A Personal Offering Concerning Self-Respect & Forgiveness, Easter
We approach another Easter. I wish you the blessings of the day and the season.
Like last year, I take the occasion to offer a seasonal thought.
Easter (2024) Part I Part II
As always, I welcome all to share what I have to offer. However, those not wishing to read something regarding religion, in this case Christian, should stop here.
Many have spoken, explicitly or implicitly, of Jesus as an advocate of passivity. Indeed, more than a few have, over time, used biblical presentation of the teachings to their benefit, including supporting passivity by others. Colonialists, slaveholders, and the beneficiaries of both have advocated (or silently supported) the benefits of passivity/resignation by one and all to their current lot in life…to the gain of the advocates (and their silent supporters).
Prime among such references—'turn the other cheek’. When struck, take your beating and ask for another. Offer fresh flesh for another blow. “When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other.” (Matthew 5:39) In short, don’t retaliate.
A conveniently cited line from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount… but also an ahistorical, incomplete and misleadingly limited interpretation.
In this case, biblical scripture provides especially precise language, so precise as to suggest that the specificity matters. The text says explicitly that if someone should strike you on the right cheek then offer the other, i.e., the left cheek. Why the right cheek? Why not just say, as many have said across time, ‘if someone hits you, then the Bible says let them hit you again’? The answer, the meaning, lies, not surprisingly, in context.
We know from decades of study that plus or minus 75% of linguistic meaning lies in context, context meaning nonverbals, relationships (individual and intergroup), settings, culture, …
In the Middle East, one uses one’s right hand to deal with others. Traditionally, this stemmed from regard for sanitation—and respect, since a person used the ‘off-hand’ or left hand to clean themselves at toilet. One performs ‘clean tasks’ such as eating with one’s right hand and so Hudud punishment that includes amputation instructs amputating the right hand in order to force the punished to perform a clean task with an unclean hand (and so suffer ongoing humiliation for the original crime.) Hence, to strike another, other than in all out fight, on the right cheek necessarily means using one’s right hand to strike the other person with the back of one’s own hand, i.e., the back of one’s right hand.
The meaning of a backhand strike survives in Western culture today in the now infrequently used expression ‘I’ll give you the back of my hand’, i.e., a slap. More commonly today the meaning lives in a gesture. A person or an idea deemed unworthy of consideration can receive a wave of the right hand -- back of the hand facing out—in a show of dismissal of value or lack of worthiness of consideration.
Additionally, the ’back of the hand’ was an established way in Middle Eastern (and Western) culture to slap a socially lesser, such as a slave, servant, child…or woman. Its use provided an ironic show of restraint in the use of power by a social superior toward an inferior while simultaneously acknowledging the other’s inferiority. Equals strike equals full on and not backhandedly, to do otherwise amounts to an insult.
Returning to scripture. Just what is Jesus reportedly saying?
Should someone strike you on the right cheek with the back of their hand, first, refuse the premise of the strike. You carry the light of God within you. You are no less a child of God than is the one who strikes you. You are therefore the equal of everyone you meet. Everyone. Anyone. Act accordingly. How to handle what might happen after you react may require another teaching or two, but one moment at a time-- in the instant of being struck, stay in that moment and act from assurance of your own, transcendent self-worth.
Act to reset the relationship and the interaction. Turn your other cheek and so, in effect, declare, ‘If you would strike me, then do it as an equal for so we are before our creator.’ Turning one’s right cheek away and offering one’s left cheek amounts to an act of defiance of social order through the declaration of essential and eternal equality. It’s classic relational jujitsu, a tactic the Bible reports Jesus doing elsewhere as well.
Here, then, is an Easter message that cuts across traditions. Ghandi delivers it as does Martin Luther King. It lives in the multiple case studies presented in “A Force More Powerful.” It does not confuse non-violence and passivity. Rather, it asserts the shared dignity of human life, the trappings of class and social position aside. It does not advocate, ‘thank you, sir, may I have another.’ Quite the contrary.
This is also the Jesus who beaten and broken, hanging and dying on the cross on Good Friday musters an audible request during his final breaths, ‘Forgive them, Father, for they do know not what they are doing.’ (Luke 23:34). Jesus does not issue a personal forgiveness to his ignorant persecutors… not yet. I would attribute that, perhaps stemming from my own ignorance, to the following: maybe the human Jesus isn’t quite ready to issue such forgiveness. Maybe Jesus isn’t quite there yet. But staggering amounts of respect and compassion do lead to a heartfelt and mournful request for mercy. Jesus will need a few more days to move yet further down that trail personally. Easter Sunday will reveal a reborn, transfigured, and transcendent being, even fuller of compassion, patience, and forgiveness in the face of horrific personal suffering, namely Jesus’ own…all in the service of a far greater cause—‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ (John 20:27)
And… without qualification or restriction. Reach out whichever hand you wish, but reach out…you, as a child of God, deserve to believe.
Lastly, music of forgiveness & the season & our times… I’d suggest Spotify, but there’s also YouTube if you prefer:
Johnny Cash covers Tom Waits’ song Down There by the Train (w/captions)
For those of us who favor Tom Waits himself (with a few more lyrics)
Happy Easter.