Our kids are less than three years apart. One is sixteen, and the other is thirteen. In the last few years, they have become experts at finding ways to blame each other for various household crimes. When they are really going at it, they are Olympic level instigators when it comes to calling each other names. They have elaborate score cards for each other that I can never hope to decipher.
Grant and I spend entirely too much of our time calling them to do better - to think the best in each other instead of assuming the worst, to remember that we’re a family and tearing other people down isn’t how our family acts, to be kind. Hell, let’s be honest: much of the time, I’m just happy if they would ignore the other person instead of retaliating and escalating.
This isn’t a parenting post.
(although if you have some good advice on this phenomenon, I’m all ears)
The escalation of political violence in this country is terrifying. School shootings are political. Plotting to kidnap governors or violently trying to overthrow free and fair elections is political. Assassinating state legislators or popular partisan podcasters - political. Politics is how we arrange our lives together. We have been resorting to violence to air our grievances since the Boston Tea Party, but there is no doubt that it has been increasing drastically again over these last ten years.
And I’m nearly as concerned for our collective reaction to this political violence as I am about the violence itself. I’ve tried to observe instead of react, especially this last week or so, and what I’ve mostly noticed is many people acting like my teenage children - pointing fingers, assigning blame before having the facts, ever escalating.
It bears emphasizing that every Democratic leader I’ve seen has loudly and decisively condemned the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The same cannot be said about Republican leadership after the assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband just a few short months ago. The proximity of these two events makes the differences in reactions all the more stark.
But, I would like someone in leadership to step off of the spiral merry-go-round of escalation and pointing fingers, and act like the adult I keep asking my teenagers to be. I can think of a few simple but not easy ways to do so:
Take ownership for the ways in which your own side has chosen escalation over finding common ground.
Stop the blame game and call on ourselves and each other to do better.
Don’t take the bait. Bite your tongue.
Worry less about scorekeeping and more about leading.
Do your best to ignore the people that have no interest in getting off of this merry-go-round or for whom the merry-go-round serves their purposes. I would put Trump and most of his cabinet in this category.
I was taught that Jesus’ turning the other cheek teaching was actually a sly deescalation technique - a third way to step off of the escalator of the escalation game. Even if you aren’t a Jesus fan, you’ve probably heard this teaching. It is typically translated from Matthew like this:
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. (Matthew 5:38-41, RSV)
Biblical scholar Walter Wink argues that Jesus was doing something different than what you might think. it sounds like Jesus is asking the oppressed to be a willing doormat while getting walked all over by the oppressor1. But in Engaging the Powers, Wink explains the context of this passage:
“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” Why the right cheek? A blow by the right fist in that right-handed world would land on the left cheek of the opponent. An open-handed slap would also strike the left cheek. To hit the right cheek with a fist would require using the left hand…The only way one could naturally strike the right cheek with the right hand would be with the back of the hand. We are dealing here with insult, not a fistfight. The intention is clearly not to injure but to humiliate, to put someone in his or her place…A backhand slap was the usual way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews. We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would invite retribution. The only normal response would be cowering submission. Why then does he counsel those already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because this action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate [emphasis mine]. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, “Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me.
Learning the broader context of the passage, like any good first century Jew - the original audience for the Gospel of Matthew - would have already known, helps us to see how this teaching became the foundation for much nonviolent wisdom across traditions. Gandhi and MLK based their nonviolent teaching on this Third Way teaching of Jesus, in which the oppressed find a way out of the cycle of violence while maintaining their own dignity and calling the oppressor into accountability.
Christianity has been weaponized enough, so I’m really trying to avoid that here, but because so many people today profess to follow Jesus, I think it is worth sharing some other perspectives, especially when some of our great teachers and activists of the last 100 years used this Third Way understanding of Jesus’ teachings. I’m not mature nor wise enough to offer us a list of ways to find the Third Way in this situation we find ourselves; nor do I think there is one singular Third Way, but hundreds or even thousands. The more, the better.
I wrote here after the inauguration about how I didn’t want to rehash the first Trump presidency for the next four years. His second term thus far has been far worse than I imagined - and my imagination was pretty dark. But I’ve been thinking about the ways in which I’ve grown up since 2016. One of the lessons I’ve learned is another one espoused by our great wisdom traditions: the freedom that comes from forgiveness. All of our great wisdom traditions teach about the benefits of forgiveness for the sake of your own soul, not for the person or people that hurt you. Our wisdom traditions teach that we forgive for the sake of freeing ourselves from the person or people that hurt us, not because they deserved it or somehow earned it. Our traditions teach us to forgive because it is the better way to live.
I’ve been wondering if we should find this Third Way forward not just because it seems like historically it has been the only thing that has ever really worked without us all just devolving into war, but because it is the better way to actually be a human in the world.
I would like to be less like a teenager and more like an adult, and I would like to live with and under the leadership of other adults, which requires me to act like the adult I want to see in the world.
Here’s to finding and imagining new ways of being,
Sara
There is also a translation issue here. Wink writes that the Greek word used here was poorly translated because King James didn’t want to encourage revolt: “When the court translators working in the hire of King James chose to translate “antistenai” as “resist not evil” they were doing something more than rendering Greek into English. They were translating nonviolent resistance into docility. Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. That would have been absurd. His entire ministry is utterly at odds with such a preposterous idea. The Greek word is made up of two parts: anti, a word still used in English for “against,” and “histemi” a verb which in its noun form (stasis) means violent rebellion, armed revolt.” Further reading here and here.
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