Violence of Absolutes: ‘Truth’, ‘God’, ‘Nonviolence’ and Other Idols.

By Jarrod Saul McKenna

19 kms from Alice Springs on the land of the Indigenous Arrente people in Central Australia is Pine Gap a U.S. Military base officially known as the Joint Defense Space Research Facility. It is one of the largest and most important US satellite ground control stations in the world. Pine Gap is a military facility that has been used to target US bombing on Iraq and Afghanistan resulting in the death of millions of innocent and oppressed people. Pine Gap also plays an essential part in the US National Missile Defense (NMD), a space battle system often dubbed "Star Wars" because of the U.S.A.’s plans for Ballistic missiles into space by 2020, triggering a new nuclear arms race.

While being involved with the Anti-War Protests at Pine Gap I was not surprised by the demonisation of those working for peace by the media and by the police forces. To some degree you even expect that. What I was taken back with was how quickly I found myself falling in the same trap. I was at risk of my just anger about the issues, being projected upon those we were coming up against, namely the police. The irony for me was over whelming. My vision had been distorted by my ‘rightness’ that I no longer saw the police as people rather they were objects standing in the way of ‘what I know is best’.

“For you don’t count the dead with God on your side.” The prophetic words of Bob Dylan slapped me in the face as I was moved by the realisation that I was dangerously at risk of killing off the humanity of the police in my mind. The dangers of ‘Truth’, ‘God’, or ‘rightness’ or any ‘absolutes’ has become shockingly overt to me. Like so many of our world leaders at the moment, I had fallen victim to the ‘plankeye problem’, trying to fix the bits of wood dust in the eye of everyone without realising the huge bit of 2 by 4 that was blocking my own vision.

U.S. President Bush has coined his own phrase for the problem he sees ‘out there’. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” runs through several countries and utilizes the paradigm we are fed from the earliest age through cartoons and books: us, and them. There are good guys and there are bad guys the paradigm tells us. These are easily distinguishable by outward appearance such as colours of the capes, by the sinisterness of the laughs and by the sound track that is played in the background by Big Brother (try and think Orwell and not reality TV). Not much has changed between the cartoons we were weaned on as children and the T.V. news or “info-tainment” we are now pacified and lulled to sleep with.

This is the dominant paradigm which all of us are trapped, not just the U.S.A.’s King George. This is a special kind of self-righteousness in activist circles that most of us are able to mask with a sometimes intermittent façade and, at other times, with a legitimate shop front of justifiable anger. But some of us have had the irritation of being winded by the sometimes offensive nature of reality, like a primary school child receiving an unexpected soccer ball in the gut while eating their lunch on the school oval. This soccer ball which leaves us on our hands and knees grasping for air and coughing up our vegemite sandwiches is the realisation that the ‘axis of evil’ is not out there but in fact in us. The ‘axis of evil’ (or to use a paraphrase with less religious baggage ‘axis of injustice’) does not run through a series of countries distinguishable by there race, religion, political system or ideologies, rather I believe, runs through the heart all of us.

The ‘us vs. them’ paradigm is found wherever some thinks they are completely right. The lie of the ‘us vs. them’ says we are right to the exclusion of the truth as experienced those on the othersider of a demonstration. The ‘Us and Them’ dogma denies the truth known (however partial that knowing might be) by those on the othersider of parliament. ‘Us and Them’ dictates the refusal to be open to the revelation given to those in a Synagogue, a Temple, a Church or a Mosque on the othersider of the road.

‘Us vs. Them’ paradigm is at its essence violent because it seeks to draw borders around and monopolise “truth”. Violence always comes from a mindset of I am right, so absolutely right that I am justified in using force.

Our refusal to acknowledge the plank in our own eyes, and the refusal to listen from those of us with ears to hear, I think is a sign of our lack of trust in our own experience of truth. Thomas Merton expressed well when he said,

“The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be ‘converted’ – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective(sic.) in our open-mindedness, we might find that viewing things from a basically different perspective – that of our adversary – we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically.”

In seeking power over truth, we lose the ability to share what truth we might have experienced and stands in the way of society becoming what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community”. Understanding implies humility because we must ‘stand under’ truth, which also implies truth it is bigger than us and how we might perceive it. The refusal to listen to others, I believe, is also the refusal to listen to the gracious Beyond communicate something bigger than either side of argument.

I pray we are able to move beyond seeing the world in the categories of us and them and see, to use the Quaker expression “that which is of God in all of us” or the Hindu expression “Namaste”. A Rabbi was once explaining to me the Jewish understanding of interconnectedness of our existence with the earth, with all beings and with the Great Spirit of Deliverance and our individual part in our shared responsibility. He explained that the Jewish understanding was that because of the delicateness of our existence that our choices for justice or injustice tip the world’s scales towards justice or injustice. This is the power our free will. We collectively choose the world in which we live by our actions and by our lifestyle.

As a follower of the risen Rabbi Yeshua (Christi-Anarchy) I do believe God takes sides. In Jesus I see God sides with those who are poor, marginalised and oppressed regardless of the boxes we put them in or the labels we place on them. In Jesus I see the fulfilment of Love who wills that the world would be one with the Most High, no boundaries be they national, economic, racial, religious, philosophical or ideological. One Love, with one people, our earth, our children, our future. In Jesus I see that the universe does bend towards justice, and calls on all of us to lean the same way and provides us with the resurrection power to do so. I hope that by us listening and answering the call to lean towards justice through peace we could knock the world off the axis of violence and retaliation.

*End note on Context: The article was written while reflecting upon the events of the protests and upon the following passage that some traditions hold as a sacred text:

“What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! Who we see as the ‘inside group’ and ‘outside group’ are both in identical conditions, that’s to say we all are all unjust. As it is written in the Scriptures: “There is no one just, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.”

(Romans 3:9-11)