CHEEKY

Must a Christian turn the other cheek when his face has been slapped ?

Well of course he must. That’s his basic duty. He wouldn’t be a Christian otherwise. It’s the very definition of Christianism.

Or is it ?

First, let’s remain on a squalid pragmatic level. If you turn the other cheek, my friend, you must be prepared to be slapped again. And again. And then worse, cause the fury can grow and the attacker get really mad. Oh, of course he’s supposed to be disarmed by your own candid goodness, fall on his knees and cry out : “Forgive me, cause I didn’t know what I was doing !”

Oh, he might do so. Why not. He might.

But then he might not. He might hate you for being sent back to his guilt and get really riled up by what to him will be nothing more than your holier-than-thou attitude. He might kill you. He might kill six million Jews.

So… If you turn the other cheek, you must be prepared to call yourself Gandhi, Rabin, Lennon, Luther King, Malcolm X. Is it a Christian’s basic duty ? I don’t think so.

The difference between a hippie and a Christian is that a hippie thinks that love is easy, while a Christian knows that it’s NOT. To turn the other cheek is HUGE. It’s holiness. Saints can do it and stay in tune. Not me. It would be false, and so OUT OF TUNE it would make me cringe.

A Christian’s basic duty is to be a “good enough Christian”, in the same sense as Winnicott’s “good enough mother” : according to this psychologist, the woman who wants to be too good a mother does more harm than a mother who’s conscious she’s not perfect. A Christian’s basic duty is to know his limits and be humble.

What happens otherwise ? If you try to be better than what you are, you BECOME holier-than-thou. That’s Nietszche’s concept of resentment and Hannah Arendt’s comments on hidden cruelty behind compassion.

Nietszche : “They decree 'one approved unegoistic actions and called them good from the point of view of those to whom they were done, that is to say, those to whom they were useful; later one forgot how this approval originated and, simply because unegoistic actions were always habitually praised as good- as if they were something good in themselves.”

And Arendt notes that absolute goodness shares with absolute evil "the elementary violence inherent in all strength and detrimental to all forms of political organization." She believes, for example, that Robespierre was a monster born in compassion.

So what IS the basic Christian duty ? Oh, I think Jesus told it “well enough” : “"Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first Commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt. 22:37-39). The dude never asked me to turn the other cheek.

So how do I treat my neighbor ? Well, I treat him according to his desire to improve himself or to persevere in error. How do I know ? By the size of his ego according to his self. When the ego becomes bigger, I know it’s time for kung-fu. When the ego becomes miserable, I know it’s time for compassion. In philosophy, it’s known as Pascal’s anthropological argument. Pascal recognizes “Man is neither angel nor beast” and puts forth a technique of dealing with those who think too highly of themselves, as well as those who think too lowly of themselves:

"If he exalts himself, I humble him.
If he humbles himself, I exalt him.
And I go on contradicting him
Until he understands
That he is a monster that passes all understanding."

It’s even "simpler" : "Love, and do anything you want" (Rabelais).

Even hate ? Yeah, think so. Even hate. Hate is energy. You won’t hurt and you won’t get hurt. As long as there’s no basic hatred.

On the other hand… Your “victim” might have a hard time with this realistic, critical kind of love. I’ll quote the example of a friend I had and who as I see him is now stuck in a rut of error and pride. We fell out, but he tried to “move on” and asked me how I was doing as if nothing had happened. I replied : “If you want to know, you can”. He sighed, as if I had rejected him.

But I hadn’t. My words were literal. If he wants to know, he can. I wrote it all to him. If he wants to know, the door is open. But he doesn’t. He wants to err. And so, a slave to his guilt, he bangs his head against his own walls. All I’m doing is help him meet said walls. Cause as John Lennon put it, “can’t do you no harm to feel your own pain”.

Michael Moore calls this “tough love”. And he knows a thing or two about being a Christian.