Hey guys, I have been thinking about starting a blog for
awhile. This is not particularly because I think I am someone whom you should
listen to, but because I think there are some discussions that need to start
happening--I hope to start generating those discussions. If I had to put a
category on what I am to be talking about, I would say these discussion will
all be around worldview.
A worldview is something we all hold. It is not merely your
thoughts and beliefs about the world, but how you actually live within the
world. The way we operate within the world proclaims what we believe to be true
about it. Sometimes--oftentimes, perhaps--something we hold to be true (or wish
to be true) is at a clear conflict with how we live our lives. I see this
happening in how we, as a culture, celebrate certain things in song, film,
literature, etc. So let's starting talking about it. If we want to celebrate
something that we don't believe in, then why not start believing in it? Why not
allow this be a forum for seeking truth and
learning from one another?
(If you have not seen Ender's Game and would like to watch
it without knowing the ending, you should stop reading. If you don't care to
watch the movie, you will still be able to track with this [and you should
totally watch it].)
For better or for worse, I have decided to lead out with a
particular finicky topic: loving our enemies. The movie Ender's Game is all for
it. (Sorry if you are all about the book, for I did not read it. This post is
about the movie) The movie opens with
the text, "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him
well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him" and
that theme follows its way right on through. The first time we see it is when a
bully tries to jump the main character, Ender. He cleverly (for he has
"understood him well enough to defeat him") defends himself but the
bully ends up injuring his head, going unconscious, and gets sent home that
way. Ender is distraught and shows an uncomfortable love for this character
whom the movie has prepared the audience, us, to hate.
In his next school, Ender winds up being on the team of an
awful leader. Ender repeatedly turns his cheek and respects this guy--he loves
him--a person whom the writers do virtually everything to make us despise. He
treats Ender unfairly, does not pay Ender respect, is prideful, etc., but Ender
continues to play the game of enemy-love.
And, of course, this plays out all the way through to the
end. Ender gets tricked into completely obliterating his enemy--it was only
because he had them completely figured out that he was able to destroy them.
When they reveal to him that what he had just done was in fact a real life
event, not a simulation like he thought, he was again distraught. Ender was
always trying to be an agent of peace throughout the entire movie, and he had
become his worst nightmare, albeit unbeknownst to him. He makes amends at the
very end by encountering the enemy of his land, an alien (the only one left
alive?), and promising to take the egg to a planet in which the enemy race
could rebuild and repopulate.
Ender believed in loving his enemies, and his actions--as
best he could--proved that belief. When I watch this movie, that is something I
celebrate. I believe that when we know someone just as 'enemy', (or just as anything for that matter:
'terrorist', 'Southerner', 'democrat', 'republican', 'this', 'that') it is
extremely easy to despise them, because they are not a person in our mind--they
are what we have made them. I can easily hate the idea of someone, but when I
meet them and see they deal with the same crap I do and share the same
struggles, it becomes much more difficult.
As a culture, though, we have two stumbling blocks in front
of us if we would like to participate in Ender's call to arms: tolerance and
natural selection.
Our post-modern tolerance and inclusivism have really just
become a veil for the opposite--for betraying true friend/neighbor/enemy-love.
We claim to tolerate everyone, but if someone does not also share and employ the same
definition of tolerance than they are intolerable. We claim to include everyone,
but if someone has a moral/ethical/truth opinion that goes against the
group-grain, than they are excluded. Tolerance and inclusivism have become nice
dressings to catch our attention while intolerance and exclusivism have been
smuggled in the backdoor. Are we tolerant towards people who are pro-choice? How about pro-life? Are we inclusive to homosexuals? What about homophobics? Or have we simply settled on one-side and relegated the other to sub-human (even sub-enemy?). It will be impossible to love our enemies, let alone
get to know them, if we continue to hold to this cultural worldview of fake
tolerance.
Our naturalistic belief, grounded majorly in a
survival-of-the-fittest ethic, instantly cuts from the tree this enemy-love
branch we are sitting on. There is simply no way to incorporate a call to
enemy-love if our only good/bad paradigm is based in a Darwinian worldview. (Side note: this is not an appeal for or against evolutionary theory [but it can turn into that if you'd like] but to recognize the worldview that it derived from and still acquires its energies.) If humans came about by the success of the powerful over their enemies, and human progression and furtherance is what we strive for, then why would we romanticize the opposite. There is nothing within this worldview which says that would be a good thing at all--silly, at best, and evil, at worst. If destroying our enemies is how we survive, and 'survival of the fittest' is the name of the game, then enemy-love simply has no space here.
So, let's say this is something we affirm. We want to back
this idea of loving our enemies. What do we do next? What does this ethic say
to our military? To our gun-ownership? What does it say to our labels?
Terrorists? The others? Our next-door neighbor we hate? The guy at school
that we have written off? Our ex-girl/boyfriend? The person s/he cheated on us with? Let's not hold this in theory (because if it stays there then it is
not something we truly believe anyway), but think about it in concrete
terms. What does it mean to love my
enemy and how do we do it?
Let me know your thoughts! Am I wrong? Is this something you
even want to celebrate?
