Compassion is Selfish

It's one of the odder memes out there, but one I stumble across with some surprising frequency.

Like, say, yesterday, when I bumbled across it whilst skimming an article in the New York magazine.  It was technically an essay about the moral implications of George Eliot's Middlemarch, one of those things that people in the Big Apple are evidently deeply concerned about.  I was idling my way through it, when suddenly out of nowhere, I read this:

"For a guideline about how to treat others, the Golden Rule is strikingly egocentric. It does not urge us to consult our neighbors about their needs; it asks us only to generalize from ourselves—to imagine, in essence, that everyone’s idea of desirable treatment matches our own. As such, it makes a curiously narrow demand on our imagination, and, accordingly, on our behavior..."

Not to take anything from George Eliot, mind you, although I'm not quite as ready as the author of this magazine article to structure an entire Eliotist ethical worldview on one of her novels.  But that line of reasoning has made it's way across my consciousness before, usually as part of some atheistic screed.

Treating others as you'd be treated yourself?  Inherently selfish, of course.  It must be, because faithful people do it, and it seems to be a powerful and sustained ethical thread across many of the world's faith traditions.  If you're atheistic of bent, that means it must be inherently flawed.  And so the very idea of being compassionate becomes warped into something mildly assaultive and imperialist.

The absurdity of this line of argumentation is hard to miss.  It is primarily absurd because in an effort to display ethical superiority, it willfully misses the entire point of both the Golden Rule and compassion.

It is apparently impossible to imagine that perhaps we want to be listened to and respected.  Thus we will from that "selfish" foundation choose to listen to and respect others.  I do not like being beaten about the head and shoulders with other people's worldviews, for example.  From that foundation, I don't do that to others.  I'll talk, and discuss, and even get into a heated debate if it seems that heat is going to be mutually entertaining.  But I will not inflict/stalk/assail another soul, because that's a fundamental Golden Rule Violation.  So. Very. Simple.

And yet seen through a thicket of deconstructive folderol, it becomes turned into something falsely complex.

Amazing, what people manage to believe.

Alinsky, The Truth, The Tea Party, and Jesus

One of the more significant things that Saul Alinsky pitches out for those who want to start a radical movement is how to approach one's opponents. It isn't enough to disagree, and to work for consensus.

Alinsky, being a deeply realistic critter, argues that respectful disagreement is absolutely useless when you're trying to motivate a group of folks. People don't get fired up to march and shout slogans if you present them with an honest and balanced appraisal of the opposing position. If you have sympathy for the opposing party, if you see some of the merits of what they're saying and are willing to present their position with all of it's nuances and possibilities, then you're a crappy organizer.

Not because what you're saying would be materially incorrect. Alinsky acknowledges that human systems are complex and interwoven things, and that even opposing positions likely have positive aspects. In fact, he banks on it, as ultimately his goal is to have his mobilized communities negotiate with his opponents for whatever gains can be made.

But when you're rousin' the rabble, you don't say those things, even if you know they're true. The rhetoric of Alinsky's community organizing is apocalyptic, meaning it is radically binary. Once you've identified your enemy, you define them as 100% evil, and your own position as the ne plus ultra of virtue and all things good and right and true. When things are pitched out in those binary terms, it becomes much easier to get people motivated.

Three things strike me about this approach.

First, it requires organizers to do what Alinsky describes as being "schizoid." Meaning, saying and arguing and passionately shouting about how The Man is the source of all oppression and monstrousness and evil, while deep down inside you know that isn't accurate. As Alinsky was writing before we knew that schizophrenia wasn't the same as multiple personality disorder, let me suggest a more accurate description of that state of being.

It requires that you be a liar. You hold a truth in yourself about your opponent, and you knowingly misrepresent their nature to your own people to stir up passions. Hmmm. Perhaps that little shout out to Lucifer at the beginning of Rules for Radicals is more apropos than I thought.

Second, this approach works great. It's wonderfully successful in the political arena. What it is not, however, is limited to the political left. If you honestly compare the Obama's leadership style and the Tea Party against this metric of successful organizing practice, it is the Tea Party that comes across as more Alinskian. Obama always had this pesky habit of being moderate and circumspect, of noting that McCain was a war hero and a patriot and the like. But folks like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have no such compunction. Obama is Hitler. DemocRats are Nazis. Or communists. They will take your guns and kill your babies and make you drive a tiny little car and eat tofu and broccoli. They know how to rile Americans up.

Alinsky's methodology has won some significant admirers on the American right. When I read smart conservatives...meaning, ones who are talking openly about Alinsky with one another for purposes other than faux anti-communist polemic...they like what he has to say. They glom onto his methods. They see how useful he can be. They are now, in fact, using his methods in their training. So far, it seems to be working.

Third, this way of approaching one's enemies just ain't Christian. Yeah, I know, Jesus cleansed the temple and took on the powers that be and yadda yadda yadda. But what made Yeshua Ben YHWH such a powerfully different presence was not that he taught us to love and honor our friends and demonize our enemies. That's always been the way of the world.

It was that he pressed that love ethic out to include opponents. Yeah, they might be messed up. Yeah, they might be cause of much hurt and oppression and brokenness. But real transforming revolution only occurs when you can look at Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi or the CEO of BP and realize that you've got to love 'em.

It doesn't feel as good, sure. It doesn't fill you with righteous glazed-eye partisan fire. But that's not why Jesus lived and taught and died and rose.

Christian Atheism and the Golden Rule

Following on from yesterday's post, the exploration of the paradoxymoronic concept of the Christian Atheist continues. Though there is clearly no textual basis for making the claim that Jesus wanted us to be secular humanists, there is always that "Be a Good Person" argument for those wanting to be Atheistic Christians. We can be good without God, or so the billboards posted by atheistic organizations proclaim. Just be nice to other people, and things all fall into place.

For the person professing to be a Christian Atheist, one of the ways to avoid major neural crashes engendered by irreconcilable cognitive dissonance is to say: "Anyone who approaches the teachings of Jesus with an honest and open mind knows that the Golden Rule is the primary point and purpose of Christianity. I don't believe in all this Sky Daddy Easter Bunny Superstitious Nonsense, but the ethic Jesus taught was basically just for us to treat other people the way we want to be treated. I'm down with that, therefore, I'm a follower of Jesus who just happens not to believe in God."

I'm not about to start frothing and foaming about this perspective. I'm not going to give a long rant about not being WAAASHED IN THE BLOOOD OF JEEESUS. In fact, I'm not even going to say it's evil and damnable, because I don't think it is. Folks who live out their lives governed by an ethic of compassion and love for neighbor aren't enemies of Jesus or his followers. That's true of Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists. It's even true of atheists. When that Day arrives, quite frankly, those who just can't do the faith thing but do unto others the way Jesus taught aren't necessarily toast. We know so 'cause Jesus said so, and it's His call, not ours.

However, that does not make those folks Christian.

To be Christian, you need to be radically governed by the Great Commandment. It is our One Law, the single measure of our faith that defines and guides every other aspect of our faith. But the Great Commandment is not just "love your neighbor as yourself." It is, as Jesus taught it, far more radical than that. To be that "highest ethic" Thomas Jefferson declared it to be, it needs to be more radical. So let's take a hard look at the Golden Rule.

When you present the Golden Rule to an atheist with a chip surgically implanted in their shoulder, one of the typical responses you'll hear is, "Yeah, well, that's a really sucky morality. What if I don't want for myself the same things you want? What if you're just imposing your own sociocultural perspective of 'love' on me, and I have another perspective? What about that? Huh? Huh? That's why Jesus is a dumb loser stinkypants and you are too." They'll typically throw the word "fallacy" in there somewhere, too, because it's a Very Smart Word.

Though this could be construed as WAAAAY overthinking the Golden Rule, it actually has legitimacy philosophically. Loving others can easily be interpreted in such a way that it permits acts of violence or spiritual abuse. "I only yell at you because I know what's right for you. I'd yell at me, too, if I was doing what you're doing." In this instance, the "right" is typically an attitude that is, in fact, mediated by culture and society. Even the structures of our ethical reasoning are frequently mediated by those biases.

But the ethic that Jesus taught didn't hinge on just treating others in the way that we expect is right. That Great Commandment has two inextricably interrelated components. Love your neighbor? Sure. That's part two. But before that, we are told to "love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul." This theocentric grounding radicalizes the love commandment, because in giving ourselves over to that first element, a Christian experiences the Golden Rule in an interesting way.

The engagement of our whole being in the love of God has a continually iconoclastic effect. It is the great shatterer of idols, and by idols I mean the false godlings of society, culture, and self. God is not to be confused with cultic practice, or with doctrine, or with dogma. God is not to be confused with ethnic identity or political orientation or material prosperity or nationalistic pride. God...if we're being orthodox about it...cannot be conflated with any category that exists within the bounds of space and time. That orientation becomes, as Christian existentialist Paul Tillich would have described it, an "ultimate concern," one that forever drives us towards progressing and deepening our love of others.

That means, in terms of our practice of the love ethic, that the Christian is called to resist the desire to love only those who share our worldview. Christian orthopraxis requires us to apply lovingkindness in a way that is mindful of the needs and perpectives of those who are not Us. As Jesus taught it in the first century Near East, that included those who were outside of the boundaries that defined his culture. We are to love the lepers, the tax collectors, the unclean, and the Samaritans. We are to love and show kindness to those who are set utterly against us. This ethos transcends ethos itself...and as such, it's as radical a morality as possible.

Christian atheism does not get us there. If our orientation towards the numinous mysterium tremens et fascinans of our Maker is removed, then the Christian ethic is not authentically presented. What you get instead is not evil, necessarily. It may quite possibly be good.

But it cannot meaningfully claim to be what Jesus taught.