Imagine if Progressives Believed in the Sanctity of Life
all lives matter, not just the ones belonging to those who align with our ideology
Hello readers, I’m recovering from surgery I had on September 19th to correct a broken right ankle. Though I have a fair amount of reading to do for grad school, and a few assignments to complete, I do have a fair bit of time on my hand to reflect on things in a meaningful and purposeful way, and write about them here with a Jesus Way twist and Christian focus. I appreciate your support through paid subscriptions or buy me a coffee.
In one of my grad studies courses I’m about to read an excerpt from Hannah Arendt’s On The Human Condition. In this book Arendt writes about the nature of human activity and its connection to political and social life. In the excerpt assigned for my course, Arendt examines Jesus as an important figure in the human activity of forgiveness. She also examines vengeance as limiting in that it binds us all to the offensive or hurtful action.
According to the word etymology dictionary, forgive has its origin in forgiefan, an Old English word that means remit a debt . For means completely and giefan means to give. There’s a connection to the Latin Vulgate perdonare serving as a Germanic loan word to Old Saxon as fargeban.
What does this tell us about forgiveness?
The etymology tells us that forgiveness involves releasing the need to punish another for an offense or a trespass. Forgiveness, then, becomes a kind of surrender we engage.
Through the ongoing act of forgiveness we release ourselves from the bondage of the offender’s wrong actions against us. This doesn’t meant we condone the trespass or offense. It doesn’t mean we need an apology. It doesn’t mean we reconcile with or restore relationship with the one who hurt us. It simply means we choose to release ourselves from the enslavement of vengeance.
In our secular culture we have become alienated from the practise of forgiveness and the concept of redemption.
As Rabbi Sacks says in this video clip, we’ve come to see penitence as alien and unpalatable. Why? Perhaps because we live in a culture of hubris? Hubris rejects penitence.
Where does this leave us?
It leaves us enslaved to wrongdoing, our own and that of others. When we cannot bring ourselves to engage either penitence or forgiveness, we have become enslaved to wrongdoing, and any distortion of righteousness that emerges from that cleaving to wrongdoing.
That provides a great segue into the main reason I decided to write this missive today.
Reader, what’s the point of this post? What does it mean? What message did the person wanted to convey? What does the funeral of a man shot to death on a college campus in front of his wife and children and scores of college students, all filmed for the world to see, have to do with “gun relations” and mass school shootings? What does “gun relations” even mean? I’m honestly asking because I don’t understand that term.
Reader, think about dehumanisation and the insidious way it creeps into discourses to create a permission structure for violence.
Seek out David’s books and videos.
Think about the concept of scapegoating. Think about the origin of the term scapegoat. In Leviticus 16:10, on the command of G-d, the Israelites cast all their sins onto the goat for the demon Azazel, and the goat gets sent into the wilderness.
Back to the Xwitter post shown above.
I find this post and others like it baffling and disturbing. Perhaps I can explain why I do, by telling readers the moral messaging it conveys to me.
It tells me that anyone grieving for Charlie Kirk and supporting his family and friends and other loved ones as they come to terms with his murder doesn’t care about gun violence in classrooms that harms and kills children.
It tells me that Charlie Kirk’s life didn’t matter because he said wrong things.
It tells me children in classrooms who lose their lives or suffer injury from gun violence serve as a currency for progressive fundamentalists to leverage in their ideological warfare against those whom they deem their enemy, namely conservatives.
It tells me not all life matters and that alignment with progressive fundamentalist ideology determines life’s value.
It tells me life has a transactional value to progressive fundamentalists.
It tells me progressives derive righteousness through the act of othering their designated foe. Note: for progressive fundamentalists wrong-thinkers and wrong-speakers serve as designated foes.
Jeffrey Mead has written about the permission structure scaffolding progressive fundamentalism has erected over the past several years, which we can all see clearly in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
According to documents released by the court and reported in the Sudbury Star, as well as Sky News, the National Post and others, Charlie Kirk’s killer marked his shell casings as follows.
Fired cartridge: NoTices Bulge OWO What's This?
Second cartridge: Hey Facist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓
Third cartridge: O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!
Fourth cartridge: If you Read This, You Are GAY Lmao.
Bella Ciao refers to an Italian folk song associated with the celebration of the end of Mussolini’s dictatorship. So it would seem that Dean Blundell and others who insist that “Charlie Kirk was killed by an ultra MAGA acolyte,” have misinterpreted the situation. In fact, the killer had ties to online gaming culture as well as to the furry community, both dark online cultures associated with an infrastructure of radicalisation.
Do readers remember what Thomas Merton wrote about how the imagination of our heart1 distorts our vision of things as we move through life? “We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all distort the image of reality that is reflected in our minds.”
In Ecclesiastes 17, Solomon writes, “15 in my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. 16 Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself?17 Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of the one without letting go of the other, for the one who fears God shall succeed with both.”
In Matthew 9:1-8 Jesus asks those Pharisees and critics who, in their hearts, accuse him of blasphemy, why do you have evil in your hearts? Jesus always provides an opportunity for self righteousness to receive His forgiveness.
As I wrote in both sermon reflections yesterday, Gambling on G-d’s Grace and G-d is in Control, we do not earn salvation through our merit. We do not earn salvation through any words we say or any actions we do. Our salvation rests wholly in the mercy of the Almighty — always unearned. Jesus calls us to flee from sin and to pursue Him in our daily lives. What does that mean, for us in this divisive situation of disunity and righteous hatred? How do we respond to the murder of Charlie Kirk, to the political and societal response to this horrific and awful event , to the murderer himself, to the self-righteousness on both sides of the discourse?
Jesus forgave those who executed him. He welcomed Judas, whom he knew would betray Him, to his dinner table. Jesus welcomed the sinners and the outcasts. Read the gospel to remind yourself about His Way. Cross or Sword, pick one, you can’t have both.
Speaking of seeing things centred on ourselves, I’ll end this missive with Don Lemon’s rant about how he saw the Charlie Kirk funeral as a demand for domination and a political rally wrapped in mourning.
I don’t know, Don. I think etching “catch this fascist” and “bella ciao” on shell casings as you plot to kill a non-violent man who said things you didn’t like seems like a fairly powerful show of dominance. Killing someone because they said things that you found ugly seems like an act of dominance.
Murder represents the ultimate dominance. From the first murder in the Torah, the killing of Abel by Cane, we’ve known this. Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk in front of his wife and children and a crowd of college students. He left messages on his shell casings so he could influence the discourse after committing his crime.
But, yeah, Don wants to talk about how mourners quoting scripture at a funeral of a beloved conservative influencer embody a dominance act. Sure sure.
What kind of permission structure for violence have progressives erected in their righteous hatred?
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Merton, a Catholic, referred to this human trait as “original sin” however I think the Judaic concept of Yetzer Hara employs different nomenclature to describe the same human trait.
> "It is good that you should take hold of the one without letting go of the other, for the one who fears God shall succeed with both.”
I periodically reflect on the quip -- probably Biblical -- to the effect that the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom. Though there are many connotations to "fear", not all of which hold much water -- "fear is the mind-killer" as another Biblical text, of sorts and of some repute ..., puts it.
But reminds me of a scene from an Indiana Jones movie -- Last Crusade if I'm not mistaken -- where "Junior" had to solve a couple of riddles to get to the Holy Grail room. One of the puzzles was "walking in the word of god" -- Greek letters on the ground if I remember correctly. Indiana put his feet on the letters of the word, but he mistook one of them and the ground crumbled under his feet. The light dawned -- different alphabet! Seemed like a neat illustration of an important principle. 🙂