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Gospel scripture
as
guerrilla script.
Ed
Iglehart
_____________________________________
The
Powers That Be
Theology for a New Millennium
WALTER
WINK
Galilee Doubleday,
New York, 1999, $12.95 (pbk)
"They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humanity; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountainhead."
Henry David Thoreau
This book is
profoundly and unashamedly Christian, and at first glimpse, one might
be tempted to regard it as aimed exclusively at Christians or
potential converts. The imprint is Christian and it is clearly
written by a believer, but one who has found it necessary to seek the
fountainhead. It is clear that his pilgrimage hasn't been without
pain, is not at an end, and is accepted with an endearing
humility.
Wink intends that we address the spiritual Powers
which mirror and are continuous with the corporeal Powers we all
know, the earth, its creatures, corporations, governments,
associations, clubs, churches and individuals. "The world is, to
a degree at least, the way we imagine it. When we think it to be
godless and soulless, it becomes for us precisely that. And we
ourselves are then made over into the image of godless and soulless
selves."
Thus the key to understanding and freeing our
minds is an understanding of worldviews, from the ancient as
reflected in the Bible, the spiritualist or Gnostic, the recent and
still widely dominant materialist, its reactive theological twin and,
emerging from many current streams of thought, an 'integral'
worldview. "We may be the first generation in the history of the
world that can make a conscious choice between these worldviews."
The Powers are inherently good (as we are), but fallen (as we are)
and capable of, in fact destined for, redemption through
transformation (as we may be).
This is our task, but it will
be necessary to confront the "Domination System" which
creates oppression of women. the poor, the 'undeveloped' and, in fact
all of us. We must examine the Myth of Redemptive Violence, the
operative myth of the modern world, the ancient root of power systems
and belief structures, which is at the heart of the domination
system. This myth goes back beyond Judeo-Christian myths and has its
origins deep in the Enuma
Elish,
the Babylonian creation story. It is rehearsed every Saturday in
children's television cartoons and also in westerns, comics and much
more; it saturates much modern political thought and the national
security mentality. The form is simple: underdog is beaten nearly to
destruction by an evil foe, miraculously rises up (or is miraculously
aided) and defeats (but never fully destroys) the villain.
Within
the integral worldview it is apparent that there is evil, and that it
operates through the Domination System. That the system is
self-perpetuating is also clear, and thus that the answer cannot be
found within it. So what, then, is the answer? Jesus, surely, but not
the Jesus many of us, Christian or not, admire and thought we
knew.
It was from the King James New Testament version of
Jesus that Thoreau drew his idea of 'passive resistance', later taken
up and developed to great effect by Mohandas Ghandi, Martin Luther
King, Jr. and countless others in recent decades. The core passage is
in Matthew 5:38-41
"Ye have heard that it hath been said,
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you,
That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at
the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And
whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."
This
has most often been read as commanding passivity at best and at
worst, meek submission to authority, but Wink reminds the reader of
the ways in which Jesus seemingly took every opportunity to flaunt
the prevailing proprieties, freely conversing with and touching
women, the poor and afflicted, disdaining wealth and property,
healing on the Sabbath, and so forth. Is this passive compliance,
non-resistance?
Part of the answer would seem to lie with the
Greek word antistenai,
translated above as 'resist', which in the Old Testament is used as a
military term implying 'standing in battle', or resisting force with
force. Not to meet force with force is not the same as not to resist.
There is another way, "Jesus' Third way," and this may be
inferred by examining the social context of the first century BCE.
Jesus' audience were Jews under the oppression and slavery of the
Roman occupation.
We are asked to try and imagine striking
someone on the right cheek with our right hand, for the left would
not do, being only for unclean tasks. It becomes obvious that it
could only be done backhanded - traditionally a blow to degrade or
humiliate an inferior; to offer the left cheek denies the backhand
and invites the right fist, but it is known of the times that only
equals fought with fists.
With a similar understanding of the
social context, to give up one's underwear in court is to strip
naked, shaming the viewer and exposing the creditor and the law in
their absurdity.; the imagery is highly visual, and we can imagine
the audience's hilarious reaction. Likewise, for a Jew to carry a
soldier's pack for more than a mile would involve the soldier in a
military offence, as by law, only a mile could be demanded. The
result in each case is, judo-like, to render the oppressor impotent
and ridiculous.
The Jesus who emerges from this contextualised
interpretation is perhaps more easily recognised by those familiar
with liberation theology, a Jesus who is radical, subtle, inventive,
revolutionary, skilled at social judo and, it would seem, somewhat of
an anarchic stand-up comic. This is guerrilla theatre, and certainly
not the way to avoid trouble, but it holds out the possibility of
redemption of the enemy. We are commanded to return love for abuse,
surely, but in a manner which can transform, so that both sides
win.
The development of practical nonviolence by those who
have followed, Tolstoy, Ghandi, King, Mandela and many more, has
provided ample evidence that it is not a way for the fainthearted. It
is, Wink believes, the only way to combat the Powers without becoming
the very thing we hate, Ghandi argued that "where there is only
a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence."
Nonviolence requires total commitment. It is aggressive, seeking out
conflict, drawing it into the open to "lance its poisonous
sores."
But the churches haven't even agreed that
domination is wrong. Those who accept the concept of just-wars, were
they to look, might find common ground in principles shared with
advocates of nonviolence: violence minimisation, protection of
innocents, rejection of corrupt motivation, and moral accountability.
"If the churches were unambiguously committed to nonviolence,
its appeal to governments and insurgents to reduce the barbarity of
war would have more credibility. This might have helped in Northern
Ireland, where both the Catholic and the Protestant churches have
espoused just-war positions in support of warring factions. Because
their condemnation of violence was selective, it lacked all
conviction."
Miguel D'Escoto, Catholic priest and
Sandanista foreign minister, sums up the discipline required: "I
don't believe that nonviolence is something you can arrive at
rationally. We can develop it as a spirituality and can obtain the
grace necessary to practice it, but not as a result of reason. Not
that it is anti-reason, but that it is not natural. The natural thing
to do when somebody hits you is to hit them back." The
empowerment of nonviolence lies in recognising that it is the system
which opposes us; our oppressors are its victims also, and "we
can pray for the transformation of our enemies, knowing that even the
most intractable opponents may be capable of a complete
turnabout."
Prayer invokes the politics of hope,
believing the future into being, echoing Ghandi's "You must be
the change you wish to see in the world." with "become the
answer to our prayer." We are asked to recognise that God is
limited by our freedom, that His ability to intervene is extremely
circumscribed, but that "God does want people to be free to
become everything God created them to be." This seems slightly
close to the personification against which Wink has earlier warned
us.
"We are commissioned to pray for miracles because
nothing less is sufficient." This man has listened widely, has
deeply awakened; in closing he says, "...(W)e are privileged to
learn from all religious and philosophical traditions, Christians
still have a story to tell to the nations. Who knows - telling it may
do no one so much good as ourselves. And as we tell it and live it,
we may see ourselves - and maybe even the world- a little bit
transformed."
Ed
Iglehart is a free-thinker and a lifelong student of human ecology,
currently engaged in the MSc programme at The
Centre for Human Ecology
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