In my last post I quoted this famous section of the Sermon on the Mount:“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."It struck me, as I once again pondered this teaching of Jesus, how many of us don't have actual enemies. To be sure, most of us have workplace tensions, conflicts with people who are snarky, hyper-competitive, gossipy, jealous, rude, boorish, or adversarial. But are they enemies? I'm sure it's an issue of gradation. And many of us do have true enemies, people actively and malevolently set against us.
What strikes me about this is that, even without hosts of enemies, we still do a lot of hating. As I tell my classes when I lecture on Freud: You got to hate someone. According to Freud all our pent up aggression and frustration has to go somewhere. It seeks an outlet, a catharsis, a target. And more and more often this "hatred" is directed at pixels.
What I mean by this is that when I hear someone just going off on someone, channeling a lot of anger, more often than not they are talking about someone on TV, not someone in their actual social sphere.
Most of our enemies are pixels.
Two example. First, take hate in the realm of sports or celebrities. People hate rival sports teams or team owners or players. You mention the name of a team or player and you'll hear people say, "I hate him." You mention some celebrity getting divorced or going through some trouble and you hear people say, "I hate her." Which is curious as we don't actually know any of these people. We're hating pixels.
Same goes for politics. I have liberal friends who hate Sarah Palin. That's what they tell me. On the other side I have friends who hate President Obama. Again, I have their word on that. But as with sports stars or celebrities, we don't actually know any of these people. We're hating pixels.
More often than not, our enemies aren't real. They are virtual. They are, if Freud is to be believed, dark projections and representations of our fears and paranoia. They are pixelated bogeymen and demons.
And if that's true, I wonder what it might mean to "love your pixelated enemies."
Might the souls of my liberal friends be hanging in the balance depending upon how they love (or fail to love) Sarah Palin? Might the souls of my conservative friends be hanging in the balance depending upon how they love (or fail to love) Barack Obama?
Might one of the greatest acts of Christian charity in the modern world be love toward the pixelated enemy?
The command "love your enemies" is very, very hard. And I wonder, do we think of that as we watch TV?
Interesting. I'd go the opposite direction. I'd side with C. S. Lewis when he suggests ( in the voice of Screwtape) that it doesn't do much for our virtue if we love our imaginary enemies, as long as we hate our neighbors.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that media is helping us practice vices which will eventually corrode our real ethical lives--the way we really treat our conservative (or liberal) aunt or uncle or cousin, with Fox-news suspicion or with MSNBC disdain. And I think loving our enemies while we watch T.V. could indeed be good practice.
But I think most of us hate people much closer than pixels, like our spouses and kids. (Or am I being too self-revealingly autobiographical here?) And to some degree taking that out on Tom Brady or Dick Cheney, while not at all a good thing, may provide some short-term catharsis while we try to figure out how, in contemporary culture, to love those nearest and dearest to us when it's hard to admit that they are our true enemies.
Having just spent the afternoon preparing some training on restorative approaches, I'm more than usually aware that wrong-doing (including hatred expressed in violence) can be understood as the breaking of a social bond, rather than a violation of the honour of [insert arbitrary authority figure here].
ReplyDeleteBut universalism goes even further than this.
If I've got my head around MacDonald's view of wrong-doing, it is at heart a lack of trust in the power of God's love. It is to wish the world were not as it is, to conclude that you could have ordered things better than God, that He is maybe not in control. Seen from this point of view, loving our enemy as ourselves is kind of tautological.
To the extent that we hate, we are damaging our bond with our own 'self' as God intends and wills it to be (as opposed to the 'sarx'/flesh that Paul describes).
As C.S.Lewis and his fellow bus passengers take a tour of paradise with MacDonald as their guide (The Great Divorce), all but one of the visitors find qualities within themselves that make staying unconscionable for them. Our real enemy is neither flesh and blood nor pixelated, it is ourselves.
I'm not sure about pixelated hate but I can speak to pixelated love.
ReplyDeleteI've spent quite a bit of time in my own head over the last year thinking about how I love gay people, and chewing my way through interpretations of scripture and doctrinal systems that don't sit with my conscience any longer. Pondering, pondering ... all the while telling myself how much I love gay people.
Abstract imaginary gay people.
But the first Sunday of advent, we packed up our 4 kids and traveled into the city to attend a Lutheran church known to not just tolerate but truly celebrate gay and transgendered people. We've committed to attend there for the whole of the advent season. And it's flippin awesome. The Lutheran liturgy is a welcome change from our "uber hip" home church. They did a book study on Love Wins ("have you ever heard of it?" chuckle, "um, yeah, I've heard of it" LOL)
I realized at some point I could spend all the time I wanted in my own head talking about how much I loved gay people, and what all I believed about them ... but without action, that belief was dead. Sitting my kids down in a pew behind couples and families that are different than ours, for us that's what took out us out of pixelated abstract "belief" into real life.
I imagine the hate thing would work similarly. The test would come in real life. I'm not a real fan of Newt Gingrich, but I am sure that if I met him in person there would be something about him that would draw my compassion. Not my vote, mind you (LOL) but my compassion. I thank God for that. Because many people I know don't, can't see things that way. There's nothing the object of their vitriol could ever do to change the disposition they already have toward them. And so they really do already hate them, even though they don't know them, don't you think?
Jana and I say this all the time, that if you really get to know someone you end up liking them. And if not liking, because people can be hard to like, at least having a soft spot for them.
ReplyDeleteI think this has to do with story. We're all very different, but underneath it all, we all want the same things. We want to be safe and we want to be loved. Which means we are all, in some sense, telling the same story. We just have to listen to each other.
Have you been peeking at my restorative approaches notes, Richard?
ReplyDeletePersonal Construct Psychology researchers - after asking thousands of people all round the world about what's important to them and how come that thing's important etc. - have come to the conclusion that there are four core things we all want: to make sense of the world, to relate to others, to be authentically ourselves and to choose our own path. As you say, once we get people to listen to and tell these stories, we have a chance of living with our differences.
The way I love my enemies and others is first by trusting in the God who says, "Vengeance is Mine I will repay. Rather if your enemy is hungry feed him." All sin was either punished at the cross or it will be punished in hell. Either way vengeance belongs to God. I have no right to harbor bitterness against anybody. When my faith is in God to handle it my heart opens up to love and I can forgive as I have been forgiven. This is faith working itself out through love.
ReplyDeleteAren't jlh and Andrew both discussing two sides of the same coin? Andrew describes our tendencies to hate the imaginary and the distant because it is easy and provides a sort of catharsis, as you attested, and you complement those points with suggesting that we also have tendencies to hate those most intimate or closest in proximity to us. But I'd want to push back on allowing pixelated hate to be cathartic. Because, while yes, hating a celebrity is a better outlet than hating those closest to us to whom we could do some serious damage with our hate, it still doesn't justify the hate for the celebrity. There might not be much social effect or repercussions in vocally or internally breeding hate, but there does seem to be a danger to ourselves. We are creatures of habit and practicing hate of any kind only serves to increase hate. So I don't think we are off the hook, as is typically assumed, when we hate our pixelated and projected shadow-selves.
ReplyDeleteSo... here's a question: if I don't hate anybody, does that really mean I'm any better? I ask because - like you, I'm guessing - I don't hate sports figures or celebrities or politicians, and I've never really understood how/why others claim to hate them. Sometimes I laugh at them, sure, but let's face it... they're hilarious.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any real enemies, either. I mean, I've had people do some seriously poopy things to me. I've been ripped off, ditched, divorced and even punched right on der schnozzle - but those are one-time actions, and I tend to shrug them off. It often takes me a long while to feel like forgiveness has really taken root, but eventually I get there.
So I read this post of yours and I get this smug little sense of how awesome I am, but then I wonder, Dr. Beck (and this is where the question really comes in), if this might have something more to do with an innate temperament than any particular virtue on my part. Does my body just overproduce serotonin? I don't feel like a particularly great guy... so, what's going on? Is hate genetically harder to stave off for some people? Where does my generalized equanimity come from? Jesus? Yoga? (actually, I don't do yoga... but once back in eighth grade I remember having had a really good stretch)
Fair, and well-put. Maybe Screwtape was wrong. (After all, he was a demon.) Or maybe it's just a moral progression, and those of you who are worried about hatred on T.V. are simply less far along the moral progression than those of us who are struggling (sometimes unsuccessfully) not to hate real people.
ReplyDeleteYou're asking the sorts of questions that prompted this post. I'm like you, I don't have any enemies (at least none that I know of). I figured a lot of people would be in the same boat. So I was thinking, how do we apply this particular teaching? That's when my mind drifted to political discourse, how people see various political figures as "enemies."
ReplyDeleteI do think some of us have more peaceable temperaments (e.g., trait agreeableness on the Big 5). Also, if someone like Steven Pinker is to be believed (see his new book The Better Angels of our Nature) we're living in a very peaceable time, the most peaceable in human history.
Oops, I meant to say less far along the moral downward progression. Screwtape must be catching--I'm talking about getting more sinful as though it were progress!
ReplyDeleteWell, my point was that no one was wrong. Screwtape was still right: it is most assuredly worse to hate real people than it is to hate pixelated people. Though I'm sure almost all of us continue to struggle with both kinds of hate.
ReplyDeleteI've said similar things for a good while now. But I've constantly found myself within the tension of the dichotomy of our selves - I gravitate towards and am healed by a person's good qualities and am repulsed and hurt by their bad qualities.
ReplyDeleteThis was a hard reality to really understand. I wasn't prepared for people to hurt me so much. I figured I could sort out their good qualities and focus on those things about them and that is how I would like them. That kind of immature approach caused me to run and hide from people's not-so-nice qualities, and subsequently people themselves, for a number of years. I didn't know how to accept the good with the bad, and liking is exclusively about the good. I had no idea how to handle all the baggage and suffering of other people and what to do when those things would in turn maim me. I still struggle with accepting the bad with the good, but I remain resolute that we can learn to generally like and accept people for who they are, despite the pain that they cause us. I think I just want to attest to that fact that when we strive to intimately "know" a person and eventually like them, it is going to hurt us in the process.
Thanks. Yeah... it's probably some sort of compendium of influences. My dad was kind of a pacifist. Also, I'm physically a bit of a wimp, so it's always been wiser to take the high road.
ReplyDeleteWho knows why we be what we is? But whether it's nature or nurture or the Divine Intervention, I'm glad I don't have to live angry. It's worth it, I think... DESPITE all the purple-nurples.
In your book Unclean, you made the point (and I agree) that the opposite of love isn't really hate, it's exclusion. It's kinda hard to exclude a persona on TV, unless you count the mute button. Although, I think that kind of hate is more about soapboxing and team solidarity than hatred. And if boundaries are a result of the failure-to-love, there's a lot of folks walking around with boundaries in play, if only to self-protect based on expereince. I wonder, is it possible to love an enemy with whom you really still need to keep a boundary?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'd love to get my copy signed at some point, but right now it's out on loan, probably til spring or summer.
In forgiving others I first hold them accountable for what they've done to me. I then turn them over to God and surrender my right to get even. As my resentment melts, the shame underneath the resentment starts to release. I then can forgive as I have been forgiven and offer the grace to my shamer that was freely given to me. If the relationship cannot be restored then it simply cannot be restored. But it will not be my resentment that prevents me from restoring it.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I do have real enemies who have actively tried to harm me. (Not physically, but emotionally and socially.)
ReplyDeleteBut I believe you're right. Most people in this country get dramatic over something or someone who doesn't meet their preferences. I find when I talk about real life pain, they have no idea what I'm talking about.
Thank you. THANK YOU. I'm going to hug you, even if it's only pixels. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteRichard, this is excellent. Thanks!
ReplyDelete(((hug))) back
ReplyDeleteLets remember that Jesus primary audience is jews living under military occupation by Rome. Of course I don't have a lot of hate for people in my pretty comfortable life. If I did it would have to be a pretty petty manufacture of the feeling. However if we address the question to people in a similar situation today Hate and Enemies are no longer abstractions.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Josh the reason you and I have little hate is our lack of oppression.
Just to be clear, I don't believe in eternal concious suffering. Since Christ was our substitutionary sacrifice that died in our place it follows that eternal suffering isn't true. For Christ suffered and died on the cross. He wasn't tormented forever. Christ was fully human. This means that He had a human body and a human soul that was finite and grew as He learned. He was also Divine. This means that He also had a Divine soul. On the cross Christ died as a human being. This means both His human soul and body was killed on the cross. His Divine soul however cannot die and didn't die. For He said on the cross, "Father into Your hands I commit my spirit" Either way Christ didn't suffer an "eternal" suffering thus showing that the doctrine of eternal conscious suffering isn't true. As a human being, Christ took on the sins of His people. They were imputed to Him and He died as His human soul was destroyed forever. His Divine soul was infused back into His body as He was resurrected from the grave.
ReplyDeleteWhat I also like about restorative justice at least, from my own studies, is that deal is the community takes some responsibility when someone does wrong, both for not keeping an eye on that person, and for helping them to work towards reconciliation and reintegration into the community and, as you say, this requires us to look at ourselves. Interconnectedness is central - first nations have a lot to teach us.
ReplyDeleteFrom my studies I've come to believe that universalism isn't true. Neither do I believe in eternal suffering though. Out of His mercy and judgment God will turn some to ashes as He condemns them to extinction in the eternal lake of fire. Since Christ was our substitutionary sacrifice that died in our place it follows that eternal suffering isn't true. For Christ suffered and died on the cross. He wasn't tormented forever. Christ was fully human. This means that He had a human body and a human soul that was finite and grew as He learned. He was also Divine. This means that He also had a Divine soul. On the cross Christ died as a human being. This means both His human soul and body was killed on the cross. His Divine soul however cannot die and didn't die. For He said on the cross, "Father into Your hands I commit my spirit" Either way Christ didn't suffer an "eternal" suffering thus showing that the doctrine of eternal conscious suffering isn't true. As a human being, Christ took on the sins of His people. They were imputed to Him and He died as His human soul was destroyed forever. His Divine soul was infused back into His new body as He was resurrected from the grave.
ReplyDeleteI get that, and I too understand the SOM in terms of advice to a people under harsh oppression, for whom the option of violent resistance (liberation struggle) was going to bring a whole heap more violennce down upon them.
ReplyDeleteI get that, and I too understand the SOM in terms of advice to a people under harsh oppression, for whom the option of violent resistance (liberation struggle) was going to bring a whole heap more violennce down upon them.
What I don't get is that today is any different - we still have the levels of militarism, economic oppression, debt slavery, starvation etc.
I suppose there is one, subjective, difference. This time the audience of the text - i.e me and my friends, is the oppressor, not the oppressed. At the hermeneutical level we are the Romans (or the economic / political Jewish elites). Our hatred of the global poor is not existential - in fact we experience feelings of sympathy, but we live in a system in which our comfort is a direct result of their misery. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if many parts of the world hate us, but the question is how we should respond to being their, quite justified, objects of hatred.
Coming back to the question of enemies - my enemy is not just the person who has wronged me, it is also the person whom I have wronged, so perhaps the oppressor's reading of the SOM is the same - love your enemies.
Cole, this was not about holding someone accountable, a "right to get even" nor "resentment." It's not even about forgivenss. It's about the necessity of boundaries, which vary by circumstance, and how they play out in real life, which is a little more complex than the black-and-white platitudes of Sunday School quarterlies.
ReplyDelete.
What is a black and white platitude? I adressed the boundary thing when I said, "If the relationship cannot be restored then it simply cannot be restored. But it will not be my resentment that prevents me from restoring it." Forgiveness is part of love. Even if I have to set a boundary and not go arround the person I can still forgive. Sometimes loving someone means letting go.
ReplyDeleteI think we're doing what Richard calls "talking past each other." I wish you well, Cole.
ReplyDeleteYou asked this question "I wonder, is it possible to love an enemy with whom you really still need to keep a boundary?"
ReplyDeleteAnd I answered, " "If the relationship cannot be restored then it simply cannot be restored. But it will not be my resentment that prevents me from restoring it." Forgiveness is part of love. Even if I have to set a boundary and not go arround the person I can still forgive. Sometimes loving someone means letting go."
How is that talking past one another?
Have a nice day, Cole.
ReplyDelete