The Pope has weighed in on the Charlie Hebdo killings, and he falls into the “Well, I don’t like murder normally, but…” camp:
The Holy Father spoke to journalists in a broad interview on the papal flight to the Philippines about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the controversy about the magazine’s new cover this week. Religious freedom and freedom of expression, he said, are fundamental human rights. But they are also not a total liberties [sic]. “There is a limit,” he said, speaking in Italian. “Every religion has its dignity. I cannot mock a religion that respects human life and the human person.” He broke it down in everyday terms, something that is coming to be known as classic Francis teaching style. “If [a close friend] says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose,” he explained.
Or if a close friend says a swear word against my mother, I’ll kill him, and his friends, and also anyone who tries to stop me, and then head to a Jewish bakery and start killing people there too, because hey, it was my mom.
The Gospel message of course is quite different. In the Gospels, Jesus offers nine beatitudes, showing nine Christian spiritual practices, and interestingly, one of them is specifically being insulted:
He said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Every single one of these beatitudes, treated as a spiritual practice, yields interesting results, and creates a spiritual life quite different from those recommended by other traditions. I have much to say about all of them, but here I will focus on the ninth, often (but unnecessarily) treated as a subset of the eighth.
I have always been curious about the spiritual guru Gurdjieff, who made insults one of his primary modes of training his disciples. The theory behind it is that a human being who can be easily affected by the words of others necessarily is not conceiving of themselves in sufficiently broad perspective. We attach ourselves to small things: what we look like in the mirror, how much trivia we have stored in our brain, what clubs we are part of – and the result is a kind of narcissistic paranoia, always poised over the abyss, always hanging by a thread, always craving more validation from some new source. Maturity must involve some kind of severing of this addictive umbilicus, and one of the ways of doing this is precisely what Jesus praises as a way to blessedness: suffering opposition, and particularly insult and false testimony. There is an entire tradition of Christian spiritual practice trying to be a “holy fool,” a person who seeks to be good but does not want any worldly reward for it. To have a good reputation is to ask in a temptation, which is to be good for the sake of one’s ego. When you come to the realization that almost all of your good deeds are just a form of narcissism, and you are really no better off spiritually for all your “good deeds,” – that is one of the realizations that can produce actual transformation, into an entirely different kind of goodness. One that ends up being a lot less impressive to other people – the flash is gone – but a lot more honest, and a lot less wrought.
This spiritual practice of leads naturally to a respect for freedom of speech, and of course, freedom to insult and blaspheme and everything else. The Verba Seniorum speak of a “wise man” who sat at the gates of Athens, insulting everybody – this was thought of as wisdom:
Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his Master for three years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was over, the Master said to him: Now you can go to Athens and learn wisdom. When the disciple was entering Athens he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple who immediately burst out laughing. Why do you laugh when I insult you? said the wise man. Because, said the disciple, for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing. Enter the city, said the wise man, it is all yours. Abbot John (the Dwarf) used to tell the above story, saying: This is the door of God by which our fathers (and mothers) rejoicing in many tribulations enter into the City of Heaven.
If there were no freedom of speech, there would be no wise men sitting at the city-gates insulting people either. At some point, someone’s “dignity” would get ruffled, and they’d get rid of the wise man. And that is the enemy of free speech – that word used by the pope – a sense of “dignity,” that social stiffness brought on by social climbing, which makes it so humiliating for us to be exposed as no better than anyone else. It really is the enemy of the spiritual life as well. There is a fine story of St. Philippo Neri, who was sent to investigate the claims of the saintliness of a particular nun. He rode all day through the rain, and meeting her in the reception-room of the convent and seeing her gleaming, potentially vainglorious garments, his sense of suspicion was aroused. He told her his feet were hurting but he couldn’t get his muddy boots off; could she help him? She took offense at even the suggestion that she should take off some stranger’s muddy boots, and so he stood up and left. Whatever she represented, he was convinced it wasn’t Christianity.
Jesus does not, of course, say that giving insult is one of the ways to blessedness; it may be necessary for a Christian to be insulted, but to choose to be the person who insults others necessarily has spiritual dangers. Gurdjieff may not have ended up being a very nice person. But Christians who understand their own tradition should have no problems with mockery and abuse. Jesus puts undergoing mockery and insult up there with seeking justice, or seeking peace.
Let me also note one thing about blasphemy. There are blasphemy laws in countries like Ireland (now looking at getting rid of its statute) and Italy. These laws, all over the world, should go. Christians should certainly oppose them – Christ himself was brought to trial under such laws. The very notion of “offering insult to the Deity” is comical – I am quite certain the Deity can handle it. Muslims often think that the Christian idea that God can have a son is inherently blasphemous; whereas I, a Christian, think that having a son is not degrading at all, and many things religions ascribe to God are far more degrading than children would be. But all of it is projection. To make laws based on such projections is self-evidently unwise. Blasphemy laws are typically considered just “breach of peace” laws, but sometimes the peace gets disturbed. They say there was a riot when “The Rite of Spring” was performed. This is not a reason for prosecuting Stravinsky.
This is not to say that there are not things that are holy – there are – and that how we treat these holy things doesn’t say a tremendous amount about who we are. But that self-unfolding is holy too. As we do it, of course, we rely on others to mirror it back to us, sometimes mockingly, and in that process we learn to see.
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