The Pale Cast of Thought

Christians aren't forbidden to act against evil. But there are rules to this game.

I don’t write about my faith very often.

It’s not because I’m ashamed of it. For me, it’s more a matter of recognizing my limitations. I have no talent for preaching, and no mastery of the source material if I did. I am merely a student (and one who’s far behind on his homework assignments, at that). I also get the feeling that if God wanted me in a monastery He would’ve placed me there, via some mysterious method.

I am, of course, a sinner. Who among us ain’t?

I have sinned in the past, and will sin in the future. Even some arrows I carefully aim will fly wildly off their marks. The best I can do is learn not to miss the same target twice, and to pray for guidance when the field goes dark. I live in New York City. It goes dark a lot.

When I do discuss my faith, it’s usually with close friends who are on a similar bumpy road. Not the same road, not exactly. But close enough to recognize the absurdity of our late-game transformations, if not yet the amazing grace of those. Maybe we’ll never quite understand that part of it, on this side of the Veil. To write about that journey, to an unknown audience of strangers, strikes me as even more absurd. Maybe even very dangerous; it’s easy to get lost in a spell of words, and to maybe accidentally cast one.

But I’ve resolved to do that anyway, during this month of December. Recent events suggest it’s becoming a necessity, something we are being called to do in our own unique ways. Embracing the danger instead of hiding from it.

One great big sign came in the form of a recent post by

Paul Kingsnorth

. Unlike me, Mr. Kingsnorth is a somebody. Thousands of people pay to read his words here on Substack, and many thousands more purchase his books. That makes sense; he is a gifted writer.

He’s also a man on his own long and winding journey home. Like me, he grapples with certain mysteries he finds along those roads. His own have led him past spiritual junctions, in the form of holy wells and other manmade constructs. They once led to a cadre of robot priests, in what remains one of my favorite essays published on this platform.

But the piece in question, The Moses Option, was one I found disturbing. That’s not a criticism: it’s often good to be disturbed, to be unexpectedly shaken by something. It’s easy to fall asleep on these dark paths through the woods, after all.

If I had to narrow down the essay’s main conceit, it would be a Christian argument against committing to positive action in the material world.

In my recent Erasmus Lecture for First Things magazine, I argued against one response to the Void that is growing in popularity: a certain type of ‘civilisational Christianity’, which sees the Christian way as a useful ‘story’ with which to ‘defend Western civilisation.’ This project seeks to use the ministry of Jesus to promote values which are directly opposed to those he actually taught us to live by. Some of the people pushing this supposedly ‘muscular’ brand of the faith are Christian, but many others are agnostics who see the Christian faith as a mythological prop with which they can support their favoured ideologies, be they liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, ‘the Enlightenment’ or whatever. Whether or not the Christian religion is true, in this argument, is less important than whether it is useful.

This is, in other words, just another breed of activism, and it is still at heart a secular project. It seeks to use an unworldly faith to achieve worldly ends, and it will fail for that reason. C. S. Lewis, who was apparently having to deal with the same thing seven decades ago, explained why:

Religions devised for a social purpose, like Roman emperor-worship or modern attempts to ‘sell Christianity as a means of saving civilisation’, do not come to much. The little knots of Friends who turn their backs on the ‘World’ are those who really transform it.

Lewis’s final sentence contains, to use activist language again, the ‘solution’ to the age of the Void. But what on Earth could it mean? And how could it ‘solve’ anything?

Like Kingnorth, I find the debate over whether 21st century Christianity is “muscular” or “based” enough to be just another cat’s paw for the materialists, wielded to rationalize their political preferences or appetites. Here’s a clue: when you find bent men like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris waxing poetic about their “civilizational Christianity”, you’re on the wrong road, friend.

But Kingsnorth goes much further in his critique of Christian action:

More than one person has approached me since my talk to ask if I was advocating ‘doing nothing’ in the face of all the bad things happening in the world. Christ’s clear instruction - ‘do not resist evil’ - is one of his hardest teachings, though there are many more we are equally horrified by: asking those who strike us to do it again; giving thieves more than they demand; loving those who hate us; doing good to those who abuse us. All of these are so counter-intuitive that they have the effect of throwing spiritual cold water into our faces.

Kingsnorth claims the instruction was clear, by which I assume he also means it was literal. So my question is this: Why not stop at the literal instruction?

Why do he — and so many others who profess the faith of Christ — see fit to put words in Jesus Christ’s mouth that were never attributed to him? Why do they see the need to extrapolate his teaching into penumbras, like the song-and-dance politician or the robed jurist?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

Why does Christ use the word “slap” to teach us how to respond to evil? A slap is the most diminutive use of force a person can apply, after all, more an insult than a true act of violence. A lawsuit, meanwhile, is even less directly “violent” than a slap. The evil is inherent in the carelessness for your condition in the aftermath. And while a forced march may indeed imply some coercive threat, what is the source of that coercion? Are we to assume you are being marched at gunpoint? If so, you would have little choice in the matter, even if your captor wanted you to go seven miles instead of one.

The part about giving and lending money is very interesting to me, and may give us a clue about the framing of what is meant by “evil person” here. Are those who ask you for money evil? Even if they promise to pay that money back?

With apologies to Mr. Kingsnorth, the lesson is clearly about those choices we actually have control over, where the end result might cause us discomfort or shame. To return the insult or not. To fight the suit or not. To help carry the load further than asked, to give and lend money freely, even when you’re under no obligation. In each case, we teach the person by giving more than what was asked of us. We also show that we can withstand their slights, inconveniences, and other minor harms.

But, most importantly to my mind, the decisions being made here are all about Y-O-U. How will you, as an individual, respond when one of these small evils comes your way? What will you do, when you are being insulted, harassed or put upon?

This is even harder teaching than implied, thanks in large part to the politicization of Christ’s words. The politicization of all words, in fact. We could blame postmodernism or its Enlightenment predecessors, though I suspect the source of the confusion is much older and deeper. Primordial, maybe. But the result is the loss of distinction between Self and Other, One and Many.

When we fall into the trap of this blurred and twisted Logos, a teaching that is meant for Y-O-U starts to sound like one meant for U-S or for T-H-E-M. Suddenly, the teaching of Jesus Christ mutates into a mere political program or company org-chart. But the Sermon on the Mount is not Republic. That is what amazed the crowds, who were accustomed to the legalese of the Pharisees, the sophists, and other frauds.

It is hard teaching, and I grapple with it too. That’s to be expected. After all, I am a Christian who got in a street fight one Christmas Eve, a car crash on another. I could use all the guidance I can get. I am too quick to anger, too quick to judge. I need to learn to give much more than is asked of me without complaint. I think the only thing I’m starting to get the hang of is praying in secret to my unseen Father. But I’m sure I’ll screw that up too, from time to time. I’m a work in progress.

As mentioned, I’m also not a theologian. But neither were the apostles. Pete and Andy were fishermen. And while I don’t know how many scholars were in those awestruck crowds, I doubt Christ was speaking to them alone, and hoping they would translate for the rest of us dopes at some later date. I have read the words as written, just as they heard the words as spoken. They tell me I should turn the other cheek when I am slapped. They do not tell me to offer up my chest, when I am stabbed in the back.

But most importantly of all, they say nothing — absolutely nothing — about what I am to do when I see someone else being attacked by evil men. Nothing about turning my cheek or head, when I see violence and horror being visited upon my brothers and sisters. Nothing that says, “Let that maniac smash that baby’s head in with a brick.”

I looked and looked, but I cannot find it anywhere.

And yet, that is the leap into the realm of the political and the material that so many readers will make, which Kingsnorth himself claims to lament. An imaginary sociopolitical argument for inaction when my friends and neighbors are being violently attacked or threatened with death or worse. A grand design not just for personal pacifism, but for total inactivism, extrapolated from one who “taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” According to those who read it this way, Christ apparently needs my help to flesh out his words. To fill in those supposed blanks with words of my own.

Is that too harsh? Maybe. Maybe I am breaking another law, by pointing out the splinter. To show him grace, I suppose it’s possible that he agrees with me about my reading, and would not consider me pulling off some sweet Kung Fu moves on a maniac threatening a baby to constitute a form of unholy “activism.” I may not be able to save the world, but I might be able to save that kid.

That said, I remain troubled by the way he confines “resist[ance of] evil” to forms of violence in any context, based on a lowly slap. Even the phrase “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth”, the law which he has come to complete, is less about the violent acts themselves than the cycle of vengeance that leaves everyone blind and toothless at the end.

But if I’m to understand the lesson as a whole, the thread which connects all of these mountain teachings is that I should be prepared to give everything of myself for the sake of others — up to and including my earthly life, if that’s the price tag.

And yet, at the same time that Christ teaches me this lesson, I am to understand that Daniel Penny is a wicked man, for risking his life to protect a bunch of strangers on a subway car. Because we shouldn’t “resist evil”, no matter its form, and even when it’s being done to those around us.

There are many angles to this story that have been hidden by Penny’s evil persecutors. But there are other finer angles that some people may not even be aware of, due to their ignorance of the form of martial art he was employing. When I was discussing the footage with my friend Major

Grant Smith

the other day, we both noted how Penny used the most gentle form of the chokehold technique, and that at one point he even put Neely in what’s known as a “recovery position.” In other words, Penny tried to save as many lives as he could that day, including Jordan Neely’s.

And yet, he acted positively in the face of evil, and Christian pacifists tell me to see this as a form of wickedness in the eyes of God.

Perhaps.

Perhaps George was also a “wicked” man of action, when he skewered that dragon. Or Didymus, who rescued Theodora from a brothel near the end of Diocletian’s psychotic murder spree. Or Sebastian, who fired arrows of truth into the latter villain’s ears. Or even Peter, The Rock, who fought with his sword on the night of Christ’s arrest. What a rogues’ gallery.

That’s not to say that every action committed to fight evil is good, or that there aren’t times when better options than violence exist. There are many stories in our faith, and many human heroes from which to draw forth inspiration. Mr. Kingsnorth is called by another story and man in the form of Moses the Black, which he prefaces with the following claim (emphasis mine):

Christ allows the authorities to kill him, without resistance. His helpless and agonising death sparks a global revolution which is still playing out.

Which is it?

Did he allow it, or was he helpless against it? It can’t be both.

He then goes on to invoke the concept of “total sacrifice” as the Ur command, meaning a full retreat from the world of matter and spacetime. Yet, I am taught that Christ sacrificed himself in our stead, so that I might live and spread God’s joy to the world.

Again: Which is it?

The distinction (or lack thereof) repeats itself in his recounting of the tale of an Egyptian robber and murderer, who saw the Light and became a monk. Kingsnorth claims his story had a fitting end. I agree with him, in the sense that his tale has a mythic roundness to it: a man who plied his bloody trade comes to a bloody end, slain by ghosts of his violent past:

When the monastery was attacked by robbers, he refused to flee. By this time Moses was Abbot himself, and he refused the requests of some of his monks to be allowed to take up arms against the attackers. If they wanted, he told them, they could run, but he would stay. Christ, after all, had told him that those who picked up the sword would die by it. Moses had picked up the sword many times. Now it was his turn to face it. And he did, like a Christian. We are still telling his story 1500 years on.

But, once again, the mythic angles of this story do not suggest inaction. Moses forbids his men from fighting, but it’s not an explicit call to pacifism. Not does he command those men to stay and die by his side. Moses is not helpless, either; he could have fled with the others, or even fought back by himself, Die-Hard-style.

In fact, how do we know he didn’t? We’re told seven others chose to stay with him. Did they stay to fight, or merely to surrender to butchery? It’s not clear to me from the sources, and there was only one surviving witness, apparently:

One day when the brethren were sitting with Abba Moses, he said to them. “Behold, the barbarians are coming today to Scete: you must rise up and flee.” And they said to him. “Will you not flee also, Father?” He said to them, “I have been expecting this day to come for many years, so that the command of our Redeemer may be ful­filled who said. ‘All who take the sword will perish by the sword’ “ (Matthew 26:52). And they said to him. “We will not flee, but will die with you.” He said to them. “This is not my concern, but it is your own desire. Let every man look after himself in the place where he dwells.”

There were seven brothers with him, and after a little while he said to them. “Behold, the barbarians have come near the door.” And the barbarians entered and murdered Moses and six of the brothers. One of the brothers had hidden for fear behind the palm leaves, and he saw seven shining crowns come down and place themselves on the heads of those who had been slain.

Compiled and paraphrased from: The Prologue from Ochrid; Butlers Lives of the Saints. Vol. II; The Paradise of the Holy Fathers. Vol. 1; and The writings of Monk Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis. A.D. 430

Staying behind is something this man chose to do, so that he may complete his story well and reach atonement with the Father. The others? They must do as they see fit, to tell the stories they must tell.

Are all our stories meant to be the same? All paths the same? Every thought, word, and deed indistinguishable from another? Does God want identical clones? Why did He not make us as clones? Why did He separate Self and Other, just as He divided the waters of earth and sky?

Consider a different version of the tale.

In this one, we see a man who allowed a woman and her child to be raped and murdered in his presence, while he stood idly by. He is a strong man, and a veteran well-trained in violence. But in that moment, he failed to risk his life to protect the innocent while they screamed for help. He failed to give more than he was asked in that moment, because he was afraid he’d lose his life in the process. Or perhaps he told himself convenient lies about “turning cheeks” and “loving enemies” and whatnot. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Like Moses, one day our cowardly rationalizer sees the Light of Christ. He also commits himself to a monastery, also learns and grows in mind and spirit. His monastery abuts an orphanage, where kids abandoned by their parents are raised by devoted nurses and nuns. He tends a garden. Life is nice.

One evening, a gang of murderous cartel soldiers shows up. They want to rape the women and children, sell them all as sex slaves, drug mules, and organ “donors”. They plan to kill the monks to cover up their crimes, too, and prove it by shooting his abbot in the yard while he attempts to dissuade them.

How will this story be completed to God’s satisfaction? How will our cowardly monk reach his own atonement with the Father? He must be prepared to give his life, just as Black Moses was. But does he offer it in service to others? Or must he simply surrender to Death without a fight, to protect his pure, shiny, immortal soul from all that blood and grime? That form of surrender is his right, of course. His call. Or it would be, if he were not simultaneously surrendering the lives of others.

Can we not see the selfishness of that choice? The hypocrisy?

Why is the story of St. Die Hard lesser than the story of St. Moses the Robber, given the uniqueness of their roads and angles?

I am not a theologian, and never will be. I probably won’t write any bestselling books, or get paid for speaking engagements, or any of that jazz. But I know that God is not a madman or a fool.

I know that He does not want to see His children suffer at the hands of the unrighteous, become food for the demonically possessed. I know that He wants us to defend others from harm. To act, when we are called upon to act. I’ve learned that much.

Mr. Kingsnorth seems to see such calls to action as a purely Western artifact — the West’s “Big Idea” as he calls it. He links it to the Western man’s seemingly disproportionate fondness for abstraction. But action — the physical doing of a thing — is not an abstraction. You might even say it’s the opposite of abstract.

Our bodies are tools that we send out on missions. They are not going to be the same missions, will not conform to a standard template in this dynamic place of time and distance. Some bodies will be sent to feed the poor, others to heal the sick, others to mend fences and guard walls. Some will be sent to rescue people from dragons, or from the clutches of evil men. All must act in alignment with God’s will, but not identically. They are a body made of bodies, and each body part has it’s own particular design and function.

Christ instructs me to build my house on a rock instead of sand. If we each learn to do our missions well, to heed his words without making up new ones, to offer ourselves while protecting others from harm, what kind of houses will we be building? What would it be like to live in that town, among men and women who will fight, but not for honor. Not for something as paltry and fragile as a slap, or a lawsuit. They will not even fight for themselves, but will fight to the death for each other.

What would such a people look like?

I’ll tell you what I think it would look like.

It would look like an invincible army.

A body made of bodies, each part willing to sacrifice itself, but never the others. Therefore when “we” act, it may superficially look like organized action, but it won’t be anything of the sort. We will each instead be doing as Christ taught us. Never worrying our brows. Never failing to go the extra mile. Loving others as ourselves.

Even loving our enemies, yes, and showing them mercy in defeat. But that’s the secret of mercy, hiding in plain sight: to show mercy to your enemies, you must first defeat them. And by “enemies”, we do not mean those who simply offend us, who slap us or slander us or drag us onto the set of Judge Judy. We mean those who seek to rape and murder those around us. The kind of men who throw bullets and bombs, not slaps and lawsuits. Some love is tough love. I’m sure they’ll be far more lovable when they’re locked in a cage. They may even find the Light themselves in there.

When we see them attack, we must oppose. And in acting to oppose them, we must stake our lives, the way Daniel Penny staked his life. He didn’t drone-bomb Neely, or blow up his pager by remote control, or turn his kids into walking grenades, or any of that evil shit. He stepped into the breach, not the Void. If he died in the effort, I suppose you could call that a sacrifice of sorts. But only of Self, and only of flesh.

That’s what the cross teaches, is it not? The hard rule of sacrifice?

That’s part of it. But Christ was also showing us how to face the final opponent of Death when it arrives. He was not helpless against it, let alone against any of its engineers from Church and State. He could and did defeat it. But he knew that we couldn’t. Not the same way he did, at any rate. We didn’t even understand what it was.

We are not him.

We must work in the world of skin and calories, do the best with the gifts we’re given. When Christ lent his apostles the authority to drive out demons, and sent them among the lost sheep and wolves, did he say: “Good luck, gang. Be sure to hand yourself over to the first crooked cop you see, so they can lock you up and torture you to death.” I don’t remember that part either. I recall something about being “wise as serpents” and “gentle as doves”, of “shaking the dust” from their feet, if and when the heat got too hot.

Christ came to put an end to the older form of sacrifice. Many of the bloodthirsty, eldritch demon-gods of the time demanded their petitioners sacrifice the lives of others. They still do. They are awakening from their long slumbers, everywhere we look.

They and their human pawns must be fought, by those who are made for fighting. It is not a “Western” idea to be called to battle evil. It is written in Eternity by the angels.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

There are those who will say this prayer refers to “spiritual battle”, and I agree. But I also know that the spiritual intersects with the material, that evil manifests itself to spread misery, chaos and ruin. It grows fangs and claws, lurks in dark alleys, feeds on innocence and blood. And when it does, some of us will be tasked to stand in its way, and to fight with our minds and bodies. To use every gift and tool He gave us, to save what we can of His Creation.

Not all of us, surely. Call me a chauvinist, but I would never ask a woman to fight. Would I ask a man to run? Maybe. If I were Black Moses, and I knew that’s how the Lord wanted my particular story to end. But there are other stories. We tell these with our lives, to rejoice in the Story of Christ’s Victory. That victory is complete already. Our own work marks the epilogue, at best. But we still need to write that part, and it will come in as many forms as we do.

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I don’t know if Mr. Kingsnorth will ever read these words, or care to respond if he does. Like I said, he is a somebody, and I am a nobody. Our paths are similar in some ways, wildly different in others.

He has attained enough wealth from his work to tour the sacred, hidden places of the world. I am struggling to pay the rent and keep the lights on. He flies from land to faraway land. I ride in the subway cars with the strangers — some of them very strange indeed. Some of them very dangerous, in fact, possessed by demons of many species and appetites.

I don’t say any of that out of envy. This is all probably as it should be, the two of us placed where God wants us. In fact, I am grateful for my given place in this Story, for all that I don’t have as well as all I do. Until I’m told otherwise, I am exactly where I need to be.

I also know there may come a day — a blessed day? — when I am called to act in defense of my brothers and sisters. My fair city isn’t getting any better. Her rulers have turned the law upside down, to punish the innocent and reward the guilty. They salivate at the thought of me — or you, or anyone else — doing their job for them. Acting to defend the weak from the strong, rescue the prey from the predator. They long to sacrifice such heroes to their gods — and especially the Christian ones. We are a delicacy, I’ve been told.

That’s supposed to be their job, by the way: to defend and serve, the proxy duty we’re supposedly paying for. But, much like the U.S. Department of Immigration now exists to ensure the border is undefended, they have abrogated that duty. They have chosen inaction, in the face of evil and gruesome harm.

Does that make them better followers of Christ than I am?

Is that what God wants?

Or is it what some people dearly want Him to want, because it implies so much, while demanding so little?

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