Love Your Enemies

Nikiforos Lytras, Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865)

From the Sermon on the Mount:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Your Head Trucker feels old and weary, and not up to writing a lengthy, well-polished post today, so I will just throw out some thoughts and leave it up to you fellas to connect the dots, if they mean anything to you.

It's a gray, drizzly day here in Texas, where last night, several counties away from me, tornadoes destroyed a subdivision, killing or injuring scores of people. Which seems only to be expected somehow, in a week when the news has been brimful of scandal, crime, murder, outrage, and every kind of horrible mayhem. Too much to take in, and far too much to dwell on: it seems the veneer of civilization is worn through in many places, and the ugly, bloody, barbaric core is bleeding out. I suppose awful things have always been happening somewhere, to someone, every day of mankind's existence on this planet; but whereas news used to travel slowly and partially, now it comes roaring at you in living color at all hours of the night and day. Too much to bear. All one can do is look away, and occupy the mind with puttering around the house, and tending one's own narrow garden.

As much as I applaud the recent advances for gay rights and marriage equality that I often feature here in the Blue Truck, I also have to say that I can hardly help despairing for the future of the world, and to be honest, I am glad that whenever it is my time to depart from it, I will leave behind no posterity to worry about. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," Yeats wrote a hundred years ago, and it is even truer now than it was then.

At nearly 60 years of age, few illusions about human nature are left to me; with time and experience, one comes to see people for who and what they really are, not what they pretend to be. It is particularly discouraging to see that the great mass of supposedly civilized Western people - the great majority of them at least nominally Christian - are all in a headlong rush to the worst excesses of barbarism. It feels that way, anyhow.  My second-grade teacher got it exactly right one day, fifty years ago, when she asked why a bunch of us little boys were all stepping on one another's shoes in the cafeteria line. "Well, he did it to me, so I did it to the other boy," was the repeated answer to her question. Summing up her inquest with a wry face and a disapproving shake of the head, she exclaimed, "Monkey see, monkey do."

Man is an imitative creature. You become what you think about, what you idolize, what you adore - which may be something quite different from what you say you do. And it seems to me that nearly everyone is doing their damnedest to behave just like characters in a low-class, scrum-bum reality show nowadays. Hence the decline of manners, of civility, of literacy and of reason. Of course, I have to remind myself that the worst examples are not necessarily representative of the whole in any group, but - "Monkey see, monkey do."

Continued after the jump

Nor do I exempt myself from censure. In the eight years since my husband's death, there has been plenty of time alone in which to review the whole course of my life, and memories from all points of my existence have passed in and out of my mental view - and with that clarity of sight I just mentioned, I see all too well how I too have been petty, self-centered, unkind, and ignorant, and more often than I care to state, willfully so. Sometimes, I realize now, I must have caused real hurt to others, whether close to me or mere acquaintances and strangers in a happenstance encounter. And for all that hurt, I am deeply, deeply ashamed and sorry.

I remember too, the times when others have deliberately caused me grief and pain, and I wonder if it ever occurs to them just what they did, and if they repent of it. Something we should all do, but first we have to get to a point of truly realizing what we have done. And then, even then, amendment of life is the next step but is it really possible? One turns from contemplating a harsh word or scornful glance from decades ago to the shock of remembering how one treated a bumbling sales clerk at the corner store just yesterday. And both events are truly now and truly present, all of a piece in the single, unbroken crime of Pride, the noxious vine of all evil, rooted so deeply in one's own heart.

Poor humanity! Doomed to die, and doomed to sin all the while until! To some of you, these will seem like mere poetic words with no real significance, no particular meaning in this world of matter and space and time, and if so - why, God bless you, my children.

Some few others of you, mayhap, will comprehend the true horror of what I just said, and weep with me. For a Christian, of course, there are the means of grace and the hope of glory on the other side of the ledger, and we must believe that at the end of all things, beyond all our comprension, all shall be well somehow, for all and every one - but how searing is the vision of even the small, petty, surreptitious, personal evils of life, bubbling all our days like hot tar beneath the skin, inside each of us, in the caverns of one's own soul - there, just beneath your own heartbeat, in the place where you live.

* * * * *

The barbaric delay and uproar over the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev troubled me much; and I thought of the ancient Greek play Antigone, which is based on just such a controversy. Now I am pleased to see that someone whose wit is more limber than mine has written about the parallel stories, and I recommend the full essay for your consideration, if you can bear to think about such old, useless schoolroom stuff. Excerpt from Daniel Mendelsohn in the New Yorker:

“The claims of family” is just one way to describe what Antigone represents. The titanic battle between her and Creon is, in fact, one of the most thrilling moral, intellectual, and philosophical confrontations ever dramatized; inevitably, it has been seen as representing any number of cultural conflicts. Certainly in the play there is the tension between the family and the community, but there is also that between the individual and the state, between religious and secular worldviews, between divine and human law, feminine and masculine concerns, the domestic and political realms.

But perhaps a broader rubric is applicable, too. For you could say that what preoccupies Antigone, who as we know is attracted to universals, is simply another “absolute”: the absolute personhood of the dead man, stripped of all labels, all categories — at least those imposed by temporal concerns, by politics and war. For her, the defeated and disgraced Polyneices, naked and unburied, is just as much her brother as the triumphant and heroic Eteocles, splendidly entombed. In the end, what entitles him to burial has nothing to do with what side he was on—and it’s worth emphasizing the play is not at all shy about enumerating the horrors the dead man intended to perpetrate on the city, his own city, the pillage, the burning, the killing, the enslavement of the survivors—but the fact that he was a human being, anthropos. . . . This is why, during her great debate with Creon, while the king keeps recurring to the same point — that Eteocles was the champion of the city, and Polyneices its foe, and that “a foe is never a friend” — such distinctions are moot for Antigone, since the gods themselves do not make them. “Nonetheless,” she finally declares, putting a curt end to another exchange on the subject, “Hades requires these rites.” The only salient distinction is the one that divides gods from men — which, if true, makes all humans equal. . . .

Whatever else is true of the terrible crime that Tamerlan Tsarnaev is accused of having perpetrated, it was, all too clearly, the product of an entirely human psyche, horribly motivated by beliefs and passions that are very human indeed—deina in the worst possible sense. To call him a monster is to treat this enemy’s mind precisely the way some would treat his unburied body—which is to say, to put it beyond the reach of human consideration (and therefore, paradoxically, to refuse to confront his “monstrosity” at all).

This is the point that obsessed Sophocles’ Antigone: that to not bury her brother, to not treat the war criminal like a human being, would ultimately have been to forfeit her own humanity. This is why it was worth dying for.

* * * * *

From Matthew 25:

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

* * * * *

Yes, Our Lord commands us to treat kindly even the prisoners - the criminals behind bars. The failure to do so is a denial both of our humanity and of Divinity itself. And this compassion, this human kindness allied with justice for all who are helpless and cast down, is no mere option, but indeed an essential requirement of entry into Heaven. Of course, that does not mean that every one of us has to spend all day at the local hospital, jail, or penitentiary. For to those who have eyes to see, those who hunger, those who thirst, those who are sick or shoeless, prisoners of something, or strangers in a strange land, are all around us. You need only look outside your window - or within.

Nor in this day and time can we often do much as individuals for the plight of those in the toils of a mighty bureaucracy or who are far away. But we can at least be aware, and will what is good, for whatever help our little merging ripples may eventually give. At the very least, we can recognize and attempt to expunge the silent, evil complicity in injustice from own souls, once we see it for what it truly is.

I had meant to post this long-awaited report a few weeks ago, which unfortunately came out during the week of the Boston bombing and the chase and capture of the culprits. Now it has already been forgotten by the media, overshadowed by all that as well as the half-dozen other scandals and surprises that have claimed the spotlight of the news cycle and talk shows. But the report of the bipartisan Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment, a review of what our own government has done with the prisoners at Guantanamo, in your name and mine, should be widely read and discussed. Much, much more so than that stupid sitcom you never miss an episode of, or that vulgar music video you just shared with all your so-called friends on Facebook. Because to ignore the meaning and implications of what is in this report is to renounce all humanity. Don't glance away or flip the channel - don't think it is not about you. It is exactly and precisely about you.

If you don't have time read the whole report, at least read Glenn Greenwald's summary in the The Guardian. Excerpt:

The Report explains that the impetus behind it was that "the Obama administration declined, as a matter of policy, to undertake or commission an official study of what happened, saying it was unproductive to 'look backwards' rather than forward." It concludes - in unblinking and definitive fashion - that "it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture"; this finding is "offered without reservation"; it is "not based on any impressionistic approach" but rather "grounded in a thorough and detailed examination of what constitutes torture in many contexts, notably historical and legal"; and "the nation's highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture." It also debunks the popular claim that torture was confined to three cases of waterboarding, documenting that more than three people were subjected to that tactic and that the torture includes far more than just waterboarding.

This is not only a historical disgrace for the US and the responsible officials, but, as the New York Times article on this report inadvertently suggests, also shames two other institutions:

(1) the New York Times itself, which steadfastly refused to use the word "torture" to describe what was being done (unless it was done by other countries) and continues to justify that refusal through its then-Executive Editor Bill Keller (Andrew Sullivan ably demolishes Keller's reasoning, while the paper's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, wrote this week that this choice merits "some institutional soul-searching"); and,

(2) President Obama, who barred all criminal prosecutions for Bush officials and other torturers and thus brazenly violated at least the spirit and probably the letter of the Convention Against Torture. That treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 (exactly 25 years ago to the day: Happy Anniversary!), compels all signatories who discover credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). It also specifically states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)).

The disgrace of the American torture regime falls on Bush officials and secondarily the media and political institutions that acquiesced to it, but the full-scale protection of those war crimes (and the denial of justice to their victims) falls squarely on the Obama administration.

Furthermore, Greenwald reports:

The hunger strike at Guantánamo continues to grow, even by the Pentagon's own admission. The New York Times' Charlie Savage cites two military officials as saying that "two detainees recently have tried to commit suicide by hanging themselves." Laura Poitras interviewed one former detainee, Lakhdar Boumediene, who engaged in hunger strikes while at the camp; watch this extraordinary two-minute video to see what happened to him:

Your Head Trucker has no idea if any of those prisoners are guilty or not guilty. That does not matter. Civilized men and women treat even the guilty with humanity and certain minimums of decency. To do otherwise makes us mere savage beasts with no law but that of the jungle, red in tooth and claw. To do otherwise removes from us and those we love all claim to fair treatment if ever the tables are turned. To do otherwise is the act of a moral pervert and a coward. It is the antithesis of all that is meant by civilization - let alone Christianity.

The monster you fear, the one you run from in dreams and wake screaming at his clutch - that monster, that man, is you.

* * * * *

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity:

One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.

* * * * *

But can anyone even hear these things anymore? The sleek, spoiled, cynical children of this age, so very special and so very, very smart, say with all sincerity "Christianity is a psychological disorder and a dangerous pathology."

Really?  Poor, ignorant little pups, do they even know what Christianity is?  Has anyone ever shown them?

* * * * *

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.