Sam,
First, I want to comment on something that I brought up in a previous post. I said that evil is both a force (also an intention or disposition) and the act that makes this force known or able to be seen. I said that it would become important in a future chapter. Chapter 5,"The Hermit's Tale" was that chapter. I feel chills when I read this story. I also feel disgust, disdain, and sadness for the lonely man living in the cabin. What kind of person secretly violates dolls in this way, and what else is he capable of? But then I read the Morrow's alternate explanation. What if this was a story of evil (as in the force of evil or disposition to evil) resisted? Even with Morrow's explanation, there was deep sin wrapped tightely around this man's soul (as well as around the soul's of all of those people around him who thought him weird but never considered trying to meet him or get to know him) that made him feel such a deep urge to find sexual satisfaction with children. But if Morrow's explanation is true, that this man was using dolls to resist the temptation to hurt real children, then, although sin is no doubt there, evil was resisted. The force of evil was never joined with its ultimate manifestation in reality and therefore it did not materialize. There may have been another way to resist this evil, but maybe not if this guy had to do it by himself. In Morrow's explanation, I think the Hermit felt the best way he could affirm the "light" in the world was to separate himself from the world in order not to spread more darkness.
On to some of your comments...you start out with an explanation for how some of our modes of thinking and perceptions are formed. I agree with this. I think the fact that we learn and develop in this way in connected to God's call to His people to live in community. The Church as a community is meant to be apart of this socialization process and to pass down the stories and memories of what God has done and is doing so that we can be formed by them. This is no doubt an imperfect process.
I like your Newbigin quote; it is very relevant here. Sometimes we don't realize how our lives point to starting points for understanding that are far from the Gospel. You seem to be struggling with how to shed the influences of this world in order to have the "eyes and heart" of Christ. Please keep struggling. The first step in opening up to God is the recognition that you are struggling with shedding the influences of this world. I am not trying to be an elitest even though this may sound like I am, but most people never take this step. And if they do it takes a major life event or tragedy for them to do it. Most people stay comfortably immersed in the deception of their own cultural conditioning. In some ways we choose to stay immersed and in other ways we are so blind that we stay immersed without even knowing it. This is another reason why I think much truth can be discovered in serving the "least of these." I believe there are two reasons for this. One, it is countercultural (in almost any culture) to serve people who are different than me and to do it via the sharing of my own material resources. Second, in serving the poor in the way that Jesus calls us to, we are to serve the whole person, building relationships and sharing experiences. This allows for the one who is serving to learn from the one being served and to catch a glimpse of life from a perspective that otherwise would be unattainable. This too is countercultural to think that someone who is not as "successful" has much to teach me about life.
One way to look at your Newbigin quote is to think about the attributes of the Kindgom of God and that it is available now, since this is the Gospel message. How are we a reflection of the Kingdom's ways and its reality with our lives? I have no doubt that this can lead us closer to this "new starting point for all human understanding of the world." In what ways do we forgive endlessly, in what ways do we treat the last as though they are first (in what ways do we define "last" and "first"), in what ways are we generous beyond our means, in what ways do we pray to God on behalf of those we dislike (or hate), in what ways do we seek justice on behalf of the oppressed, in what ways do we confess our own sins before we condemn the sins of others, in what ways do we recognize that people (or "flesh and blood" as the Bible words it) are never our enemies but instead our enemies are dark spiritual forces, the principalities and powers, in what ways do we affirm the value of this creation and God's promised restoration of it, in what ways do we truly worship and lift up the name of the Lord every day...
Your discussion of hope is a good point. Morrow does not articulate much here. But I would say that since Morrow is affirming that existence of evil it is simply not possible to avoid affirming the existence of absolute good. Even though he does not articulate the hope he alludes to, for the purposes of his essay, the opposite of evil is all he wants to say about the thing that he claims hope in. Hoping for diminished evil or even its absence is not necessarily the same as the many false hopes that exist in the world.
You wrote: "True hope, in a world embodied with evil, is beyond an intellectual concept, spiritual idea, or a human existence..." I agree, but honestly acknowledging the existence of evil can be the first step to recognizing Christian hope.
The pace is fine. No worries about that.
Blessings,
Nathan
1 comment:
Sam,
I hope Europe is wonderful. I looked at some of the pictures on your wife's personal blog, amazing.
Here is a response to chapter 8. My first thought to the first page of chapter 8 is Jesus' (or maybe Paul's) words "don't repay evil with evil but repay evil with good. How radical is this, and yet it seems that Christians just explain it away when it gets hard not to, like in situations of mass violence on display in the Balkans in the 1990s. Many say, "My evil is just a response to their evil." Morrow refers to this as the law of retaliation. Christians can never be okay with this law. Maybe violence is sometimes justified, but never as a matter of retaliation because "they" wronged "us". After studying International Relations or even on a smaller scale, gang rivalries in America's inner-cities, much of what one sees is a tit-for-tat "game" that is continuous, only its intensity ebbs and flows. I have to ask myself, if Natalie were taken from me from a misguided rocket blast (or a targeted attack) launched by another country's military or a brutal murder by the associates of a gang member that I just arrested, how much would I be willing to trust the ways of Jesus? How much would my hatred and hurt consume me? Could I possibly pray for my enemies and repay them with good as Jesus explicitly asks me to? Even the thought of it now makes me think that I would be a changed person capable of worse things than I would ever want to admit (to a larger audience anyway). I guess because Jesus' ways are so antithetical to my base urges in such an extreme situation, their truth is affirmed even more.
I am compelled by Morrow's observation that evil often portrays itself as "injured innocence" (59). How much do individuals do this, how much does our nation do this? He goes on to write on the next page that what would be contemptible for an individual is made virtuous by the "injured" group. All things are allowed (rape, murder, even genocide) because in the group context, people in the group sacrifice for one another in conducting the "protective" actions, making atrocities virtuous. Basically Morrow is saying that if you are the victim, then you are always justified in your actions. Because no one should be forced to be a victim without recourse, a victim may do whatever it takes to get out of that situation.
I am struck and moved by the precision with which the Russian driver on page 63 remembered the number of days since his wife had been killed in Sarajevo. People have such a capacity to remember and mourn. Yet we also have a capacity for such intense apathy, often lacking compassion and generosity. I am also struck by the way Morrow seems to view Elie Wiesel's emphatic reminder to us to "Never Forget" (the Holocaust and the systematic evil that perpetuated it). He goes on to say that if none of us ever forget (as in the Balkans), we would all be dead. In fairness, he later says that remembering is indispensable (64), but I would say that the story of Scripture is (in part) a story of remembering past sufferings (of Adam and Eve, of Noah and those on the Ark, of those who never got on the Ark, of the Israelites, of Jesus, of the early Church). What is interesting about Scripture in terms of Israel is that over and over they are reminded of their own complicity in the suffering they endured. It was the Israelites' lack of faithfulness that made them vulnerable to oppression. In the case of Jesus on the other hand, it was His very faithfulness that caused His suffering, yet even here there is no battle cry urged upon His followers to avenge His crucifixion against the Jews or the Romans; instead, while on the Cross He cries out to the Father to forgive them. Not only this, but His followers actually record it this way. Christians that find themselves in situations of violence and deceipt and war are not to remember the past for the purposes of justifying their own evil in response, but they are to remember in order to gain understanding and in order to exercise a fundamental pillar of Christianity, i.e. forgiveness. We also must remember so that we understand ourselves better and more honestly. How hurtful it must be for some minority groups in America to hear white Christians talk about how the only religious group in this country under fire is the Christians and that we need to get back to the Christian heritage of our country. Imagine how that might sound to many African American Christians who wonder when the days of that Christian heritage actually were; maybe 1865 back to the founding when government sanctioned slavery was the norm or possibly it was after the Civil War through the 1960s when government sanctioned discrimmination took place in the South (not to mention public lynchings and wrongful convictions of black men) and severe social discrimmination took place almost everywhere else. Because many Christians feel stifled in our current pluralist environment, they feel like victims, and it is at this point that selective memory occurs about the "good ol' days". Remembering honestly, therefore, also keeps things in perspective. Morrow writes on page 64, "Obsessive memory mandates revenge." Not for Christians, for us, "obsessive memory" reminds us of Jesus' sufferings and His response to it ("Father forgive them").
I must say that when I read on to hear Elie Wiesel's declaration that it was "time to weep" and then read Morrow's response (65-66) I felt a sense of relief, like Morrow was finally getting to reality. I guess sometimes when I see the horrors, I want to feel anger and call it "shit" instead of feeling sorrow and speaking of the profound absence of God. Why is this? Maybe anger provides for the response I desire whereas sorrow does not.
I appreciate how Morrow speaks of victimhood and utter denial as too modes used for justifying group evil. He leaves us with the difficult proposition that often all sides could claim to be victims and it is at what point you decide to take notice or intervene that will determine who is the aggressor. This is what makes the Middle East feel so hopeless. Nevertheless, I think there is (whether at the micro level-a murderer/rapist or the macro level-an army) often a discernible aggressor initiating evil or moving it to another level of intensity. Tutsis may have killed Hutus prior to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, but the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis could find no justification by anyone but the Devil himself. Of course then you also have the agents of sex trafficking rings that exploit little girls for profit so that men can sexually abuse them. Its not hard to designate the evil actors here, regardless of their backgrounds that might include extensive abuse, poverty, exposure to violence, spiritual depravity, etc. I guess evil is both complex and simple. Imagine that, the truth includes paradox.
I look forward to your response to this chapter.
Nathan
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