Undying Love in "Kiku's Prayer"

The work of Japanese Catholic novelist Shūsaku Endō thankfully received some recognition in contemporary anglosphere after Martin Scorsese directed Silence in 2016. Audiences, for the first time, were exposed to Endō's masterfully crafted historical fiction and blown away by the existential questions contained therein. Despite the film's critical success, Endō, as seen from Western eyes, remains somewhat of an anomaly in the world of literature, and this is due to the fact that the dominant theme of his novels is Christianity.

This analysis, however, is not about Silence, instead it's about a recently translated work of Endō's. Kiku's Prayer, like Silence, is set against the backdrop of a Japanese shogunate hostile to Christianity; it continues the saga of Japanese Christians struggling to keep their faith in the face of remorseless persecution. Set mostly in Nagasaki during the violent transition towards the Meiji restoration, Kiku's Prayer is a story of love, faith, and suffering with multiple layers that defy one's normative understanding of all aforementioned topics.

Kiku, the protagonist of the story, is a village girl from Urakami. Described by Endō as somewhat of a tomboy, Kiku uncharacteristically falls for a boy named Seikichi, and as we shall see, this newfound romance is no mere thing. She often fantasizes about him and dreams of becoming his wife, but her optimism runs into several mammoth hurdles. First, Seikichi turns out to be a kirishitan–a Christian. Not only is Christianity prohibited in Japan, but the Japanese people have attached various stigmas to Christians and prefer not to associate with them. This, of course, does not stop Kiku from loving Seikichi; in fact, she often considers Seikichi's kirishitan faith as a nuisance which he could do without. What really gets under her skin is Seikichi's devotion to this strange lady (and a virgin, of all things!) called Santa Maria. Indeed, Kiku is bothered so much by this aspect of Seikichi's life that she often sneaks into the newly constructed Ōura church and scolds the statue of Santa Maria.

Kiku's desire to be with Seikichi is met with a tragic fate when the Japanese authorities launch a series of violent persecutions against the Christian population of Urakami. Upon seeing Seikichi in chains, Kiku is terrified for the boy's safety, and it is here where an unusual relationship develops between her and the Santa Maria of the Ōura church. She often scolds and pleads to the Virgin Mary for Seikichi's safety. "You’re a woman, too," Kiku prays to Santa Maria, "So you must understand how I feel. I prayed to you every single day that nothing terrible would happen to Seikichi…. But … but you made terrible things happen to him. Since you’re a woman … you must understand how sad … how painful … how painful …"

Endō's portrayal of the persecutions is filled with interesting perspectives on the East vs. West debate on sovereignty, authority, and various other things. For example, we are presented with a conversation between a Japanese magistrate and a troubled French Catholic priest over the question of the foreign missionaries preferring safety despite the brutal tortures being inflicted upon the impoverished Japanese converts. What kind of a pastor would subject his laity to endure terrible punishment while telling them that everything would be okay? Another angle that makes this question so interesting is that many of Endō's characters are allegories for nations and cultures. The French priest Petitjean is the face of Western Christianity rendered helpless to the challenges set by the East. Kiku, on the other hand, symbolizes Japan.

Kiku's approach to faith is simplistic, but in a manner that makes all grand theories or intellectualism obsolete; it can be said that her faith is more Christian than that of many significant Christians who value differentiation over compassion. Whenever her lover Seikichi is put under intense suffering, Kiku ceases to be herself and immediately rushes to Santa Maria, begging with tears for the Holy Virgin to pour forth empathy while appealing to their commonality of being women, as we see above. Her faith, however, does not stop there.

With Seikichi suffering, Kiku refuses comfort and embraces humiliation. Reminiscent of Dostoevsky's Sonia Marmeladova, Kiku subjects her body to humiliation and pain while working in a brothel, just so that she could bribe Seikichi's persecutors and save him from further suffering. The author of Crime and Punishment would immediately recognize this action as Christlike. Just as Christ endured humiliation for the salvation of His creation, so would Sonia and Kiku sell off their dignities for the sake of their loved ones.

The complete lack of abstractions in Kiku's faith is telling to the reader who is so used to the sensory overload of grandiose ideas. The way Kiku goes out of her way, ultimately dying, for the person she loves is truly a sight to behold and a stern lesson for those squabbling at dinner tables. In Kiku's faith, there is nothing but flesh and blood; to her, abstract narratives proclaimed from pulpits appear silly and confusing until they turn real in one's life. And God becomes real only when one completely throws herself at His feet while relinquishing all control and certainty.

Many people came away from Silence and its ending of apostasy with dashed hopes, but they would do well to continue reading Shūsaku Endō's remaining works. If they do, they would be rewarded with simple yet profound stories of redemption through self-sacrifice and compassionate love that breaks all barriers in ways one couldn't imagine.

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The Disenchanted – A Novella in Three Parts

 

Disenchanted is a novella that I have been working on for quite a while. It's a part-fantasy, part-dystopian tale about faith, love, and freedom. The concept was born more than five years ago and ever since then I have been refining and condensing it to its very essence. It's a story that is very close to my heart and something that I hope you will enjoy. Here are the links to the episodes for you to read.

Click here for episode one.

Click here for episode two.

Episode three is coming soon...

Also, if you've been wondering why I haven't been posting on this blog for a long time, be sure to visit the website of A Neighbor's Choice where I have become a regular contributor of essays and articles and where I am still writing about similar topics that I used to write over here.

Blatty and the Otherizing of Man

In 1971, William Peter Blatty wrote ‘The Exorcist.’ Till date, the novel is considered one of the scariest horror stories ever written. The movie adaptation traumatized many people in cinema theatres across the world. Roger Ebert called it a ‘frontal assualt’ and for good reason because it certainly is.

In the novel, we witness a young girl possessed by a demonic spirit. The demon recreates the innocent girl into a hideous gargoyle-like creature that screams obscenities, self-mutilates, and assaults everyone near her. The possessed girl even murders a friend of her mother and then proceeds to taunt her mother about what her beloved child did. Towards the end of the story, two Catholic priests are called in as a desperate attempt by the mother to cure her daughter of this strange supernatural illness. But the priests, relentless as they are in their attempts, are left in despair while the demon simply refuses to leave the girl.

During their momentary break from the exorcism rite, the younger priest, Damien, asks in frustration, ‘I don’t understand. Why her? Why this girl?’

The older priest, Merrin, replies, ‘I think the point is to make us despair, to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps; in unworthiness.’

This otherizing of a human being—the twisting of God’s likeness into a hideous beast—is an anthropological phenomenon rarely touched upon by modern-day intellectuals. We see this phenomenon play itself out in culture, politics, and every other sphere in human history, including individual human lives. How often do we tend to conceptualize our opponents into half-animal, half-satanic hybrid entities hell-bent on destroying us through mischief? The Nazis propagated the Jews as devilish, not only in character but also in appearance. The Soviets did the same with the kulaks and any other state-designated ‘enemies of the people.’

Blatty touched upon this phenomenon with the deconstructing brush of the gospel. The demonic accusatory spirit twists and destroys the beautiful image of God within his creation in a way as to make it so that a human being must be handled with force and caged like a wild animal. This is an anthropological truth, regardless of one’s belief in demonic possession.

We see the hypnotic possession of a nation in all its hideous glory when the news media point us to a scapegoat to further political agendas of lobbyists and the like. As a result, the masses are polarized, and conflict, whether physical or psychological, is perpetuated; a mechanism that regards the human being like a wild animal is put into place so that society’s illnesses is solved through coercion and violence.

The satanic spirit of accusation and otherizing is an ever-present reality that stands whether or not one believes in the supernatural. It brings out the worst in people, and with it a strange contradiction of becoming the very thing one detests. In our mission to hunt down the animal, we become animals ourselves. We try to fight evil with evil.

The older priest, Merrin, says to Damien, “... I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves... for ourselves.”

Father Merrin continues, “... At last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do in unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.”

During the writing of this article, it became legal to carry out late-term abortions in the state of New York. It is now legal to inject poison into a child. How can such things come to pass in a self-proclaimed civilized society? The answer is very simple: when we deny the likeness of God in each and every individual, we set a precedent for mass murder. That is the trick of the demon in ‘Exorcist,’ to make everyone think that an innocent child is vile and disgusting. It is also the trick of this secular religion we call ‘the state,’ to engineer society as if we are all mere spokes in a wheel.

The antidote to this degeneracy of man cannot be anything other than the imitation of Christ. Blatty illustrated this wonderfully at the end of his novel. Damien, devastated by the death of Father Merrin, rages at the possessed girl. He pounces on her and starts beating her, but he immediately changes his mind and channels his fury into something else other than hate. ‘Come into me!’ he shouts at the demon inside the girl. The demon fulfills Damien’s wish and invades him, leaving the sobbing, traumatized girl once and for all. Damien then, overcoming the demon’s will within himself, hurls himself through the window and falls to his death; he sacrifices himself for the girl.

When we see the divine within each and every individual, we don’t look for scapegoats. We don’t sacrifice human beings on our altars of hate and desperation. No, instead we seek their well-being. If we face an ‘enemy’ we seek reconciliation and the rehabilitation of those we deem to be ‘other.’ We die for them. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,’ that was what Jesus said before dying on the cross at Calvary.

To imitate Jesus is to find the divine spark within each and every individual. And when we fathom this truth, we seek to preserve the gift of that spark that was bestowed upon us all. It doesn’t matter if we are not able to feel this truth. Sure enough, we will come across individuals who are pathological to the core; we will come across those who are truly possessed. But God has the final say, and if he says that all are created in his image and that Christ is the only way, then that’s all there is.

Creating Beauty out of Sorrow

"Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."

--Akira Kurosawa

Films in India are largely known for their overly melodramatic content coupled with song and dance routines, but one filmmaker stood out from the usual Bollywood circus of noise and saturation. Satyajit Ray remains, to this day, one of the finest directors to have ever graced the world of motion pictures. His films speak of suffering, sadness, social issues, and the beauty of nature. Probably his best-known work among western audiences is the ‘Apu’ trilogy. The name ‘Apu’ may strike a chord of familiarity with Simpsons fans; after all the creators of that animated show borrowed the name from the film character.

The trilogy consists of ‘Song of the Little Road,’ ‘The Unvanquished,’ and ‘The World of Apu.’ All three movies depict the daily struggles of a poverty-stricken Brahmin family. In ‘Song of the Little Road’ we see Apu for the first time as an adolescent. We see Apu within the confines of childhood, where the harsh realities of adulthood are simply out of reach. Apu’s father is a priest who barely earns a living, and his mother is a simple housewife who takes care of the children. The two of them shield their children from a world that is bitter and cruel; they allow their son and daughter to blossom in their innocence.

Apu wanders and plays through the countryside with his sister, who takes care of him in an almost maternal way. They gaze at the world around them in wide-eyed wonder. They laugh, giggle, and play endlessly. And then one day, Apu’s sister suddenly dies from a fever. The family is overwhelmingly grief-stricken at the death, and the young Apu’s journey into the world has just begun.

After the death of his father, Apu desires to study in a school as he wants to gain more knowledge about the world around him. The mother wants him to stay, but she soon gives in and joins in his excitement; she sacrifices almost all of her savings so that Apu can go to the city to study and work. The distance between the mother and the son during this time makes the mother yearn more for her son. She treasures each and every one of his visits, though the visits are few; but she is thankful. Roger Ebert described this relationship in an essay:

“The relationship between Apu and his mother observes truths that must exist in all cultures: how the parent makes sacrifices for years, only to see the child turn aside and move thoughtlessly away into adulthood. The mother has gone to live with a relative, as little better than a servant ("they like my cooking"), and when Apu comes to visit during a school vacation, he sleeps or loses himself in his books, answering her with monosyllables. He seems in a hurry to leave, but has second thoughts at the train station, and returns for one more day. The way the film records his stay, his departure and his return says whatever can be said about lonely parents and heedless children.”

One day, Apu returns home only to find that his mother has passed away. He is heartbroken, but he decides to move on whilst cherishing the memories of his beloved mother.

In the third film ‘The World of Apu,’ a bizarre turn of events sees a much older Apu getting married. The message of the movie is particularly interesting when we consider that Satyajit Ray was a member of the Communist Party in India. Despite social ills being prevalent around the characters of the movie, Ray’s message seems to be of self-giving and the acceptance of responsibility rather than any sort of radicalism. Apu marries a supposedly ‘jinxed’ girl, not because he wants to settle down and start a family, and not even because he loves the girl, but rather because he thinks it is an only way to save the girl from social ostracism. Perhaps the absence of revolutionary zeal in Apu’s ‘solution’ was why many of Ray’s socialist comrades were so irked by the great auteur’s films.

Though initially sad and nervous, the girl, Aparna, grows quite fond of Apu once she gets to know him. A loving relationship begins to grow between them. But alas! Tragedy strikes again. It happens when Aparna gives birth to a son. She dies during childbirth, and for Apu it is the final nail in the coffin of what he once knew as life. He blames the death of his wife on his newborn son and runs away from the responsibility of fatherhood.

The further our souls stray from beauty, the more emptiness we are in. Life, from one perspective, is a series of endless tragedies. To make up for the emptiness, we develop a mindset of consumption and entitlement; ‘the more you consume and the more rights you enjoy, the happier you are.’ Such things, however, do not redeem the endless sorrows we encounter almost daily in our lives. In Ray’s films, we find the things that indeed redeem the suffering we go through. The love of Apu’s mother, for example, vividly illustrates a self-giving nature that is reminiscent of the Trinitarian dance. Later, we see this same self-giving when Apu sees Aparna on the brink of being excluded from society and decides to marry her.

The poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”

This way of self-giving not only redeems our suffering, but it connects our souls to the divine dance of heaven. It gives us a gateway to a state of existence that is above the natural. Isn’t that what beauty is supposed to be about? Beauty is that which connects us to the divine, and whenever we are confronted with that which is truly beautiful we are at a loss for words and find ourselves in awe. This is exactly what Apu experiences when, after running away from fatherhood, he witnesses the sun rising in the horizon and painting everything with a brilliant layer of light.

Having witnessed the power of creation, Apu returns to see his son. The son, now an adolescent, cannot recognize his father, but he is willing to accept Apu as a friend. Apu cheerfully picks up the boy and carries him on his shoulder, embracing fatherhood and its inevitable struggles, and continuing the journey of his own self-giving mother.

Reflections on the Gulag Archipelago

Life is filled with suffering, and suffering is magnified and multiplied by the endless stream of malevolence. I am discovering this first hand as my mother lies in a hospital bed beside me, a victim of a violent assault. It's the act of evil committed upon the innocent that shatters us the most. No one is immune. The arbitrary nature of evil cannot be denied. It is self evident as there is no shortage of examples. Having acknowledged this fact, the question that each and everyone of us should ask ourselves is: how should one walk in the face of such evil?

While I sat beside my unconscious mother, I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago,' a mammoth Nobel prize-winning book written by a Russian dissident who suffered at the hands of a brutal Communist regime. Solzhenitsyn was a soldier who had served in the Second World War. While fighting against the German army, he witnessed first hand the atrocities committed by the Red Army against German and east European civilians. The looting and raping of civilians by his comrades were the first cracks in Solzhenitsyn's long held illusion about the rulers of his motherland. Very soon he would be sent to a series of labor camps. He was convicted for his criticism of Stalin in a private letter to a classmate; the sentence was eleven years. For eleven years he would suffer like the lowest form of animal, working away like a beast without limits, and scratching away at every crumb he received whilst barely able to keep himself warm in the coldest hell on earth.

Solzhenitsyn had every reason to hate his captors. He had every reason to feel victimized and plot revenge. After all, he was an innocent man wrongly convicted for speaking the truth. But he did something that would go beyond victimism and scapegoating. He looked within himself. He searched his life and looked for how he might have contributed to the creation of such a regime that had imprisoned him.

It took him time spent inside a series of labor camps to realize that the degradation of the society and state goes hand in hand with the degradation of the individual. When the Russian revolution erupted, many innocent lives were lost at the hands of furious mobs acting at the behest of the 'oppressed' people. This coincided with the massive loss of lives on the battlefields of the first World War. Before the revolution, and before the hypnotic frenzy of the crowd, Russia had been a flawed but thoroughly devout and traditional country. She was soon to be fed from Europe an overwhelming amount of socialist and utopian ideas. The import of radical socialist ideology came after a combination of liberalism and nihilism supplanted the traditional axiom of Orthodoxy that had held the country together. Fyodor Dostoevsky would write about this era of nihilistic movements in its embryonic form in his novel 'Demons.'

Dostoevsky argued that for a morally upright society, or a society striving for moral uprightness, to sustain itself must have a foundation that is not only firm but also transcendent; and by transcendent, meaning that even Kings and Queens must subject themselves to it. For Dostoevsky, that foundation had to be God. Once that foundation is removed, the ground becomes ripe for artificial religion, i.e. hateful ideologies, to grow and spread like wildfire. Man is an innately religious animal, and he must have an axiom by which to live and exist, either devouringly or fruitfully.

That is why Solzhenitsyn echoed Dostoevsky when he said the following:
"...But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

What does it mean to not forget God? What does it mean to follow God? That is an interesting question, and it is closely tied to the first question about walking in the face of evil. The recognition of evil, the discovery that malevolence is when one subjects another to his/her version of an inferior man-made existence, is closely tied to what Jesus unraveled on the cross. And this unraveling of evil on the cross gives birth to conduct that treats the other, not as a piano key or spoke of a wheel, but as a worthy individual capable of having autonomy--a unique individual created in God's own image. Ideology does not provide this way of conduct, it gives us the reverse. Ideology dismisses the individual's true stature as an expression of divinity, and attempts to squeeze the individual into its utopian vision, with or without consent. This collective, coercive way of the world leads to tyranny. It leads to the Soviet Union and its Gulag system.

Solzhenitsyn wrote the following about ideology,
"Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.... Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago."

To impose one's worldview on another is to forget God. For ages, men have tried to bring about good by evil, violent means. Thieves try to provide by theft. Murderers try to fulfill life by killing. Politicians try to solve by scapegoating. Generals try to bring peace through war. Jesus called this 'satan trying to cast out satan.' While it may have worked before during pagan times, it works no longer because of the crucifixion at Calvary. The memory that men had once lynched the innocent Son of God haunts us to ends of the earth. The face of Christ is etched on the countless men, women, and children we sacrifice in war, clinics, and prisons for the sustaining of fragile society.

But the question still remains: how must we conduct ourselves? It begins with the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus sets a precedent for us: resist not evil with evil. The act of turning the other cheek is a recognition of the autonomy of the other person. Not only that, it is also the recognition that the attacker is bitterly fighting a war within himself. The decision to not reciprocate violence with more violence urges the attacker to introspect and encourages him/her to find the Christ within.

Solzhenitsyn wrote,
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil."

Solzhenitsyn also urged us to live not by lies. The greatest lie is the idea that we can bring about good from evil, that peace can come from violence. The Soviet Union believed this lie, and its leaders thought constantly and morbidly that they were only one execution away from utopia--one labor camp away from a worker's paradise. Likewise, the motto of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany was: 'Work will set you free.' The perversion of reality, that is the lie preached by authoritarian cults all around the world.

Solzhenitsyn summed this up perfectly:
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence... Any man, who has once proclaimed violence as his Method, is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."

After years of inhumane suffering in the camps, Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed with cancer. He fought and won this battle too. Years and years of living in the very depths of hell had transformed him. Earlier, he had already compared himself to the camp guards who ran the Gulags, and concluded that he was once, when serving in the Red Army, no different than them. But he could no longer keep living in a lie. He had to speak the truth. He began by jotting down his own account of time spent in the Gulags, and at the same time, he began collecting testimonies from hundreds of eye witnesses. He had already demonstrated a remarkable ability to memorize when he composed a poem comprising of thousands of verses whilst living in the Gulags.

In 1962, a novel called 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' was published in the Novy Mir magazine. It detailed a single day of a Gulag inmate. The horrors of camp life became vivid in the eyes of readers across Russia. The book became enormously popular. It also earned Solzhenitsyn the wrathful eye of the totalitarian state watchdogs. Many attempts were made by the KGB to confiscate the manuscripts of his unpublished works, but by now the Gulag Archipelago had already been completed, translated, and distributed in the west. The party could no longer tolerate Solzhenitsyn; he became a non-person and was finally exiled from the country of his birth.

In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lived in the United States, and returned to Russia in 1994 after the communist government had fallen.

Solzhenitsyn used the greatest weapon of all: Truth. The truth need not be accompanied by violence. It is powerful of its own accord. It has the strength to bring down empires. Solzhenitsyn wrote nothing but the truth about what his country was going through and what he was going through. He spoke truth about others, but most of all, he spoke truth to himself. In today's world of superficiality it is often the trend to lie to oneself. In the lies we tell ourselves, we claim that since we have only one life we should live for the moment. We drown in our own materialism and hedonism. We trap ourselves in the prison that calls itself pleasure island. We waste away without meaning, without purpose, and the best we can come up with is the wagging of fingers and waving of placards. Solzhenitsyn said otherwise. His message transcends the superficiality of our times. Against materialism, he argued for a Stoic approach to life and finding contentment. Against finger pointing and blaming others, he encouraged a life of continued death and rebirth, for before taking on the world one must first sort himself out.

The tyranny of compulsion still exists today. Society still goes by the principle of might makes right. The lie of sacrificial violence is well and alive, but it is loosing its stranglehold on humanity thanks to the revelation of the cross. As Christians, we would do well to further the demon of state tyranny on its way to hell. We would do well to demotivate the culture of violence in society by being shining lights of peace ourselves. We can start following Solzhenitsyn's example. We can stop telling lies and start telling the truth whilst carrying the burden of existence.

"You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me."

As I wait in the hospital for my mother to regain consciousness, I decide to start small. There is no point in revenge; nothing becomes better by doing that. I have to be a better son than I was before, and I have to find meaning through responsibility. Start small, like taking care of your loved ones, and healing those nearby who are in great pain. Truth and beauty goes hand in hand. Together, they provide meaning by which we can weather the storm, and in all of this, there is an abundance of freedom as only God can provide. 

Identity Politics or Pesonal Action

Image copyright: Prager University

Question: Should we consider the king's judgment in Matthew 25 an example of "identity politics"? The Human One [Christ] seems to identify whom we should serve solely by victimary identity: the hungry, thirsty, sick, naked, imprisoned, and stranger, i.e., the typical losers in human politics.


My Response:

This is what I call reading scripture through a conflict theory lens. There is a difference between serving the marginalized of the society and forcing others at gunpoint through the state to 'serve' a state/culture-designated marginalized class. Also notice here that Jesus speaks about actual victims with inflictions that go beyond race, gender, religion, nationality, etc--inflictions that are universal to all corners of the world regardless of 'identities.'

Also notice the emphasis on personal action in the actual text in Matthew 25.

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

Nowhere does Jesus speak about enforcing these actions through the power of the Roman empire or through Herod. He speaks about 'giving something to eat/drink,' 'inviting in,' 'clothing,' and (even more strikingly) 'visiting the prisoner in his/her cell.' All personal actions, i.e. taking full responsibility and being in close proximity to the one you're supposed to help. One could object that here Jesus addresses the 'nations,' but that still does not make it okay to 'help' the marginalized through the use of state coercion. An identity-political reading, as implied by the question above, would indicate that Jesus would punish any person if he were to not support the right policies designed by sacrificial institutions.

On the other hand, a girardian reading of the text would indicate that the otherized scapegoats of society are not to be expelled but instead included into the family of God and treated with dignity. This is also why Jesus' parable of the Samaritan neighbor is masterfully designed to eradicate the identity of the other that existed in Judean culture at that time. Christ presented the Samaritan as a human being closer to God, not because the Samaritan has a racial/ethnic identity that belongs (or deserves to belong) higher up in the ladder, but because the Samaritan has transcended the racial boundary. The Samaritan chooses to 'be his brother's keeper,' not through recognition of identity but through recognition of the universal human identity--a fellow-image bearer of God.

Jesus explicitly stated that his kingdom is not of the world, and that his band of followers are a government unto themselves, who brings peace as God gives it and not as the world gives it. Christ's intention was and is always to impact the world from the bottom up and not top down. This is not about individual pursuit, as some would mistake, but rather, it is the proper way to change the world. The kingdom of God is a contagion of love that builds up from the micro aspect of society through imitation of Christ. Wouldn't one agree that conversion first starts with the individual, with the realization that each and every one of us is at least a potential persecutor? If one claims collective guilt of any kind and of any group, one risks falling into the trap of man-made sacrificial Christianity.

It is obviously desirable to band together and help fellow human beings. What's certainty undesirable, as I've already pointed out, is to band together and force others at gunpoint to 'do good.' Christ does not do that, and neither should we.

Jordan Peterson and the Devouring Mother

In one of my recent facebook posts, I pointed out that we as a society are failing our youths and we are failing drastically. When I had posted this sad observation, I expected a serious discussion on how we can help our young neighbors, but instead I got drawn into a petty argument about laws. This modern day insistense that we must have an excess of institutional supervision creates nothing but a rule of the devouring mother, and sadly it has given birth to a lot of angry and directionless boys.

The root of the problem lies deep, like ancient bones underneath enormous layers of earth. That is what many of our laws are; they are sacrificial, drawn out of the scapegoats of our ancestors. When we cling on to laws with demands that a few be sacrificed instead of the whole nation, we get kids like the Columbine and Parkland shooters.

The detached culture which we live in transforms a large portion of the youth within a society into bitter, resentful, and alienated human beings. Is it any wonder that we see murders committed in schools or playgrounds? And we look for quick fixes from institutions, where none exists at all. Even worse! We are willing to turn away from the dark alleys, where state laws have sacrificed a good portion of the population so that those who are not sacrificed can live in safety.

But enough about worldly laws, and onto the main concern. A friend of mine asked me how we can guide our young neighbors out of the cages of misery. I suggested to him that every individual in society must voluntarily help those young people who are close to them. There are many out there who are neglected in a variety of unbelievable ways. Here I will give a vivid illustration on how we can help the youngsters around us. The following is from a book that I'm currently reading.

I saw a four-year old boy allowed to go hungry on a regular basis. His nanny had been injured, and he was being cycled through the neighbours for temporary care. When his mother dropped him off at our house, she indicated that he wouldn’t eat at all, all day. “That’s OK,” she said. It wasn’t OK (in case that’s not obvious). This was the same four-year-old boy who clung to my wife for hours in absolute desperation and total commitment, when she tenaciously, persistently and mercifully managed to feed him an entire lunch-time meal, rewarding him throughout for his cooperation, and refusing to let him fail. He started out with a closed mouth, sitting with all of us at the dining room table, my wife and I, our two kids, and two neighbourhood kids we looked after during the day. She put the spoon in front of him, waiting patiently, persistently, while he moved his head back and forth, refusing it entry, using defensive methods typical of a recalcitrant and none-too-well-attended two-year old.

She didn’t let him fail. She patted him on the head every time he managed a mouthful, telling him sincerely that he was a “good boy” when he did so. She did think he was a good boy. He was a cute, damaged kid. Ten not-too-painful minutes later he finished his meal. We were all watching intently. It was a drama of life and death.

“Look,” she said, holding up his bowl. “You finished all of it.” This boy, who was standing in the corner, voluntarily and unhappily, when I first saw him; who wouldn’t interact with the other kids, who frowned chronically, who wouldn’t respond to me when I tickled and prodded him, trying to get him to play—this boy broke immediately into a wide, radiant smile. It brought joy to everyone at the table. Twenty years later, writing it down today, it still brings me to tears. Afterward, he followed my wife around like a puppy for the rest of the day, refusing to let her out of his sight. When she sat down, he jumped in her lap, cuddling in, opening himself back up to the world, searching desperately for the love he had been continually denied. Later in the day, but far too soon, his mother reappeared. She came down the stairs into the room we all occupied. “Oh, SuperMom,” she uttered, resentfully, seeing her son curled up in my wife’s lap. Then she departed, black, murderous heart unchanged, doomed child in hand. She was a psychologist. The things you can see, with even a single open eye. It’s no wonder that people want to stay blind.
--Jordan Peterson, '12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos'

It is this closeness that transforms and saves lives. It involves the 'soiling of one's own hands,' as my friend Andrea Romano says. Dostoevsky depicts this beautifully in 'Crime and Punishment' through the character of Sonya who helps and redeems a murderer with nothing but love, humility, and genuine concern.

I do not speak of a coming utopia. A utopia is not the same as the kingdom of God, for the ushering in of a utopia needs violent revolution and sacrifices of scapegoats. To say that we need more scapegoats until we are ready for Christ is to say that we're one execution away from utopia. Those who says that we are one scapegoat away from the kingdom of God are the real dreamers of utopia.

I speak of action and full participation. I speak of taking up responsibility. This way is harder. This way is the imitation of Christ. I'm speaking of the carrying of crosses and bearing the burden of suffering; this is hardly utopian. This Christ-like love which was illustrated in Dr. Peterson's book, not the love (at gunpoint) of the world, is what we need, and we need it urgently, before the cycle of vengeance comes full circle yet again. We can either behave like the black-hearted mother in Dr. Peterson's story, or we can become like Dostoevsky's Sonya. The choice is yours.