Not a docile God
I was chatting online with my cousin as she relaxed at the airport lounge in Manila. The man in front of her in the queue, she said, had been rude and annoying.
The staff, the sign over the door, and the notice at the front desk had all told him that his mileage card did not qualify him for the first-class lounge. He continued to be rude and demanding, but the staff members stood their ground and turned him away.
It was more than just the rude words that irked my cousin, and that irritates many of us when we witness such behavior. Many of us frown on those who try to bully their way into getting what they want. We despise the idea that morals and empathy are impractical, and that only force, pressure, and brutishness make the world work.
This was what first came to mind when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified his use of force in the Middle East conflict through an analogy so extreme, that people thought it was fake news.
Netanyahu drew on the work of the historian Will Durant, who argued that morals alone could not defend nations against powerful enemies. This philosophy was behind Netanyahu’s claim: “History proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation. So you have no choice … We have to be more powerful than the barbarians, or they will crash our gates.”
The online backlash was loud, prompting Netanyahu’s camp to reiterate that no offense was meant, and that he had only tried to say that brute force is sometimes necessary to enforce order.
To frame the issue as a debate on morals vs force, however, is to claim that they are polar opposites, loaded with mutually exclusive meanings: that compassion, morals, and empathy are all necessarily soft and gentle, while force will always be violent, consuming, and bloody.
It is to say that goodness keeps problems festering while violence solves them.
It is also to cast Jesus as a docile child, never growing out of the manger, going around healing people and preaching morals, while accepting blows and suffering.
There’s something missing here: Jesus was perceived as a rebel by the Roman authorities. A potential unifying force for a colonized and persecuted people? Bad news.
The morality attributed to Jesus seems to be tied to docility, to a compassion so soft that it allows for all things to happen without any kind of anger.
Never mind Jesus turning over tables in the Temple when he saw how a purported place of worship had been tainted by profiteering, by outward shows of faithfulness that did not match a spirit of self-sacrifice. Ignore the Jesus who wept when Lazarus died; who reprimanded apostles for flattering him or having too little faith; who told people that if they truly wanted to go to Heaven, then they had to give away their belongings, take up their cross, and follow Him.
This is not a hippie Jesus, indifferent to sin and death. This is not a fairy-tale Jesus who hugs everybody and advocates calm in the face of injustice. Even “turn the other cheek” is not about empty martyrdom, but refusing to use violence in retaliation for personal offenses.
This is a God who, at any time, could have lifted a finger to cause suffering in His oppressors, to return the pain to those causing it, to set fire to anything He pleased so that it would be purified.
Instead, He sat and took what was given, and He waited for the Pharisees to admit their mistakes, for the Roman authorities to put a stop to the bloodshed, and for people to use their free will to do what was right.
He allowed people the chance to either delight and continue, or stop and repent, because their good works hinged not on mere obedience, but on willing participation. They were fulfilling a greater cause, yes, but it was still up to them to recognize their sin and wrongdoing.
The question is not whether Jesus was real; even Durant argued that the Gospels were historically sound, and Jesus’ life looked too remarkable to have simply been invented. The point is that Jesus embodies a brand of humanity that does not paint the world in broad brushstrokes. In the words of my Ateneo colleague, Raoul Roncal, Jesus is both real and unreal: “He represents the best form of humanity, who would have thought that there is power in non-retaliation?”
To extend that reasoning, Jesus showed that listening, discerning, and giving people a choice are perhaps more revolutionary than pushing others to fulfill a personal agenda. This, perhaps, is what makes us sneer at the entitled, the rude, and the demanding. It is in how they try to enforce their will on others without first listening. It is in how they believe in the power of brute force to solve problems.
It is in how they see the world as inherently cruel and violent, so that they must simply work within the same chaos, rather than as a world that can be made good, but only if we allow people to first really, truly live.
—————-
iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
