Open my mind to discern good and evil

The Spiral of Violence - reflection from Fr Richard Rohr


Good meditation from one of my teachers who gave me the big wake-up call that I needed to be on my walk with Christ. Fr Rohr introduced me to Gil Bailie and Rene Girard in my quest for understanding the violence which lurks in our cultures (our systems as Rohr refers to here), our families and ourselves. Recognizing violence is the first step in the very long struggle to end violence.

If you cannot recognize evil on the level of what I call the world—then the flesh and the devil are the inevitable consequences. They will soon be out of control, and everything is just trying to put out brush fires on already parched fields. The world or “the system” is the most hidden, the most disguised, and the most denied—but foundational—level of evil. It’s the way cultures, groups, institutions, and nations organize themselves to survive. It is not "wrong" to survive, but for some reason group egocentricity is never seen as evil when you have only concentrated on individual egocentricity (“the flesh”). That is how our attention has been diverted from the whole spiral of violence. The “devil” then stands for all of the ways we legitimize, enforce, and justify our group egocentricity (most wars; idolization of wealth, power, and show; tyrannical governments; many penal systems; etc.) while not calling it egocentricity! Once any social system exists it has to maintain and assert itself at all costs. Things we do inside of that system are no longer seen as evil because “everyone is doing it.” That's why North Koreans can march lockstep to a communist tyranny, and why American consumers can “shop till they drop" and make no moral connections whatsoever. You see now why most evil is hidden and denied, and why Jesus said “Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

In the face of utter disorientation at the collapse of all that is familiar

Click on this title for a great reflection from Matt Emerson, 

Easter Season and Mysterium Tremendum

James Alison in his book, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination does not tread lightly when it comes to describing where Christian hope comes from.  According to Alison,

The stone put aside and the absence of the corpse were not in the first instance a motive for rejoicing, but for terror. Terror because what had happened was quite outside anything that could be expected. . . . Terror because now there was no security, no rules, nothing normal could be trusted in.

“Whatever Christian hope is,” Alison concludes, “it begins in terror and utter disorientation in the face of the collapse of all that is familiar and well known.”

Shock, fear, and silence: These are the primal emotions that greet the first evidence of eternal life.

Allow the text to get close enough to us to produce a break in us

Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination by James Alison

What do you do when you read scripture you don’t understand? Break out the Greek and Hebrew dictionaries? Go read your favorite commentaries?

Or there is the more elusive contemplative approach: meditate on the scripture. Let your mind soak in it and let the Holy Spirit use it to say something to you.

Here, James Alison wonderfully describes a way somewhere down the middle of this road:

“When we say that this text is “Holy Scripture,” we don’t mean to say that it is venerable, with a patina of glorious tradition, or something like that. We mean that we don’t question it so as to break it, but rather we allow it to get close enough to us to produce a break in us.

“If we can hear the parts of the text which make no sense, rather than only those parts which we use to justify ourselves and strengthen our self-image, then perhaps from within that same sense of strangeness we will hear the Other whose image we are called to recover.”

-James Alison, Raising Abel

Chapter 1 ----------------- Fix Your Minds….

In the epistle to the Colossians we read this verse:

“Fix your minds [phroneite] on the things that are above, and not on the things of earth.” (Col. 3:2)

If you know what this means, then you need spend no longer reading through these pages, for you have already received and understood the eschatological imagination. Theology is perhaps for those of us who can’t find an obvious sense in what may be very simple perceptions, ones which are understood intuitively by better Christians than ourselves; theology would be for those of us who are obliged to the hard labor of dragging our obstinate intellects through the spines and thistles of our own self-deceit so as to bring each thought, each remnant of intellectual pride, captive before Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), plowing out meaning from arid and sterile soil.

In fact the verse which I quoted belongs to a context, within which we are told:

“If then you have risen with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” (Col. 3:1)

Then follows our verse, and then we get:

“For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life appears, then shall you also appear with him in glory.” (Col. 3:3-4)  (these 2 verses are 2 of my favorites in all of scriptures)

There is a whole nexus of references here; hidden just beneath the surface of these verses… (Alison goes a few sentences and then we read…) This was of particular importance to the apostolic group because Jesus himself had commented on it, immediately before his passion, in the Temple… We are talking about something which was evidently imbued with great significance for the apostolic witnesses to the life and resurrection of Jesus: the happening which we describe when, while professing our faith, we say, “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.” That is to say, we are talking about the Ascension. 

Well indeed, and what might that mean? Is that happening in any way significant to us? We are used to a certain discourse about the Cross, perhaps a somewhat sick one, and also a discourse about the resurrection, perhaps a somewhat vacuous one. But, a discourse about the Ascension? Insofar as it gets talked about at all it appears as a somewhat apologetic loose end to the resurrection stories, as if it were a slightly shameful way of explaining why Jesus is no longer to be found, at least in this form.  Certainly I’m not aware of much importance being attached to this happening, and even less of anyone attributing to it a marked incidence on our lives.

However, it seems to have a special importance in the apostolic witness; in fact, in the verse which I quoted at the beginning it seems to be the sine qua non by which Christians understand who we are, as well as being a principle of action. If this is the case, then we are talking about some lost understanding, something that was quite clear for the apostolic witnesses, but which has become so opaque for us that we don’t even realize that we’re missing out on something. So, we’re going to do a little bit of detective work, rather like an archaeological dig, with the difference that instead of looking for a criminal or for the remains of an ancient building, we are seeking to bring out traces of the lost inner dynamic of a series of texts which we have available to us.

Now, this is no easy exercise, since our temptation with any ancient text is to find ourselves reflected in it. This can’t be avoided, since we cannot draw close to any text except as ourselves, with all our education, our insights, our psychology, prejudices, and resentments. However, in the case of this text, the text of the apostolic witness, which we normally call “The New Testament,” the Church, as the original compiler of the text, asks us to go slow. We are told that something extraordinary and indescribable took place with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and that this happening produced a series of changes in the way of perceiving things and carrying them out in the people who had known and accompanied him. These people, or rather their friends and collaborators, put into writing something of what they had experienced, and these writings are conserved with immense care by the Church. From time to time the Church becomes aware that it doesn’t understand very well certain parts of its own vital text; however, it clings on to it, since it realizes that, whatever that original experience was, it still happens today, and it still transforms the perceptions of those who are affected by it. That means that when we look at this text we are asked to tread with care, like Moses before the bush, so that we don’t fail to notice that this text, unlike most other texts, is capable of subverting our education, of altering our perception, and of questioning our prejudices and resentments. When we say that this text is “Holy Scripture,” we don’t mean to say that it is venerable, with a patina of glorious tradition, or something like that. We mean that we don’t question it so as to break it, but rather we allow it to get close enough to us to produce a break in us. If we can hear the parts of the text which make no sense, rather than only those parts which we use to justify ourselves and strengthen our self-image, then perhaps from within that same sense of strangeness we will hear the Other whose image we are called to recover.

What we are going to do, then, is to allow some texts of the apostolic witness to question us, so to see what kind of imagination was at work in some of those which offer us no obvious sense. It may be that the discovery of a meaning will show us a series of insights about ourselves and our lives, and, difficult though it may seem, the possibility of new attitudes, new directions. To carry this out any reader must by honest about the method he or she is using, that is to say, what some of the presuppositions are that are being brought to the text. So I’m going to try to set out before you the tools which I’ll be using to try to recover the inner dynamic of the apostolic witness, tools which are to be found in the mimetic theory of René Girard.

Mimetic theory is a particular understanding of human relationships which implies, at the same time, a way of understanding human culture. That is to say that it offers a simultaneous perception of what moves human beings in their relationships and of what forms them in the structures that are previous to, and often hidden from, their relationships. Perhaps it will help us to get a perspective on this if we say that this single idea helps to break the barrier between two approaches to our self-understanding which haven’t, up until now, been able to find an inner link: the psychological approach, following Freud, which concentrates on the individual person, conceiving his or her problems as internal to that person, and the sociological approach, which conceives of problems as “out there” – objective, independent of your or my motives, of our intentions, feelings, and so on. You realize, I imagine, and even if you haven’t given it much thought, that this split has marked effects on theology: consider the way in which the discourse about sin used to be confined to the world of the “personal,” and then how there was an attempt to rescue it from that sphere so as to emphasize it as something “structural,” an attempt which, for reasons that may become clearer as we progress, has not yielded the fruit that was hoped for.

You were within me but I was outside

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

from The Confessions of Saint Augustine

My, my what morsels are these words... "You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you." The mimetic creatures that we are, in other words, we are captivated by the thoughts of others so much so that we are more "in" others than we are within our self. You can get a sense that this is what St Augustine was grappling with here. God is truly within yet we are so caught up in all the soap operas swirling around us that we never rest in God within.

True personhood is not about the psychological "self" - be it true or false

My musings here are mixed with the words and thoughts of my mentor, Gil Bailie.


The kenotic self-giving obedience of Christ on the cross reveals the God whose kenotic act is an endlessly self-giving gift of self. So much so, that in a Christian context, selfhood is oxymoronic. The key to Christian subjectivity is being subject to the Other. The true self is the giving away of the self to the Other and/or others. It is pouring out one's life, losing one's life in order to find it.


So where did our modern idea of self - distinct from another - come from? Is there any ground to it?


Psychologically speaking, the modern age could be said to have begun at the moment when two things happened: first, a relative social independence became widespread enough to become the defining experience of those living in Western culture, and, secondly, this relative social independence was misinterpreted as autonomous individuality, whose indebtedness to the Cross and Christian revelation was no longer taken into account. G. K. Chesterton insisted that even minuscule mistakes in Christian doctrine would eventually lead to huge blunders in human happiness. In misconstruing the meaning of the growing social independence of those living in cultures under biblical influence, modernity made precisely one of those mistakes. The modern world's mistake was the myth of autonomous individuality.

So pervasive did this notion of selfhood become, that it is now the air we breathe. The Cartesian self -- the psychological entity standing alone and surveying the world with its narrow view of relating and understanding -- has been until recently the unquestioned assumption of our world. Few stopped to notice not only that this notion of selfhood was preposterous, but that there was absolutely no biblical warrant for believing in its validity. Selfhood as the biblical tradition understands it is radically dependent. The social independence the biblical self enjoys is directly related to the degree of that self's dependence on the biblical God. That personhood is radically different from the snatching at distinction and self-reliance that passes for modern "personality." Citing a passage from the Gospel of John, Hans Urs von Balthasar remarks on how radically different Christ's being was:

"It is the will of him who sent me, not my own will, that I have come down from heaven to do." ... The meaning of the Incarnation, of Jesus' manhood, is first borne in upon us as a notdoing, a not-fulfilling, a not-carrying-out of his own will.... [A]lways he is what he is on the basis of "not my own will," "not my own honor." (7:18)... If in him "having" were for one moment to cease to be "receiving", to become a radically independent disposal of himself, he would in that moment cease to be the Father's Son... It is indeed this receiving of himself which gives him his "I," his own inner dimension, his spontaneity, that sonship with which he can answer the Father in a reciprocal giving. (A Theology 29-30)

Few have summed up this situation better than Johannes Baptist Metz did when he wrote this of Jesus:

Did not Jesus live in continual dependence on Someone else? Was not his very existence hidden in the mysterious will of the Father? Was he not so thoroughly poor that he had to go begging for his very personality from the transcendent utterance of the Father? 

Let me plow further into this radical and subversive undertaking to get at the originality of selfhood:

(Acts 5:34-42) A Pharisee in the Sanhedrin named Gamaliel,
a teacher of the law, respected by all the people,
stood up, ordered the Apostles to be put outside for a short time,
and said to the Sanhedrin, "Fellow children of Israel,
be careful what you are about to do to these men.
Some time ago, Theudas appeared, claiming to be someone important,
and about four hundred men joined him, but he was killed,
and all those who were loyal to him
were disbanded and came to nothing.
After him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census.
He also drew people after him,
but he too perished and all who were loyal to him were scattered.
So now I tell you,
have nothing to do with these men, and let them go.
For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin,
it will destroy itself.
But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them;
you may even find yourselves fighting against God."
They were persuaded by him.
After recalling the Apostles, they had them flogged,
ordered them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus,
and dismissed them.
So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin,
rejoicing that they had been found worthy
to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.
And all day long, both at the temple and in their homes,
they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.

"Selfhood as the biblical tradition understands it is radically dependent. The social independence the biblical self enjoys is directly related to the degree of that self's dependence on the biblical God." We have apostles who speak "in the name of Jesus," not on their own or on some human other but a Transcendent Other and this generates fear of those whose task it is to maintain social order. Again, let me repeat selfhood, in the biblical tradition, is understood as being dependent and not some autonomous, distinct-from-other identity. So what the Sanhedrin found threatening and different about the apostles was that their identity was grounded in something other than of human origin. The Sanhedrin knew all about how to handle people to maintain social order - and when there was a threat of violence they would put that threat down by using violence. It is the way of order.

There is Something Greater Here.

A new way of being and a new way of being in community - a Spirit of communion is making itself known. Our selfhood has always been dependent, this is not new. And this dependence was always "ordered" by another, be it a culture or significant other. It was a spirit that inevitably would fall into resentment and violence. The apostles begin to act - to live outside of the "old self" and mirror a new creation - dependent but "clothed in a new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness... Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil... Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." (Eph 4:22-32)

This is no small task - impossible for humans. Jesus says, 'You have used the sacrificial system up to this moment to stay sane and civil. I'm now going to take it away from you. You're now going to have trouble staying sane and civil. I'm going to give you another way, and that is to fall in love with me, to follow me.' Not out of some piety, or 'wouldn't it be nice,' or 'isn't he a lovely guy,' or even 'he's God's incarnation.' No, it's the alternative to the way we humans have lived with since the beginning of culture.

God guides those souls that abandon themselves to Him

Excerpt from:

PROVIDENCE

by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

23. The Attitude Of Providence Toward Those Who Abandon Themselves Completely To It

Fidelity to daily duty by docile correspondence to the graces offered us every moment, soon receives its reward in that special assistance which Providence gives to those who practice this childlike self-surrender. This assistance, it may be said, is shown mainly in three ways, which it will be well to emphasize: thus Providence gives special guidance to those souls in their darkness; it defends them against whatever is hostile to their spiritual welfare; and it intensifies their interior life more and more.

In what way God guides those souls that abandon themselves to Him

He enlightens them through the gifts of wisdom and understanding, knowledge and counsel, which with sanctifying grace and charity we received in baptism and to a greater degree in confirmation. In imperfect souls these gifts, together with those of piety, fortitude, and filial fear, are, so to speak, shackled by more or less inordinate inclinations, so that such souls are living but a superficial life, which prevents them from being attentive to the inspirations of the Master of the interior life.

These gifts have been likened to the sails of a boat by which it readily accommodates itself to the least stir of a favorable wind. In imperfect souls, however, the sails are furled and will not respond to the breeze. On the other hand, when the soul does what it can to fulfil its daily obligations and steer its bark as it should, abandoning itself to God, He visits it with His inspirations, at first latent and confused, which if well received, become more and more frequent, more insistent and luminous.

Then, amidst the joyful and painful events of life, the clash of temperaments, in times of spiritual dryness, amidst the snares of the devil or of men, their suspicion and their jealousies, the soul in its higher regions at any rate remains always at peace. It enjoys this serenity because it is intimately persuaded that God is guiding it and, in abandoning itself to Him, it seeks only to do His will and nothing more. Thus it sees Him everywhere under every external guise and makes use of everything to further its union with Him. Sin itself, by its very contrast, will recall the infinite majesty of God...

The soul has then less need of reasonings and methods in its prayer and meditation, or for its guidance; it has become more simplified in its mode of thought and desire. It follows rather the interior action of God in its soul, which makes itself felt not so much by the impression of ideas, as through the instinct or the necessity imposed by circumstances where only one course is possible. It perceives at once the depth of meaning in some phrase from the Gospels which has not previously impressed it. God gives it an understanding of the Scriptures such as He gave to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. The simplest sermons are a source of enlightenment and it discovers treasures in them; for God makes use of these means that He Himself may enlighten the soul, just as a great artist may use the most ordinary implement, the cheapest pencil, to execute a great masterpiece, a wonderful picture of Christ or the Blessed Virgin.

In God's dealings with souls that abandon themselves to Him, much remains obscure, mysterious, disconcerting, impenetrable; but He makes it all contribute to their spiritual welfare, and some day they will see that what at times to them was the cause of profound desolation was the source of much joy to the angels.

Moreover, God enlightens the soul by means of this very darkness and just when He appears to blind it. When the things of sense, which once so charmed and fascinated us, are obliterated, then the grandeur of spiritual things begins to be seen. A fallen monarch, like Louis XVI after losing his throne, sees more clearly than ever before the sublimity of the Gospel and of the many graces he has received in the past. Formerly he scarcely gave them a thought, being too absorbed in the external splendors of his kingdom. And now it is the kingdom of heaven that is revealed to him.

An important law in the spiritual world is that the transcendent darkness of divine things is in a sense more illuminating than the obviousness of earthly things. We have an illustration of this in the sensible order. Surprising as the truth may at first appear, we see much farther in the darkness of the night than in the light of day. The sun, in fact, must first be hidden before we can see the stars and have a glimpse of the unfathomable depths of the sky. The spectacle presented to us on a starry night is sometimes incomparably more beautiful than anything to be seen on even the sunniest day. In the daytime, doubtless, our view may extend far over the surrounding country, and even to the sun itself, though its light takes eight minutes to reach us. But in the darkness of the night we see at a single glance thousands of stars, although the light from even the nearest requires four and a half years to reach us. From the spiritual point of view the same holds true: as the sun prevents our seeing the stars, so in human life there are things which by their glare obstruct our view of the splendors of the faith. It is fitting, then, that from time to time in our lives Providence should subdue this glare of inferior things so as to give us a glimpse of something far more precious for our soul and our salvation.

Indeed, in the spiritual order, as in the physical, there is often an alternation of day and night; it is mentioned more than once in the Imitation. If we are saddened at the approach of twilight, God could well answer us by saying: How can I otherwise reveal to you all those thousands of stars which can be seen only at night?

Thus is verified the truth of our Lord's words when He said: "He that followeth me walketh not in darkness" (John 8:12). The light of faith dispels the lower darkness of ignorance, sin, and damnation, says St. Thomas. [93] Moreover, since this divine darkness is owing to a higher light which is too intense for our feeble vision, it does enlighten us in its own fashion and gives us a glimpse into the abyss of the heavens, into the deep things of God, into the mystery of the ways of Providence. St. Paul says: [94]

We speak wisdom among the perfect: yet not the wisdom of the world, neither of the princes of this world that come to nought. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew. For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him. But to us God hath revealed them by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

God has His own way of enlightening souls concerning His intimate life and the secrets of His ways. Sometimes He seems to blind them, yet, in reality, just when an inferior light disappears, then it is that He gives them a more sublime light. For the saint, the darkness of death is followed immediately by the light of glory. Those around him are saddened to see this present life coming so quickly to an end; he is happy to see it drawing to its close, for it means his entry into everlasting life.

If at times in our lives everything seems desperate, and, as Tauler says, the masts have gone overboard and the ship is reduced to a mere hulk in the midst of the tempest, then is the moment to abandon ourselves to God fully and completely, without reserve. If we do so with all our heart, God will at once take into His own hands the immediate direction of our lives, for He alone can save us." The Lord leadeth the just by right ways and showeth him the kingdom of God" (Wis. 10: 10).

Creation directed toward opening up a space for the response to God

Easter Vigil: HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom...

What is the creation account saying here?  Light makes life possible.  It makes encounter possible.  It makes communication possible.  It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible.  And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible.  Evil hides.  Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness.  It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act.  To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love.  Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good.  And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial.  It is a “no”.

The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil.  The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general.  If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other “lights”, that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk.  Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible.  Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment?  With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify.  Faith, then, which reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.

Post celebration through an anthropological lens

Gil Bailie at The Cornerstone Forum

Through an Anthropological Lens:

"Riot police used pepper spray in small amounts for crowd control as thousands of rowdy fans swarmed into the streets near the University of Kentucky campus, overturning cars and lighting couches ablaze after a victory over cross-state rival Louisville in a Final Four matchup." 

Athletic contests (which, by the way, I love) originate - as does theater, art, music, politics and so many other features of culture - in ritual sacrifice. The art of ritual sacrifice is to arouse passions latent in the community, turn them toward an expendable victim, and drain them away at the victim's expense. Sports events are fun, but they still perform a ritual function. They unite people who may have little in common by giving them a common cause and a common adversary.

Like ancient rituals, sporting events (aside from being entertaining) are socially and culturally useful only if the passions they awaken fade quickly away when the bell rings or the whistle blows or the clock runs out or the last batter swings and misses. Again, as in ancient ritual sacrifice (as Aristotle warned), when the passions spill out of the ritual containment and into the wider society, it is an indication that the society is slipping into crisis - its sundry rituals no longer able to periodically and routinely cleanse the social order of mimetic rivalries and social aggravations that threaten social cohesion.