The Most Dangerous Faith

From my reading of Reza Aslan's peculiar and confounding Zealot, I turned back to reading Tolstoy.  In particular, I turned to reading Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, his spiritual and theological magnum opus.

It is, in its own way, every bit as challenging as Zealot, but for completely opposite reasons.

Reza Aslan spins out a Jesus who--oddly enough--looks exactly like the zealous warrior-prophet who founded his faith.  Tolstoy presents us with something that could not be more radically different. He goes to the core teachings of Jesus, and says, in a very straightforward way: this is what we are meant to do.

No violence. Resistance to injustice, sure, but it must be nonviolent. No retribution. Selflessness. Love for all creatures, as if they were our own children.

Period.

All the energies we pour into arguing about doctrinal issues and power struggles and rooting out heresy?  Pointless distractions.  That energy needs to go into being the human creatures that can legitimately say: we are inhabiting and manifesting the Reign of God.

What he has been casting out, as I have read this book, is the most detailed Christian anarchist manifesto I've ever read.

And it is also the most dangerous.

Oh, it's tempting to look at the Jesus of Reza Aslan, the one who is willing to take up the sword, and say, "Yikes! Threatening! Scary man with a weapon and a furrin' name!"  We want to go to FoxNews, and to instapundit, and to townhall.com, where we can angrily rant in the comments section about islamofascism and global jihad.

But the armed and violent Jesus is no threat to our way of life.  In fact, Tolstoy would suggest it is no different from our way of life.  Christendom, and any form of Christian faith that vacillates and equivocates about the use of force to coerce others? That form of faith poses no threat at all to the status quo.  It is already the nature of our world.

But the faith that says: I will not seek power over you, even in opposition? I will not take up the sword, no matter what? This is a frightening, dangerous faith.

It is a direct threat to the entire structure of our society, which rests on power. It does not allow us the swelling heart of pride in the power of our nation, when fighters fly low and in formation. If we did as Tolstoy suggests, we'd be vulnerable.  We'd be unprotected.  Anyone could harm us.

And it threatens us, personally. It does not permit us our revenge fantasies. It does not allow us to yield to the sugar-sweet yearnings of our pride and our fear, and to arm ourselves so that we might be able to take the life of any who come against us or our families.  Again, we are asked to set that aside, and we recoil.

I can't do that.  I struggle with it.  Imagining it feels terrifying.

It is the kind of faith that cuts deep into the heart of who we are, as a people, as persons.

And that is how you know it is real.

Faith and Freedom

Funny thing, freedom.

I've been reflecting on liberty a whole bunch this last week, as my book has extended a tender first sprout into the world.   Playing faith off against Many Worlds cosmology has left me with what amounts to a radical theology of freedom.  Given that "Liberation Theology" is already taken, I'm not quite sure how to describe it.  But it's pretty cool, in a creative, boundless way.

Whichever way, the assumption that we are created as absolutely free beings is a vital part of a faith that can engage with the wild, open creation in which we find ourselves.

Faith that redefines liberty to mean something quite different, that...well...that's rather less creative.  Rather less hopeful.  Just a tich.

Having listened to some of the speeches and followed the conversations at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's recent gathering, I do find myself wondering:  Why is there so much difference between how I understand liberty and how it's defined by this "teavangelical" movement?

I mean, shoot, as the World's Most Bourgeois Anarchist (tm), the words liberty and freedom are some of my favorites.  I think we're created free, each given both the gift and the immense responsibility of telling our own story.

But when I use the words "freedom" and "liberty," there are some assumptions that I make.

The first assumption is that freedom, by necessity, means we can screw up.  We aren't just free to live that best, most joyous, most gracious and noble life.  We can make the wrong decisions.  We can do real damage to ourselves and those around us.  We can take a bite of that fruit, and be cast from the garden.  If those things are not true, then we are not free.

When one says things like "Freedom means striving to be your very best," as was said at the conference, that's all well and good.  But it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom.  Freedom is a peskily neutral thing.  Yes, it's a heck of a lot better than oppression.  It is not actively negative, abusive, or monstrous.  It is simply the absence of constraint.

Another assumption that I make is that my liberty cannot define yours.  I understand the good in a particular way.  I see value in duty, and responsibility, and commitment.  I do so because both reason and faith dictate it.  But if you see differently, and you approach existence differently, then my commitment to liberty dictates that...so long as you're not impinging on me...I let you go at it.  I might disagree.  I might tell you so, or offer up a differing opinion.  But if you want to screw up, I cannot stop you.  I will not use the law to coerce you.  I will not bully or oppress you with my own personal power.

I also understand that just because you aren't me, that doesn't by necessity mean you're wrong. You are free to not be me.  You are free not to think as I do, and sometimes that's not you being wrong.  It's just you being different.  When we define liberty as just one thing, or just one set of values, then we just don't get it.  If we think freedom means "You are free to obey my rules," then somewhere, we've missed the point...not just of our Constitution, but of the way we were created.

A final assumption, related and absolutely essential:  to value freedom, you have to value the freedom of others.  So much talk of "liberty" is focused on "my liberty."  I want to defend "my freedom."  I want to be free to do what I want.  And of course, we do.  But if your primary concern is for your own right to do/believe/act however you please, then you don't really have freedom as a primary value.  You have your own power as your primary value.

To care about freedom, you need to defend the liberty of others.  Here, political movements don't do so well.  In defense of the "us," umbrage and outrage are turned outward at the oppressive other.  The ethics of victimization and manufactured oppression become a way to justify oneself.

If you're going to be faithful about freedom, and really attend to the Law of Liberty, then you do kinda need to steer away from that.

Paul, Powers, and Principalities

Poring over the slate of GOP candidates, I find myself compelled to admit:  I like Ron Paul.  I really do.  Perhaps that's a factor of the odd way in which right-leaning libertarians and left leaning anarchists come right back around to being essentially the same critter.   Paul is admirably consistent, and seems to be that rare politician with considerable integrity.

But though I'm theologically quasi-anarchic, and very much in favor of limiting the scope of governmental intervention in individual life, I just can't quite bring myself to consider voting for him.  Why?

Because I think weakening the state in our democratic republic would have a negative impact on individual liberty.

What is the role of the state?  A good and well-run state balances the interests of constituent members of a culture, insuring that the liberty of one does not impinge on the liberty of others.   That is the essence of justice within the realm of human societies.

The reality, though, is that as cultures become more complex than the local or the tribal, the requirement for the state to maintain balance becomes more challenging.  You are no longer balancing individual rights with other individual rights.  You're dealing with collective and transpersonal entities, whose power is considerably greater than that of individuals.

Our society, for good or for ill, has decided to treat most corporations as if they were individuals.  Those "persons" bring considerably more weight to the table than a single individual.  Their interests, driven by the amassed wealth and resources that these "immortal beings" bring to the table, are difficult to counterbalance if you are just a single human being.  My ability to influence the direction of culture is considerably smaller than that of NewsCorp, for example.  The same is true for ExxonMobil, or NorthropGrumman, or ConAgra.   If they want something, they're likely to get it.  They control both the means of production and, increasingly, the media through which we communicate.

If it is truly representing the people, government provides a counterbalance to the power that corporate entities wield in a culture.  It can break up organizations that are too potent.  It can regulate those corporation's activities...and what are regulations but laws governing the behavior of these odd semi-human leviathans?  And the behavior of corporations needs to be governed, because they could otherwise easily become the lords, barons, and dukes of a new feudalism.

Assuming they are not already.

In the absence of that counterbalance, those entities will pursue power and profit above all other things.  That's their purpose, and that's the biggest challenge facing both anarchists and libertarians.  Maintaining individual freedom and liberty in the face of those very real and active powers seems to demand both an engaged citizenry and a government that is empowered to act on the behalf of the individual.

Given the Corporate Colossi that now tromp and rumble through our world, we each need all the help we can get.