the long shadow

in the last couple of months i’ve written several times about torture, or at least, my own feelings as i try to find a sense of faith (beyond despair) in human goodness or perhaps of what the place for G-D is in all of this mess there is… knowing that being a decent human being is something i fall far short of all too often and that being human, i am not beyond the capacity for violence, as much as i desire to live in peace…

i think this will be helpful… Speaking of Faith: the long shadow of torture

Rejali’s immersion in 40 years of social scientific research also yields the plain, unsettling message that these men and women who have perpetrated torture were probably not sadists, not just a “few bad apples” who defied the norm. The demonstrated if shocking norm of human behavior is that at least half of us are capable of inflicting harm on another human being under orders, in the right circumstances, with the right kind of authority behind the orders. […]

Whether you call it “enhanced interrogation” or “torture,” it profoundly traumatizes the lives and societies of those who experienced it and those who perpetrated it. Coming to terms with these human consequences will be the work not of days but of years and generations. For we know that in our lives, both individual and collective, traumas that we do not face will continue not merely to haunt but to define us. – from krista’s journal: Facing the Malleability of Human Nature (italics my own)

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all man is that being who invented the gas chambers at Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered the gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

– Victor E. Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

LB

we love with our innards

Ms. Tippett: Something I’ve always been intrigued by, though, in my conversations with Orthodox Christians, is how this attunement to, to the senses is also very earthy, also has a very earthy side. It’s not all just about gorgeous images in worship. And, you know, I just, I wanted to read this passage that you quoted in your book Incarnate Love, which, of course, is a central theme of the Easter story. And, you know, the example you used of talking about this is, is how it was articulated in, by Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, right?

Mr. Guroian: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: And you wrote, he said, “Alyosha, my boy, so I want to live and go on living even if it’s contrary to the rules of logic, even if I do not believe in the divine order of things. The sticky young leaves emerging from their buds in the spring are dear to my heart, so is the blue sky, and so are some human beings, even though I often don’t know why I like them. I’ll get drunk on my own emotion. I love these sticky little leaves and the blue sky. That’s what, you don’t love those things with reason, with logic. You love them with your innards, with your belly.“

Mr. Guroian: Yes. And of course, the irony, which is so often a device used by Dostoevsky is that the principal atheist who’s rebelling against God in the novel is articulating precisely what the Christian experience is or ought to be…

from this conversation.

LB