This is the first new post published on this site under its new name, L'Ami Du Peuple.
This time I've quite a bit to share and to ask. Allow me to begin by sharing two articles from Daily Kos which I think can have some significant bearing on the issues discussed here:
http://click.actionnetwork....
http://click.actionnetwork....
What looks to me like a sticking-point is when someone else (Nazis, Islamists, Christianist Talibans) declares their dignity and/or destiny fulfillment requires your extirpation and/or extermination. My understanding of the Sermon on the Mount has been shaped in large part by Walter Wink's masterwork, Engaging The Powers. He makes the point how the most 'difficult' parts of that sermon are actually ways to assert one's own human dignity while also respecting that of the other. But when that respect (according to them) mandates your absence from your land and, indeed, from the whole earth, what can one really do but defend oneself? This, by the way, has been the viewpoint of most 'Palestinians' toward Israel, including their leadership, but it's a viewpoint they'll only express in Arabic between themselves and after being as sure as possible that no Western bleeding hearts ('useful idiots' to them) can hear or understand.
On the other hand, that God has placed this dilemma before the Jews can be a wonderful riposte to the 'supersessionist' heresies: this is probably something humanity as a whole needs to learn, and guess who's learning it first? God's original 'pilot group'!
Jesus speaks to us to the extent that we can 'hear' him today; his meanings were and are primarily directed at that first crowd, nearly all of whom were in positions not where someone else's right or dignity demanded their genocide, but one where they endured a thousand daily slights from parents, husbands (let's be brutally honest), upper-class Jews and occupying Romans. The examples Jesus gives are meant as forms of moral jujitsu, where you use your opponent's weight to throw him/her.
Nonviolence of this kind is a way which can and should be used at every stage in fighting injustice short of actual genocide coming at one and one's marked group. But acknowledgement of the oppressor's humanity is a necessary part of it; otherwise it degenerates into a 'mask' for hate-fueled violence. This is why all the 'Palestinian' attempts at 'nonviolence' (at least most of those we hear about) have failed. When either party has no conscience to be touched, nonviolence short-circuits and cannot work.
I don't know if this is part of nonviolence training as yet, but I had an idea for an exercise: to look the adversary squarely in his/her eyes with openness and see what happens. If s/he looks away or 'halts', even for a New York nanosecond, you may have touched something alive in them. Now, it may be you will see death, or nothing alive, in their eyes. That, I think, will be either the sign of one with no conscience or a narcotized or broken one. I don't know even if there is a way to tell one from t'other, much less how to do so. But I guess that's a matter for further study and lots of prayer. God bless and keep you all and I hope I haven't ranted and rambled too much.
This time I've quite a bit to share and to ask. Allow me to begin by sharing two articles from Daily Kos which I think can have some significant bearing on the issues discussed here:
http://click.actionnetwork....
http://click.actionnetwork....
What looks to me like a sticking-point is when someone else (Nazis, Islamists, Christianist Talibans) declares their dignity and/or destiny fulfillment requires your extirpation and/or extermination. My understanding of the Sermon on the Mount has been shaped in large part by Walter Wink's masterwork, Engaging The Powers. He makes the point how the most 'difficult' parts of that sermon are actually ways to assert one's own human dignity while also respecting that of the other. But when that respect (according to them) mandates your absence from your land and, indeed, from the whole earth, what can one really do but defend oneself? This, by the way, has been the viewpoint of most 'Palestinians' toward Israel, including their leadership, but it's a viewpoint they'll only express in Arabic between themselves and after being as sure as possible that no Western bleeding hearts ('useful idiots' to them) can hear or understand.
On the other hand, that God has placed this dilemma before the Jews can be a wonderful riposte to the 'supersessionist' heresies: this is probably something humanity as a whole needs to learn, and guess who's learning it first? God's original 'pilot group'!
Jesus speaks to us to the extent that we can 'hear' him today; his meanings were and are primarily directed at that first crowd, nearly all of whom were in positions not where someone else's right or dignity demanded their genocide, but one where they endured a thousand daily slights from parents, husbands (let's be brutally honest), upper-class Jews and occupying Romans. The examples Jesus gives are meant as forms of moral jujitsu, where you use your opponent's weight to throw him/her.
Nonviolence of this kind is a way which can and should be used at every stage in fighting injustice short of actual genocide coming at one and one's marked group. But acknowledgement of the oppressor's humanity is a necessary part of it; otherwise it degenerates into a 'mask' for hate-fueled violence. This is why all the 'Palestinian' attempts at 'nonviolence' (at least most of those we hear about) have failed. When either party has no conscience to be touched, nonviolence short-circuits and cannot work.
I don't know if this is part of nonviolence training as yet, but I had an idea for an exercise: to look the adversary squarely in his/her eyes with openness and see what happens. If s/he looks away or 'halts', even for a New York nanosecond, you may have touched something alive in them. Now, it may be you will see death, or nothing alive, in their eyes. That, I think, will be either the sign of one with no conscience or a narcotized or broken one. I don't know even if there is a way to tell one from t'other, much less how to do so. But I guess that's a matter for further study and lots of prayer. God bless and keep you all and I hope I haven't ranted and rambled too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment