The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. bell hooks
All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death. Charlotte Brontë
Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness. William Shakespeare
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Ayn Rand
Everything precious was also vulnerable. Mary H.K. Choi
While most of us are, at some level, guilty of creating what some scribes and religious texts refer to as “graven images” of deeper and more challenging spiritual realities, our imaging has taken a particularly sinister turn as this season of Advent transitions into the season of the Christmas manger.
Many have seen for ourselves images of smiling elected officials and others sitting around Christmas trees while holding deadly weapons and asking Santa for suitable ammunition. We have also heard preachers, not always from obscure denominational backgrounds, urging a brand of “godly” violence in an effort, or so it seems, to drag an otherwise disredited version of Christianity out of the shadows and on to the pedestal of governance. It is as though we never abandoned the aspiration of “holy empire” nor ceased to honor the (mostly) men who perpetuated it.
Putting forth a notion of a “muscular Jesus” is not a new phenomenon in our culture, but in some circles it is clearly poised to make some fresh noise. An article this week in the Washington Post by Peter Manseau cited the desire in some “Christian” quarters for a “viral and manly Jesus” on the basis of which weapons and other threats of force can be justified, necessary to the “preservation of the good,” including the good of restoring a more testosterone-laden version of Christianity which, as they see it, had been allowed (by liberals mostly) to get too soft, too gentle, too “feminine” as it were.
This relishing of muscular force as a global (and even religious) good has a long and checkered past. While taking a break from weekly posts, I came upon a commentary on the iconic “Iliad” by the illustrious Simone Weil, one in which she reminds us of the deeper truths embedded in that seminal work, truths about ourselves including our almost genetic obsession with violence and its justifications. As she navigates the text, she is clear throughout that the “center of the Iliad is force,” force that enslaves, force before which our “flesh shrinks away,” force which “turns anybody subjected to it into a thing,” in essence making “corpses” of all of us.
This is sobering reflection, made more so by the accuracy of its portrayal. As a species we have long been addicted to the allure of force, which includes the assumption (until proven otherwise) that our choices are only between the projection of force and its receipt, that we have little recourse in this life aside from being on one end of a weapon or another, creating things out of people or, alternatively, enduring the experience of being turned into things by others.
This dystopian view generates plenty of supporting evidence, and we often seem surprised by how shallow are our collective alternatives, our practical commitments to the values of peace, dignity, compassion and tolerance. Weil notes that in the Iliad there are moments of grace to be found, but these are often buried along with the corpses of those fallen in battle or through siege, signaling the likelihood that the cycles of violence to which we have become all-too-accustomed are poised to flare up yet again.
And yet amidst the pain and carnage of our weapons and muscular mindsets, a child is born, a son is given, a manger barely fit for livestock has become the stage for a different way of engaging the world, one less involved in pumping iron and packing heat, and more interested in demonstrating that, even in this force-addicted world, another more peaceful course forward is possible.
The manger, after all, is more than a humble birthing location; it is a metaphor for what is to come: a life spent bringing dignity to outcasts who might otherwise have been ignored; a life bearing forgiveness in settings where many of us would likely succumb to bitterness; a life showering compassion on the sick and hungry beyond the influence of any comfort zone; a life rejecting the very violence and self-reference which some in his name would have you believe is a core component of a proper, “manly” faith. We hear the testimony of that divine life: Give him your cloak as well. Put away your sword. Cease your elbowing for honor and recognition. Understand that the ways of the world – embracing the coerciveness of muscular force – will not be your way, must not be your way if we are to have a way forward at all.
That same manger also sends a message to those who fear above all their own vulnerability and insufficiency, who measure strength by their ability to coerce others and even make them beg for mercy, who seek to double down on the terms of the current world rather than the terms which the ministry of Jesus embodies, a message that there is grace, dignity and forgiveness to be found emanating from the most extreme and forlorn places, even from a barn at the edge of town on a bone chilling night.
The late senior pastor of New York’s Riverside Church, William Sloane Coffin, used to speak of the essential Christmas choice as one between “shoving and loving.” This always struck me as hopeful but not uncomplicated phrasing. For we have constructed a world where the threat and use of force is, for many, the wallpaper that covers their world, an expectation that literally envelops their reality with its overly-muscular and militarized imagery, its inflexible bureaucracies, its self-refereential supervision, its stubborn power imbalances. It is hard for many now, as perhaps it has always been, to imagine a world suggested by the manger – vulnerable beginnings which transition into lives which are threatening only to those whose influence in the world is a byproduct of what we at the UN refer to often as “coercive measures rather than of commitments to compassion, forgiveness, dignity and equity.
And the “loving” option is certainly no simple matter either. Indeed, it is a matter much more easily professed than discharged, a claim too often drowning in intangible sentiment that sounds perpetually better in theory than in practice. Love is, for most of us, an easy choice, but as we soon find out is one fraught with missed connections and self-deceptions. We tend to forget (or ignore) how much of our being is earmarked for competition, possession and, yes, force, and this is increasingly true in some measure across lines of gender, culture and ethnicity. We are generally not as loving as we profess to be, surely not towards ourselves, certainly not towards others.
But having made the choice to eschew a life defined by “shoving” is an important transitional step, a step in keeping with a humble manger and the divine spark which emanated from it. While loving may ultimately offer “no place of safety,” as the late Gloria Jean Watkins (bell hooks) reminded us, it does offer us a path to follow, one suggested by humble origins and a subsequent life of divine purpose, a path which can take us to places where muscular force and the pain it inflicts has a measurably declining impact on how and why we live, what we can reasonably and hopefully aspire to for ourselves, our communities and our progeny.
The manger signifies more than merely tickling our sentiment. It suggests a fresh way forward, a path towards higher levels of dignity and service; a path towards reversing the self-inflicted decay which now envelops too much of our planet, a path wherein we are moved to both protect what is most vulnerable and invest in what is most precious such that others can also share in the remaining manifestations of abundance which we who are most privileged so often prefer to horde.
Let us be clear: the Jesus we revere especially on this Christmas Day did not advocate violence nor find it attractive; did not spend his precious time on earth working on his abs; was not to be found “packing heat” (or the biblical equivalent) on the donkey that carried him ultimately into Jerusalem; did not conveniently turn away from acts of compassion and healing, even unto death. And while he apparently turned over a table or two in the temple and had more than a few harsh words for those who represented or enabled a coercive empire, his cheeks always seemed to be turned.
Despite the contentions of some muscle-bound, force-challenged Christians, the Jesus who emerged from the Christmas manger is not “masked death” but unmasked life, offering guidance towards a world where the pain from coercion is no longer coin of the realm, and where what is most precious is duly acknowledged, protected and shared. This is why the wonders and aspirations of Christmas still matter to me. Perhaps to you as well.
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