Living Wittily

Love of enemy and redemptive risk-taking compassion

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Can3 Sometimes the dilemmas of yesterday come back to teach us the truths we missed first time round. In the early 1960's there was a big debate in the US on "shelter ethics". Sparked by a priest who defended the ordinary citizen's right to use loaded weapons to keep other people, neighbour or stranger, out of his nuclear fallout shelter (a more modern version pictured – attractive wee thing eh?).

Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton exchanged letters about it. Merton picked up the themes of hospitality, love of neighbour and seeing the 'other' as Christ. Three cardinal principles of Christian discipleship modelled on Jesus came to mind – welcome, love, and seeing the other as graced presence. Here Merton weaves these together in a theology of redemptive risk taking compassion:

Merton declared, "If I am in a fallout shelter and trying to save my life, I must see that the neighbour who wants to come into the shelter also wants to save his life as I do. I must experience his need and his fear just as if it were my need and my fear…and if I am strong enough to act out of love, I will cede my place in the shelter to him…It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are."

The willingness to walk in the path of another, Merton proposed, is the very essence of Christianity (and of all the world religions); and in order to see what we have in common with out enemy, "and to respect his personal rights and his integrity, his worthiness of love." He went on, " we have to see ourselves similarly accused along with him, condemned to death along with him, sinking to the abyss with him, and needing, with him, the ineffable gift of grace and mercy to be saved. Then, instead of pushing him down, trying to climb out by using his head as a stepping stone for ourselves, we help oursleves to rise by helping him to rise. For when we extend our hand to the enemy who is sinking in the abyss, God reaches out to both of us."

I believe deeply in the importance of such idealistic and principled theology. In our own age, 50 years after those words were written, the Church of Jesus Christ is called to a life of risky solidarity not with the status quo, but with those who look for shelter, for comfort, for a chance of life. In our own day we have our own reasons for fearing the other, seeing the world as populated by enemies. Copenhagen and climate change; Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror; global recession and the threat of global capitalism to the world's poorest as powerful economies plan for economic recovery; plenty of crises to shelter from.

Index.7 For all our agonising about mission, its definitions and challenges; for all our wondering about what the Gospel means in a postmodern conflicted world, here are words that are uncomfortably unrealistic, ridiculously principled, devoid of that pragmatism that so often and so easily promises effectiveness. Instead, words that are devastating in their Gospel simplicity, unanswerable in their Christ mirrored grace and mercy – idealistic with ideas such as not using another's head as my stepping stone out of the abyss, but helping him to rise, and finding God reaching out to both of us, in mercy and grace.

Where are the Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton figures today who haunt and humble us by the clarity of their conviction that Jesus was serious in what he said, not deadly serious but seriously on the side of life – "inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me?"

Lord grant me grace so to live, Amen

Comments

8 responses to “Love of enemy and redemptive risk-taking compassion”

  1. Hermina Janz avatar
    Hermina Janz

    “The willingness to walk in the path of another”. This is a satisfying (feels more like Christ’s message) contrast to the common type of email forward from well-meaning friends listing generalized threats and dangers from generalized forces “outside” the so-called-Christian western social establishment. What do you do when you receive those forwarded messages that are basically a venom-filled rant against someone “other”?

    Reply
  2. Hermina Janz avatar
    Hermina Janz

    “The willingness to walk in the path of another”. This is a satisfying (feels more like Christ’s message) contrast to the common type of email forward from well-meaning friends listing generalized threats and dangers from generalized forces “outside” the so-called-Christian western social establishment. What do you do when you receive those forwarded messages that are basically a venom-filled rant against someone “other”?

    Reply
  3. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Hello again Hermina. Forwarded messages, especially chain messages, exploit the worst features of ECT, including their impersonal, non accountable and unanswerable nature. For myself I delete them, I pray for the sender, and I pray for myself – for grace to not be drawn into venomous exchange, and for insight and wit to see and name hate, injustice, and violence in our world, in my place of work, in my neighbourhood – whether verbal, psychological and physical violence. That’s hard though – hard as anything else God calls us to do and be – hence the prayer for grace, mercy and persistence in goodwill. Blessings this season of forward looking hopefulness.

    Reply
  4. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Hello again Hermina. Forwarded messages, especially chain messages, exploit the worst features of ECT, including their impersonal, non accountable and unanswerable nature. For myself I delete them, I pray for the sender, and I pray for myself – for grace to not be drawn into venomous exchange, and for insight and wit to see and name hate, injustice, and violence in our world, in my place of work, in my neighbourhood – whether verbal, psychological and physical violence. That’s hard though – hard as anything else God calls us to do and be – hence the prayer for grace, mercy and persistence in goodwill. Blessings this season of forward looking hopefulness.

    Reply
  5. anon avatar
    anon

    serious question: how do you forgive someone who doesn’t admit they’ve wronged you?

    Reply
  6. anon avatar
    anon

    serious question: how do you forgive someone who doesn’t admit they’ve wronged you?

    Reply
  7. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    I suppose we all have to face the question of whether the dominical command to forgive admits conditions. I think reconciliation requires the mutual working out of grievance, a process of reciptocal peacemaking, and that does seem to require acknowledgement on both sides. That said, Jesus prayed forgiveness even as the nails were being driven into his body. There’s also the important question of whether forgiveness is a series of actions and responses to various situations, or a disposition adopted as a way of life.
    Yet I recognise that when we are hurt and alienated or rejected, our capacity to forgive is deeply impaired by our own sense of injustice. Not only so, but if there is no recognition of wrong, there can be no forgiveness recieved – which isn’t the same as saying forgiveness should not be offered, even if it is laughed away by one who does not acknowledge they are / were / might be, wrong.
    There is no easy answer to the question – if we are the one who is hurt then we require an admission of wrong before we can forgive in a way that satisfies both parties. If the other person denies any wrongdoing, and even blames us, then we are called to bless and don’t curse – and how hard is that. In the end, and speaking only for myself, and recognising it isn’t as easy to live as to say, I’ve found that the occasions when forgiveness of the other is hard because there is no acknowledgement of wrong, are the very times we hear the hard saying, if you love only those who love you what good is that?
    That’s why the post in question finishes with a prayer for grace and mercy so to live. So hard to live it – but such a hard world if we don’t. Lord have mercy.

    Reply
  8. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    I suppose we all have to face the question of whether the dominical command to forgive admits conditions. I think reconciliation requires the mutual working out of grievance, a process of reciptocal peacemaking, and that does seem to require acknowledgement on both sides. That said, Jesus prayed forgiveness even as the nails were being driven into his body. There’s also the important question of whether forgiveness is a series of actions and responses to various situations, or a disposition adopted as a way of life.
    Yet I recognise that when we are hurt and alienated or rejected, our capacity to forgive is deeply impaired by our own sense of injustice. Not only so, but if there is no recognition of wrong, there can be no forgiveness recieved – which isn’t the same as saying forgiveness should not be offered, even if it is laughed away by one who does not acknowledge they are / were / might be, wrong.
    There is no easy answer to the question – if we are the one who is hurt then we require an admission of wrong before we can forgive in a way that satisfies both parties. If the other person denies any wrongdoing, and even blames us, then we are called to bless and don’t curse – and how hard is that. In the end, and speaking only for myself, and recognising it isn’t as easy to live as to say, I’ve found that the occasions when forgiveness of the other is hard because there is no acknowledgement of wrong, are the very times we hear the hard saying, if you love only those who love you what good is that?
    That’s why the post in question finishes with a prayer for grace and mercy so to live. So hard to live it – but such a hard world if we don’t. Lord have mercy.

    Reply

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