O little town of Bethlehem
A wall thee now divides
Above thy concertina wire
The silent stars go by
Beyond the wall the soldiers
Aim rifles toward the sky
Militias roaming streets inside
Ignore the baby’s cry

The settlements and suicides
Injustice, greed and hate,
O little town, you seem to drown
In tears for your hapless fate
But hear the choir of angels
Their great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

Dead dogma burdens Bethlehem
With grudges from the past
Muslims, Jews, and Christians, too
Say their claims are the last
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

The baby’s voice is calling us
To Bethlehem again,
Where walls divide may grace abide
Forgiveness enter in
The morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises ring, for Love we sing
And peace to all on earth!

In a (quite good and interesting) recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Targets of Aggression” (Chronicle Review, October 5, 2007), David Barash considers the matter of misplaced aggression and like  countless others before him—preachers and Christian educators foremost among them—cites Jesus’ teachings “to love our enemies and if slapped, turn the other cheek.”  Indeed, Jesus did say these things.  And their meaning is obvious.  No?  Well, maybe.

Again, like countless others before him, Barash summarizes Jesus’ teachings along these lines: “absorb pain without passing it on.”  Just take it.  That’s the godly, or Godly, or What-would-Jesus-do way to be.  And anyway, what other way to be is there—aggression?!  Even were one to condone violence and, to put that more honestly, when one condones violence (since most of do, at some point[s]) in the name of vengeance or justice or something(s) in between, s/he would need to admit that aggressive response is a move and a set of actions that results much moreso in misplaced or displaced aggression toward some (weaker and/or available) other than it does in action directed at the aggressor. Think of biblical stories, history, “scapegoating” of all kinds and, if/as you will, various current military conflicts. 

And in our heart of hearts, we (many of us) would agree that violent aggression is not godly.  So, where does that leave us?  Back at “absorb pain without passing it on”?

Barash asserts within his article that “we might all be well advised to explore not only how pain and aggression are typically misplaced or displaced, but also how they should be placed.”  I agree!  Indeed, I think that in many and significant ways, which Barash along with countless others—preachers and Christian educators foremost among them —does not explore, this is precisely where Jesus’ teachings kick in (pardon the, arguably, aggressive metaphor). 

As scholarly work on Jesus in his Roman/Galilean context has shown, far from simply asking or demanding that his followers simply “absorb pain,” Jesus actually teaches in these sayings a creative response which neither simply absorbs nor passes on pain.  Rather, Jesus invites and models a creative redirection back onto the aggressor.  Listen again, as if for the first time: 

1) “you feel privileged to slap me in public with the (socially acceptable) right hand, well then let me turn my check, giving you the opportunity–and literally forcing your hand, if you so choose to follow through–to slap me again with the (not socially acceptable) left hand”;
2) “you feel justified in suing me in open court for my last set of pants and shirt, well then, here, take my underpants and undershirt too”;
3) “you’re going to  press me into service to carry your gear for a mile (as Roman soldiers are privileged to do), then I’ll go ahead and carry it another mile too (putting the Roman soldier under threat of having broken the rules of engagement).

Dubbed Jesus “third way” (by Walter Wink, whose writings have been influential on the matter), these teachings creatively turn the tables back onto aggressors in a manner that potentially threatens their social standing and suggests to them, and to others, the limits of their presumed power and even of the systems which uphold that power.  They provide precisely that which Barash’s article, and our world, is crying out for–both a break in the aggression : misplaced aggression paradigm, and an alternative to simply absorbing pain.

God help us to continue hearing, and applying, Jesus’ teachings in paradigm breaking, and habit breaking, ways!