This is really a continuation of my previous post, or a prequel to it perhaps. But I've been thinking a lot about this today, and looking back over my life I can see how I've all too often bought into the myth of redemptive violence myself.The cross, as we see again and again, is the "coincidence of opposites": One movement going vertical, another going horizontal, clearly at cross-purposes.
When the opposing energies of any type collide within you, you suffer. If you agree to hold them creatively until they transform you, it becomes redemptive suffering.
This stands in clear and total opposition to the myth of redemptive violence, which has controlled most of human history, even though it has never redeemed anything. Expelling the contradictions instead of "forgiving" them only perpetuates the problem.
Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness
It seems to me that violence is so much more than the physical act of causing damage to another's body. Violence is a way of life, a way of thinking, that is profoundly at variance to Christ's way. Violence exists in the refusal to forgive, in the impulse to retaliate in whatever form, in the refusal myself to suffer, but to attempt to expel, as Rohr suggests, the suffering onto another.
Violence against oneself is a strange and complex thing. I have never been able to relate to physical self-harm, and even though I have been very close to people who have done this I have not been able to understand their explanations. But inner violence I have known all too well, and it seems to me that it is yet another attempt to expel the suffering; only in this instance to expel it from the present, conscious part of me onto another part: my past, perhaps, or the instinctive, emotional part of myself.
Love is the opposite of violence, in this sense. Love accepts suffering, holds it, absorbs it, and ultimately transforms it into "redemptive suffering". Love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." (1 Corinthians 13.7-8)
Martin Luther King understood this, as did Gandhi, and it lies, spoken or unspoken, at the heart of all of Desmond Tutu's words - he who said once, "A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons."
9 comments:
Wow, you're on fire today, Mike!
Excellent stuff.
This post is a gift Mike, grace presented in words.
Thank you.
Mike I left this over on Sue's blog but I thought I would post it here also.
Here are some excerpts from Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf, a Croatian Theologian that found himself in a tough spot with his country men/women when he began to speak of the need to embrace their enemy.
"Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion - without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and imitate God's love for him. And when one knows that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see onself in the light of God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness." (p.124)
"When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion the movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in (see John 17:21). We, the others - we, the enemies - are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which they love each other and therefore make space for us within their own eternal embrace." (p.129)
"Without entrusting oneself to the God who judges justly, it will hardly be possible to follow the crucified Messiah and refuse to retaliate when abused. The certainty of God's just judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence in the middle of it. The divine system of judgment is not the flip side of the human reign of terror, but a necessary correlate of human nonviolence."(p.302)
Kent, I've left a longer comment on your own post, but thank you for introducing me to Miroslav Volf, whom I confess I hadn't encountered before. I see he's written on Moltmann - I must check this guy out properly. This passage is terrific stuff - entrusting oneself to God - yes, absolutely!
Mike, Miroslav studied under Moltmann. I've also read his book Free of Charge: giving and forgiving in a culture stripped of grace
I was pretty challenged by his thinking
"Miroslav studied under Moltmann." Starting to make sense! I'm obviously going to have to read some of his work properly. Free of Charge sounds like it might be a good place to start?
Mike, I think most people when speaking of books from Volf would probably mention Exclusion and Embrace as the book of his that so challenged them. Free of Charge seems to be a continuation of it.
OK Kent. Thank you - useful!
Mike, I had a friend not too long ago say it to me this way when speaking of the myth of redemptive violence.
"Thinking we will reach a place of peace or redemption through the use of violence is like thinking we can achieve virginity through screwing."
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