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There is a common story of a lion/dragon/wolf/bully that is very mean and hurts other people. The story comes in many shapes, but is always the same story.
This large and powerful abuser/bully crushes villages, disrupts the life of the forest, eats the sheep.
Despite her destruction, this creature is reconciled when a friend is made: She was just lonely! That’s why she murdered!;
or a thorn from his paw is removed: He gave me a bloody lip because of his pain!
This large and powerful abuser/bully crushes villages, disrupts the life of the forest, eats the sheep.
Despite her destruction, this creature is reconciled when a friend is made: She was just lonely! That’s why she murdered!;
or a thorn from his paw is removed: He gave me a bloody lip because of his pain!
The story invites us to understand an other’s suffering. Good! A beautiful tool for the work of empathy and understanding. Perhaps even reconciliation.
But this story is also a horrible weapon. It is picked up by bullies, who use the pain that they feel as an excuse to have disregard for all others. And so they continue to breath fire and stomp villagers because the pain somehow gives them “the right.”
"You would do the same thing if you knew how it felt to be me!"
"You would do the same thing if you knew how it felt to be me!"
This weaponized version of the story is the one so many of us have internalized. And so the weapon is used against us.
There is an important theological idea, that God has a “preferential option for the poor,” that God calls us to be on the side of the oppressed. That God shouts out when we shout out in pain against those who would stomp and kill us.
This idea is very important. In terms of everyday ethics, I think that it tells us this:
This idea is very important. In terms of everyday ethics, I think that it tells us this:
If, in the name of empathy, we enable ongoing, repetitive abuse, we might be empathizing with the wrong person.
When we are called to side with the stomped-upon (be it ourselves or others), the Spirit stirs our empathy primarily for the villagers, for the sake of their (of our) threatened or belittled lives.
Only secondarily do we look to care for the dragon. The dragon’s reconciliation, the lion's restoration, if possible, depends on the dragon's repentance, the lion's reparations. These may be made. They may not. But the lion and the dragon are not the most important. Those they abuse are.
Whatever the case, whatever the action, it is to be for the sake of the villagers, the abused--for the sake of the life and the living of the burnt and bitten inhabitants.
No matter the size of the thorn, love need never enable abuse.
When we are called to side with the stomped-upon (be it ourselves or others), the Spirit stirs our empathy primarily for the villagers, for the sake of their (of our) threatened or belittled lives.
Only secondarily do we look to care for the dragon. The dragon’s reconciliation, the lion's restoration, if possible, depends on the dragon's repentance, the lion's reparations. These may be made. They may not. But the lion and the dragon are not the most important. Those they abuse are.
Whatever the case, whatever the action, it is to be for the sake of the villagers, the abused--for the sake of the life and the living of the burnt and bitten inhabitants.
No matter the size of the thorn, love need never enable abuse.
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