Category Archives: freedom

freedom, justice, peace, solidarity

Pacifism in Light of Freedom, Justice, Solidarity, and Peace

I’ve had this post in me for months. Nearly a year actually. This post seeks to re-look at pacifism in light of what freedom, justice, peace, and solidarity are. This is in one way, the next logical step for my study in theological language: a series of definitions. This is to show that the real discussion around violence and non-violence is about how to properly understand the language that shapes us and the categories that constitute the discourse, rather than simply shouting louder or moralizing one’s desires.

So quickly, a refresher. The words I have focused on are freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. I have sought to give my own definitions elsewhere, but I shall sum them up here:

Freedom: Christian freedom is the space and power provided by the Christian community (and God) to be and do the things your Christian community (and God) needs or asks of you. In short, freedom is not about choice, but the recognition that the subject is constituted by the community and the word freedom encapsulates the desires, goals, or telos that the community calls the member to seek. In Christianity, this is love because the community is formed by, and therefore called to, love. Importantly, this is not a tame love. This love will show itself throughout the rest of this post. It is not safe, but it is good.

Justice: Christian justice seeks to holistically set relationships aright. Justice is to take people and their problematic relationships — out of their imbalance, abuse, and brokenness — and to transform/heal people and their relationships that they may flourish. Justice is redemption work. It is reconciliation work.

Solidarity: Christian solidarity is not representative; rather, it is choosing to live with the marginalized and seeking to empower the voice of those who have been silenced. Solidarity is a partisan justice: justice that seeks the good for the hurt and hurt-er alike by propping up the victim while calling into question the victimizer (who is killing them-self as well).

Peace: Christian peace is living out and participating in the continuing redemption by God through grace and love. Peace is not the silencing of parties, instead it is altering the very logic or fabric of life as we know it. The outcome is that swords are turned into plowshares. We live peacefully and hope for true peace at the end of things where everything is made new.

I believe I am right when I say Love is the Movement (of Freedom, Justice, Reconciliation, and Solidarity) because love is the action that knits us back together in the face of rupture. Love exists in a separate economy, with grace, rather than an economy of bargain and the self. In fact, love must exist in its own way because it is clear that the status quo revels in death at its telos and its method. Love brings us out of the cycle of death and into a new way of relating to one another; love brings us into the freedom of the Christian community. Only in love, then, can justice, solidarity, and peace be realized because they exist in a different economy than self-serving power. Thus a crucial characteristic of this love is its universality. It is not selective. It is not exclusive. It demands nothing, but is for all. In this way, love is embodied as a pure gift. It is by its very definition: grace.

Also love inspires hope in the darkest of times. Despite the threat of death, love exposes the negative poverty of death. With love acting as love, rather than converting over to the economy of death, love stays true. With love as the key or method to true, holistic reconciliation, it must embody from where it comes: the kenotic, divine economy. Thus to live out the Christian freedom is to identify with Christ. To live the Christ love is to embody Christ.

So why say all this about subjects that seem to have little affect on why violence is problematic? Violence is problematic because it runs contrary to the Christological-biblical life I have just laid out. Simply, the Christian life is a life of change from one way of life to another, from one economy to another. The new hope we have — the Christological hope we live — is that the past does not have to rule the present, nor does the past have to command the future. Come what may, the Christian life is a work of love that seeks to mend people together, not enable people to make others disappear from sight. The Christian life seeks to make visible all who have been made invisible so that all may live well together.

Thus the Christian life has no room for the actions of violence and war because it has no room for the economy of death. In fact, the Christian life not only says that we will not make you die for our desires, but also that we shall seek to help you and die if necessary in the process because the Christian economy is the Christ love for all.

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freedom, justice, love, memory, peace, reconcile, redemption, solidarity

Love is the Movement (of Freedom, Justice, Reconciliation, and Solidarity)

This post functions in a few ways. It is partly a clarification for a few conversation partners at school. It is also a synthesizing work on the way towards a post on pacifism that I have long promised in light of the previous language work. Without further delay:

We begin our existence with break or rupture. With death. And throughout life relationships of all kinds die: between communities, within communities, or strictly between two people. At one time the relationship is there in a positive way, and in the next following second, it is gone, it is sick or broken or dead. This death is not merely the virtue of not being properly alive, but has taken on its own identity as broken — judged in relationship to how life should be, but toxic in its being.

And yet, the Christian life seeks to live contrary to this. Forgiveness, reconciliation, and the flourishing of life is not only the telos of humanity because of divine interruption, but the future living itself today from the same divine work and the promises therein.

Nevertheless, there exists a gap between life and death. The Christian answer, for the action between the act of death and the act of new life, is the Christological movement into love by way of a sacramental life that remembers Jesus in terms of anamnesis. God looked into the fullness of death and did not choose death. Love was the method — the way of being — instead. Through our active and participatory remembrance, God moves us into life by his love and her grace. In a blink, relationships can now in their time (in their own blink) be restored.

As such, the sacramental life — including the in-breaking of the rule of God — looks death in its face. It refuses to trivialize death. And yet, the rule of God says that in present, the repercussions from the past do not hold sway. Indeed, the toxicity of death is arrested by love in the act of reconciliation. This is justice.

However, the forgiveness of today is not exactly retrogressive. While death is stopped, and its eternal sting is indeed taken away in the christological act of redemption, we do not work history backwards. The old covenant of Israel was not dissolved backwards, nor the promises of God renounced to the troublesome humanity; but rather, the curtain between the Holy of Holies and the people was ripped from top to bottom at Jesus’ death — the Christological love in death that looked Death in the face opened the present and future to the continuation of God’s work and plan.

History, and the sufferings within history, leave wounds that linger as scars. We long for the full healing, and at times, we do receive it, but often today, the death in the past still exists. The wounds from the spear and nails were left in the Lamb who will be recognized as the “Lamb who was slain.” Nazi death camps, divorce, parental abandonment, murder, still exist as scars even after the reconciliation between people. But the hope we have is that the past does not have to rule the present, nor does the past have to command the future. Reconciliation today informed by the future eschaton makes the past the past as it confronts the pain and conditions of the past in the present. Rather than simply perpetuating death, love moves us into the freedom to love.

The problems of the past, however, are not left to simply be ignored. But the problems and death of the past is not to be left to memorials, like we do with war memorials. Instead, the past is to be remembered to know who we are and to make sure that we have reconciled today what was in the past that still lives in the present. This is justice formed from the memory of a just God who took pain and healing seriously. This justice is working towards the righting relationships, towards reconciliation.

But how do we live in love towards reconciliation? The death of the past living in the present conflicts with those of us Christologically formed. The answer is yet again Christological, because it is incarnational: a loving solidarity against the perpetuated evils. We are immediately in conflict with the sting of death as it continues today.

After true reconciliation life is able to flourish, relationships are established and strengthened, because swords have become plowshares. This is peace. We see glimpses of it today (and indeed participate in it one hopes) informed by eschatological memory and the small reconciliations that do happen. But while death is rejected in favor of love and reconciliation, death still exists. For now, formed by memory and urged on by hope, we work in love to participate in what divine reconciliation we can.

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anthropocentrism, freedom, liberation

Freedom Defined

This is part of a study in theological language, the rest of the posts can be found here.

Freedom is a word that is often fought over: one wants freedom, one fights for freedom, one will kill for freedom. However, such an argument assumes a certain definition of freedom, and this is where the real fight lies.

Largely understood, freedom is the ability to make a choice for one’s own. Yet, this is not the whole definition, there are underlying assumptions. Freedom understood by the government is making space for someone to follow their desires, or said differently, the empowering of people to seek after happiness. I’ve argued elsewhere that the government understands its role as coercively subordinating all other social institutions to itself, and with this in mind, I dare say when we speak of freedom in America, we speak using the definition of the government. The notion of a free market — to act on one’s own with limited or no regulation, is a case in point.

However, I want to back up. Before the government grants one freedom, one must be a citizen of that government. Quite simply, one must enter into a community in order to understand that community’s notion of freedom and what freedom really means, and thereby engage in said freedom. In America, as an American, I have rights that are in theory guaranteed (though are continually restricted, or subject to a presidential declarations) and am urged towards enacting the freedom that the community desires. One instance is President Bush’s response to September 11 — go and spend money in the market, feel free to do so. In fact, if you do not exercise such freedom, in some ways, your loyalty may be questioned. Another case in point, try not voting and see what people do. And I don’t mean be lazy about not voting, I mean choose not to take the freedom to vote with a damn good reason.

If the reader has been paying close attention, one would note that in the previous paragraph, the definitional use of the word freedom ceased to be moored to “empowering of people to seek after happiness.” Rather now, one is born or conscripted (as if those are two different things) into the “freedom” of the state. Simply understood, freedom is tied to a community. To be free to do something necessitates a certain communal allegiance. To go willy nilly after pleasures at the expense of others, or to seek to live one’s own life style come hell or high water, means that this pursuit is defined by a certain notion of freedom that comes from a community. Freedom largely understood is at the heart of what a community cares about. Freedom is what the community urges its people towards.

Now, liberation theology (and much of “liberal” and even some “conservative” theology) makes a great deal of the term freedom. Insofar as those seeking freedom understand the term as the pursuit of happiness, I am suspicious and reticent. For those who are claiming a Christological understanding of liberation, but overlay an enlightenment notion of freedom that is inherently structured from within the nation-state I find a conflict. At least with me.

Now, there is a different sense of freedom in the church, as far as I understand it. Quite simply, the freedom of the church is death, to die, to sleep (perchance to dream — I couldn’t resist). Like in our baptism into the community of Jesus, we die to previous attachments, however, we also are identified with Jesus as well, of whom we are not greater than. Importantly, Jesus made mention of this: if the master dies, why wouldn’t the disciples suffer as well? For they are no better.

I certainly encourage the freedom of Jesus, but it cannot be understood as seeking after wants. Jesus came proclaiming the basileia and died for it. Rightly understood, the freedom of Jesus conflicted with the freedom of the state and religious authorities. Christian freedom is the space and power provided by the Christian community (and God) to be and do the things your Christian community (and God) needs or asks of you. The emphasis of a Christological freedom is both highly political, as it is part of the complex nature of salvation, but also entirely in line with some liberation theology.

The rejection of androcentrism in feminist theology denies men seeking pleasure over women, the rejection of anthropocentrism by eco-feminism denies humanity seeking pleasure over or against creation, the rejection of socio-economic and state oppression by other liberation theologies denies humans seeking pleasure over other humans. Some liberation theologies temper the American pleasure seekers, others are more Christologically and ecclesiologically adept (one can see this in how they deal with martyrdom, for instance), recognizing that pleasure is from God, but its not the governing category. Case in point, solidarity is not pleasure, instead it is joy, because we are together, and suffering, because we are together.

Liberation, salvation in all its complexity, is the aim of God.

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