believe me good will come

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, buy you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.
– “Where Do We Go From Here?”, speech delivered at the eleventh annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 16 August 1967.

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies”, he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.
– Strength to Love, ‘Loving Your Enemies’, II.

[We] should love our enemies [because] love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.
– Strength to Love, ‘Loving Your Enemies’, II.

When in speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow down before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.
– “Beyond Vietnam”, New York, 4 April 1967.

In a real sense, Waterloo symbolizes the doom of every Napoleon and is an eternal reminder to a generation drunk with military power that in the long run of history might does not make right and the power of the sword cannot conquer the power of the spirit.
– Strength to Love, ‘Our God Is Able’, II.

[Nonviolent resistance] is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship.
– Stride Towards Freedom, ‘Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’.

Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.
– Strength to Love, ‘Transformed Noncomformist’, II.

One will not be asked how many academic degrees he obtained or how much money he acquired, but how much he did for others. Did you feed the hungry? Did you give a cup of cold water to the thirsty? Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit the sick and minister to the imprisoned? These are the questions asked by the Lord of life. In a sense every day is judgement day, and we, through our deeds and words, our silence and speech, are constantly writing in the Book of Life.
Light has come into the world, and every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgement. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
– Strength to Love, ‘Three Dimensions of a Complete Life’, II.

Our nation’s productive machinery constantly brings forth such an abundance of food that we must build larger barns and spend more than a million dollars daily to store our surplus. Year after year we ask, “What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” I have seen an answer in the faces of millions of poverty-stricken men and women in Asia, Africa, and South America. I have seen an answer in the appalling poverty in the Mississippi Delta and the tragic insecurity of the unemployed in large industrial cities of the North. What can we do? The answer is simple: feed the poor, cloth the naked, and heal the sick. Where can we store our goods? Again the answer is simple: We can store our surplus food free of charge in the shrivelled stomachs of the millions of God’s children who go to bed hungry at night. We can use our vast resources of wealth to wipe poverty from the earth.
– Strength to Love, ‘The Man Who Was a Fool’, II.

As Christians we must think not only about “mansions in the sky,” but also about the slums and ghettos that cripple the human soul, not merely about streets in heaven “flowing with milk and honey,” but also about the millions of people in this world who go to bed hungry at night. Any religion that professes concern regarding the souls of men and fails to be concerned by social conditions that corrupt and economic conditions that cripple the soul, is a do-nothing religion, in need of new blood. Such a religion fails to realise that man is an animal having physical and material needs.
– Strength to Love, ‘What is Man?’, I.

Nowhere is the tragic tendency to conform more evident than in the church, an institution which has often served to crystallize, conserve, and even bless the patterns of majority opinion. The erstwhile sanction by the church of slavery, racial segregation, war, and economic exploitation is testimony to the fact that the church has hearkened more to the authority of the world than to the authority of God. Called to be the moral guardian of the community, the church at times has preserved that which is immoral and unethical. Called to combat social evils, it has remained silent behind stained-glass windows. Called to lead men on the highway of brotherhood and to summon them to rise above the narrow confines of race and class, it has enunciated and practiced racial exclusiveness.
– Strength to Love, ‘Transformed Noncomformist’, II.

Gradually, however, the church became so entrenched in wealth and prestige that it began to dilute the strong demands of the gospel and to conform to the ways of the world. And ever since the church has been a weak and ineffectual trumpet making uncertain sounds. If the church of Jesus Christ is to regain once more its power, message, and authentic ring, it must conform only to the demands of the gospel.
– Strength to Love, ‘Transformed Noncomformist’, II.

Gandhi – Non-Violence in Peace and War

Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. II – 97

There is no escape for any of us save through truth and non-violence. I know that war is wrong, is an unmitigated evil. I know too that it has got to go. I firmly believe that freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom. I – 75

Non-violence is the supreme law. During my half-century of experience I have not yet come across a situation when I had to say that I was helpless, that I had no remedy in terms of non-violence. I – 172

I know this cannot be proved by argument. It shall be proved by persons living it in their lives with utter disregard of consequences to themselves. I – 122

The ideal of satyagraha is not meant for the select few – the saint and the seer only; it is meant for all. I – 34

To me it is a self-evident truth that if freedom is to be shared equally by all – even physically the weakest, the lame and the halt – they must able to contribute an equal share in it defense. How that can be possible when reliance is placed on armaments, my plebeian mind fails to understand. I therefore swear and shall continue to swear by non-violence, i.e., by satyagraha, or soul force. In it physical incapacity is no handicap, and even a frail woman or a child can pit herself or himself on equal terms against a giant armed with the most powerful weapons. II – 35

Without the recognition of non-violence on a national scale there is no such thing as a constitutional or democratic government. I – 199

I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics. The whole gamut of man’s activities today constitutes an indivisible whole. You cannot divide social, economic, political and purely religious work into watertight compartments. I – 170
 
Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for non-violence. I – 335

You are no satyagrahis if you remain silent or passive spectators while your enemy is being done to death. You must protect him even at the cost of your own life. II – 63

The virtues of mercy, non-violence, love and truth in any man can be truly tested only when they are pitted against ruthlessness, violence, hate and untruth. II – 85

If one has pride and egoism, there is no non-violence. Non-violence is impossible without humility. My own experience is that whenever I have acted non-violently I have been led to it and sustained in it by the higher promptings of an unseen power. Through my own will I should have miserable failed. I – 187

Truth and non-violence are not possible without a living belief in God, meaning a self-existent, all-knowing, living Force which inheres in every other force known to the world and which depends on none, and which will live when all other forces may conceivably perish or cease to act. I am unable to account for my life without belief in this all-embracing living Light. II – 212

The root of satyagraha is in prayer. A satyagrahi relies upon God for protection against the tyranny of brute force. II – 62

My greatest weapon is my mute prayer. I – 251

My faith in the saying that what is gained by the sword will also be lost by the sword is imperishable. I – 211
 
Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. This was non-violence par excellence. II – 16
 
If non-violence does not appeal to your heart, you should discard it. II – 134

– from Mohandas K. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1948.

Herbert Marcuse - One Dimensional Man:

The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation – liberation also from what is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable – while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society….

The intensity, the satisfaction and even the character of human needs, beyond the biological level, have always been preconditioned….

We may distinguish both true and false needs. “False” are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression….

Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and to hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs.

Such needs have a societal content and function which are determined by external powers over which the individual has no control….No matter how much such needs may have become the individual’s own….no matter how much he identifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction, they continue to be what they were from the beginning – products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression….

The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced….

The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood. And as these beneficial products become available to more individuals in more social classes, the indoctrination they carry ceases to be publicity; it becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life – much better than before – and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change.

Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.

The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of “Worship together this week,” “Why not try God,” Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc.

But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of a practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet….

All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual’s own.

- from Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 4-5, 7, 9, 12, 13-14, 256-7.

WWJD, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Left Behind, The Purpose Driven Life, The Prayer of Jabez (ever wondered what happened to the author of The Prayer of Jabez?), The Passion of the Christ…

John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart joins the list of recent Christian fads. The first copy I received I exchanged for a book on Christian apologetics. I was sent another copy while in China, but stopped reading it when I got to the part where Eldredge implies that Jesus is more like Braveheart’s William Wallace than Mother Teresa (p. 24). Last week I borrowed Wild at Heart and decided to [try] read[ing] it with a more open mind (third time lucky?).

Eldredge argues that men “long for adventures and battles and a Beauty” (p. xi). Wild at Heart’s basic thesis is that men are wild at heart because God is wild at heart. Both men and women need to understand this so that men can live the wild lives for which God created them.

Wild at Heart provides an interesting critique of political correctness and how it has negatively impacted gender roles. Eldredge obviously wants to help hurting people. But anyone with a basic understanding of the Bible will find [some of] Eldredge’s approach problematic. Too many Christian authors manipulate the Bible to fit their arguments, presumably because they feel pressured to back up their claims with scripture. Yet the misuse of scripture doesn’t strengthen an argument, it weakens it. For example:

• Eldredge begins by arguing that man was meant to be wild and undomesticated because Adam was created outside the Garden of Eden and then placed there by God (p. 3-4; Ge 2:7,8,15). Eldredge implies that Adam’s place in the garden was less than ideal, that man’s true place is in the wilderness. But presumably God put Adam in the garden because it was the ideal dwelling place for him. Eldredge’s interpretation suggests that even God doesn’t fully understand the wildness of man’s heart…

• Eldredge argues that nature’s fierceness – tigers, killer whales, the jungles of India – reflects the nature of God (pp. 29-30). But others would argue that nature’s fierceness is a consequence of the Fall. Furthermore, the Bible says that the Messiah will usher in an age even more tranquil than that described in Eden – “The wolf will live with the lamb”, etc. (Isa 11:6-9; Isa 65:17-25; Rev 21:3-5; Rev 7:17). Eldredge’s wild masculinity would be out of place in a peaceful heaven where there may be adventure, but there will be no battles to fight or beauties to rescue.

• Eldredge states that God’s wild nature is evident in His “willingness to risk” (pp. 30-32). A risk implies uncertainty and the possibility of failure. But the Bible states that God is all-powerful and all-knowing (Eph 1:11; Isa 46:9-10). By claiming that God takes risks, Eldredge has to conclude that faith in God is a risk: “He rigged the world in such a way that it only works when we embrace risk as the theme of our lives, which is to say, only when we live by faith” (p. 200). But “faith” and “risk” are not the same. The Bible says faith is not risky, but is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb 11:1). Christian faith is anchored in the objective, historical figure of Jesus.

• Eldredge derides the “false self” that desires a “guarantee of success” before following God (p. 213). Yet Jesus guarantees success – following him has no risk of ultimate failure (Jn 10:28-29; of course worldly success is not guaranteed: Mt 6:19-21). It seems that Eldredge fails to understand the earthly aspect of our existence in light of the heavenly (Mt 6:33). For the Christian, following God is success.

• Eldredge says Jesus is like William Wallace, as depicted in the film Braveheart (pp. 22-25). Christ “picks a fight” with the Pharisees; He is fierce and wild (p. 24). Yet the Bible focuses not on Jesus’ wildness, but on His complete submission. Jesus only said and did what the Father wanted Him to (Jn 8:28-29; Php 2:5-8). He condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and drove the moneychangers from the temple, but these demonstrate obedience to the Father as much as they indicate wildness.

• Jesus’ anger and ‘wild’ actions (such as driving the moneychangers from the temple) were not a reaction to wrongs against Him, but were carried out in defence of the Father (Jn 2:16). Throughout the Passion story, Jesus would not defend Himself physically against his attackers, and hardly even defended Himself verbally. As Christians, we are not to seek justice or revenge for ourselves (Ro 12:19-21; Mt 5:38-42). Contrast that with Eldredge’s advice to his son to meet violence with violence when confronting a bully (pp. 78-79).

There are many articles that go into far more detailed criticisms, particularly relating to Wild at Heart’s theological problems. I don’t agree with all of these criticisms, but they raise many interesting questions. Some of the more comprehensive reviews:

Rut Etheridge, ‘God in Man’s Image: A Critique of John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart’
“Wild At Heart is a heartfelt, emotionally moving but ultimately dangerous book because it is severely lacking in biblical truth….Eldredge rightly points out that men and women have fallen prey to culturally popular but deplorable ideas about masculinity and femininity. Eldredge wants men to be real men and women to be real women.  But Eldredge’s unbiblical methodology of helping people along this road is what necessitates the rejection of the key principles of the book.”

Gary E. Gilley, ‘Wild at Heart - Part 1’
“But what is so bad about Wild at Heart?  Are we just picking apart something because it is successful?  I trust not, for Wild at Heart is so full of unbiblical content and downright error that even Christianity Today wrote a negative review….Christianity Today implied that Wild at Heart is a “syrupy pop book that pleases undiscerning ears” and then stated clearly, “The therapeutic virtues of the book, however, do not outweigh its theological and cultural vices….Theological error emerges by page three.”

Randy Stinson, ‘Is God Wild At Heart? A Review of John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart‘
“With all of the good insights Eldredge offers in this book, it is actually a little painful to mention two of what should be considered very significant problems which undermine the entire book.”

-

“It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not.” – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II.

A while back I read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You (because I kept coming across comments about how it had profoundly influenced Gandhi and, by extension, Martin Luther King, Jr.). The book was long and rambling, but it had some great, stinging passages – a few of which sprang to mind as I was watching The Bourne Ultimatum. The movie touches on issues such as torture, assassination, extraordinary rendition, covert surveillance, “following orders“, and the basic question of whether the end justifies the means (“You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette”, “it became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it“, etc.).

[A] man, otherwise sensible and good-hearted, simply because he is given a badge or a uniform to wear, and told that he is a guard or customs officer, is ready to fire on people, and neither he nor those around him regard him as to blame for it, but, on the contrary, would regard him as to blame if he did not fire. To say nothing of judges and juries who condemn men to death, and soldiers who kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple merely because it has been instilled into them that they are not simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.
 This strange and abnormal condition of men under state organization is usually expressed in the following words: “As a man, I pity him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or soldier, it is my duty to kill or torture him.” Just as though there were some positions conferred and recognized, which would exonerate us from the obligations laid on each of us by the fact of our common humanity. – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, XII

The fourth method [in which governments enslave men] consists in selecting from all the men who have been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain number, exposing them to special and intensified means of stupefaction and brutalization, and so making them into a passive instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them at the youthful age when men have not had time to form clear and definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines, submissive to the hypnotizer. These physically vigorous young men (in these days of universal conscription, all young men), hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving men. – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, VIII.

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible. – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, 9.

The slightest movement affects the whole of nature; one stone can alter the whole sea. Likewise, in the realm of grace, the slightest action affects everything because of its consequences; therefore everything matters. – Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 927 (505)

AMORALITY   A quality admired and rewarded in modern organizations, where it is referred to through metaphors such as professionalism and efficiency.
     Amorality is corporatist wisdom. It is one of the terms which highlights the confusion in society between what is officially taught as a value and what is actually rewarded by the structure.
     Immorality is doing wrong of our own volition. Amorality is doing it because a structure or an organization expects us to do it. Amorality is thus worse than immorality because it involves denying our responsibility and therefore our existence as anything more than an animal.
– John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense

ANSWERS   A mechanism for avoiding questions.
     This might be called obsessional avoidance or a manic syndrome. It is based on the belief that the possession of an education – particularly if it leads to professional or expert status and, above all, if it involves some responsibility or status and, above all, if it involves some responsibility or power – carries with it an obligation to provide the answer to every question posed in your area of knowledge. This has become much more than the opiate of the rational elites. It may be the West’s most serious addiction.
     Time is of the essence in this process. An inability to provide the answer immediately is a professional fault. The availability of unlimited facts can produce an equally unlimited number of absolute answers in most areas. Memory is not highly regarded. Right answers which turn out to be wrong are simply replaced by a new formula. The result of these sequential truths is an assertive or declarative society which admires neither reflection nor doubt and has difficulty with the idea that to most questions there are many answers, none of them absolute and few of them satisfactory except in a limited way.
– John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense

ECONOMICS   The romance of truth through measurement.
 ….Economic truth has replaced such earlier truths as an all-powerful God, and a natural Social Contract. Economics are the new religious core of public policy. But what evidence has been produced to prove this natural right to primacy over other values, methods and activities?
     The answer usually given is that economic activity determines the success or failure of a society. It follows that economists are the priests whose necessary expertise will make it possible to maximise the value of this activity. But economic activity is less a cause than an effect – of geographical and climatic necessity, family and wider social structures, the balance between freedom and order, the ability of society to unleash the imagination, and the weakness or strength of neighbours. If anything, the importance given to economics over the last quarter-century has interfered with prosperity. The more we concentrate on it, the less money we make.
– John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

– Martin Luther King, Jr., from ‘Beyond Vietnam’, New York, 4 April 1967, in Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepherd (eds.), A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., New York, 2001.

As Christians we must think not only about “mansions in the sky,” but also about the slums and ghettos that cripple the human soul, not merely about streets in heaven “flowing with milk and honey,” but also about the millions of people in this world who go to bed hungry at night. Any religion that professes concern regarding the souls of men and fails to be concerned by social conditions that corrupt, and economic conditions that cripple the soul, is a do-nothing religion, in need of new blood. Such a religion fails to realise that man is an animal having physical and material needs.

– Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘What is Man?’ I, Strength to Love.

Our nation’s productive machinery constantly brings forth such an abundance of food that we must build larger barns and spend more than a million dollars daily to store our surplus. Year after year we ask, “What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” I have seen an answer in the faces of millions of poverty-stricken men and women in Asia, Africa, and South America. I have seen an answer in the appalling poverty in the Mississippi Delta and the tragic insecurity of the unemployed in large industrial cities of the North. What can we do? The answer is simple: feed the poor, clothe the naked, and heal the sick. Where can we store our goods? Again the answer is simple: We can store our surplus food free of charge in the shrivelled stomachs of the millions of God’s children who go to bed hungry at night. We can use our vast resources of wealth to wipe poverty from the earth.

– Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘The Man Who Was A Fool’, II, Strength to Love.