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Sunday, May 06, 2007
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Neighbors
Yes, that's really the best title I could come up with for what's to follow.
The many misperceptions and misinterpretations of the Gospels, and of the teachings of the Church since the time of Christ, reduce almost entirely to a lack of comprehension of Christ's final commandment:
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. [John 13:34-35]
Some things about this statement are clear to all who are capable of reading it. It did not mean "love" in the romantic or physical sense, and it did not mean a miasma of tender emotion that pervades the consciousness. But what it did mean seems to take us modern types a bit of pondering to work out.
Here's Saint Paul's take on the subject:
For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. [Romans 13:9-10]
But this must be incomplete, by rational standards, for one can completely ignore a neighbor while observing the proscriptions of the commandments. One need not feel anything whatsoever for a neighbor, or have anything whatsoever to do with him, yet still "worketh no ill" to him. Wherein lies the distinction between Christian love and a good, high, stout fence?
An under-explored approach is to turn from consideration of love to consideration of its opposite: hatred. By reflecting upon the nature of hatred, we may gain insight into love. The aspect of hatred that's most immediately accessible to anyone who's attained the age of reason is this one: it embodies an active desire that the hated one come to harm -- if possible, by one's own hand.
Christian love is equally an active desire: a desire that the loved one come to good. This is so simple a matter that it requires no explanation at all. But just as he who hates would work the demise of the hated one with his own hand if he could, he who commits himself to Christian love must act personally, to the benefit of the loved one, when possible and appropriate.
Much of the time, all that's appropriate is good will. For many of us, not much more is possible. Nevertheless, the commitment requires us to stand ready to deliver all possible and appropriate assistance to those whom God has placed in our path: our neighbors.
A neighbor isn't just someone who lives within some small distance of you. A neighbor is anyone whom time and chance deliver into your conscious proximity. We are commanded under all circumstances to do no harm to a neighbor, except when forced to defend ourselves against him. When a neighbor requires assistance, we are commanded to render that assistance as best we can.
If these aspects of neighborhood and Christian love were better understood by Christians, there'd be a lot less strife among the denominations.
As you might imagine, I get quite a lot of hate mail. Most of it targets my political essays, but now and then it has relevance to these religious topics as well. And today we have a "twofer," deriving from these sentiments and the thoughts above.
Quite a lot of my hate mail accuses me of wanting to "oppress brown people." The reason appears to be my criticism of the pseudo-religion called Islam, whose adherents are likely to be of darker hue...at least, darker than this pasty-faced white boy. The accusation is unworthy of a response; getting drawn into reciprocal slander matches can permanently deflect a writer from his proper office. Still, the linkage of such accusations to my attitude toward Islam is worthy of a moment's thought.
What if your neighbor desires your subjugation or destruction? What form should Christian love take then?
It seems obvious that one's thoughts must flow toward considerations of defense: defense of oneself, one's loved ones, and one's rights and property. The desire to do good to the neighbor is constrained by the situation itself. One may pray for his enlightenment, and perhaps might even exhort him to change his ways, but more is not appropriate, for it would be turned to one's own hurt.
Sometimes the only way to defend oneself against a hostile neighbor is to expel him from the neighborhood. Indeed, it's best to prevent hostile and destructive persons from becoming neighbors in the first place. The color of their skins is utterly irrelevant. They who treat skin color as a sort of get-out-of-Hell-free card, that entitles the hostile and violent to an exaggerated forbearance from the rest of us, have a lot of rethinking to do. Let's hope they get on with it pronto.
A man may have many failings, yet remain acceptable to God. Indeed, it's easier to be acceptable to God than it is to be acceptable to quite a few people I've known. When Christ said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light" [Matthew 11:30], He really meant it. That doesn't mean that one who keeps the Commandments can neglect his failings in smug assurance of salvation. That sort of attitude endangers one both in this life and the next.
C. S. Lewis, as always, was eloquent on the subject:
I have been in correspondence with Slumtrimpet who is in charge of your patient's young woman, and begin to see the chink in her armour. It is an unobtrusive little vice which she shares with nearly all women who have grown up in an intelligent circle united by a clearly defined belief; and it consists in a quite untroubled assumption that the outsiders who do not share this belief are really too stupid and ridiculous. The males, who habitually meet these outsiders, do not feel that way; their confidence, if they are confident, is of a different kind. Hers, which she supposes to be due to Faith, is in reality largely due to the mere colour she has taken from her surroundings. It is not, in fact, very different from the conviction she would have felt at the age of ten that the kind of fish knives she used in her father's house were the proper or normal or "real" kind, while those of the neighbouring families were "not real fish knives" at all. Now the element of ignorance and naivete in all this is so large, and the element of spiritual pride so small, that it gives us little hope of the girl herself. But have you thought of how it can be made to influence your own patient?It is always the novice who exaggerates. The man who has risen in society is overrefined; the young scholar is pedantic. In this new circle your patient is a novice. He is there daily, meeting Christian life of a quality he never before imagined and seeing it all through an enchanted glass because he is in love. He is anxious (indeed the Enemy commands him) to imitate this quality. Can you get him to imitate this defect in his mistress and to exaggerate it until what was venial in her becomes in him the strongest and most beautiful of the vices -- Spiritual Pride? [From The Screwtape Letters, XXIV]
We are permitted just pride: pride in our accomplishments. We are not permitted the sort of pride that leads to contempt for our neighbors. This is too obviously antithetical to Christian love of the neighbor. If permitted to take root in the soul, it will thwart future charitable acts when they become possible and appropriate, in contravention of the Second Great Commandment.
Your neighbor might not be a Christian, yet still be a better person than you. He might keep the Commandments better than you do, even if he doesn't yet recognize God. Self-exaltation on religious grounds is never justified.
I hope everyone who reads these Ruminations keeps always in mind that I write them to myself. I'm at best a dime-store theologian, straining to discern what constitutes Christian love and right action in a world that sometimes seems to have gone completely mad. I have as many failings as the next man; just ask my wife. But among my gifts is that I think carefully and seriously about what I see. If there's any gift I'm determined not to waste, that's the one.
Many persons have difficulty with both these things. They've been conditioned out of seeing certain things (fnord!), or have been brutalized away from certain logical conclusions. Yet one can't impose one's own perceptions or conclusions on others without developing a highly unpleasant reputation, for which reason I'm not out on a soap box in Speaker's Square. I'm here, on the Web, writing mainly for myself, and for whatever neighbors might happen to drop by. For my friends and my detractors both, for you are all my spiritual neighbors for whatever length of time you choose to hang out here at Eternity Road.
Did you come to scoff? Perhaps you'll stay to pray. I'd like that very much.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
I will never forget the homily I heard where the priest said, “Your neighbor is the checker at the grocery store who you see every week. Your enemy is the coworker who cuts in front of you in the xerox line and uses the last of the paper without refilling it.”
Nothing about their faith or politics or race or any such strictures.
In other words, we are called to live our Christian lives with everyone whose lives touch ours, no matter how trivial we may think the way that our paths intersect.
Posted by Julie D. on 05/06/2007 at 02:12 PMMr Porretto,
As - probably - one of the twofer you mention, I read your Sunday rumination with as much goodness in my heart for you as I could muster, and tried to read what was said in a positive light. It is undoubtedly true that there exists within Islam a loud, obvious, and (above all) attention-getting minority of extremists who - undoubted - bear us ill, simply for not agreeing with them. However it is also true - and I am not sure that you accept this point - that within Islam itself they are seen in exactly the same way; worse in fact, as it is well understood that the “squeaky wheel gets the attention”; that the moderate mainstream of Islam understands that the view of the religion in the West is colored by these extremists.
Unfortunately I see no such nuance in your writing on the subject. You reject the idea that the recent phenomenon of takfiri Salafism is well out of the mainstream. It is as if you were to paint all Christians as fundamentalist abortion bombers, or all Jews as belonging to a secret society within a society.
While it is easy to point the finger at examples of religious extremism, it is wrong to claim those examples as representative. If even one per cent of the world’s Muslims were committed to the idea of jihadist martyrdom against the West, in the interests of the other 99 per cent, there is no doubt that they could succeed - an army of ten million would sweep all before them by sheer weight of numbers.
But that simply isn’t going to happen, because - like Christ’s message of love thy neighbour - Islam has the same message.
Consider of an outsider to Christianty; somebody whose only knowledge of the subject was the “squeaky wheels” that appeared on his television of in his newspaper - the financial excesses of televangelists, the bloody hatred of the killers of abortionists, the Iraq War waged by a President who claimed divine inspiration for his actions. Would we be surprised if they had a distorted view of the fundamentals of the Christian message, and a jaundiced view of Christianity as a whole? Would we expect them to have any understanding whatsoever of the message of the Bible?
By all means point out the squeaky wheel. But please, please, don’t use that to condemn the entire shopping cart and its contents.
Posted by on 05/06/2007 at 05:46 PMYou’re a plenty good theologian nonetheless. And some of my favorite posessions originated in dime stores.
Posted by og on 05/06/2007 at 07:02 PMThere’s something fundamentally missing in your assumption Minky.
Let’s assume that you are right. That there are as large a number of moderate Muslims as you assert.
Then why are there so few who are vocally against the Jihadis who use extortion by terror to further their aims?
Is it possible that Islam can claim to own the sole polity on the planet that has but one wing? Understand?
Islam has radicals on the Left who are in the wrong. That is, they display no sanctity for innocent human life. There is nobody who is safe from them. (You will find the same in the Western Left, but they are not as clear, not as honest about their intent as the Islamists are).
One would think that surely there must be in Islam a main body that is live and let live—that is those who follow the normal human condition—even if they are forced to endure a daily barrage of hate-preach propoganda.
But if so, then why are there also no anti-radicals in the Right worth noticing?
Why only one wing to the body? If Islam has a right wing, why is it nothing but an undeveloped stump?
It seems logical to ignorant old me that were there sufficient Qu’ranic ideology to provide ETHICAL support to its side (as you’re suggesting), then the Islamic Right would be outraged by its Left and would fight back against them with all means available.
But we don’t see that.
The question you have failed to address is why are there not as close to as large numbers in the Islamic world who are as thoroughly engaged in fighting what is wrong as we find in the West?
The Western Left, like the Muslim Left, is a wing that is mesmerized by death. The Western Right fights to counter its Left wing? Why is this not so with the Islamic Right?
Without a substantial Right wing in Islam, it is healthier for normal human beings to look askance at Islam every bit as much as most of us regard communism today.
In order to prove their mettle, the ball is entirely in the Islamic community’s court.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 05/06/2007 at 08:31 PMJust a nitpick, but I would actually characterize violent Islam as the extreme right and its opponents in the Muslim community as moderate to somewhat left. Calling a movement that believes what radical Islam does about the role of women, democracy, and the family a left-wing movement strikes me as a bit weird. Of course, labels like “left” and “right” are arbitrary and I don’t think either applies all that well to radical Islam because they are steeped in modern conceptions of political enlightenments and we are attempting to apply them to what is essentially a 9th century ideology, but respecting that limitation I would still characterize radical Islam as right, not left.
In any case, that does nothing to contradict your larger point, which I mostly agree with. As I mentioned in my comment on Fran’s original post on this topic, I think the problem is not so much that there is no Quranic support for a moderate and non-violent Islam, but that the Sunni schools of Islamic thought officially stopped evolving their doctrine in the 10th century and began interpreting new situations solely by analogizing them to past decisions, rather than looking for novel interpretations to adapt themselves to the changing world. In Christianity, the more violent prescriptions in the Bible were reinterpreted and minimized as Christianity adapted itself to a world where its temporal battles had mostly been won. Because the Sunni theology has essentially been frozen by conscious choice since the 10th century, the Quran’s more violent and intolerant side was never reinterpreted nor minimzed and as things stand now, it cannot be, not by Sunnis. It is no coincidence that Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization. This is why I believe the impetus for reform will come out of Shi’ism, and why I think it is so important that we succeed in democratizing Iraq and eventually Iran. So in sum, it is not that the Quran will not permit a non-extremist form of Islam, it is that the sect followed by the vast majority of Muslims refuses to change interpretations of the Quran that were relevant a millenium ago but are catastrophic today.
Finally, as far as the actual Sunday rumination goes, it is excellent and very thoughtful, as usual!
Posted by on 05/07/2007 at 01:02 AMA damn worthy nitpick it is too Aaron.
I neglected to specify that for this war alone I am recommending a different political scale other than the traditional one of the French Revolution that was later adapted by Marx. Aren’t we constantly being told by our sterling media that the war against Marxism and class warfare was mostly over? So it is time to adopt a
I assert that a normal human being wants mostly to live first, and the other benefits of living can be dealt with as still having that life permits.
Furthermore, the traditional moral code of live and let live must be put on center stage again. No moral relativist non-sense should be tolerated on that score. Violate it and there are consequences from minor to capital.
Now, it becomes axiomatic that what is right stands to defend innocent human life. Call that The Right.
Now let’s examine what is to the left.
Anything or anyone who will not defend innocent human life is more to the left.
Those who will try to extend civilized protections to murderers are even more to the left.
Those who aid and abet murderers are further left still.
Those who murder for whatever reason are pretty much almost fully to the left.
And finally, those who plan out and foment murders and work their evil to incite killings of all sorts are the epitome of Left. They are The Left.
I do no know if I can be clearer than that.
We who are aim to do right are the Right. We need to be dextrous. We need to stop apologizing and become adroit about it.
Those leaning to the left are misguided. We must try to reguide them.
Those who aid the Left need to feel guilty. They are gauche. They wish to be loved can turn them. They seem to be mostly about style anyway.
Those who murder, the quite Left, are sinister.
Those who plan and seek to gain from wanton killing, these postmodernist monsters, are simply evil. Can’t be more left. They are The Left.
Make this political spectrum a popular conception, and the fog spread by our sinister opponents in this war on terror will dissipate quickly.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 05/07/2007 at 02:20 AMFrancis,
what do you think of this Verner Vinge character and the whole business of The Singularity, and the Great Upload we are going to experience within the next twenty three years? (see Alan Sullivan’s blog)
and this link. http://www.reason.com/news/show/119237.html
Surely it makes everything you say here pretty well redundant? Or is there some way it can be worked into the Christian message.
If so, it will be about the most surprising thing I could imagine, yet logical in a nerdy sort of way. Has it been prophesied?
You would know more about this than me, I am sure, though I am a well-educated Catholic, and cannot recall anything that could be so interpreted except in the vaguest terms.
Sure, God may have intended it this way, but really..!!! I find classic Evolution theory hard enough to swallow, but this is in the future, and scary with it. Is it simply the product of minds deranged by the reading and writing of science fiction? I can’t find anyone authoritative on the web who actually disagrees with the theory, even though I had never even heard of it until yesterday. Some guidance, please!!Regards,
Ghislaine
Posted by on 05/07/2007 at 07:27 AMDelightful to hear from you again, Ghislaine! As it happens, I’ve been a Vernor Vinge fan for quite some time. His “Singularity” motif is among the most intriguing of all his creations; the books he’s constructed around it—The Peace War, True Names, and Marooned In Realtime—are uniformly dazzling; as we old Baby Boomers used to say, “mind-expanding.”
But they are, after all, fiction. One can postulate anything in fiction, especially science fiction or fantasy.
I, too, am intrigued by the possibilities of networked intelligence. Networked unintelligent computers have already expanded Man’s capacities greatly; this conversation is only the crudest possible example. But whether entities that possess intelligence as we understand it could somehow combine and thereby amplify their powers is open to serious doubt. My reasons for thinking so follow.
The quest for engineered intelligence appears firmly stalled. We can write programs that embed considerable, rule-based knowledge, but the creation of artifacts that possess the qualities of natural intelligence—sentience; arbitrary information-seeking (curiosity); borderless pattern search and inference (induction)—appears to be beyond us. I am of the opinion that if we can’t create such devices, we will never know enough to engineer direct interfaces between human minds that are qualitatively superior to ordinary communications techniques.
Natural intelligence appears inseparable from sentience: i.e., the awareness of one’s own existence and independent identity. The Vingian conception of super-intellects composed of lesser ones in an adequately capacious network does not treat with this aspect of intelligence as we know it. I can’t see how the functions of intelligence could survive the loss of sentience, even if it were swallowed up by a postulated larger consciousness. Intelligence is important to Man precisely because it allows each individual to formulate plans for dealing with that which is not himself—i.e., that which is not enclosed within his conscious identity.
But even if we hypothesize that human intellects and, possibly, machine intelligences could be networked into a super-entity with unimaginably greater powers of thought than any individual has ever possessed, the proposition that such a construction could then “step off” into a higher form of existence than our material-temporal realm—the terminus of Vingian “Singularity” imaginings --- is 100% speculation. There’s absolutely no evidence for it. Indeed, it’s not possible that there could ever be evidence for it, for reasons I’m sure you can see.
I regard the whole thesis as entertainment, nothing more. Man is finite by design; his powers were limited by God, for reasons God knows but the rest of us can only guess at. Others put more stock in it, possibly out of a fear of death or a spiritual vacuum they’re not willing to acknowledge. Yet some of those others are reasonably intelligent; whatever the subject, I try always to keep in mind that I could be wrong.
Another science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card, wrote in his book Wyrms that “Reality is always the clearest indication of God’s will.” This is so piercing and important an observation that if I were made undisputed Emperor of the world, my first decree would be that everyone, at all times, should wear a button that says it. (Then I’d abdicate. Who needs the agita?) Whatever becomes of Man, whether through our conscious exertions or our follies and failings, is ultimately because God wills it. It’s a prescription for relaxation, for God wills all men well, even those unaware of Him. Or, as a certain dearly beloved, recently departed Bishop of Rome once said, “Be not afraid.”
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 05/07/2007 at 08:10 AMThis is an excellent post, and is also an issue I personally struggle with every day. How far am I to go to help a neighbor? When is it appropriate to give up the attempt to help and switch to defense against a hostile neighbor? What pride is just and what is arrogance?
There are, of course, the obvious extremes. A person who asks help that is easy to give and loses you nothing should obviously be helped. The man who invades your home should be defended against. Pride in a great accomplishment is good, pride in one’s self-granted superiority is wrong. But the rest of life is a grey area in which we try to navigate as best we can.
A dime-store theologian you are not. There is wisdom in your words.
Posted by on 05/07/2007 at 08:39 AMI’ve always thought that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Nevertheless, your point stands as a good way to illustrate the focus on positive action where appropriate, not merely to refrain from negative action.
By the way, i loved the R. A. Wilson allusion! There seem to be so few who know his work, and are thus impressed by the decidedly inferior “The Da Vinci Code”. As I was reading the latter I kept asking myself “this is all very well, but where are the genius dolphins and sentient computers and resurrected Nazis and Lovecraftian horror?”
Posted by on 05/07/2007 at 01:38 PM
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