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As a progressive community committed to peace and justice, we try to look honestly at what’s going on in the world, in our community, and in our hearts. We are oriented around ethics and praxis, asking: how does this change how we understand the world and ourselves, and how can we cultivate more kindness, compassion, and justice? This has never been easy, especially in a place like the Ozarks. Each of us must decide what we can do, and what we can’t do. Sometimes, we even come to different conclusions, but we do our best to keep listening, keep learning, and keep changing. It’s hard work, and so we also encourage each other to keep going. What I’ve felt inside of myself, and what I’ve heard from many others, is that this is increasingly difficult. The polarization in the United States, and in many other places, has combined with pandemic fatigue, and we are worn out.
The polarization is nothing new, and marginalized communities have especially been harmed by it. The history of the United States can’t be separated from the history of people in power dehumanizing entire populations, then using that hatred and bigotry to help tolerate or even justify exploitation and violence. You know the list: slavery; genocide and violent displacement of Indigenous peoples; exploitation of immigrants; Jim Crow, segregation, and mass incarceration; patriarchal violence and the gender gap; neglect and abuse of disabled and elderly; violence and discrimination against gender and sexuality minorities; class warfare and social disparities; and more.
The ethical questions that come to us are also nothing new: in such a situation, how can we be people who love – ourselves, each other, and even those who hate us? How do we respond to hatred and division? And having been deeply hurt by others, how do we love in a way that breaks those cycles of harm? This last question was the most pressing for me, especially as a young person growing up in a conservative Christian tradition. This saying by Jesus was especially confusing:
“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. … Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:27-31, NRSV)
These words were at once lovely and horrifying to me. It was easy enough to know who at least some of my enemies were, but what did it mean to love them? What did it mean to pray for someone who had abused me? What did that mean for me? Was this an indirect confirmation of what I had absorbed in my religious surroundings, that I had somehow deserved abuse? Was turning the cheek part of the punishment, something I deserved for being a genderqueer, bisexual kid? My teenage self struggled to make sense of it all - and decided against it. If that was what Jesus meant, I wouldn’t have any part of it. Don’t get me wrong; I was a true believer, and I coped largely by clinging to the emphasis on peace and justice in the messages of Jesus and the prophets. It was clear that speaking up against oppression was something that could and should be done, and I could follow their examples in whatever ways made sense in my life.
But the Sermon on the Mount still lingered, with that difficult word about loving my enemies. I wanted to love everyone. If for no other reason, I wanted to be able to love myself, and hatred made that difficult. And as a true believer, I wanted to be able to take Jesus’ words seriously in a way that made sense. I was around 20 years old, just beginning to understand all the work involved with healing my own personal trauma, let alone how to engage with the larger suffering of the wider world. This is what I was wrestling with in life when I first encountered the works of Walter Wink and learned a new way to understand unlearning hatred and even loving my enemies.
This felt even more explicit in Matthew’s version, with the addition of: “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:41, NRSV) Growing up, “going the second mile” just meant to put my needs last and not hold it against someone who took advantage of me. Wink pointed out that this interpretation could even lead to “collaboration with the oppressor.” Later, this possibility was vividly described by a friend of mine who told me she had been taught this verse growing up as an encouragement to be kind to the overworked soldier who just needed a helping hand – with never a word that he represented both the violent, cruel occupation of Jesus’ homeland or the symbolic power of Roman imperial might.
Further, Wink put my own rejection of these interpretations into words that I could recognize: “Jesus’ teaching, viewed this way is impractical masochistic, and even suicidal. An invitation to bullies and spouse batterers to wipe up the floor with their supine Christian victims.” (ibid) For me, “turning the other cheek” was functionally inseparable from “looking the other way.” It was the powerful’s way of guilting us into silence and inaction. It protected their power by helping keep in check what Wink called the “natural reaction to being slapped, sued, or forced to carry a soldier’s pack,” which was “irritation, outrage, or violence. / The structure of violence is quite simple. Do unto others as they have done unto you.” (ibid)
This latter insight showed me where I had been caught. “The structure of violence is quite simple. Do unto others as they have done unto you.” I could feel the power of outrage and anger inside of me. It was a protective force, but it could also consume me. By itself, I would just repeat the harm. I would enter into that same cycle, and likely hurt others in the same way that I had been hurt. I could feel the trap: fight back, and become like those who had harmed me, or do nothing, and allow myself and others to get hurt again and again. Wink offered an alternative that opened up a way to stay grounded in goodwill without giving into the demands of oppressors. Although Wink’s work on this subject has now been around for at least three decades (I first encountered it in Engaging the Powers, published in 1992), I still meet enough people who are unfamiliar with these ideas that I think it is worthwhile to repeat them again today. (His books go into much greater detail on historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts to support these conclusions, which are not without controversy. I’m offering them here more as an introduction.)
In the case of turning the other cheek, the setup is that the first blow would be a backhanded strike, the back of the right hand striking the other person’s right cheek. The point was less to cause physical injury than to humiliate and degrade, “inserting a person back in the social role … as an inferior.” Wink suggested that this was a common method for those in a position of power – masters, husbands, parents, Roman occupiers – to assert their dominance over others – slaves, wives, children, and occupied Jews. In this way, the power structure could be reinforced through humiliating, degrading, and dehumanizing the marginalized. “The whole point,” Wink taught, “was to force someone who was out of line to get back in line.” But when you turned the other cheek, a backhand was no longer possible:
“The left cheek now offers a perfect target for a blow of the fist. But only equals fought with fists as we know from Jewish sources. … By turning the cheek then, the inferior party is saying ‘I’m not inferior to you. I’m a human being. I refuse to be humiliated any longer. I am your equal.’” (ibid)
A similar dynamic is behind the second example, giving up your shirt. The setup here is a poor person has been taken to court to collect a debt. We know the person is poor because their only collateral is their outer garment. The Hebrew scriptures (in Deuteronomy 24) put a limit on this, requiring that the creditor had to return the cloak before evening so that the poor person could sleep in it and not risk exposure in the night. But Palestine in the first century was overflowing with economic injustice, supported and encouraged by Roman imperialism. With the system set against them, a poor person in debt had little hope – with “nothing left but the clothes on their backs to use the system against itself.” By offering their inner garment, effectively their underwear, the poor person turns the shame of this situation against the wealthy and powerful creditor:
“He has said in effect, ‘you want my robe? Here! Take everything! Now you’ve got all that I have except my body. Is that what you’ll take next?’ Imagine the debtor leaving court naked. His friends and neighbors aghast, inquire ‘what happened?’ He explains. They join his growing procession which now resembles a victory parade. / This is guerilla theater folks. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been [publicly] unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution.” (ibid)
The third example is going the extra mile. The military was often on the move across the empire, and Roman law allowed a soldier to impress a person to carry a load. This was no small requirement, as packs often weighed 60 to 85 pounds, plus weapons. Some higher-ranking soldiers had slaves or donkeys, but forced labor of subjugated people “was a constant feature in Palestine from Persian to late Roman times.” Wink reported that this compulsory service was so despised that, at times, a whole village might flee to avoid “being forced to carry soldier’s baggage.” However, it seemed that even the empire recognized the physical limits of human beings and limited carrying gear to only one mile. A soldier who compelled a person to carry baggage more than a mile could be subject to a centurion’s discipline, from paying a fine to enduring a flogging. So what would a soldier do if a person refused to give up the pack and went the second mile? Wink taught:
“… from a situation of servile impressment, the oppressed have once more seized the initiative. They’ve taken back the power of choice. They have thrown the soldier off balance by depriving him of the predictability of his victim’s response. … Now he must make a decision for which nothing in his previous experience has prepared him. … Jesus does not encourage Jews to walk the second mile in order to build up merit in heaven or to be pious, or to kill the soldier with kindness. Rather he is helping an oppressed people to find a way to protest and neutralize [an] onerous practice despised throughout the empire.” (ibid)
As a student of biblical studies, I am aware of the arguments over the legitimacy of Wink’s exegetical conclusions. Those discussions are interesting and even important. But as a student of my own heart, what was - and is – important to me was finding a pathway out of that trap: fight back, and become like those who had harmed me, or do nothing, and allow myself and others to get hurt again and again. Wink’s alternative approach, to both Jesus’ words and more generally to breaking the cycle of violence - made sense of, provided a vocabulary for, and pointed toward some practical skills to deal with what I was going through in my life and in the world. And this is the understanding I took with me into the broader world, as an activist, teacher, peace worker, and pastor.
Wink also pointed out that these were just examples, not rules to be followed in a rigid way. In fact, they might only be effective once or twice, since oppressive systems have proved to be incredibly adaptable over time. The examples, then, are meant to spark our imaginations and give us confidence that we can respond to difficult situations in a way that exposes injustice, recovers our agency, asserts our humanity, and also provides the enemy with an opportunity to join us in transformation. This last point is how these creative acts of resistance relate to loving our enemy. Hating our enemy and responding violently dehumanizes the other, while passively accepting oppression dehumanizes ourselves. Creative resistance allows me to respond with goodwill, without demeaning either myself or the other. It provides a space for change to happen, breaking out of the patterns of hatred and violence. At least for me, unlearning hatred for my enemy became part of setting me free to love myself and my community. All the energy that hatred and despair burned through, I could receive back as a gift, and share it with others who had also been wounded and marginalized. As bell hooks wrote,
“Without changing structures of domination, we leave in place the culture of lovelessness. / Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth. Only love can give us the strength to go forward in the midst of heartbreak and misery. Only love can give us the power to reconcile, to redeem, the power to renew weary spirits and save lost souls. The transformative power of love is the foundation of all meaningful social change. Without love our lives are without meaning. Love is the heart of the matter. When all else has fallen away, love sustains.” (Salvation: Black People and Love)
Over the years, I have found other words and other paths and tools to help me heal from trauma, resist oppression, and build community where solidarity, justice, and joy are the norms, rather than the exceptions. But in many ways, my journey started here, with Jesus and Walter Wink. This is where I learned that it was possible to love, even amid hate, and break the cycle of violence in my own heart, even if it was not broken anywhere else. That hope – and commitment – put me in touch with a long history of people forming just and compassionate communities in the face of hatred and oppression, and continues to carry me through life today. Whatever path we take to get here, I am convinced that this is the way forward, and I am glad to be here with you.
