{"id":25832,"date":"2025-09-22T08:30:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T12:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25832"},"modified":"2025-09-22T09:11:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T13:11:02","slug":"25832","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25832","title":{"rendered":"Love as the Source of Nonviolence\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sam Cooke -A change gonna come  lyrics\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BLtEag0ym5U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard Rohr reflects on the spiritual and moral futility of violence, drawing on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his radical call to love:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the genius of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929\u20131968), inspired by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, was that he was able to show thoughtful people that violence was not only immoral but actually impractical and, finally, futile. In the long run, it doesn\u2019t achieve its stated purposes, because it only deepens bitterness on both sides and leaves them in an endless and impossible&nbsp;<em>cycle of violence<\/em>&nbsp;that cannot be stopped by itself. Instead, some neutralizing force must be inserted from outside to stop the cycle and point us in a new direction.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>King insisted that true nonviolent practice is founded on a spiritual seeing and has little to do with mere education or what I would call the \u201ccalculative mind.\u201d He thought it self-evident that the <strong>attitudes of nonviolence were finally impossible without an infusion of agape<em>&nbsp;<\/em>love from God and our reliance upon that infusion.<\/strong> He defined agape love as <strong>willingness to serve without the desire for reciprocation, willingness to suffer without the desire for retaliation, and willingness to reconcile without the desire for domination. This is clearly a Divine love that the small self cannot achieve by itself. We must live in and through Another to be truly nonviolent. <\/strong>[1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Palestinian Christian theologian Munther Isaac challenges us to confront the deep disconnect between the nonviolent teaching of Jesus and the ways Christianity has often aligned with systems of power and violence, even today<\/em>:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christianity and violence should not go hand in hand, at least theoretically. The teachings of Jesus are very clear. The teachings of Paul and the apostles are very clear. There is no place for violence for the followers of Jesus. Yet an honest assessment of even the last 150 years will clearly reveal that many who claimed to be Christians committed some of the worst atrocities in our world: the Belgians in Congo, the Germans in Namibia, the French in Algeria, the Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Guatemalan genocide against the Laya indigenous people, and of course the Holocaust against the Jewish people in Europe.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Bible and theology have played a significant role in this war of genocide in Gaza.\u2026 To be clear, I fully believe that when Scripture is used to justify genocide or promote ideologies of supremacy, this use has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus nor the essence of the Christian faith. <strong>Yet, shamefully, the church has aligned itself with empire throughout the centuries. It has chosen the path of power and influence. One would expect Christians to have learned the lesson. We have not.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Can We Love All?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Congressman John Lewis (1940\u20132020) describes his Christian faith as the foundation of his commitment to nonviolence:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. I accepted it not simply as a technique or as a tactic, but as a way of life, a way of living. We have to arrive at the point, as believers in the Christian faith, that <strong>in every human being there is a spark of divinity.<\/strong> Every human personality is something sacred, something special. We don\u2019t have a right, as another person or as a nation, to destroy that spark of divinity, that spark of humanity, that is made and created in the image of God.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I saw Sheriff Clark in Selma, or Bull Connor in Birmingham, or George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, as victims of the system. We were not out to destroy these men. We were out to destroy a vicious and evil system. [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Theologian Walter Wink (1935\u20132012) recalls a tense moment in Selma in which a reminder to love their enemies shocked the conscience of the crowd and forged a nonviolent path forward:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>King so imbued this understanding of nonviolence into his followers that it became the ethos of the entire civil rights movement. One evening \u2026 the large crowd of black and white activists standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church was electrified by the sudden arrival of a black funeral home operator from Montgomery. He reported that a group of black students demonstrating near the capitol just that afternoon had been surrounded by police on horseback, all escape barred, and cynically commanded to disperse or take the consequences. Then the mounted police waded into the students and beat them at will. Police prevented ambulances from reaching the injured for two hours\u2026.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The crowd outside the church seethed with rage. Cries went up, \u201cLet\u2019s march!\u201d Behind us, across the street, stood, rank on rank, the Alabama State Troopers and the local police forces of Sheriff Jim Clark. The situation was explosive. A young black minister stepped to the microphone and said, \u201cIt\u2019s time we sang a song.\u201d He opened with the line, \u201cDo you love Martin King?\u201d to which those who knew the song responded, \u201cCertainly, Lord!\u201d\u2026 Right through the chain of command of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he went, the crowd each time echoing, warming to the song, \u201cCertainly, certainly, certainly Lord!\u201d Without warning he sang out, \u201cDo you love Jim Clark?\u201d\u2014the Sheriff?! \u201cCer \u2026 certainly, Lord\u201d came the stunned, halting reply. \u201cDo you love Jim Clark?\u201d \u201cCertainly, Lord\u201d\u2014it was stronger this time. \u201cDo you love Jim Clark?\u201d Now the point had sunk in, as surely as Amos\u2019 in chapters 1 and 2: \u201cCertainly, certainly, certainly Lord!\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rev. James Bevel then took the mike. We are not just fighting for our rights, he said, but for the good of the whole society. \u201cIt\u2019s not enough to defeat Jim Clark\u2014do you hear me Jim?\u2014we want you converted. <strong>We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>==============<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">TODAY IS THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re still in the \u201cseason within a Season\u201d the four Sundays in September now celebrated by many churches as the \u201cSeason of Creation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On this Sunday, we read one of Jesus\u2019 strangest and most misunderstood parables \u2014 about a corrupt manager who gets praised for stealing from his own boss.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Luke 16:1-13<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Jesus said to the disciples, \u201cThere was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, \u2018What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cThen the manager said to himself, \u2018What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.&#8217;\u2018<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cSo, summoning his master&#8217;s debtors one by one, he asked the first, \u2018How much do you owe my master?\u2019 He answered, \u2018A hundred jugs of olive oil.\u2019 He said to him, \u2018Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.\u2019 Then he asked another, \u2018And how much do you owe?\u2019 He replied, \u2018A hundred containers of wheat.\u2019 He said to him, \u2018Take your bill and make it eighty.\u2019 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cWhoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><\/td><td><\/td><td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">from Diana Butler Bass<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>The passage today is appropriate for both this season of creation and the threatening political season of global authoritarianism in which we live.<strong> It is a parable \u2014 a story that isn\u2019t factual but is true <\/strong>\u2014 told to make a point or two. There is a point about shrewdness: People of faith are often kind of clueless but shouldn\u2019t be. There\u2019s a point about money: \u201cYou can\u2019t serve God and wealth.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there is also a point about justice: You can do the right thing even while having less than honorable intentions toward others. In this parable, the manager tries to save his own neck but winds up acting justly toward the poor. Sure, he keeps his job. But those who receive the greatest benefit from his actions are the debtors. Ultimately, those struggling to repay the manager\u2019s master have their debts reduced some 20 to 50 percent!&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rich man, the householder, is out a lot of cash. Yet he still praised the corrupt manager who stole from him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All sorts of things may be happening behind the scenes. It may be that the manager had cooked the books all along. Maybe he\u2019d padded the debts by 20 to 50 percent and skimmed that extra off the top for his own benefit. In order to rescue his job, he abruptly ended his scheme to profit off the master\u2019s account. Perhaps he added to the debts to make more money for the master \u2014 who might be impressed by the profitability of the estate and reward him for his good work.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Corruption wears many masks.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But people started to talk \u2014 and the manager got called out. So, whatever smarts he\u2019d employed toward cheating in the first place, he now redirected to impress and befriend those in debt. Because those were the folks about to become his new neighbors.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you emphasize the debtors in the parable (instead of the householder or the manager), the story shifts. At first, the manager sees the debtors as a kind of personal piggybank \u2014 cheating them, whether directly or indirectly, enriches him. He sees them as a way up the financial or social ladder, people to be used on his way up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it becomes clear that he might spend the rest of his life among those whom he\u2019d defrauded, he didn\u2019t panic. Instead, he saw the situation differently. He will be in&nbsp;<em>their&nbsp;<\/em>debt. He\u2019ll be beholden to them for friendship and food. He will live among them, not over them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, he might have panicked a little.&nbsp;<em>Would they cast him out? Would they turn their backs on him? Would they cheat him as he had cheated them?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He may have thought they were objects to be used for his benefit. But they were people, human beings as vulnerable as he was.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>What will make them like me? Accept me? Welcome me to their tables?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The manager had a change of mind. He converted, at least in a vaguely selfish way, to side with those whom he\u2019d previously seen as less than human. He decided to buy their affection. And he slashed their debts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The manager\u2019s boss finds this shrewd. It certainly was a creative redeployment of resources.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the process of saving himself, the manager made the debtors\u2019 world a little more just. He\u2019s an accidental sort of social justice warrior. And guess what? They probably did like him much better than before. Who wants to hang out with a crooked debt collector?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At this point, the debtors disappear from the story and we are left with questions about them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My sense is, given Jewish law and customs about hospitality at the time, the debtors would not have rejected the fired manager. If he came to them in distress, and if they took the teachings of their own faith seriously, they would have accepted him and cared for him. The debtors might have been generous people glad to have the manager finally take a seat at their tables. Even without the debt reduction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But he saw the world through his own eyes \u2014 seeing people as pawns in his own game. He discovered he needed others, even as \u201cpawns\u201d to save himself, and did a strangely good deed for them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The householder steps back in at the end. He praised the manager because the manager did something right even with these less-than-pure motives. The manager oddly became an agent of God\u2019s justice for the poor. And then, the householder added one more thing \u2014 bring your heart in line with your mental shrewdness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We might paraphrase the householder\u2019s final speech:&nbsp;<em>You did the right thing for the wrong reasons. How much greater would it be if you understood that you still had used my wealth to get ahead, to placate your own fears and greed, and that money was still your ultimate master. Don\u2019t do the right thing accidentally. Change your heart, too. Because, ultimately, you can only follow one path \u2014 you must embrace the love of God and neighbor or continue to serve and save yourself through mammon.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shrewd, yes. But loving? My cunning manager, you\u2019ve got some work to do.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what of that manager? As the story closes, his boss is pleased with him and expects him to do better in the future and his neighbors are grateful to him for making their lives easier. The manager now has the opportunity to go from being a crooked middleman in a corrupt arrangement to being well-regarded by the entire community. From having no friends to being surrounded by friends.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I find great comfort in these truths within Jesus\u2019s story. (Always remember: a parable is&nbsp;<em>fiction<\/em>, not something that actually happened.) I certainly have done good things for the wrong reasons \u2014 often those reasons were greedy and self-serving. And I\u2019ve seen other people as little more than rungs on a ladder of my own getting ahead, only to learn later that, ultimately, all we humans are in the same boat.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The shrewd manager reminds me that I\u2019m not alone. And the householder\u2019s generous response to his manager\u2019s actions \u2014 to praise him and keep him on \u2014 makes me feel safer, accepted, and forgiven. For all my flaws, I don\u2019t feel condemned. Instead the householder\u2019s response makes me want to&nbsp;<em>do better.&nbsp;<\/em>I want my actions and my heart to match, to grow in tandem toward the love of God and neighbor.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, as we do better, everybody else does better. Because it isn\u2019t about ascending to the top of some power pyramid by abusing and cheating others. We really live, even though we don\u2019t always see it, in an interconnected community of mutual benefit.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This twist on the parable is greatly needed today. We are literally drowning in a sea of the most massive political corruption in the history of the United States. It is outrageous and brutal, and it is destroying the fabric of community at every level.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So many of us stand at the ready \u2014 indeed are eager \u2014 to condemn both the actions and intentions of the corrupt. To gossip and accuse and charge others with fraud and abuse. All those whom we deem less than human, those whom we think it is fine to abuse on our way to getting some result in our own interest. Corruption in the middle of a system invites more corruption throughout.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps we all need to take a breath \u2014 and try to see if and where good is really being done, ham-handedly perhaps, by those with impure hearts (and please do tell me if you find many actors with pure hearts) and mixed motives. Where the most unexpected of characters winds up being a hero in the story. I bet there\u2019s more of those sorts of folks than we imagine \u2014 shrewd managers who accidentally learned that they don\u2019t have to buy their friends. And that they don\u2019t have to cheat to get ahead.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the midst of it all, imitate the householder.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Praise the good; resist condemnation; invite even the awkwardly contrite to do the right things for the right reasons. Extend mercy. Seek the unity of mind and heart, of action and compassion. Rightly direct your love and urge others to do the same. Welcome all who come to the table.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And make sure that we, each one ourself, continues on that neighborly way \u2014 where we find we have far more friends than we knew all along.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Father Richard Rohr reflects on the spiritual and moral futility of violence, drawing on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his radical call to love:&nbsp; Part of the genius of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929\u20131968), inspired by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, was that he was able to show thoughtful [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25832"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25832"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25841,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25832\/revisions\/25841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}