I, Johan, "Mr. Dignity and Decorum," a.k.a. "your favorite blogger," am starting this EXCELLENT post with a confession:
I read the "Newsom University" post from California governor Gavin Newsom's press office via x.com, and was unable to suppress AUDIBLE MIRTH.
Two days ago, I had a chance to hear Howard Macy read his draft chapter on "Blessing Enemies" from his forthcoming book with the working title Living to Bless. This chapter of his book is based on Matthew 5:43-48, but not only: Howard traces the "love your enemies" theme throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible.
Howard's full chapter is a compelling lesson in why and how we bless our enemies, while not denying the dangers they may pose. Here's the challenge for me: its teachings can be applied to our fractured world this very day, if we're willing.
For example: Shouldn't we find ways to bless those in our own government and society who have apparently abandoned the constitutional mission to "... secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves [that is, "We the people"] and our posterity..."? Some of the people I'm referring to, and daring to classify as "enemies," engage in what's been called "gleeful cruelty"—the very opposite of blessing—and that public glee provokes in me (and apparently in Newsom's office) an almost irresistible temptation to RESPOND IN KIND.
Another case study: Among many other current calamities, we have the reality of Afghanistan, a nation whose Taliban leadership has gone out of its way to alienate much of the planet, is now in great need of assistance for the casualties of this week's earthquake. In so many places, the command to love enemies and bless those who harass us has immediate application.
In Howard's words,
Don’t answer in kind. Don’t make personal attacks, either directly or indirectly. Telling others about how rotten your enemy is seems like revenge. As does name-calling, even in your own thinking, since it keeps hurt and anger fresh. Certainly be careful with humor since, especially in our time, it is too often used to embarrass or demean. Importantly, living in love and blessing also frees us from the damage to ourselves that enduring bitterness and anger invite.
—Howard Macy, Living to Bless, chapter 8, "Blessing Enemies." Italics are mine.
Awkwardly enough for mirthful me, I've written something consistent with this on my own blog. Here is one of the "first principles" I republished upon Donald Trump's November 2024 electoral victory:
3. Resist the degradation of civil discourse. Do not use condescending mockery of anyone, or of their diets, appearance, or class origins. Don't mock their faith communities, although it's perfectly fair to propose contradictions between their publicly-proclaimed faith and their behaviors or policies.
Are those first principles adequate in an era of mutual trolling and unrestrained satire?
Another commentator, Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf in Berlin, is thinking along similar lines, but his specific concern is misuse of the label "fascist":
The ‘fight against the right’ is often portrayed by the left as a matter of life or death, as democracy versus fascism: if the fight is lost, then it would spell the end of democracy and fascism would reign again. That was the stark warning published in a global manifesto signed by 400 intellectuals.
But does this framing actually work? Will it help to defend democracy and win back lost voters? Probably not. In fact, it may do more harm than good. [See full article.]
...
In short, the best tool to defend democracy is open, calm debate rather than fear-driven fascism framing. We should specifically illustrate successes as well as the problems and dangers. Above all, extremists need to be included in these debates.
In the face of all this dignity and decency, however, Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi points out:
Newsom has grasped what so many other Democrats are loth to admit: you can’t keep playing by the same old rules when the other side has ripped up the rulebook.
A generation ago, George Lakoff was advising us not to let the opposition frame the argument; perhaps the use of salty satire helps break their frame? Or maybe there are two streams of rhetoric that should not be confused, because they're for different audiences:
- Honest (i.e., non-manipulative) rage and outrage linked to the violation of the standards we thought ought to prevail by virtue of our common citizenship and founding values: rule of law, due process, separation of powers, and government of, by, and for the people. Are we not to make our distress clear, and assure others that we are seeing the same crazy things they're seeing? Don't we need some of that righteous anger to fuel our efforts to get out on the street and prevent or at least witness the ICE dragnets?
- Direct expression, in our own diverse voices, of the values we uphold and intend to defend, and their Scriptural and civilizational bases, and our curiosity at what motivates our opponents to abandon those values. Doesn't our shared humanity, our commitment to "regard" others as we regard Christ, require us to make that effort, to express that curiosity, and to learn from them why they don't apparently see the need for mutual blessings?
But can we truly avoid confusing these two tracks? The danger with the first track, shared rage and distress, in its full range of expression (such as Newcom's trolling) is that it can fool us into thinking we can stop there—that outrage and mocking and mimicking the worst behavior of our opponents, somehow constitute positive resistance and activism, simply because we have the short-term pleasure of feeling like we've struck a blow for righteousness. Worse: for the sake of that gratification, we've reinforced the very alienation that got us into this mess in the first place.
What do you think? Where is the balance for you, if "balance" is even a valid goal? In our era of gleeful cruelty and mutual trolling, how do you handle honest distress without getting frozen into an "enemy" mentality?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
Related:
Tom Nichols: Gavin Newsom's parodies are riling people up....
Margaret Sullivan: Two can play at that game.
Regarding, part four: Closer to home.
The Beatitudes and Resisting Evil: this is a sermon by Becky Ankeny that has the same direct application as Howard Macy's chapters. After recounting a bloody period of Burundi's history, she continues,
You can see why I’m jumpy today about current events. I think about various possible scenarios and what I can or should do. Maybe you folks do, too. So today, we will look at two of the Beatitudes, bearing in mind that Jesus spoke to an occupied people, ruled by the Roman emperor and his governors, and locally oppressed by the military. Any rebelliousness was mercilessly put down and the rebels crucified. Therefore, I believe these Beatitudes can help us negotiate our way through our realities.
Matthew 5:6-7
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
If you're in or near Bremerton, Washington, this Sunday, the Bremerton Friends Worship Group is meeting.
It's church coffee hour ... what's an introvert to do? (Review of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam S. McHugh.)
This uncomfortable thought occurs whenever I catch myself plotting Sunday morning escape routes. Aren’t church gatherings supposed to offer a foretaste of heaven? McHugh might reply with reasonable alternatives to self-reproach: Perhaps, after worship, most introverts prefer holy silence, quiet prayer, or deeper dialogue to shooting the breeze in a noisy foyer.
Yet my own inward journeys of reflection suggest a less flattering answer: I don’t always love God’s people as I should. I treat them as roadblocks to reading books or watching Sunday afternoon football.
Yair Rosenberg on the MAGA influencers rehabilitating Hitler.
How serious was the GPS outage that may have affected the EC's president Ursula von der Leyen's landing in Plovdiv, Bulgaria? Or is this a case of some of us wanting to believe the worst?
Nancy Thomas thought about simplicity and integrity while shredding paper.
Once again in honor of the late Leonardo "Flaco" Jiménez... The Texas Tornados' version of "96 Tears."
8 comments:
Hi, Johan. As regards the main body of your post, I keep coming back to what Jesus taught: “Do not resist evil,” Matthew 5:39. (Not, by the way, “do not resist evil men.” The Greek is unambiguous, and the difference is significant. Do not resist evil whether it is personified or not.) This teaching is *illustrated* by the business about turning the other cheek and going the second mile, but those are illustrations of the larger and unambiguous principle.
The early Friends were very clear on their testimony. It was not protests against their government’s wars. It was not simply refusing to fight in wartime. It was not even refusing to fight at all. It was *nonresistance to evil*. George Fox wrote plainly about it, asking his opponents, “Have you *ever* seen us resist?”
So if we are pointing out the difference between what our opponents say and what they do, or mock them, or name-call, in a spirit of resistance, we have already gone off the track. Better, perhaps, to set a positive example of caring?
And there seems to be a purpose to that. The teaching, not to resist, is embedded in a larger text about being perfect as our Father is perfect. This is big. The early Friends made a great deal of noise about this perfection thing. We are to be like our Father, carrying goodness and righteousness to the highest level, so we become our Father’s true children, His spitting image, worthy to inherit the Kingdom. And the Kingdom of Heaven is not a kingdom of endless war between good and evil. It’s a kingdom in which good is the only thing. And so it is not established on Earth by conducting struggles between opposing sides. The Kingdom is beyond all that. It is established on Earth wherever the struggles have ended and only good is done. It is a realm in which even enemies are well cared for — as Jesus put it, their fields are watered and the sun shine upon them. If we point out the difference between what our enemies say and what they do, *as loving and gentle ministry*, to help them see, that is okay, that is the nurturing spirit of heaven. But the moment something in us stiffens, it’s time to go back to the Lamb.
Jesus also taught us not to lay up treasures on earth. If democracy is a treasure, and we are therefore defending it, again, we have missed the point. It is okay to teach democracy in a helpful way. It is okay to model democracy (although, as Friends, we have something infinitely better to model: our listening and discerning together and obeying). But defense is resistance.
It’s a very different path from the one the world walks. And when we walk it, some people notice, because it is so different and unexpected, and they wrestle with it, and learn from it. So it is also transformative, in a good way.
I wish that all God’s people would grasp this teaching of nonresistance, and practice it. We’ll get there some day.
Hello, Marshall! Thanks for deepening the subject, as you always do.
I don't see the command "do not resist evil" as absolute. I can think of times when doing the right thing, or refusing to do the wrong thing, could be construed as resistance to evil. The actions of Peter and John in Acts 4 seem like resistance to me, and could be an occasion when something inside them "stiffens."
I don't really want to argue this too far, however, because basically I think you're right. As Naylor said, "There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end." If we're oriented toward that spirit, we may vary in our understanding of what is permissible and what isn't, but we're not trying to rationalize our own self-gratification.
A harder point of balance might be managing our own feelings. When we see hypocrisy and injustice that is actually doing harm, our anger or dismay is not rebellion against God. I agree with that pop psychology statement that "feelings are much like waves. We can't stop them from coming, but we can choose which one to surf." Anger, disillusionment, despair, even cynicism, come unbidden, and we choose how to express them consistently with nonresistance, but we are not required to deny them. Biblical models certainly didn't.
Sometimes the response is managed through humor, and one point I was making in my post was that even humor can be weaponized. But I don't think it is altogether wrong. When we lived in Russia, we saw vividly how humor helps people cope with repression. In light of the command not to resist evil, humor can give people an alternative to resistance, but of course it's not an unmixed blessing. It can also serve to objectify and demonize those who are apparently causing their suffering, but who themselves are caught in bondage. It can reinforce a tired cynicism, a learned passivity, that may allow sufferers to forget that some acts of care and honesty ARE possible.
Thanks for giving me a lot to think about!
I have many questions on this topic, and appreciate that you are tackling the topic. I would like to submit a partial answer just on Newsom’s style, from the viewpoint of a teacher.
Students know that a constant force produces a constant speed, but I taught them that constant forces produce constant accelerations. Unless some way is found to interfere with students’ thinking, they will learn to occasionally answer F = ma even as they continue to understand that F = mv.
Newsom has found some ways to interfere with the understanding of some ideologues. He is educating them. A few, and a bit, but still.
Education is important.
Your comment on educating ideologues may be similar to my concept of breaking frames ... but clearer. Thanks!
How do I change my name from anonymous on my previous comment?
Karen, I'm not sure how to do that. One idea: ask me to delete the original comment, then republish it with your name. (You may be able to delete and replace it yourself if you are a Google or Gmail subscriber and were signed in when you made the comment, but if not, I could do it. I could then delete my reply and post it again in the right order after yours.)
It's always good to hear from you.
I have many questions on this topic, and appreciate that you are tackling the topic. I would like to submit a partial answer just on Newsom’s style, from the viewpoint of a teacher.
Students know that a constant force produces a constant speed, but I taught them that constant forces produce constant accelerations. Unless some way is found to interfere with students’ thinking, they will learn to occasionally answer F = ma even as they continue to understand that F = mv.
Newsom has found some ways to interfere with the understanding of some ideologues. He is educating them. A few, and a bit, but still.
Education is important.
Could you delete original version, and thanks!
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