This semester in the Religion 373 class, I taught Christian perspectives on warfare and terrorism. One of the options for the topic assignment was to ‘live one week as a Pacifist.” It was more of a challenge than an assignment. I DARED them to try to live according to the dictates of thorough, deep-in-the-heart, Christ-like non-violence. The parameters were simple;
1) You may never respond in anger, hate or violence.
2) If you are abused or accosted or otherwise unjustly treated, you must respond with love and forgiveness. (Hug it out!)
Now I had seven students take up the challenge. All with the same attitude, “I am a loving forgiving person, this should be easy.”
It wasn’t.
They had to submit an account of their week and explore what they learned from the experience.
Some disturbing patterns arose from their experiences and I’d like to share them with you.
1) All of them FAILED.
They didn’t fail the assignment (I am not that mean). They universally failed to behave in a pacifist manner. All of them were driven to violence and anger. Not just the occasional slip up, but every day and often. Most did not make it through the first hour without some form of verbal or physical violence. It seems the hardest form of violence to resist was the violent response of SARCASM. Most students were shocked by the sheer volume of hurtful sarcasm they employ each day.
2) Even if they could live non-violently, they wouldn’t.
Most of them concluded not only that they COULDN’T do it, but that they WOULDN’T do it. They were not happier, they were not more at peace. They were more frustrated, more stressed, more abused, more helpless. They all felt that they were forced by the limitations of agape to let injustice go uninhibited. The Christian message of unconditional love and forgiveness is revealed in practice to lack discretion. Should we love everyone equally? Are they equally deserving of my forgiveness, or concern, or attention? While ‘love thy neighbour’ is a pleasant slogan, none of the students could or would abide it in practice. It is a call to leave reason, judgment and desert out of our decisions.
3) People WANTED them to fail.
All of them had a similar and disturbing experience. Those who knew about the challenge actively sought to invoke a violent response. Friends, family and even mere classmates committed injustices just to get the pacifist to snap. One student was baby-sitting and had the child quickly discern that the lack of punishment gave them a carte blanche to misbehave. Chaos ensued. Why were people so hell-bent on helping them fail? I am not sure…anyone have a theory?
Here are some snippets from the student responses;"The hitch I found in the whole pursuit was that I became so very aware of the ruined state of humanity."
"I may have been trying to be a better person, but that person just isn't me."
"Being a Pacifist stripped away my happiness. No Lie."
"Almost everyone that I came across that I informed of my experiment was excited - not because I was going to morally improve myself but because it was an open invitation to take advantage of me for a week."
"I felt like I was demeaning my values and my rationality by forgiving everyone regardless of merit."
Should we love our enemies? Should we forgive those who trespass against us? Should we turn the other cheek?
I don't know that turning the other cheek is possible in an age where we have such a strong instinct to preserve and distinguish our sense of self from everyone else, and everyone else has that exact same desire. We make everything about how we feel, and how situations affect us (comments on another post on fb in response to a question of mine made me realize that) and in the end, turning the other cheek seems kind of impossible when it feels like society as a whole lacks any sort of empathy and is trained from birth to contextualize every aspect of life as a sort of extension of the self. In fact, it doesn't seem very prudent to turn the other cheek. Also, I kind of wonder what kind of people would have an easier time of turning the other cheek, and I also kind of wonder if, by our standards, they would be classified as having some sort of mental disorder. I have actually been told on multiple occasions that I have stockholm syndrome for forgiving and loving certain people in my life without any sort of expectation of payback. Does the world view any sort of turning the cheek as mental illness?
ReplyDeleteMatthew 3:7
ReplyDeleteBut when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"
I am not sure that your parameters are appropriate for Christian pacifism. Christ-like non-violence as practiced by Christ includes rather aggressive responses and appropriate anger. He did throw the moneychangers out of the temple, after all.
I do think one can be loving and forgiving and still be honest and true to yourself. For example, say I had an alcoholic friend who called me continually drunk to get picked up from a bar and was verbally abusive. I could lovingly tell him he was being an ass and should get his life together while I was picking him up. It wouldn't be angry or hating. I would forgive him for whatever he said. I would still pick him up the next time - and the next time - and the next time. That seems to be following the turn the other cheek principle and also Christ's example.
i don't think that pacifism means being a doormat or not getting angry. it just means that your response shouldn't be motivated by anger. so to take the example of working with kids, it wouldn't mean that kids don't get consequences for misbehaving. it means that the consequences wouldn't be a punishment, delivered out of anger. when i taught preschool i tried to never give time-outs or withhold participation simply for the sake of punishment. there would always be a reason ('you look like you're having a hard time listening right now, so how about you sit here and calm down for a few minutes', 'if you hit susie then susie is hurt and sad. how would you feel if someone hit you? so you need to sit here until you're ready to apologize to susie and play without hurting other people'). believe me, spending a few minutes discussing why exactly it was that you threw a truck at the wall can be an effective deterrent.
ReplyDeleteso i think possibly the parameters were a little bit too stringent. i think outrage is a very valid response to a lot of what goes on with the world, and i don't think it's necessarily incompatible with pacifism. pacifist outrage would be that atrocities happen, with room for compassion for everybody involved. you can have compassion for a murderer without excusing their crime.
/my hippie two cents