction of the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the Second Temple period (536 BCE – 70 CE). The Mishnah is comprised of examples of Rabbinical judgments that were used to determine the correct way to carry out laws recorded in the Torah.  Each Rabbi would teach both the collected regulations, the "yoke", of his teacher and the line of teachers before him, as well as his own, leading to an ever increasing body of rules to clarify and break down in ever increasing levels of minutiae the proper observance of Torah. 

This way of thinking carried over to their expectations of Messiah.  The Messiah would be a figure anointed by God to show the people the proper way to observe the Law and bring them back into the right in their Covenant with God.  He would bring a punishment on the people that would settle the debt for their past transgressions and would judge and purge the land of offenders.  Once the people's side of the Covenant had been satisfied, he would, as God's Chosen, drive out the invaders and establish Israel as a powerful sovereign nation.

The drawback of this legalistic deficit mindset is that it doesn't leave much room for giving anything beyond the minimum of what is seen as required.  If you believe that you are in debt and have fallen short of the basic requirements, it is difficult to consider going beyond the letter.  How can you consider the  spirit of compassion, community, and generosity that are the principles of the Law when you feel that your survival depends on just getting what's obligated by the letter and you are already coming up short?  But, this is exactly what Jesus demands.

Jesus contends that our relationship with God extends beyond any legal contract.  There is no point at which the demands of God's spirit; love, compassion, and fairness, are satisfied, where we can opt out when the spirit calls.  The demand of the spirit can never be fully met or paid, so that anyone can claim to be fully righteous, paid in full, and beyond any further obligation.

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:20

For Jesus, it is more than the minutiae of what's technically correct, it is the principles and spirit behind the Law that is most important.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.  Matthew 23:23

To make things even more challenging, Jesus also calls us to be totally unbiased, indiscriminate, and non-preferential in our practice of this boundless spirit of love, generosity, and compassion.  There is no hierarchy of priority, or anyone we should not include.  We are to love those outside our family, our religion, and our national and cultural groups the same, even those who hate us and mean us harm.

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? Matthew 5:46

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26

Jesus was asked in the Gospels what the most important Commandment was.  

"On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:40)

When he answered that it was to love God and to love our neighbour as our self, he was asked who this neighbour we were required to love included.  In response, he told a parable about a foreigner of a despised religion, a Samaritan.  In the story, the Samaritan stops to help a Jew who had been left for dead by roadside bandits.  Even though pretending to be injured was a common trick by bandits and he could be walking into a trap, and even though knew that Jews hated and reviled Samaritans like himself and we're forbidden from even associating with them, the man tended to his injuries and even put him up in an Inn and gave him money.  He did this even though he was unlikely to ever see him again or get anything back.  This is the un-preferential and boundless love that Jesus tells us God expects.

This teaching is quite in contrast to the limitations that some Christians justify.  I recently saw a post that reported on a Religious Right activist who stated that Christians are not obligated, “to be giving money to feed those Muslims.”  He claimed the Bible tells him only, "how Christian brothers are supposed to relate to Christian brothers, not how Christian brothers are supposed to relate to the lost world.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/daubenmire-christians-are-not-obligated-help-muslims#sthash.1R4MZVKC.dpuf

When I was in High School, the staff advisor for our Interschool Christian Fellowship group taught us the hierarchy of Christian duty he had learned at his Church.  Our first duty and allegiance is to God, then one's spouse and family, then one's job, employer, and nation.  This would make the difficult choices between competing concerns much easier, but it is not the teaching of Jesus.  

Often our most difficult moral choices involve two legitimate demands from different people or groups that are mutually exclusive.  To show your love and give your assistance to one means withholding them to the other.  Whichever side you pick, someone is going to get hurt or neglected.  A system like the one above allows you to make some of these choices in a way that absolves you from responsibility and guilt for your harm or neglect of the side not chosen and see yourself as "in the right".  One can appeal to the authority of, "family comes first", to justify a decision and still appear righteous.  Again, this does not follow Jesus' teaching.

As a young man, I was concerned that these teachings of Jesus were extreme, unbalanced and seemingly fanatical.  They scared me.  I looked at the life of Jesus in the Gospels and asked myself what it might mean to really follow this man and take up his call to emulate him and live like he did.  I saw a man who lived in poverty, had no job, no home, and little possessions beyond the clothes on his back, and living off the charity of others.  He was never married or had children.  He was constantly giving his self to others to the point of ultimately giving up his own life and travelling a path that led to his execution.

When younger, I also heard a story about a Holy Hermit that I found disturbing.  Holy Hermits were persons in the Middle Ages who, "turned their back to the world", in their desire to follow Jesus.  They would travel the country, homeless, jobless, and with little in the way of possessions, giving sermons on street corners and depending on the charity of others for food and shelter.  The story went that one particular Holy Hermit, who had no possessions other than the clothes on his back and a tin cup for drinking, one day spied a man drinking water using cupped hands.  Once he saw this, he threw his cup away.

So, what does it mean to follow the way of Jesus.  Is it a path of total martyrdom where you constantly give of yourself without reserve or boundary until there is nothing left, up to and including death? Does it mean limitless and unbiased giving where no preference can be allowed for those who might support you in return?  Is it a totally self destructive road of self sacrifice?

 “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."

(Matthew 16:24-25)

I do not think this is the point of Jesus' teaching.  I think what Jesus is calling us to is an acceptance that we will always be, "in the wrong", at some point and that debt and obligation is not something that can ever be paid in full by us. We can't earn or perform our way into a position where our part of an agreement with God is complete and we have some kind of right or power to demand things of God.  We can never consider ourselves as set apart and special as compared to others.  But, these things are not what the, "life more abundant" that he offers are about.

What Jesus is telling us is that being, "in the right", is not the priority or goal that we should be setting.  People who set their priority on petty legalism and always being, "technically correct", usually have little grace and forgiveness for those who don't make the grade.  And grace, mercy, forgiveness and inclusion are the major tenants of Jesus' teaching.  The vision he shared of God that he calls us to imitate includes not only limitless love, compassion, and generosity, but also limitless grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  God not only has boundless grace for us, God also calls us to have infinite grace for ourselves.  We are included through grace no matter what, and we are called to practice that same inclusion to all around us with the same lack of stipulation.

  

I have been writing a blog series called, "A Literary Look at the Gospels".  In this blog, I am working my way through the Gospels passage by passage in an effort to better understand what these teachings and stories meant to the authors and their faith communities. In the course of this study I have been quite excited by the themes of acceptance and inclusion I have been discovering in the second chapter of Mark.

The second chapter of Mark gives three stories in a row centered on Jesus' inclusion of those considered outsiders in the society of his time. In all three, inclusion is independent of performance and is a statement on the unrestricted compassion of God.  A cripple, blocked from Temple sacrifice due to his deformity and therefore ostracized by the community, is pronounced forgiven by Jesus and brought back into the community.  Similarly, a leper, also expelled, is made clean and returned the community. The third story involves a tax collector, a collaborator with the enemy, making profit through oppression and in competition with the collection of the Temple taxes and the tithes seen as necessary to regain God's favour. Jesus not only elevates him to the same social level as himself and other Teachers of the Law, by eating with him in his home, he honours him by calling him to be one of his disciples.

In these stories, Jesus deliberately picks three people who were excluded and reviled by the community that considered themselves as God's special chosen people, three people rejected because they were unable or unwilling to meet the requirements of the Law.  He makes a point of including them, no strings attached.  He requires no prerequisites, he does not condemn them or demand any change.  In fact the only people he ever condemns or demands change from in the Gospels are the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law who consider themselves as righteous and having earned special favour with God, those who exclude and persecute others who they don't feel have matched their purity.  He makes the point that all are welcome in the fellowship and community of God, God's kingdom, no payment necessary.

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! (Galatians 2:19)

The Apostle Paul, in his Epistles, continues the metaphor of Covenant in order to explain Jesus' teaching in a way that it can be seen as a continuation and culmination of the Hebrew tradition.  He portrays Jesus death in terms of a sacrificial payment that has met all the demands and requirements of the Law for us.  For him, Jesus represents a New Covenant, with the Old Covenant fulfilled and completed and therefore no longer binding.  The Law now no longer applies. He criticized those in the Christian movement who, by continuing to call for strict adherence to the purity laws, were rejecting the freedom of Christ to remain "slaves to the law" (Galatians 5:1).

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. (Romans 10:4 KJV) 

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. (1 Corinth. 10:23 KJV) 

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Like the original Covenant metaphor, some people literalize this New Covenant or stretch it too far until it is not only no longer useful, but in fact harmful.  A legal contract is not a love relationship. It is a power relationship where one party tries to control the actions of the other based on the terms set out.  Legalism is an attempt to control God.  Legalism is not love, and God is love.  A legalistic mindset requires there to be terms on our side so that in meeting them we can force God to fulfill His/Her side.  There needs to be a level of performance to meet so that we can consider ourselves as having merited special favour and set apart from others who fail to make the grade.

Legalism is an attempt to control God.

Legalism is not love, and God is love.

But, the beauty of this New Covenant in Paul's theology, is that it not only completely negates the requirements of the Old Covenant, but has no requirements of it's own.  It is totally unmerited and totally without stipulation or condition.  Yet this is beyond the grasp of many Christians who need a performance hurdle to feel like they have some control or claim over God and can perceive themselves as better and entitled beyond others.  

Some Christian theology claims that the law was never fulfilled and negated, but is still in play.  They believe that each transgression requires a separate act of forgiveness to be granted by God after it has occurred.  This forgiveness is only granted if after each transgression we ask it of God in Jesus name, accepting Jesus sacrifice as payment for the punishment they believe we deserve.  It also requires that we accept that the laws arbitrarily identified as being still in play (unlike others like eating shellfish or wearing clothing woven from two different types of material) are valid and deserving of punishment and death by a "just" God.  And it requires an attitude of repentance, a decision and conviction not to engage in the unlawful behavior or lifestyle in the future.  It is a well thought out, systemized and popularized theology cobbled together with a string of proof verses removed from context and a twisting and convoluted logic.  But, it is not reflective of the spirit of the stories and teachings of the Gospels, or the writings of Paul and other writers of the Epistles.

So, given all this, how does Jesus call us to live?  How do we know how to act or make value decisions if there is no ultimate set of binding rules or human authority to dictate how to implement them to allow us to be in the right in each circumstance?  First, I think we need to give up the illusion that it is possible to be right and "justified" in every situation life brings us.  We need to humbly accept that living means that we sometimes do the wrong, we harm or neglect the needs of others.  We eat while others go hungry, we clothe and shelter ourselves and our loved ones while others go naked and homeless.  We should no longer try to justify and enoble these choices, but humbly recognize our debt to those we share the world with.  At the same time, we need to offer ourselves the same grace that God does and in accepting that grace extend it to those around us.

We can't walk through the field of life without bruising the grass, but we can be mindful, humble, and grateful.  I think we need to adopt the mindset I have been told that some indigenous American people take towards hunting.  They do not consider the animals they hunt and kill their possessions, or the animal's life their due.  They do not see an animal's purpose as only to serve their needs, but as a creature that has the same right to life as themselves.  When they kill an animal, it is never for sport, but to meet their own needs for survival.  After taking an animal's life, they address the animals's spirit.  They express gratitude to the animal for their sacrifice and tell them how their body will feed their family and tribe, and how all their body will be put to use with respect with nothing wasted.  The point is that they do not deny they have taken what they have no inherent right to and treat the taking with humility and gratitude. 

Without absolute law and authority to make our decisions for us, how do we decide when to put the interest and needs of ourselves over others and to what extent?  The Gospels tells us that Jesus has sent us his spirit to guide us.  This is the spirit behind the principles of the Law, "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23).  It is also the spirit of love, compassion, and inclusion demonstrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus and his parables.  We are called to make the best and most balanced decisions we can by the prompting of this spirit with grace both for others and ourselves. It is messy and filled with uncertainty and lacks the assurance, self justification and lack of moral responsibility one can find in Law and authoritative directives.  However, it is a path of maturity, of accountability, of truth and integrity, the path of the Way of Jesus.

PITY THE RACIST

I have a request for you to consider:

Pity the racist.

Have compassion for the bigot.

Be kind to those who are triggered and threatened by new immigrants.

I, as a person of relative privilege, presume no right to tell people of marginalized and racialized groups how to respond to racism, bigotry, and hate speech. However, to those of us who hold some privilege, I ask us to not act out of righteous indignation or threats to the legitimacy of our values by racists in ways that are unkind.

I am not asking you to tolerate, excuse, or ignore racism and bigotry. 

Or, to cease from confronting and condemning it. 

I am asking you to extend empathy to the person who displays racism and think about the poverty of spirit that would drive them to speak and act in such ways.

Pity the person whose identity is so tied to the maintenance of the superiority myth of the group they were born into that they are triggered by the idea that new immigrants might take an equal place in their community. How bereft of self worth and of loving affirmation of their value they must be that they are so invested in the superiority of a group they belong to through no merit or work of their own, and only due to the randomness of the birth lottery.

I imagine this view also comes from being steeped from birth in a colonial mindset of racial superiority and competition where life is a zero sum game and worth depends on being perceived as better than others, where your value depends on others being inferior, and only proven by others remaining less better off than yourself.

Can you imagine the miserable, ungenerous, and constantly threatened heart that people have to endure to be held by these beliefs and to live in this framework. I came to tears this afternoon thinking about the misery and self torture these people endure, the lack of intrinsic self worth, security, and value they live with.

I can extend empathy to people whose lives are dominated by this mindset because I can recognize elements of it in myself. The voices of bigotry and racism speak inside me, reflections of my own insecurities and the culture that surrounds me. I try to recognize them for what they are and by doing so try to not let them influence my words and actions, or keep me from being the person I want to be. I forgive myself and extend that forgiveness to others; forgiveness not endorsement.

I get why many people are feeling threatened and are looking for a scapegoat. I can see why racism appeals to many people in our country. Many have seen their real wages drop and are struggling under an ongoing affordability crisis, housing prices, and tax burden that mean they can no longer achieve the lifestyle of their parent's generation.

Instead of blaming a capitalist system that has created record breaking wealth inequality, employment insecurity, and a government that disproportionately places the tax burden on the working class, they accept right wing narratives scapegoating the marginalized. Right Wing propogandist groups like "Canadian Crime Watch" and "Canada Proud" disproportionately highlight crimes committed by immigrants or members of minority groups to encourage this association, foster fear and division, and create the perception that crime is rampant.

This narrative tells us that we, "the majority", are the "good guys" being taken advantage of. We pay our taxes, we follow the rules, while "hoards of immigrants, many illegal, and welfare recipients who are scamming the system, get our money and jobs". It tells us that "immigrants and other criminals" (mainly from minority groups), who aren't following the rules and are getting "special privileges that we don't get", are getting away with it because they have too many rights and protections and "special treatment" that get in the way of their just or sufficient punishment.

Or, so the narrative goes. It is easier to demonize the marginalized than confront the system you have been taught is " just the way things are" or to hold accountable the beneficiaries of an unequal economic system who we have all been taught to revere, and believe we are entitled to become part of, if we only work hard enough.

I have no illusions that loving and extending compassion to racists, those we find least lovable, is easy, especially when they are hostile and speak hate to both ourselves, our values, and others we identify with and love.

I offer this mainly as a challenge to myself. I must admit that I purposefully fail to look at comments on my posts that I get notifications for where I do not recognize the commenter because I fear hate comments that might make me defensive and persuade me to argue and make unkind comments in response (which I have definitely done).

I want to keep in forethought that:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” (MLK)

In Violence We Trust

I have to tell you about a book I bought and my strong reaction to it.  I had read the synopsis and was intrigued.  However, after I bought it and started reading the foreward, I found it was not what I had expected and that what I read would make me well-up and start sobbing.

The book is called, “On Killing:  The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society”.  It wasn’t what I expected.  I expected it to be a research study by a psychologist on how armies and other armed forces desensitize their members to killing and the psychological damage it does.  I am interested in psychology and took the holy trinity of psychology lecture courses in University; Intro, Abnormal, and Developmental, so was curious.

Reading the foreward, however, I realized that the author is not a psychologist doing research, but a Lt. Col. in the U.S. army, and that this is not a research study but a “how-to” manual being sold to institutions wanting to teach people to overcome their conscience to kill on command.  The introduction talks about the long standing “problem” of getting soldiers to actually kill another human being.  It cites a study in WWII about how when faced with the enemy a large percentage of soldiers on the line either don’t fire or deliberately mis-fire, and that this has been a "problem" that is cited throughout history.  He then talks about measures in training done to overcome this “resistance” such as changing from bulls-eye targets for shooting practice to human silhouettes or even more lifelike targets.  He also talks about how earlier editions of his book on turning people against their own natire to make them killers have been required reading at West Point, the CIA and FBI, academies, and other institutions that instruct in “deadly force”.  It is a how-to manual for conditioning people to overcome their basic humanity and empathy in order to kill other human beings in cold blood on command, and how to deal with the mess it makes of the person afterward when you have a monster that can no longer function in society.

I read this preface and then went to the grocery store for milk and laundry detergent.  While scanning my groceries at the check out, I started welling up and had to suppress sobbing.  Driving home I was full out sobbing and couldn’t think about the book for the rest of the day without welling up with sobs.  So, I have had to put the book away for a while.

I’ve been thinking about why I have had such a strong reaction, why this is so triggering.  I was fine when I expected the book to be a clinical research study observing from the outside, but this change in perspective has made a big difference.  We all know that agencies such as the army train their members to kill people. I was going to use the euphemism “use deadly force”, but that makes my point, that this type of killing has always been sanitized by euphemisms and other means.  The fact that these agencies train people to overcome their humanity is somewhat of an open secret, understood but not talked about, a bit shameful, but understood as an "unpleasant necessity".  

I think that part I was reacting to was how this book was normalizing and even lauding the process as a great achievement, something that one should work to get better at and to do with less consequences.  Get them to sell their soul to the devil, but in a way that lessens the sentence in hell as much as possible.  And I reacted to that with great sorrow; that dehumanization and the deliberate curtailment of empathy should be a goal and lauded in our society.

It just goes against all my core values of what is loving and true and worthy, and the kind of society that I hope to live in.  It also brings home to me how insulated I am from violence and how that insulation depends on the cultivation of this kind of violence both in others and on others, particularly others “outside the wall” of pleasant middle class Canadian society.  I realize my complicity in this system while benefiting from it.

I have been insulated from violence all my life and have idealized a life of non-violence.  Probably the only example of violence (if you can call it that) that I can recall is in Grade 5 when lining up to come in from recess another boy pushed me out of line and struck me.  I was so incensed that I yelled in his face that he should, “strike my other cheek!”. I was so vehement and aggressive in my response that I think I quite frightened the other fellow, which I don’t think was quite what Jesus intended.  Even growing up with my brother we never had physical fights or hit each other.  I remember once when we were quite young, Terry had ratted me out on something to our mother and I had run from her to my brother full of fury to enact vengeance.  Terry cowered beneath me once caught, but once he was under my power I just stood there unable to harm him.

In Highschool the movie about Gandhi made a big impression on me and I read a biography of his life after watching the movie.  The movie was produced for Western audiences and tailored the story to show parallels between Gandhi and Jesus’ teachings.  That given, I found in his teachings and example many of the principles of Jesus I had learned to revere in Sunday School as a child.

Earlier this year I became curious again about Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance.  

Matthew 6

39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Luke 6

27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; 28 bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

These are pretty radical teachings and it occurred to me that I could not remember any examples of Christian commentary on this teaching other than a convoluted explanation about striking the other cheek where one cheek would be the one a person of the time would strike someone of lower rank and the other an equal and that Jesus wasn’t really saying what the rest of the passage repeats but was telling people to stand up for themselves.

So, I purposely set out to find commentary on Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance and found out that this was the subject of most of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kingdom Of God is Within” and that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. credited Tolstoy as an inspiration.  So, I’ve been picking away at Tolstoy’s work.  It’s long and dense, as befitting a Russian novelist, and has no large talking cats to add levity (as in Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov's, The Master and Margarita).

The more I consider and wrestle with Jesus’ teaching on non-resistance, the more I am struck by Christianity’s contradictory values as a whole in support of Empire, the most blatant being American evangelical teaching.   If someone threatens to strike you, you shoot them with your open carry gun.  Someone coming on your property to take something from you is a legitimate target and the opportunity to kill someone, and you can do it and spend two hours the next Sunday with your hands in the air praising Jesus without seeing any contradiction.  I also recognize that I myself am just as complicit in my outsourcing of violence to the state.  I take for granted the security of myself, my family, and our home and possessions that is ensured by a police force based on the use or threat of violence.

It is also ironic that I, who am unconvinced of Jesus’ divinity (and am unconvinced of God’s “godhood” in a literal sentient superbeing way) take his teaching in what in my mind is much more seriously than many who do.  If Jesus is God, then his teaching and example can be filed away as unattainable and only possible by saints at best.  Jesus' death as an act of substitutional atonement that provides a ticket to heaven in the afterlife to all those who give their intellectual assent to this as being factual is much easier and asks a lot less of a person than a death that embodies his teaching of non-resistance to evil, one that calls us to emulate him and follow the same path.  And really, why go through the effort of trying to follow Jesus’ teaching if you have decided that it is all about getting into heaven when you die (at least the important part), and you’ve already got your ticket, and this life is just an inconvenient waiting period where you’re entitled to wait in comfort.  And besides, if you fail to try to follow Jesus teaching, you can always “confess your sin” or go up at the next alter call, and all responsibility and accountability are wiped clean.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and wrestling with Jesus teaching on non-resistance.  Although I am no longer convinced of Jesus’ divinity, his teaching is not only a big part of my heritage and sets the stage for me on how to perceive the world, but I also affirm the truth and hope of his teaching and example because they “sit right” in contrast to the message and values that dominate our society.  It is a difficult teaching to wrestle with because it goes against so many of the assumptions we take for granted in our society.  It makes me think of the quote by  G.K. Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

I have in no sense a complete or even consistent view on non-violence and non-resistance.  I support the Palestinian right to resist, including the use of violence against their occupation and genocide.  But, at the same time, I question the validity of using violence in any circumstance, no matter the justification.  Each side, every user of violence, has a rationale or justification.  Even if they can’t justify the specific occurrence, they can tie it back to what they see as a greater good and the “defence” of their group, tribe, or nation.  To refuse to use violence out of love of the greater good of humanity is cast as treason against one’s tribe for which one is supposed to favour over others.  That’s why Jesus’ call to expand the circle of love and concern beyond family, religion, race, and nation, is so radical.  

I also reject the argument that dependence on violence and non-violence are a binary where if you live a life free from violence due to state sanctioned violence, you have no right to criticize militarism in both the army and domestic policing forces and that there is no other way to respond to violence except with more violence or the threat of it.

I have been wrestling with Mark Carny’s announcement of the largest investment in the Canadian military and weapons manufacturing for both domestic use and for export in Canadian history outside of war time.  I struggle with the idea that money is going to militarism when our own people are suffering poverty.  I also question the assumptions around the need for an expanded military.  Who would we fight or deter with the paltry force we could muster even doubling our current force against an expected adversary on the world stage?  The most likely adversary would be the United States who have been openly talking about annexation.  No force that we could stage, even if we used the sum total of our economy, would in any way be a deterrent or would be able to resist an invasion.  The same would be true for Russia and China.  The only use I could see would be to support Eastern European nations like the Ukraine from Russian encroachment and so further develop European alliances and assured trade partners.

This makes me think about the “need” for an army at all.  The idea that we "have no choice" instead of the fact that we just won't accept another choice in terms of non-resistance.  It is argued that if we didn’t have an army we would have ended up being conquered by Nazi Germany and would have lost our freedoms and the continued need for an army is to deter the same type of conquering by Russia or China with the same loss of freedoms.  The evil of having that type of government conquering us is epitomized by the Holocaust.  Yet, the righteous West that won the second world war and is credited for ending the Holocaust had their own concentration camps for Italian and Japanese people and is currently sponsoring a genocide and holocaust in Gaza.  Are the deaths of the second World War justified by the “more moral” governments winning?  A lot of the “elites” in German and Japanese society stayed in power and in some cases little actually changed with the Allied victory.

I’ve also heard claims about how the Army “keeps us free”.  One time I heard an ad said that if you enjoyed an afternoon at the beach you should thank a veteran, as if German and Japanese citizens didn’t enjoy afternoons at the beach and if we were under their government we would not be either.  I’m no fan of totalitarian of authoritarian governments, but fighting wars is no guarantee against fascism as the United States is a prime example.  Also, war and violence is not the only way one can resist.  I think of India resisting English colonialism and Gandhi’s non-violent protests.  He didn’t succeed in curtailing all violence in the resistance, and people died, but a lot less people died than if it was all out armed resistance for independence.

What if Germany and Japan had won the Second World War?  Would we have fought the new totalitarian government in different ways and, if so, what would the society that resulted be like, particularly if it was a non-violent resistance?

I think I’m also greatly dismayed at the lack of imagination with the assumptions built into our culture that there are no alternatives to violence and militarism and their threats to keep us safe.  I think of Ernst Bloch’s quote:

“The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security; it is the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different”

And from the book I just finished by Palestinian Canadian Safee Teebi,

“I want to never hope, to never be stuck in its expectant static.  I want to always imagine, because there is nothing that compares with the engine of imagining”.