by Lee Cheek
One Heart At a Time
“…you should become fools so that you may become wise.” 1 Corinthians 3:18
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48
It is so hard to stop fighting. It is so easy to start. Here’s the scene: A room full of toys. A child is playing with one of them. Enter another child looking for a toy. What happens next?
Right. You all know: a fight over the only toy (among many) that the first child has. Punches are thrown. Tears. Screams. Parents enter. Blame ensues: I had it first! She hit me first! But he pulled my hair! She bit me!
This is so common among children AND adults that one might suspect we are hard-wired to ramp up our responses in the heat of conflict. In 2003 researchers in London discovered that, indeed, we are.1
Pairs of volunteers were connected to a mechanical device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other’s fingers. Although they were instructed to take turns applying equal amounts of pressure, the machines recorded that each volunteer typically responded with 40% more force than they had just experienced. Each partner was convinced that he was responding with equal force. A game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate, then hard pokes.
Commenting on this study, Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, wrote that the research teaches us that “our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.”2
In other words, the pain we receive seems to be more painful than the pain we produce.
Frankly, I find this personally sobering. I know from life experience, that conflicts can escalate quickly, but I usually think it is the other person’s fault.
As the study would imply, the truth of this is much easier to see when we are not personally involved. I think this knowledge of tit for tat escalation is what had us on the edge of our seats for 18 days as we watched events unfold in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Who was going to respond with the additional force that would set off an all-against-all conflagration?
It is unclear what is going to happen in the delicate negotiations to restructure Egypt’s government. But we are beginning to learn a little about what has happened so far.
After a failed effort in 2005, leaders of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement began training in non-violent activism which prepared them years in advance for the events in both Tunisia and Egypt.3 Rather foolish in the face of repressive regimes you might say.
But like Gandhi, King, Mandela, and their followers, the democracy activists were whole-heartedly and fearlessly committed to meeting their enemies without returning the harm they perceived they had received. Even if it meant they would lose their lives.
To be sure, not all non-violent action succeeds in ways measured by the world. People die, regimes stay in place. Worse repression or worse tyrants may follow. But, as a Christian, I believe like Mother Teresa that I am not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Faithful to the practice of opening of my heart to all my brothers and sisters, especially those with whom I disagree, and especially those whose actions I must oppose.
In today’s reading from Matthew, the centerpiece of the Sermon on the Mount, we are asked to respond to provocation not with equal force—which research tells us we cannot do anyway—but with the bravest generosity beyond any requirement of law that we can muster.
Not in order to shame or expose the baseness of the other who has wronged us. But in order to change ourselves that we might live creative lives, uncontaminated by resentment and angry self-righteousness.
The very extravagance of these instructions wisely takes into account our desire for distorted payback that gives our tormentors way too much real estate in our soul.
As Christians, we are given the freedom to judge for ourselves what that might look like for us in any given situation. On some occasions, a smile might be our most generous response, the bravest thing we can do. And who knows. It just might be enough.
Sometimes all we can do is pray. Yet know this: when we take time to pray for our enemies and include them in our circle of concern, we admit them into our hearts and are eventually blessed by the liberating truth that the rain and sun are equally theirs.
So here’s the question Paul is asking us today: Do you want this foolish, extravagant, wholehearted generosity towards others to be the foundation of your life? If so, then relax into the Company of Fools, he says, and it’s all yours. As you build your temple with care on this foundation, you will begin to experience a world beyond tit for tat for ... boom!
Now I can’t end without addressing the troublesome last sentence of the today’s Gospel: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
I know many of us have been damaged and emotionally crippled by exhortations to be “perfect.” In fact, according to Dr. Brené Brown who researches vulnerability at the University of Houston, perfection as it is known today is actually one of the ways that we use to avoid opening our hearts and becoming vulnerable to life’s experiences, including love and connectedness.4
So I’m going to offer up a contemporary paraphrase of what I think Jesus understood as the heavenly Father’s “perfection” that we are to imitate. If you like, gaze at the screen upon the beautiful 6th century icon--which happens to be from Egypt, St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. It is the Christ Pantocrator, “Christ, Ruler of All.” And then, if you like, imagine Jesus speaking these words, taken from an Abbey Lincoln song:
"Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life each and every day ... And keep your hand wide open. Let the sun shine through, 'cause you can never lose a thing if it belongs to you ... Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life each and every day ... And the hand's unclenched and open, gifts of life and love it brings, so keep your hand wide open if you're needing anything ... Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life, each and every day.”5
Live foolishly. Live generously. Amen.
1 Sukhwinder S. Shergill et al. “Two Eyes for an Eye: The Neuroscience of Force Escalation.” Science 11 July 2003: 18.
2 Daniel Gilbert .“He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t.” The New York Times July 24, 2006
3 Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution.” The New York Times February 16, 2011.
4 Brené Brown. “The Price of Invulnerability.” TEDxHouston. YouTube video. 2010
5Abbey Lincoln. “Throw It Away” Track 4 from Golden Lady. InnerCity Records 1117, 1981. Link
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