The late
Rene Girard saw humanity’s moral progress in its gradual abandonment of its
age-old violent sacrifice systems with their victim scapegoats. He traced it
back to parts of the Hebrew Bible, and in Jesus he saw the pinnacle of this
development, for it is only in Him that this undercurrent becomes conscious of
itself. Another reason for Jesus being crucial to this development is obviously
the subsequent spread of His message, which Girard as a Christian ascribed to
the work of the Holy Spirit.
On the
human level this spreading moral revolution has taken on forms that are clearly
discernable. And yet Jesus’ paramount message of “loving one’s neighbor as
oneself” and the even more radical one of “loving one another as I [Jesus] have
loved you” seem to cut across some of humanity’s evolution-hardwired moral foundations. Jonathan
Haidt, following on the research of other psychologists and anthropologists, has long been arguing that evolution equipped
us with a set of 5 (or 6, in a recent formulation of his theory) moral
foundations falling into 3 main ethical categories. They are care,
fairness and liberty (ethic of
autonomy), loyalty and authority (ethic of community), and sanctity (ethic of divinity). It has
been corroborated by fieldwork that most of the world’s population base their
moral judgments on all of these moral foundations, while progressive or liberal
elites in the West ground their morality on just 2 or 3 foundations, all of
them falling into just 1 ethical category, that of autonomy.
Since
most Christians, including many among those who subscribe to progressive ways
of thinking, consider human moral predispositions as being “evolution-based” or
“natural,” these facts should give them pause. They also should let
progressives better understand the moral stance of those endowed with this
broader range of moral sensitivities. Moral – not immoral! Yet liberals of all
kinds, including most liberal Christians, do not seem to see it that way. Neither
is the other side willing to see the progressive stance as a logical
implementation of Jesus’ message.
Especially
in a societal setting, acting out of a reduced set of moral foundations might many
a time place one in a moral conundrum, as there is no natural balance between
society- and individual- oriented imperatives. But there is an easy way out
resorted to most of the time: self-righteous position of moral superiority over
those seeing a particular moral dilemma differently. And the other side then
reacts similarly based not only on their divergent moral judgments, but also
reacting to the perceived hatred and
demonization directed at them.
Yet a
case can also be made, as to an extent has been, that since the broader
foundations and categories produce moral attitudes standing in opposition to
one another, adopting a reduced yet coherent subset of such foundations might
represent or amount to moral progress. I am interested in such a case grounded
on pronouncements of Jesus. What is more interesting is that Jesus seemed to
set about dismantling some of the foundations, especially sanctity (understood as avoiding pollution), but also
authority (of the religious elites) standing in the way of more prominence
being accorded to the foundations He seemed to cherish the most, namely those
of care (or no harm) and fairness. One might see this stance as invitation to a
moral transcendence of oneself as defined by humanity’s moral evolution, as invitation
to universal love.
I will
limit myself to basing my case for universal love on my reading of Jesus’
message. Universal love is much more than responding to what one perceives as
harm done to one’s neighbor while at the same time being resentful (if not
outright hateful) of those who do not see this situation the way one does. And it
is obviously also much more difficult. I think it requires tolerance, a virtue
that has fallen by the wayside on both sides of the moral spectrum. Seeing the
position of the other side as morally-based could certainly help. It does not
follow that we must necessarily agree with the other’s position. Yet if we see
it as essentially immoral, we are on the way to hatred and demonization of our
opponents. And that is certainly not in line with what Jesus taught.
The
famous Jesus’ “love-thy-neighbor” pronouncements are well understood by all
Christians, as well as non-Christians, their not being adhered to
notwithstanding. What is important for this exposition is that they are
necessarily shared by those Christians who subscribe to both the narrower and
the broader set of moral foundations. The situation gets complicated only when
there arises a perception that they are standing in the way of moral
imperatives based on some of the other foundations, the ones cherished by the conservatives.
What if those “neighbors” of ours do not share, and do not want to share, our
traditions, culture, religion? What if
they seem not to even want to be loyal to our society? The latter suspicion might
become then a self-fulfilling prophecy, when someone viewed as incapable of
loyalty is acting the role out of resentment.
Jesus made
His clearest case for universality of neighborly love in His parable of the Good
Samaritan, told in response to the question “who is my neighbor?” Having
related the story He actually reverses the question, asking, “Which of these three do you think proved
to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?,” and then says, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” There is more to this reply that
initially meets the eye. It is an alien belonging to a despised group that
turns out to be the one showing mercy, the only “neighbor” in the story. For
Jesus’ listeners this fact is supposed to undermine their conventional notions of
their compatriots’ moral integrity vs lack of it in all the others.
The
other famous Jesus’ parable on caring, brotherly love is the one told in
Matthew 25, the “I was a stranger,
and you invited [did not invite] Me in” parable. This one in turn is the
most compelling in its exhortation to care for the least fortunate: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one
of these brothers of Mine, even the least of
them, you did it to Me.” For the Christian there cannot be more
compelling a case for loving all of one’s fellow men than realizing that Jesus
fully identified with the least ones on this earth of ours.
Girard and many others claim that these pronouncements
of Jesus are the true source and the true code of Western morality at its descriptive
(and mostly theoretical rather than practical) best, rounding out the best they
can the revelation of the (innocent) scapegoat mechanism, which revelation makes
it futile. They have laid solid foundations first and foremost of the care (or no-harm) imperative in the human soul, as they have also for any culture claiming
to be Christian, and in the unprecedented manner and revelatory context, as was
clearly demonstrated by Girard. It should also be underscored that this
imperative is truly normative, that is evolutionary-based, as evidenced by the unease
experienced on hurting others or even observing their being hurt
Today though
the ongoing Western moral revolution is spearheaded by post-Christians who are
taking their cues not directly from Jesus anymore but are picking and choosing
from, or being driven by, as the case may be, the legacy foundations, or,
rather the ruins thereof. The dignity
culture, built – many a time without realizing that – on Christian moral tenets
is being supplanted by what has been named victimhood culture. Some such
development has been foreseen by Girard, who nevertheless considers it moral
aberration, or rather – as a logical one, though unwanted, and yet hopefully
not unavoidable – an ominous sign of the beginning of descent into apocalypse.
His analysis of Matthew 24 as describing an apocalypse at our own hands, rather
than one inflicted by God, draws on perspicuous understanding of the recent
developments in Western society and culture; to be duly replicated by the world
at large, it being but a West-oriented global village.
It is
not easy to navigate the moral landscape of our times. The victimhood culture
is drawing on the imperative of the universality of care (as discussed above as
regards the proverb of the Samaritan aiding a wounded one). But if we are not
mitigated at the same time by admonitions having to do with not judging others
(e.g., the speck in your brother’s eye proverb), or loving one’s enemies
(discussed later), resentment is certain to get the better of us. And our
acting out the care imperative will
just be a caricature of itself, for, often not realizing that, we will be upping
the ante in a game of scapegoating.
There is no doubt anymore that scapegoating is violence. Second-generation
scapegoating, the scapegoating of scapegoaters (not necessarily our own), seems
even more insidious than that of the previous generation, for it is rarely
noticed even by those who are sensitive to and thus can detect cases of
scapegoating in other situations. The reason is that it is extremely difficult
to see oneself as the one doing the scapegoating. It seems to be engaged in
more often by the progressives because it is inextricably tied to the moral foundation
of fairness/justice. Acting on this imperative in a violent manner, which also
includes being driven by resentment and/or hatred, cannot but become an act of
scapegoating. A conservative acting on this imperative, which call for him/her,
by the way, would certainly be understood differently, would many a time be
mitigated by his/her other imperatives, like loyalty to the country/nation. But
apart from fairness/justice the liberal has only care. And s/he would do well
to fall back on this foundation, as this might prevent her/him from violently fighting for her/his brand of
justice. Violent status-quo, even if ostensibly bearing a semblance of peace,
can only be truly remedied by nonviolent methods of conflict solving. The myth
of redemptive violence is just that, a myth. Violence puts nothing aright, and
these days even less so, as scapegoating stopped bestowing a peaceful respite on
a mob of scapegoaters. Today there will always be several angry scapegoating mobs
violently, that is hatefully, competing with one another. No chance anymore for
the formation of an apparently peaceful or at least peaceable community, even if created by the
blood/expulsion/suffering of a scapegoat. Not any more, and so much the better
for it.
Fairness, the second moral
foundation of Jonathan Haidt, is truly a problematic one, especially if it is viewed
in conjunction with or mostly through the bigger lens of justice. It is
apparently shared by both the progressives and the conservatives. Yet both
groupings differ diametrically in their understanding of it. What is one side’s
justice many a time is the other side’s injustice. Suffice it to recall here
polemics of the advocates of “egalitarian” positions, and those affirming “equal
opportunities.” Even Jesus’ position on justice-related issues did not escape being questioned while He
lived on earth, or anachronistically criticized by later commentators. Some of the Sermon on the Mount passages are
often cited as examples of a seemingly cowardly renunciation of any striving
for justice: the famous “do not resist evil,… turn the other check,… let him
have the shirt also,… go with him the second mile” themes. Yet, as Walter Wink
so convincingly showed in his last books, these words, on the contrary, are a
summons to nonviolent resistance to evil, not at all to virtual complicity in
it by forgoing resistance. Such a stance requires actually much more courage and
wisdom (as exemplified by the martyr Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela upon
ascending to power) than adrenaline-driven rage that seems to be the normal
mode of pursuing justice in our time. Jesus unequivocally renounced that,
knowing that there is but one small step from that to an evil no lesser than the
one that the justice advocate is fighting against. That evil is scapegoating, the
violence of its outward forms and/or inherent in the motivation underlying it.
If fairness/justice as a
moral foundation tends to be problematic – and very difficult to pursue in a
way that is not self-defeating – care
seems only difficult, sometimes exceedingly difficult. But it is well worth
pursuing. It is the one foundation that cannot – for any reason – be given up,
if one is to stay moral, and not just occupy the moral high ground, as is often
the case with “seasoned” justice fighters. It is also evidently the one foundation
that Jesus’ earthly life evinces preeminently. This is the truest embodiment of
Jesus’ ethic, ethic of uncompromising love, inclusive of one’s enemies. And for
a man whom such neighborly love makes incomparably free at heart, it also
logically embraces nonviolent-only resistance to evil and nonviolent-only
pursuit of justice.
As far as the moral foundation of liberty
is concerned, it goes without saying that Jesus would fully embrace it and it
must be considered as basic for Him. Yet, as with fairness-justice, there are
shades of liberty that seemingly stand in almost total contradistinction to one
another. Jesus certainly was an advocate of positive freedom, and opposed to seeing
liberty as just a libertarian-type negative freedom from whatever it might be,
oppression, slavery, excessive taxation, etc. He urged us to use our inherent
freedom to pursue our true humanity, which necessarily includes charity-based morality,
and which is solidarity-based. Now such a brand of liberty obviously can only be
seen as standing at the junction of the ethic of autonomy and that of
community.
Jesus’ position on loyalty
was a nuanced one, and certainly not one to be emulated if one were to ask any
local zealot of His time. His brand of true loyalty seems to have been rather
narrow but authentic: it was community-focused, or communitarian, and based on
solidarity. And it was active. Had He lived in our times, He wouldn’t have
moved, like most “lip-service” paying liberals, to the suburbs, away from the
underprivileged, i.e., the people who they ostensibly care about. No, He would
have stayed with His community, just like our contemporary Little Brothers (and
Sisters) of Jesus do, modeling their lives on His. So, He was loyal par
excellence, but to those He was in contact with (obviously this could be
anybody, no one was denied access), not to the “idea” – of a nation, of a
temple tradition – as cherished by the scapegoating elites and used by them to
control their fellow countrymen. His loyalty, or respect for His nation’s
traditions and laws was actually something out of the ordinary, if not
revolutionary. He set about subverting those traditions as to their literal
meaning and instead delved into an unexplored before richness of the hidden
spirit of those traditions. He was vehemently criticized for that and accused
of being a subversive, a rebel – certainly not a loyal member of society. Yet
His loyalty was authentic and much deeper, to boot, but not to those in a
position to pass judgment on His brand of it. Instead, it was to the Ultimate
Lawgiver, on the one hand, and to those exploited by those quick to pass
judgment, stemming, as it must have been, from their uniformed understanding, certainly not
imbued with charity, of a tradition ostensibly shared by the whole nation, on
the other hand. I am afraid, judging from the above description, that Jesus’ loyalty
measurement from a contemporary conservative perspective would come out
horrible.
Jesus’ stance on authority is
well evident from His relations with the Pharisees and religious scribes. When
speaking of those critical of His position on loyalty to traditions, reference
was obviously made to the formal authorities of the Jewish nation, the chief
priests of the temple, the religious hierarchy collaborating with the Roman
Empire, the scribes, even the sect of Pharisees. It is clear that there was no
unquestioning endorsement of their authority on the part of Jesus, quite the contrary, for His
certainly was not a position of acknowledging anybody’s authority just because
that person/group was holding a formal
position of power/influence in society. In other words, His example is
certainly not one of acting from the authority foundation on the model that conservatives of any time would.
Now fear
and revulsion or disgust cast a long shadow on morally legitimate sentiments of
care for the integrity and tradition of one’s community. Consequently Jesus set about dismantling the sense of sanctity understood as it was in His times in negative terms as
pollution avoidance, which position is the easiest springboard to scapegoating
among the foundations. There is no denying that this dismantling was truly an
outright attack wherever He went on the mentality of advocates of sanctity understood
as pollution avoidance. It was accompanied by a wholesale paradigm shift, whereby
sin was defined in metaphorical terms as debt, as a transgression against both
love and sense of justice, and not as being contaminated. Jesus never tired of
inviting to His fellowship those who were stigmatized as impure or polluted or “unclean” in
the eyes of society, based on their profession (tax-collectors) or behavior
(sinners), or anything else. He even went so far as to touch and heal people considered
polluted based on an instinctual fear of contagion (lepers, or those possessed
by an “unclean” spirit; generally those bearing victim marks and consequently truly
victimized). A Pharisees’ attack on His disciples for their eating with “unclean”
hands occasioned the full formulation of His position on what is clean and what
is unclean. And it obviously went totally against the grain with them, just as
it does with many latter-day conservatives, though their “pollutants” might be
different. It is worth adducing His
words here: “…whatever goes into the man from
outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into
his stomach, and is eliminated... That which proceeds out of the man, that is
what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the
evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy,
slander, pride and foolishness. All
these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.” This statement followed
His accusation leveled at the Pharisees (so concerned with His disciples’
impure hands) of failing to be charitable or even fair to their parents. In
effect Jesus was saying to them: the old paradigm of scapegoating based on perceived
non-cleansable pollution or indelible victim marks must be done away with and
replaced with a new one based on transgressors’ redemption informed with sentiments
of caring and justice; and love. In
trying to follow Him we may as well start by doing away once and for all with
all the pollution-based metaphors for lack of sanctity. Or, for that matter, in
the employ of denying humanity to those “unclean,” as is more common nowadays.
It has been shown in neuroscientific studies that
pollution avoidance highly correlates with brain activity in deep regions of
our brain, those that were shaped early on in our biological evolution, rather
than in more malleable regions reflective of later sociocultural evolution, or
emerging from our brain neural networks’ whole-system organization when interacting
with the world. And yet Jesus wants us to transcend these apparently hard-wired
activity patterns, to move into the realm of a love capable of embracing those from
whom we would cringe in disgust if we let our old brain dictate our behavior. Some
people are not ready to concur, their disagreement being based on their reading
of holy books or on mindboggling (to them) proliferation of wholly new categories
of those demanding that they be considered pollution-free. For others it is
easier said than done, sometimes they cannot help it no matter how hard they are
trying. Consequently those who have managed to transcend those hard-wired
inhibitions must not indulge in scapegoating those who have not, for this if
not for any other reason. Otherwise they might in fact be worse than those whom
they would be targeting. This would certainly be the case with those aware of
these mechanisms and still engaging in second-generation scapegoating.
My argument here has been that the morality Jesus
advocated and practiced when abiding on this earth of ours should be understood as
a paradigm shift described in terms of
throwing in bold relief some of man’s natural moral foundations while others are reinterpreted and/or made to recede into the background. Yet basing one’s judgments and behavior on a
reduced set of moral foundations coincident with those highlighted by Jesus does
not make this human moral agent morally superior. It is not a game of proving
one’s superiority. Rather it is about humility.
Such humility as would allow man to see his/her fellow human beings through
Christ’s eyes in order to be able to
love them as Christ does. To
love all of humanity: oneself, one’s brothers and sisters, neighbors, and even
enemies. So that Christ’s love spreading through us as its agents might be
universal and thus complete.
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