A Tip of the Hat
“God doesn’t answer humanity’s cry for justice with a legal brief, He answers by sending Christ to suffer with us.”
from The Loudest Silence is Found in ‘A Hidden Life’ by Hannah M. Langdon on Medium
Reading this sentence for the first time was an interesting experience. On Saturday morning without enough coffee, I wasn’t prepared for a discussion on life as we face it.
The quote comes from deep in the article by Hannah M Langdon. The first half of the quote seemed intended as sardonic, as if “well, don’t expect a human argument from your deity, dude.” And the second phrase came back around to an image that, if recognizable to other Christian theologians, still struck me that morning as a new thought — possibly because I don’t read much Christian theology — or at least a new way to phrase it. In any case, this is meant as a tip of the hat.
However — if there’s no however, I’m not Irish and there’s no reason to write in any case — it’s often debated (by agnostics mostly) why an all-purpose deity would allow suffering at the hands of human evil, a theme repeated through the movie Langdon writes about. The response of the movie’s protagonist is to turn the other cheek, as Jesus is quoted by both Matthew and Luke, so I’m guessing it was corroborated.
An allegory, this turning one’s cheek, returns to the early days of the Christians hiding from persecution in the catacombs — it has very little to do with the encrusted rituals and ceremonies I grew up with in the Catholic Church, and everything to do with that early faith.
One wonders, was this humility in the practice what convinced early converts of Christianity’s worth? Taken at its literal meaning, this is the thorniest imperative for Christians of any age to practice.
It also lies at cross purposes to ‘worshiping’ one’s deity. It could be the word ‘worship’ has been debased, but the Christ who advised turning the cheek wasn’t busy encouraging folks to bow and scrape. What exactly has one to do with the other? Assume for the moment an all-seeing, all-knowing God. Of what use to such a being would be our obeisance? Perhaps the preachers need a new thought here. Though I digress.
Seems — again with only one’s passing knowledge —Zen Buddhism contains a similar humility, though posed differently — more an acceptance of what we don’t comprehend, yet embracing the mystery. The need of people to ascribe reasons for our existence while facing the silence of the universe seems will never abate.
Leaving aside manmade evils to consider the existential pains of animal life in general —a seagull in the sand with the broken wing stoically awaiting (it seemed while we were watching) its inevitable death —the innumerable cancers, the robbery of a person’s consciousness from Alzheimer’s, the latter being something I’m seeing in close friends, something coming closer the longer I live.
If saying ‘it’s God’s will’ allows you to rise from bed in the morning to make your way in the face of this implacability, I’m with you. You need God’s will, and I need coffee. I’ll never argue to remove a person’s will to live, no doubt because this was my mother’s faith that got her through a way harder life than I’ve lived. My grandmother carried the same faith — though by her 80s, it seemed more resignation than yearning for the hereafter.
However (again that word), I could never stay silent in the face of human evil — or if I did, it would make me the coward, yes? Confronted with George Floyd being murdered — to use a current example — witnessing that horror and given the means, I could well have replied in kind, even if regretting it later.
I will curse the unjust to my deathbed.
Rage against the devil inside —by necessity. Rage against the machine —where evil been mechanized. Rage against the dying of the light — aye, Dylan, that I do.
“The movie is a three-hour test of intuition.” Does the author mean that faith equals intuition as it seems she must? If so, she doesn’t elaborate. Intuition is as ineffable as faith; that seems clear enough.
But three hours is a serious test of a bladder.
The entirety of Langdon’s piece is quietly written. Without a writer’s aggrandizement. Again, a tip of the hat. The author watched the entire movie, perhaps watched it more than once to confirm her impression. Made enough of an impression to kick-start a thought to write of it.
I probably will never watch it.
A recreation of the Nazi horrors, particularly a well-acted one, doesn’t feel like required work to me. I’ve read too much of it already. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer’s book for starters. And I’ll probably continue to read of Nazis — and the innumerable other horror passages we humans inflict on the ‘others’ we refuse to accept as part of our family. It’s the one constant theme running from pre-history on to the present.
After reading Sophie’s Choice by William Styron, I knew I’d never watch the movie — one of Meryl Streep’s best, I’m told. The more vividly portrayed, the more likely to bring on nightmares.
I admire Langdon’s faith — or what I take is her faith. I may even envy it, as I did my mother’s, before she was swallowed by dementia — and where is a god’s justice in that? And I hope, as the author lives her life, she isn’t beset by trials so unsurmountable she can’t get past them spirit intact. It could well be Langdon has already faced those trials — being young never shelters you.
Standing on the moors and refusing to cede defeat is as old as Shakespeare — undoubtedly much older.
If I hadn’t had my mother’s stoic faith as example, I wonder where I’d be. Christopher Hitchens would reply, ‘dude, at least you wouldn’t be living in a fairie tale.’
My brand of stoicism is less gentle and more vocal — like Lear’s.
I’ll admit Hitchens would never use ‘dude’ — it’s too common. However, what people mistake in Hitchens’s virulent attacks on religion was his abiding passion for life, for simple existence, as though pleading. If there were a higher intelligence animating this world, he desperately wanted to meet up with him/her/they. Never to worship, always to seek a better understanding of where he lived.
After a life of tossing figurative Molotov cocktails right and left, how many did Hitchens admit regretting? Blundering about in the darkness is another well-trod meme.
The bitter irony of WW II was the choosing of too many church leaders in Europe, in America, the Catholic Church included, to be co-opted by the Nazis during their reign. This proves all that’s necessary to support Hitchens against these institutions. Not the parishioners but the priests. Supposed followers of the pacifist Christ, these priests, bishops, cardinals popes, et al. were the worst of hypocrites. So much worse than the laity who stayed silent.
“Sometimes the silence is infuriating. When the village learns that Franz refused to swear loyalty to Hitler, most of them mock and ostracize his family. A few are sympathetic, but they show their sympathy in the quietest ways — helping Fani carry something when everyone else walks away, or giving her a little more food than she paid for. Of course, those acts are meaningful, but their inability to speak up in Franz’s defense is also telling. We know that Franz isn’t the only one who realizes Hitler’s racial-cleansing is wrong, but when the test comes, Franz is the only one brave enough to act on his belief.”
from The Loudest Silence is Found in ‘A Hidden Life’ by Hannah M. Langdon
Or perhaps the priests in the 30s and 40s were no worse than the silent neighbors of the movie?
My mother taught her children we were responsible for our personal morality. She put it in terms of her Catholicism, however her morals went deeper than catechism — whether this was alone my impression, I can’t prove, but it was what I learned from her. Her brother, my Uncle George, said he admired her for her morals, which said as much for him as her.
There was a strain of belief in the Catholic Church — largely missing in today’s American church — which argued for the obligations of the individual aside from doctrine and church teachings. Father Fisher, my college chaplain and another pacifist, represented this strain of Catholicism, insisting that we each carry our responsibility. That I recognized the validity of his argument was a gift from my mother’s faith.
We are too frequently the same silent neighbors, when the best we can do is plant Black Lives Matter signs in safe, blue neighborhoods, and make no objections to the Confederate flags painted on the sides of barns out where our country houses may be — hoping no one takes offense. There is a fine line between not assailing others for what they believe, and staying silent in the face of evil.
Being Irish, I carry my shillelagh at the ready, though my more gentle mother, saying nothing, would still raise an eyebrow aimed in my direction.
