The PN in Luke, Part III

There is, in the Matt/Mark account, no return to the relationship with the Father which was marked, through Jesus’ entire ministry, with the address, “Abba.” I argued, in considering that tradition, that it marked the complete absence of that sense of God’s presence in Jesus. Jesus does not lose that sense in Luke’s account. Mark and Matthew draw Jesus’ last quotation from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” Luke draws on Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.”

There is no real way to account for this difference. The difference itself is stark; the reasons for the difference obscure. I have been so impressed, however, by the effects of “the strengthening angel” in Gethsemane, that I am inclined to speculate that Jesus’ continuing sense of attachment to his Father was one of the effects. Jesus prayed to be spared the brutal testing. Then, after the angel strengthened him, he prayed to withstand the brutal testing. I argue here that he “withstood it” so successfully that in his last moments, he retained the notion of God as his Father and himself as the agent of the Father’s will.

A second difference that may be related has to do with the “bandits” who were crucified with Jesus. They don’t appear in Mark’s account; they are mentioned as reviling the dying Jesus in Matthew. It makes me wonder what the Jesus who was so brutalized in the Mark/Matthew narrative would have said to the penitent bandit had there been one. What Jesus had left in that account was, “My God, for what cause have you abandoned me?” What would he have had for the penitent bandit?

In Luke, Jesus has been strengthened by a direct divine intervention. He still has access to that understanding of himself that makes “Abba” the true way for him to address God. And to the penitent bandit, he says, in my paraphrase, “I will be in paradise today (after my death) and you will be with me.” In Luke, those are his last words to humans.

Addendum

I have followed Brown’s account of Jesus in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, in Luke this year, to complement my consideration of Mark/Matthew last year. I don’t really have any more to say about Brown’s account, although I have benefitted from it immensely. I have been brought to think much more deeply this year about receiving the strength to endure the test.

I have thought, often, of Paul’s account of “testing” or of “being tempted” (same verb) in 1 Corinthians 10:13. In my account, the New Jerusalem Bible, it reads, “You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it.” I have always thought of this in terms of “temptation,” a plausible translation, and in terms of “escaping from” the temptation.

But although the word is the same, it doesn’t make the same sense to me to think of Jesus being “tempted” rather than “tested.” And as I read it, it seemed to me that Jesus could either “escape from” the test or “endure” the test. In the one phrasing, it seems that the test (temptation) goes away; in the other phrasing, it seems that you continue to endure the test, that you do not break under it.

Now, quite against my inclination, I see that Paul says that God will provide me “a way out” by “enabling me to put up with it.” In this phrasing, “putting up with it” is the means and “escaping it” is the end. I find that jarring. Attractive, too. If it makes sense to you, you might note it as a comment because at least 19 other people are likely to need an answer as much as I do.

The PN in Luke, Part II

The previous post on the Passion Narrative (PN) in Luke brought us up to the effects of the angel who ministered to Jesus in Gethsemane. Here, I want to begin with what the angel did for Jesus and then go on to a much bigger question. Why?

In Matthew, the beginning of Jesus' ordeal in the garden is described like this: “…and he began to feel sadness and anguish. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’” Mark is similar, “And he began to feel terror and anguish. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’” That’s not the way Luke does it.

Jesus is here portrayed “in agony.” Brown translates this passage, “And being in agony, he was praying more earnestly.” What does tbe Greek agōnia bring to us? Brown here follows Paton [W. R. Paton, “Agōnia,” Classical Review 27 (1913), 194] who argues that agōnia often meant the kind of agony that a runner in an athletic contest experienced just before the start. Hebrews uses this word in describing Jesus as the “forerunner” (Heb. 6:20) and in 12:1 compares the Christian struggle to “running the race agōn that is before us.” Another scholar compares agōnia to “a supreme concentration of one’s power in the face of the impending battle.”

It is hard, in considering this new perspective, to find language that does not trivialize the experience, but if agōn is the context and agōnia the preparation for the context, it does not seem too much to say that the angel serves as a trainer—someone to help Jesus prepare for the race before him. It is through the God’s intervention, in the appearance of the angel, that Jesus is able to concentrate his power in the face of the impending contest. The fierce trial does not “pass away,” but Jesus is sustained in his preparation for it.

That brings us to the role of sorrow (lypē) which is so prominent in Mark and Matthew, both of whom use perilypos to refer to Jesus. Philo argues that lypē destroys strength and power. The good person, like an athlete in agōnia, combats it because it weakens him in the face of the contest. So agōnia and lypē , which we are apt to see as two expressions of Jesus’ tribulation are, by this understanding, opposed to each other. Jesus' agōnia is crucial to surviving until the cross; his lypē weakens him so that he may not make it to the cross.

It seems to me that is what we have in Luke. This is a new idea about Jesus, but it is a very familiar idea about preparation. Any of you who have competed know that as you prepare, there are some feelings that move you toward readiness and others that move you away. Some modern athletes say they cultivate anger because it helps them. Simultaneously, they suppress the feelings of friendship they may have for their antagonists (agōn, again) because it will weaken them. I am not attributing such feelings to Jesus, but I am saying that the opposition of one feeling to another will be familiar to anyone who has prepared for a competition.

The remaining question is just why Luke presents this portrait of Jesus. A part of the answer can be seen in Luke’s portrayal of Christian martyrs. In Acts 7:55—60, Luke highlights parallels between the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and the death of Jesus. Accounts of the behavior of Christian martyrs during the Roman persecutions also echo the behavior of the Lucan Jesus. If Luke is facing the issue of martyrdom on behalf of his readers, he will want to give them the example of Jesus to strengthen them.

Luke is, by this account, making Jesus the prototypical martyr. Jesus prayed to be spared the trial, but submitted himself to God’s plan. And so should you. Jesus received strength to endure by God’s direct provision (it was an angel in the case of Jesus) and so will you. Jesus shunned lypē in preparation for the awful contest and so should you. Luke may also have been sensitive to the Stoic tradition of suffering, in which any display of instability was viewed as a sign of weakness, or to have believed his hearers would have been affected by that tradition.

If Jesus is to be the prototypical martyr, some attention will also need to be paid to his own instructions. In Luke 12:11 Jesus said that his followers should not be anxious when the rulers haul them before the authorities because of their faith. Luke’s Jesus needs, for that reason, to be less anxious that the Matthean or Marcan Jesus or he will not set a good example.

The PN in Luke, Part I

For reasons of space in the title and because of Brown's use of the abbreviation, PN will be used to refer to "the passion narratives."

There are three gospel traditions of Jesus’s suffering and death in what Christians have long called “passion week.” [Footnote 1] I say three because the accounts of Matthew and Mark are so closely aligned that it makes more sense to call them a single tradition. Luke follows the pattern of Matthew and Mark, but makes substantial changes. It is those changes that will be the focus of this series of posts. John has an entirely different perspective, as he often does.

These reflections will be based on the work of Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, Volumes 1 and II. All the exegesis and the suppositions are Brown’s. Where I am taking off on my own, I will say so.

I did my best to capture two moments of the passion narrative in the Matthean and Marcan tradition last year. I have attached it here, but it is long and difficult and it is as grim as Mark’s story is. I was hit very hard by the suffering of Jesus in that tradition. It is extreme and violent. The best translation Brown offers for the last sound Jesus makes on the cross is a “death scream.” Jesus is so distant from God in that tradition that he does not, at the end, address Him as “Father,” his normal address, but as “My God."

Luke follows the same sequence, but tells a different story. Let me start with a small detail from Jesus’ prayer. In Mark, Jesus “was falling on the earth” [Footnote 2] in the intensity of his grief. In Matthew, nearly the same, Jesus falls “on his face.” Same position, but less violently. In Luke, Jesus is not prostrate at all, but is kneeling in prayer.

Why this difference? The approach I am taking does not ask “What really happened?” I take it for granted that we cannot know that. I am asking, rather, “What is the story Luke is trying to tell us?” Most exegetes imagine that Luke had a copy of Mark before him (as Matthew did) and made the changes he needed to make to tell his story. That means that the most pointed inquiry can be put in the form of “Why did Luke change Mark’s account in this way particularly?”

Let’s look at another detail. How does Jesus pray that the cup pass from him? Brown summarizes the changes in the synoptic gospels like this. Matthew and Luke soften, in the preface to the prayer, just what the request is. Mark (14:36) has Jesus pray, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you.” Matthew (26:39) has “My Father, if it is possible...” Luke has (22:42) “Father, if you desire…” It is the introduction of God’s desire (boulesthai) that marks Luke. It carries the tone of a preordained divine decision, somewhat more deliberate than thelein in Mark and Matthew. Thus, the Lucan Jesus is first of all concerned with the direction of the divine planning before he asks whether in the execution of that plan, the cup can be taken from him.”

For me, it is hard to feel the movement from thelein to boulesthai as significant. I can see it, but I can’t feel it. On the other hand, this is the second difference between the traditions we have noted and the difference between “falling prostrate” and “kneeling” moves in the same direction.
We see that same pattern in the response to Jesus’ impassioned prayers. In Mark, there is no response at all. Jesus begins his path to the cross without any notion of the “being in touch with the Father” that has marked his ministry. In Matthew, there is no response either, but Jesus as he leaves Gethsemane says, “Do you think that I am not able to call upon my Father, and He will at once supply me with more than twelve legions of angels?" Clearly, Jesus still feels “in touch;” he has not been abandoned. But in Luke, an angel comes to Jesus to strengthen him. Why?

It is hard for me to say this exactly. Jesus didn’t feel any relief as a result of the angel’s support. The next line, which I will look at in the next post, is “And being in agony, he was praying more earnestly. And his sweat became as if drops of blood falling down to the earth.” This is after the angel appears. There is not the slightest scent of “Thank God, the cavalry is here” about Jesus’ response.

There are two things of interest, nevertheless. The first is the sense of direction, as we saw in the previous examples. The movement from Mark to Matthew to Luke is, again, a straight line movement. The Lucan Jesus does not despair as does the Marcan Jesus. He is not abandoned. He gets help. [Footnote 3] The second is that, in Brown’s phrasing, “an angel from heaven appeared to him.” It made me wonder how to understand “appeared.” Does that mean that the angel was always there and that Jesus’ prayer allowed him to see the angel and receive strength? Does it mean that the angel was not there and then, as a result of Jesus’ prayer, he was there?

I don’t think that mattered to Luke, but it makes me wonder whether God responded to the prayer by allowing Jesus to see the provision He had made for him, where before, he could not see it.

In the next post, I would like to continue by looking at what the angel did for Jesus and how it fits into Luke’s story of what happened.

[Footnote 1] [Footnote 1] You can read a lot of modern English prose without discovering that the verb we use as the root of passion, the Latin pati means “to suffer.”

Footnote 2] That is an awkward translation, to be sure. Brown keeps his translation a little closer to the Greek because he will be relying on very small differences in his analysis.

[Footnote 3] It is worth noticing, however, that it is “help getting through the ordeal” that is offered. It is Jesus’ prayer, “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done,” that allows him to receive the angel’s ministry as “help.” If Jesus had fixed himself, as I have done in some crucial times, on defining “help” as “getting me out of this mess,” we would have to say that Jesus received no help at all. That is not Luke’s story and if we prayed the way Jesus prayed, it would not be our story either.

The Assimilation Committee, Part 2

In the previous post, I told a parable about how committees work in my church. For the purposes of telling the story, I imagined that my old-line Presbyterian church was right next to a public housing project in Portland and that the residents of the project had begun attending our church, joining, and involving themselves in the work of our committees. That produced all kinds of difficulties for the chairs of the committees and even more for the Assimilation Committee, which had to solve this dilemma in principle.

I also said that the post was true in the way a parable is “true,” not in the way a newspaper article is “true,” and I promised to “interpret the parable” in the next post. That is today’s job. Let’s do the easy part first. All the descriptions of stylistic differences are actually true, but the parties about whom they are true are not “mature Christians” and “Project Rookies” of the parable. They are, rather, men (males) and women (females). The women are the “mature Christians.” The men are the “Project Rookies" and the work of the Assimilation Committee is a good deal more fundamental than I implied.

The picture below is typical of the man, looking at the "listener," but untypical of the woman, not looking at the speaker, according to the research Maccoby cites. That brings up the question of the source of the data. It is readily available. All the comparisons were taken from the first three pages of Eleanor Maccoby’s article “Gender and Social Exchange: A Developmental Perspective,” which appeared in Volume 95 of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, the Spring 2002 issue. As an outsider to sociology and as a fan of Maccoby’s through her many years of publication, I offer my judgment that her work is impeccable. She is a careful, thoughtful centrist on gender questions and a capaious anfair-minded user of research. All of that says only that when I read something she wrote, I am likely to trust it.

Let me offer a few passages from the cited article, just to let you see how close to her findings I stayed in my adaptation of those findings to the “Project Rookies.” One: “In mixed-sex groups, men typically talk more, give more information and opinions, make more task-relevant suggestions, and express more direct disagreement. Women in mixed-sex groups more often express agreement with other speakers, express group solidarity, and adopt a warm upbeat tone of voice.”

Here’s one more. This finding actually comes from comparing groups of men with groups of women, but for my purposes, it didn’t really matter. “In all-female groups, women devote an even greater proportion of their interactions to socioemotional elements of the exchange, displaying more friendliness and mutual helpfulness than is typical in all-male groups. Men are more likely than women to initiate negative acts and to reciprocate another man’s negative with a negative of their own, so that conflict escalates. Men more often engage in seriously meant oppositional discourse, in which they may highlight their differences and forcefully argue opposed points of view. Women are more likely to soften opposition, to make their views seem more alike rather than more different.”

Conclusion: women are nicer than men.

Now let’s translate this into the area of Christian praxis, where it appears in a strange and unsettling light.What do you think? Is it more reasonable to say that women are naturally better Christians than men are? You look at the listed outcomes of life in the Spirit—love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—and tell me.

Or, is it more reasonable to say that in God’s Providence, disciples who are men will (and should) act differently than disciples who are women? The implication here is, first and easiest, that a man who is living the life that the Spirit makes available will behave differently than he would apart from that life. Second, it implies that if there is “a man’s style”—leaving aside individual differences for the moment—it will be different from “a woman’s style.” Third, it implies that these styles may appropriately be referred to instrumentally rather than morally, i.e., we might say about “the man’s style” what we would say about a hammer, that it is good for hammering nails and what we would say about a saw, that it is good for cutting boards. We would not criticize the hammer as “concussive” or the saw as “abrasive.”

Is it really possible that the kinds of differences Maccoby describes—in a very different context and for different reasons, remember—are different resources for the Christian community? That they are more like different grades of sandpaper than they are like saints and sinners?

Yes. I think so.

The Dilemma of the Assimilation Committee

Caveat lector: None of the information offered in this post is true. Or if it is true, it is true in only an insignificant way. On the other hand, this post is entirely true, but its truth is the kind of truth a parable might have. It other words, it really is about something, but it isn't about what it seems to be about. The next post will discuss the implications of this one for the church.

At my church, the group that is supposed to see to it that new people become a functioning part of the church organization is called the Assimilation Committee. Assimilating new people into the mission of the church would be quite a daunting project, so we have chosen--either "instead" or "as a first step"--to integrate them into the structure of the church. You know, ushers, deacons, members of various committees and so on.

This is a much more manageable project, certainly, but even this modest project has its own difficulties. My church is a downtown church in an area that was once affluent. To simplify this description, I will say that we are next door to a large public housing project and that the residents of this project have begun not only attending our church, but actually joining and participating.

This is a wonderful achievement in the abstract, but this is a Presbyterian church, which means that we have a lot of committees. The committees have chairs who are supposed to manage the work of the committee and pass the results of their work up the food chain. That means that there must be results and the increasingly mixed membership of the committees--some mature Christians who have been in the church for a long time and some of the rookies from the nearby project--is a dilemma every chair must solve or there will be no product at all.

All these people are fine people I am sure, but their styles of interaction are not only different, but conflicting. In the contrasts below, I will refer to the long time members as MC = mature Christian and to the new members as PR = project rookies. It would be easy to find less offensive names, but since none of this is true, I won't bother.

1. In the committees' discussions, the MCs take the trouble to express agreement with the other speakers; they model a kind of committee solidarity; they maintain the sort of warm upbeat tone of voice that makes staying on task easier. The PRs, on the other hand, talk more, give more opinions, make more specific suggestions, and express a more direct disagreement with other speakers.

2. MCs do not make strategic use power when they have it; PRs are much more likely to use strategically any power they have and are, in addition, much more likely to be influenced by other PRs than they are by MCs.

3. MCs are a good deal more gentle (see Fruits of the Spirit, below). For example, they do not maintain direct eye contact with listeners when they themselves are speaking, but they do establish and maintain direct eye contact with speakers when they are in the listener role. PRs might be called more "visually dominant." They maintain direct eye contact when speaking and disengage from the speakers when they are listening. The effect of this difference is that the CRs sound tentative, as if unsure of what they are saying. Their speech overall has a polite and deferential quality. PRs tend to give their views in a more aggressive, chin-thrusting sort of way. If there is a way to be chin-thrusting and deferential at the same time, I have not seen it practiced in our committees.

3. Committees being what they are, negative things will be said from time to time. There will be disagreement, occasionally sarcasm; there will be interrupting and talking over others. The PRs are more likely to do any or all of these and are also more likely to respond to a negative action with another negative action. MCs are less likely to do any of these things: the interrupting the sarcasm, etc. They are more likely to ignore negative actions--simply not to respond to them at all--and to act positively in response to any positive action. Put yourself in the place of the committee chair and consider that for a moment.

4. MCs are more likely to highlight similarities and agreements. PRs are more likely to highlight differences and disagreements.

5. MCs are likely to refer to the committee's work, when describing it to a third party, as "our report." PRs are more likely to say "my report," especially when they are talking to someone of high status or more power in the church.


I could go on, but the problem as it appears to the Assimilation Committee is probably clear now. I would like to put this is a broader context, if I may, before sharing it. This list of the outcomes of life in the Spirit is one of the best-known passages in Galatians: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." If you look without prejudice at the two populations of Christians in the work of the committees, you will see a lot of the outcomes of the Spirit in the participation of the MCs, just as you would expect, and a great deal less in the participation of the PRs, who are, after all, new.

I would like to remind you, using a different formulation than the one I used at the beginning, that the information contained in this post is true. It just isn't true in the way it seems to be true.

Marital Fidelity

As a guy who pays more attention to language than most people do, I find I often oppose the inflation of adjectives. In Oregon, not too many years ago, there was a campaign against a ballot measure, the tag line of which was "It's Too Extreme!" Too extreme? If it were a little less, would it be "just right" extreme? And then with a little less, it would be "not extreme enough?" Really? And then there's "just a little paranoid." And "experiencing a little trepidation." Not to mention "awesome," meaning even less, now, than "yeah, OK." ********************************************************************************** I admit it was my generation or a generation somewhere before mine that separated the terror from terrific and the fable from fabulous and that turned luxury from one of Dante's deadly sins to a major selling point. I/We did all that. But I learned all those as a child and I learned them as proper uses, so I don't really feel too guilty about them. Today, I'm on the other side of the axis. I'm going to be arguing for a very demanding notion of marital fidelity. The charge I am laying myself open to is that I have set the bar so high that everyone who attempts it will fail. In this case, I don't think that would be so bad. But I also don't think it will happen that way. I am going to define marital fidelity as a single unitary concept, one that has integrity and clear borders--as a concept. In practice, the borders go away for sure and it might be that the integrity goes away as well, because I am arguing that married couples [see footnote 1] who like this notion will define for themselves how they will achieve it; what it will look like; what to do when the "check engine" light comes on. *********************************************************************************** I started thinking about this in the 1970s, when I read Sexual Intimacy, by Andrew Greeley. Here is what he said that first caught my attention. "It is interesting that the almost universally accepted definition of marital fidelity focuses on whether one engages in sexual activity outside of marriage. The faithful person is one who does not have intercourse outside of marriage. In no other context is fidelity defined in such narrow and negative terms. Indeed, normally, the word conveys a highly positive connotation; but in marriage, fidelity merely means that one doesn't do certain things." ************************************************************************************ I knew at once, when I read that, that it was true. "Fidelity" was, in this context, the word you used for the things you didn't do. Pathetic! As I hinted earlier, this is a word I want to put way out on the end of the axis. If we fail in our attempts, which we will, we gain more from seeing the goal clearly than we lose by our failure. This standard means that my own marital fidelity is suspect, as well as that of every other married man and woman I know. It means that "unfaithful in his/her marriage" is a stone that can be thrown at anyone. I hope that will make using it as something to throw considerably less attractive. I hope too that the people in the relationship will continue to find it useful. ********************************************************************************* It seems to me that it raises two and a half really interesting questions. If you think of a marrige, as I do, as a relationship with a blend of collegiality and intimacy, in which, borrowing C. S. Lewis's physical cues, the collegueship is the side by side part of the marriage, where the partners are pursuing the same goal and value each other as contributors to the effort and in which intimacy is the direct, face to face, part of the marriage, then we have the two questions in our sights. If the couple pursues goals, as colleagues do, then fidelity is doing what you can to achieve your common goal and helping your partner do all she can to achieve that goal. [footnote 2] ********************************************************************************** In intimacy, the face to face part of the relationship, fidelity is sharing his "inwardness"--intimus, the superlative of intus. "within," is the source of intimate--and being most fully "who he really is." As I am using the term, fidelity is a goal without any mitigation at all. More is better. But that is not the way I see collegiality and intimacy. For those traits, it is what is best that is best, not necessarily what is most. More fidelity, in other words, is always good, like "more love." But more collegiality is not always good--or maybe it is just harder to measure--and more intimacy is, in the same way, not necessarily good. There is a level of intimacy and a "kind," almost a "flavor" of intimacy, that is just right for a couple. Getting the flavor right is what is good. More intimacy might be good, but it might not. Some flavors are too strong to enjoy and must be endured. ********************************************************************************* And the half question? Sexuality. I see the erotic relationship of a couple as a part of their intimacy. I think every husband has the privilege of making his wife a wonderful lover of him. I think that every wife as the privilege of making her husband a wonderful lover of her. "Wonderful lover" means what they decide it will mean for them, but letting such a powerful part of their life drift aimlessly away because no one cares enough to save it is probably infidelity. Not daring to do, to save that special kind of intimacy, what needs to be done is not being faithful to that part of the relationship. *********************************************************************************** That is, in fact, the part of the relationship Greeley had in mind when he pointed out how absurd it is to give "fidelity" as the name for "the things you don't do" outside the marriage. His point, and mine, is that it is what you actually do inside the marriage that makes your behavior faithful or not--in addition, of course, to what you do not do outside it. It is not taking the time and not taking the risks and not leaning what you need to know that are unfaithful. Those are the failures of fidelity. It the same way, the failure to be fully and optimally collegial is an infidelity. It is not appreciating, not delighting in, what your partner brings to your common effort that is unfaithful. It is refusing to allow your partner help you refine your own skills and to take the risks necessary to help her refine hers that is unfaithful. ************************************************************************************* That is why I think that "marital fidelity" is a term that deserves to be placed where I put it, wa-a-a-y out on the high end of the axis of meaning, where most of us will fail most of the time. With that kind of clarity, it becomes a kind of North Star for the relationship. It isn't that you can get there. It is that knowing where it is means that you know where you are and how to go in the direction you and your partner have decided to go. [footnote 1] There is no reason this notion can not be legitimately extended in a number or directions I will not consider. It could be applied to "committed relationships," for instance, entirely without reference to marriage. For that reason, it could apply to gay/lesbian relationships, straight relationships or (oddly) to some mix of the two. I am focusing my attention of sexual fidelity within a heterosexual marriage because it is the only kind I actually know anything aobut. [footnote 2] To simplify the grammar and to draw most closely on the part of the relationship I know most about, I am going to presume the perspective of the husband. This is a convenience only. I believe that wives have exactly the same duty and privilege of collegiality as husbands, and exactly the same duty and privilege in intimacy as husbands. The particulars will vary, of course, not only with gender, but with the actual persons involved. The symmetry I am describing is only a formal symmetry.

"Political Hypocrisy" Isn't Really a Redundant Expression

We aren’t very consistent in our view, I’m afraid. Since we learn what our views are in different settings and under the influence of different values, we are always trying to reconcile one view we hold with another. It isn’t like going out looking for your three dogs who have escaped and are out wandering around the neighborhood. It’s more like this. There is a court somewhere which as part of its duties, declares various dogs somewhere in your state to be “yours.” You have to find out that they are “yours,” find out where they are, go find them, and bring them back to your yard where, just recently, they belong. If this court is active, which it is during the times of our rapid intellectual growth or change (not the same things), you will be out trieving dogs[1] most of the time and most of the dogs that are “yours” will not be in your yard. Ever. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ That is the fundamental reason we are inconsistent. Of course, there are others. Even people who pride themselves on ideological consistency are not consistent, although their problems can ordinarily be solved by rapidly evolving definitions of the key terms. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************* But my principal interest today is in the common practice of referring to nearly any inconsistency as “hypocrisy.” What does that really mean? The Greek antecedents are plain and back as far as hypocrites = stage actor, they are understandable. They are puzzling if you try to go further back than that. For most of the centuries of its use in English, it has meant someone who pretends to be good and admirable who actually is not. I think the most prominent use of it today displays a kind of moral laziness and I cite the well-known Lord Finkle-McGraw as my authority. In Neal Stephenson’s delightful and unnerving The Diamond Age, he introduces a group called “The New Victorians.” They are a very conservative group, socially, and much respected. Now. As Lord Fink-McGraw explains in this passage, it was not always so. The case that the charge of hypocrisy is mostly moral laziness comes in the passage where the early days of the New Victorians are described. It was way back at the end of the 20th Century. Think back. Moral values had fallen to such a level that no one was willing to take a moral stand. But, as Finkle-McGraw says, “people are naturally censorious,” and some ground for criticism must be found. It was in that way that “hypocrisy” was elevated from “a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices.” ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ In this way of looking at it, the great service that the charge of hypocrisy provides is that you don’t have to have a standard yourself. Any inconsistency in the speech or in the behavior of an opponent is enough to cue “hypocrisy” as the charge of choice. That is damaging enough, giving that it elevates consistency to THE virtue and turns every public person into a piñata. But the classic response is also damaging: “That was then; this is now.”[2]****************************************************************************************************************************************************** How did we get so many hypocrites into public life at the same time? Let me count the ways. Being a member of the House of Representatives requires that you rail against the Senate for being dilatory. When you become a senator yourself, you brush off the House criticism as one that does not respect the “traditions of debate” in the Senate. Right. When you are a candidate for the presidency, you rail against the incumbent’s failure to plot a clear (or a moral—depends on which party is out of power) path. When you are the incumbent and actually have to govern, you dismiss such criticism as naïve, which, in an important way, they are. Right. The activists of the Republican and Democratic parties are well out in the tail of the distribution of opinions of their parties. The Republican activists are well to the right of Republicans generally; the Democratic activists are well to the left of Democrats generally. To secure your party’s nomination, you need to satisfy the activists, who control the nomination process. To be elected, you need to satisfy the majorities within the parties, and the Independents as well. This means that you will be backing away from whatever you said in the nomination phase and under the construction we are exploring, this would be called hypocrisy. It would be turned into a moral offense and the argument the charge cues will be a “morality” argument, ten times hotter than the instrumental one and much less open to the compromises that will be required in any case. ********************************************************************************** Of course, some things actually are hypocritical. Establishing mechanisms by which purportedly anonymous sexual transactions can be prosecuted and then being caught in that mechanism yourself is more than inconsistent. It is hypocritical. Making a political career out of gay bashing, then having to confront your sexual abuse of a same sex member of your office staff is more than inconsistent. It is hypocritical. I do think, however, that we can profit from Lord Finkle-McGraw’s insight and oppose these actions because they are wrong, rather than because they are inconsistent. This may be costly, because “wrong” requires us to offer a standard of value of our own, but it is the right thing to do anyway, and refusing to do it because it is difficult is just typical Washington hypocrisy. Ooops. [1] Since they have just become yours, you can’t really re-trieve them. [2] The form used by the Nixon administration, that a given explanation was “no longer operative” really isn’t worse than the current version. It is just clumsier.

Being Against "Injustice"

[Please accept my apologies for the crude spacing. My blog is not currently accepting the spaces I ordinarily put between paragraphs. Thank you blogspot.com. The asterisks are the least intrusive spacing device I have thought of (and Bette thought of that one). If anyone has a better idea, I hope you will let me know. Or, even better, let blogspot know.] The American view of justice sounds familiar to me. In fact, it sounds just like us. It reminds me of Justice Potter Stewart's "definition" of obscenity, which was "I know it when I see it." ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ Americans don't have a clear view of what "justice" is and as a result, our discussions among ourselves never end and never decide. We have a much clearer view of what "injustice" is. This is the difference, if I may just play with the words a little here, between Justice Stewart's lack of interest in defining "scenity" and his interest in defining "ob-scenity" clearly enough that it could actually be achieved. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ When we saw bad things happening to unresisting Negro protesters--if you are in my 101 class, the chances are that you will not remember "Negro protesters”—they seemed so harmless and so ill-used and we saw it all on television. That is what made the civil rights movement popular among northern liberals and tolerable even among northern conservatives. All these pictures of "injustice" shoved in our faces. Surely we can't be asked to just stand by. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ Now we are seeing pictures of Khadafi (or Gaddafi) threatening the overwhelmed people of Benghazi, Libya and we think we surely can't be asked just to stand by. So we haven't. We have attacked Libyan air defense installations, then planes, then tanks, then concentrations of the Libyan army. Now CIA agents are on the ground for the purpose of "targeting" future airstrikes. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ Some positive notion of "justice," some sense of how it really could be for a society with Libya's current make up and recent history, would really help us. Do they need to be a national, rather than a tribal, society? If they insist on being Muslim, could they be secular Muslims? Do they need the civil institutions that will allow they to transcend the narrow loyalties that have sustained them to this point in their history? Whether they need those or not, those will not be--trust me, they will NOT be--the first projects they take on. Will we take them on, on their behalf? ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ Will we be the teachers of "ultratribalism?" Will we formulate their civil institutions: impartial, impersonal, and fair? Will we offer our kind of religion, a distant, pale, buffet line kind of religion, in exchange for theirs? Are we, in other words, prepared to work toward some peculiarly Libyan incarnation of "justice?" Or do we just want to condemn and oppose "injustice?" We do, after all, have several other acknowledged wars going on and we have to judge our appetite for substantial investment in a society where our failure may safely be taken for granted.