Recognizing the Evil in Myself | Jesus and Nonviolence | Part 3 | Courtney Clark
Transcript: Recognizing the Evil in Myself
We’re talking again today about Jesus and non-violence, this is a part 3 of sorts. We started by looking at Jesus’s sermon on the mount beginning in 5:38-42. Where we discussed that this passage might not mean what you think it means. That rather than asking for passivity Jesus is giving examples of how to live in a third way when it feels as if you have no choices in a system of power and oppression. Something we are all too familiar with. And then last week we talked about what it looks like to love your enemy as Jesus urges his followers in 5:43-44. Throughout the sermon on the mount found in Matthew 5,6, and 7 there is a key theme of peace. All too often we see Christians and even Christian nations (Or nations that are predominantly Christian, like the US) using Jesus as a means to hate, conquer, and exude power of people they see as inferior, less than, or not worthy. People they see as others. This is something we all notice, and I think don’t agree with. Jesus is a lot of things, but he’s certainly not hateful. The sermon on the mount opens with the beatitudes and in verse 9 Jesus states,
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God.”
One could argue that by eliminating anyone who doesn’t think like you, you’re creating peace which I guess if you look at peace as no one asks questions or pushes back then I guess you’d be right. But as we dive deeper into the text found in Matthew 5, we see that Jesus is urging for a lot more than compliance and silence. The very next verse says,
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
He’s looking for something entirely new, and he came to show the way. He came to be an example of what that looks like, of what it’s like to live on the side of the oppressed, the poor, the forgotten, to fight for them and love the enemy in the process. This doesn’t mean Jesus gave in and forgot about the violence done to his people or the violence toward any marginalized group rather he showed how to fight for a better world. A world that isn’t run by power, but by equality, community, grace, and peace. He spent his life and ministry giving examples of what the kingdom looks like. Telling us countless stories or parables trying to explain a new dynamic a new way of living. Rather than flipping the power from the powerful to the powerless, Jesus wanted more. He knew the potential of more, he knew what it looked like for the world to work in harmony again, just as it did in Eden in the very beginning.
Jesus lived and taught what we’ve been calling the Third Way, named that by author and theologian Walter Wink. We talked extensively about this last week. And it provoked an interesting conversation I am so proud to have been a part of. Hearing your thoughts on this has been encouraging and has helped bring back some of my hope for the world when that hope feels really hard to hold onto. The violence that seems to be never ending lately, the questioning of rights, the fighting on both sides of who’s right and who’s wrong. This division is going to be the death of democracy. At the end of our discussion last week, we all agreed that no matter where we stand on these issues that everyone seems to be talking about, we can all agree the systems in place aren’t working and we need something new. We need to find a way to work together and use our differences to the benefit of everyone rather than trying to move forward one specific agenda. Our country was founded on the oppression and othering of entire groups of people. We can’t go back, because there is no good to go back to, only different forms of hate. We agreed we must move forward and continue to fight the violence and oppression with non-violence, like Jesus.
But even when fighting violence with non-violence there’s still great risk involved. Namely of which is the self-righteousness that inadvertently comes with fighting back. Its actually a great feeling to see your own growth and share it with the world. From this we easily begin to think wow look at me I’m doing all of this good. I’m more enlightened, better than, fill in the blank than them because I can see this, and they can’t. When we begin to see ourselves in this way, we fall back into the trap of us/them, and we forget our own complacency our own setbacks. We forget that we were once there, we forget that we were once the very thing we are now fighting against. And that one day we’ll be fighting against something we have in ourselves today. Because that’s how growth works. But it’s almost as if it’s human nature to other and belittle someone else to help us feel good about ourselves.
In that sense fighting back against evil has to almost be a spiritual act. Meaning when we fight evil in others we are also fighting that same evil in ourselves, thus we have to have the courage to face it. And more importantly recognize our own potential to be and do the thing we are fighting against. Our own capability to be the evil we see all around us. Our own capability to be hateful and violent. We can want to be non-violent to the core, we can desire to be wholly good. And absolutely should work toward that reality, but we also must recognize the very human existence of both good and bad, light and dark in everyone. If we are to look for the good in everyone, even the most evil, the most vile, we most also recognize the potential for the reverse to be true. That the darkness is capable of being in all of us as well.
Christian theology typically calls this the fall or original sin. Judaism calls it the evil impulse. There seems to be a universal sense, no matter your religion or origin of the capability of evil in all of us. And i’ll be honest, these ideas can be and likely are triggering for most of us. I have so many stories of spiritual and emotional abuse using this idea of inherent evil. Don’t hear me saying we are all inherently evil, God looked down on his creation and called it good. His opinion of that never changed. Even the fall didn’t cause god to look down on his creation and call it bad/evil/broken/worthless. The fall as we would refer to it, allowed the knowledge of good and evil, and opened up the potential for BOTH in humanity, but it didn’t make everything vile and evil and in need of redemption. This sermon isn’t about inherent evil, but if you’re interested in doing a deep dive on inherent evil vs. inherent good you can find a sermon from Danielle Shroyer in our podcast feed where she talks about the original blessing of creation. She also has a book by the same name.
While we are not all inherently evil, and we are called good by God (7 times in genius 1 god calls creation good.) its important we recognize this ability in ourselves, and we’re being naive if we don’t. but merely acknowledging it’s existence isn’t quite enough, it’s a wonderful first step absolutely, but AA has 12 steps only the first of which is recognizing that alcohol is a problem. We could borrow from this approach here as well. We can recognize the potential for evil in ourselves and then take steps to actively work through it. We must continue to acknowledge it’s existence and then offering it up to God as a means for him to have grace on us. Then practice that grace for ourselves as we forgive our own failings and missteps. And finally being patient as we learn something new. For example, learning to use gender neutral language and pronouns as the default has been difficult to me, and I have a tendency to beat myself up for saying the wrong thing. But I think what we need more than shaming ourselves is patience as we’re learning something new. It’s been proven that shame is not a motivator of change. It will stop the behavior in that moment, but it doesn’t affect things long term. Just as we are called to love our enemies and believe they can change we are challenged to do the same for ourselves. Author Shelly Dougless put it this way
“We do not want to have to change our lives to bring about justice. The hardest moment comes when our own internal oppressor meets the outside reality that it supports. It is not out there but in me that the oppressor must die.”
For most people this is asking too much, it’s one thing to participate in activism and fight for justice for all, and something else entirely to seek personal growth and fight the oppressor inside of us. But Jesus’s way is exactly this, fighting the evil outside and inside so that we can ALL become more of who we were meant to be. So that we all can bring heaven to earth now, not just for the people around us but for ourselves.
While this is difficult and facing our own inner demons, if you will, is painful. In this way of living we find a new freedom. Living in the third way isn’t required for us to be valuable, or loved, or to belong. We have all of those things whether we’re living in the third way, actively oppressing others, or somewhere in between. We are worthy of the love of God and worthy of being loved simply because we exist. Living and actively pursuing personal growth to bring freedom from oppression to ourselves and to others isn’t a path to goodness, or a path to salvation as some may call it. Rather it’s something that happens when we are able to live in the freedom of trusting and knowing that the goodness, the faithfulness of God is greater than anything, even the oppression and darkness we face in the world. Even the hatred we experience. So in this sense, the third way isn’t the goal, the goal is to know and feel the love of God and begin to live and share it with everyone we encounter. Or as we’ve talked about here, the goal is to participate in bringing heaven to earth in the here and know. And we do that when we see its goodness, when we feel it’s grace and peace, when we acknowledge how much we need it and seek to bring it with us everywhere we go because we want to share it with the world, we want the rest of the world to feel the wonder of grace and peace and love. This is true freedom, not doing to earn freedom, not living grace and peace to gain the right to feel it, but embracing it so much, experiencing its depths so much that we just begin to be it, that it just becomes apart of us.
In 1986 dictator Ferdinand Marcos 20 year rein ended and democracy was restored in the Philippines through nonviolent protest. After this nonviolent revolution Bishop Francisco Claver S.J wrote
“We choose nonviolence not merely as a strategy for the attaining of the ends of justice, casting it aside if it does not work. We choose it as an end in itself…because we believe it is the way Christ himself struggled for justice.”
Leaders of nonviolent revolution all over the world look to Jesus as an example. We’ve talked about many of them, and they have been successful. We have example after example of this reality. One thing they all have in common is Jesus’s stance with the oppressed against power and recognizing the importance of the cross.
Growing up in evangelicalism the cross was taught as something Jesus took on to nullify my individual sin. Substitutionary atonement was considered the only explanation for Jesus’s brutal murder. Meaning Jesus took the punishment for my inherent evil on the cross so that I didn’t have to. But Jesus wasn’t a part of a culture that was so wholly focused on the individual. Jesus’s life doesn’t represent this understanding either. He worked toward a collective better way of life, for everyone. Not just the justification of a select few. The cross was blatantly violent, so what does it mean to look to the cross as a way of non-violence?
The cross wasn’t just a means for Jesus to side with the oppressed, it was as Rob Robertson explained it His way of dealing with the evil. Jesus didn’t suffer violence because he was a failed insurrectionist, (remember his followers wanted a violent revolution and assumed his death meant he failed) but rather he suffered in this way because he preferred to be at the hand of violence and oppression rather than to be the cause of it. He could have fought back and stopped the brutality. But that would have meant being the very violence he taught against. Evil is like energy and the laws of energy state that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So once the energy of evil has been directed it can’t be stopped it can only change form, meaning someone or something has to absorb it. Poet and theologian Charles Williams explained this idea saying that Jesus’s way intentionally evokes violence of an oppressive system using it’s own momentum to throw it and if that evil is to be deflected or transformed, something or someone has to suffer the impact. Which is where Jesus and the cross come in. Someone had to take it on to change it, Jesus lived his life giving examples of what the world could look like. Examples of living in community where everyone has what they need, where everyone feels valuable and loved, where everyone contributes to society because we all work together to create a better life for one another, not just to gain status, power, or money (which lets be honest is the same thing). And then he absorbed all of it the power of evil on the cross. Not the individual sin, not our own mistakes and downfalls, but rather the evil of the whole system. The evil of Rome who conquered nations and oppressed their people just because they wanted more power, more status, more money.
The cross wasn’t a failure in Jesus’s insurrection, it was the whole point. He took the third way all the way to the end. He lived a life of peace and non-violence even when it meant he would suffer that violence himself. Dying in this way is proof that death isn’t the greatest evil one can suffer. Jesus was willing to suffer a brutal, painful death so that the oppressed, the marginalized, hell even the oppressor could finally live in freedom. Away from systems of power, away from systems that inflict suffering on anyone. In the knowing that death isn’t the worst evil we can suffer, we find freedom. Freedom to go about living in the third way even if it means we must also suffer. Walter Wink said in his book Jesus and Nonviolence
“I cannot really be open to the call of God in a situation of oppression if the one thing I have excluded as an option is my own suffering and death.”
We have talked before that Jesus’s third way doesn’t come naturally. We are conditioned to fight or flight it’s in our bones, its how our brains work. Living in the third way requires training, practice, patience with ourselves, recognizing the need for change in ourselves, creativity, community to live it out, and risk. The risk of suffering, for the sake of creating a better world. Which is why we need to do this together, it must be a collective work. If we’re suffering alone, with no one to walk by our side we give up, we lose hope, and we allow it to consume us by becoming the violence we are fighting against.
Jesus suffered thousands of years ago, and here it feels like we’re still fighting the same fight just with new weapons. The outcome isn’t guaranteed but this is exactly why we have to live in this way. We must live in a way that is in line with the world we want to see. Walter Wink once again says,
“The reign of God is already in the process of arriving when we choose means consistent with its arrival.”
The power of the Holy Spirit is a challenge to transcend the present order and win the victories no matter how large or small. With each victory we usher in the kingdom and claim a little stake of grace and peace. This requires immense courage, as you choose willingly to enter a way of life that could invite suffering, as you choose to absorb evil with your own body rather than play into the endless cycle of hate.
And that is what we celebrate with the Eucharist. The way of Jesus, the breaking of his body and the pouring out of his blood, to absorb the hated so that a new way can be created. So that the kingdom can be brought to the here and now.