The War Of The worlds: Justice and Charity

My friend urged me often to not abdicate your rights and be indifferent. He was talking about rickshaw drivers taking us for a ride. I always observed my friend fighting for this cause and it never caught on. Until one day, I myself realized that I may not be able to reform all drivers across the city. I thought he was right. We can do it one fellow at a time.

Initially, it began with enlightening drivers about our rights and how they cannot do what they want. Often this didn’t work as they didn’t give two hoots to be awakened about our rights. Next began coercion, using law to intimidate him: if you do not wish to go then take me to the nearby police station. This gives them few indications that we are not going to take it lying down. But two can play that game. Often drivers prefer playing ‘who will blink first’ and say: fine! let us go to the station :)

True, he doesn’t really wish to face the cop but even we don’t really wish to take them there. Often my friend never got out of the rickshaw until he took him where he wishes. I too resorted to such means, lost my temper, threatened them with the consequences of being penalized, concocted a story of how my father is a cop and he will beat him up. I wondered often, where is the line between persuasion and coercion?

I love Jesus Christ not only as a Catholic but as boy who adores his teachings. Mahatma Gandhi too adored Christ’s teachings. Gandhi was so exemplary that many often were so aghast at his means to righteousness and justice that they considered him a threat to their comfort and way of life. Indeed, many were and are used to arm twisting, resorting to violence and manhandling to get their work done. Gandhi changed it all. Gandhi, in a conversation with a doctor in Africa remarked: I now understand what Christ meant by saying ‘if they strike you on one cheek, offer the other’. He meant, that if they oppose you and attack you, do not give up. Offer another resistance. Offer resistance until they realize you are convinced for your cause and are ready to suffer for it

We all have ideologies in life. If your ideology is success, then you wish to reach success perhaps, in the shortest, fastest, and easiest way. If your ideology is happiness, then you may wish to reach it in a way that gives you utmost joy. Now this means you are ready to undergo endless strife. But that’s not a problem as your ideology is utmost happiness without constraints. Inspired by Christ, and wishing to be an exemplary Christian, my ideal in life is to be charitable: charitable in action, words, conduct, character and spirit.

And in comes the obstacle. What about justice? What about fighting for causes? If you are in tune with my ideology then you will realize our first problem is what do we do when it comes to seeking justice? Take the rickshaw drivers incident for one. I tried being expressive and assertive. But some of them displayed hooligan behavior to have any hope of budging. The predicament is that if you leave him (and his rickshaw and take another), you conclude that, he got his way and he will keep getting his way if he wishes and there is nothing we can do about it. Or I arm-twist, threaten, intimidate and take him to task, everything that admittedly opposes charity. No one can lie that after taking someone to task, they have been calm enough to engage back in charitable atmosphere. There is resentment in the air that you got your way by force and ill-will.

There are chances that you may leave the rickshaw and forget your cell phone in it. Now the driver has a reason to keep your phone. This is not the same as stealing as much as it is ‘vengeance’. Clearly, you have been uncharitable and he seeks revenge. I understand keeping the phone is not justified as it is not related to hiring a vehicle by your right but you understand where I am getting. Not showing charity does not inspire people. Even in a brawl, it is the one who keeps patience, calm and composure that is admired. Many may come to the rescue of one who does not raise his hand but only his opinion.

Also, let us for one moment forget virtue of charity and stick to reason. If one is forced to obey the law, it means that he has no freedom to break it. If there is no freedom to break the law, it is not a law but tyrannical force. If there is a penalty to break the law, there is implementation of it. Because the means to appeal to this implementation is poor, one cannot take law in one’s own hands and force someone to accede to the law. If the driver has no freedom to break the law, he has no free will. The irony is that the customer trying to fight for his right is now the hooligan.

This brings me back to ideologies. Pursuit of transcendental virtues is not the same as pursuit of higher education. You cannot always expect a positive outcome in the latter given the right inputs. This does not apply to virtues, especially transcendental ones. One has to remember that it is ‘I’ who choose to practice virtue and it should be at the expense of my own life not another. If I wish the other to act in a just way with me and I resort to means that oppose charity, what have I achieved? The one thing I wished to show him, Charity, I have not, only because I wished to extort justice from him.

Justice by definition means fair play. What is owed to you is due unto you. But charity is not the same. You may be at the losing end all the time and still be a winner as you have shown charity. At the same time, no one tells you not to punish people for not playing fair. Gandhi understood what charity is and he tried to teach the country overnight. What he forgot was that developing virtue is a deep conviction and often the trade-off is, time. Indians, during the freedom struggle looked at charity as a “strategy”. We won freedom and soon lost charity. The strategy was only to serve a purpose, it seems. Gandhi lost in turn as cared more about building a humane independent nation as opposed to an independent nation. He did not connive a plan to be charitable as if it was a tried-and-tested way to win independence. It is quite patent, it is the worst. He did not stumble on to the Bible which gave him a master plan for independence. He realized that it is more worthy to be right in the eyes of God and get your way than to use wrong means to get your way and lead others astray.

Charity and justice will often collide. Charity seeks to move the person by touching his heart and making him seek his conscience. Justice makes a person bypass his conscience and compels him to toe the line by showing him the baton. While justice seeks one’s own good, Charity seeks not its own. Charity is the highest ideal. The bible says: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love¹. It is our scarred human nature that does not wish to lose or be wronged or suffer that seeks justice and forsakes charity. Justice serves well-being of this world. Charity seeks God. Each of us decides where our loyalties lie. Whom do I wish to serve?

1. 1 Corinthians 13

NAME PLACE ANIMAL THING

As a child I used to adore my cousin. She was very kind and loving. A few years later when I met her, I did not see in her those things that I so easily appreciated. Did she lose those things? Had she got corrupted by the trials of life? My conclusion simply was: I do not find in you those things that made me love you so much. If this is my conclusion then the next logical conclusion is: and so I cannot love you now.

This is the predicament many of us put ourselves in. we do not understand how love works. We enjoy how love feels. We don’t really enjoy love. Most of our lives we are motivated by how we feel and because love gushes in feelings we say “love binds us together”. Once the feeling is gone we shallowly say, “I don’t think I love you anymore” whereas what is really wrong is you never really loved the person [perfectly] but only loved what you felt while you thought (or really did, I don’t discredit) you were loving the person.

Name. A simple analogy is of a friend. It is the bond of friendship that keeps two people together. We confuse many things when we decide what really got us into befriending a person let alone what will encourage us to continue endearing the person. For example, if I you are asked what do you like in ‘X’ and you make the mistake of saying because X is honest and kind. If tomorrow X ceases to be honest and kind, do you then cease to be a friend of X? Your friendship is not a bond rather it is a pursuit.

You pursue honesty and kindness in X and because you feel strongly about them it attracts you towards X. what if after many years X evolves and the fuel that his honesty and kindness powered your relationship with is falling short? It is better if we define friendship by love and not “names”. So that when someone tells you ‘rickson’, you do not remember a manifesto or a common minimum program which you signed with him to be friends until upheld. What if you cling too hard on the manifesto and your friend has changed for the better and you are still reluctant to grow.

I have often heard so many of my friends say: you have changed so much. Perhaps what they are saying subtly is, “I don’t think I can relate to you the way I used to and because you have so abruptly and drastically changed, you are not the same person to me and I may feel it rather uncomfortable to share the same things I used to. So our friendship will never be the same again”

Place. Instead of finding a place in my friends heart, may be my friend only fell in love with certain traits I had years back. He may have found those traits very convenient or beneficial to his well-being. Now if I have adopted different ideologies and world-views, and when he remembers the “name”-Rickson, he just does not find it in him to love me because he cannot find it in me the traits that he did before. Friendship then really is making a place for a person in your life.

I have a friend I often meet and enjoy spending time with. But I do not find myself as concerned about him as I do with other friends. I realized this is because I like this friend because he is very intellectual and a thinker. Again, I am making a mistake of only pursuing in him traits that I appreciate. He is truly my friend when I make a place for him in my heart. This has nothing to do with traits. This has everything to do with love. If he gets twice as smart in a year, it may motivate me to spend more time with him.

Is that friendship or just I pursuing things according to my preferences and tastes? Will his doubly smartness develop a concern in my life if I get to know he has experienced a crisis or setback in his life? Where will my concern arise from? Where will I find suffering in me to be in communion with his suffering so that his cross can feel lighter? Can my appreciation of traits find me suffering for him? I doubt. Appreciation of each others traits is just the beginning of beginnings. If you do not take it farther than that, you may be just pursuing your own self through others.

Animal. What separates man and Animal is rationale. Man is a rational Animal. Giraffes often have sex if they are tensed or intimidated. They are not rational creatures and they cannot think or introspect or deal with situations. They do as they feel; they push if they are pulled. They run if they are chased. They attack if they are invaded. We humans think a lot. Often we think so much, it crosses the line into scheming. We scheme and conspire, plan and judge. Something we hear quite typically about marriage is: Before marriage he was so adorable and impressive. After 20 years he is a different person. Most of the people end up saying: I don’t know what went wrong. We both changed so much.

Change is here to stay. Change is the most unchangeable thing. It is the only constant and permanent thing in life. Thus we should have more respect for an individual who we enter into a relationship with than change demands. We should have respect solely for the sake of love and not change. Change is reality, love is a choice. All of us are influenced by different things. If you have stayed with your wife for 30 years, how come both of you’ll haven’t got adjusted and exposed to the same things to such an extent that both of you’ll find yourselves successfully compatible? What is the cause of fights then, as friends have things in common are very compatible. This is the basis of fraternities in colleges.

We have to remember -I love the person now. His traits, that I fell in love with, were a lure towards the river. Now the river itself has to lure me. I do not need to look at the shimmering light on the river water or the comforting greens beside it. The river itself has to quench me. We cannot scheme or reason now. We have to lose rationale¹ like animals and love the person as someone whose traits give him an identity. It would be amusing to think we love traits which are housed by a body of a person.

Things. I am not so idealistic to think that we should be incapable of loving things in people and only love the person. Countrymen make the country. Students make the school. A man is what his ideologies are. But this is the difference pursuits and love. Our pursuits are according to our ideologies. But love surpasses pursuits.

It is a choice to love someone unconditionally or at least that loving this person has no agenda others than what loving will achieve: the hope of making a world for another person through you. You do not get to choose what your brother or sister will be like, do you? What happens to ideologies then? We are lost for choices to bond. Only love remains…

1. By saying, one has to lose rationale; I did not mean you should not bother to question why you love the person until you continue doing. St. Thomas Aquinas says the origin of love is our affections and emotions and our reason. Love is emotional when the person concerned is unable to live without the object of his love and it is governed by the dictate of reason when the person lives what he grasps with is mind. We should love in both these ways, with our will and with a heart. From the emotional and sentimental points of view we realize how much we ourselves need help, protection, affection and happiness. At times these very deep feeling can and should be a channeled for seeking the people we love: friends, lovers, mothers, brothers and sisters for telling them we truly love them. If our actions were the result only of cold and rational choices, or if we tried to ignore the affective side of our being, we wouldn’t be living our human life to the full. At times, we may perhaps feel cold and listless with our heart unresponsive, our feelings fluctuating unpredictably. We shouldn’t then make do with the feeling of following love unwillingly like swallowing an unpalatable medicine. (IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD 4, ORDINARY TIME, WITH ALL OUR HEART)

NATURE: CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD?

“And in the beginning there was Man.” We have heard this in the Bible and many narrative movies. But what eludes us is if God made them or Science. I do not wish to discuss the pros and cons of Evolution or ponder on Man’s origin. All I want to throw light on is God and Nature. If I have to believe the likes of Richard Dawkins, contemporary Darwinist, even for a second, I will then be forced to state that we all are children of Nature. We have no God, Nature is our God. Otherwise we can go with the teaching of the Church which says whether evolution or not, Man was created in God’s love and not as some random fusing or mutating or chemical or metaphysical reaction. Now whether God chose it through evolution or any other way is for Science to unfold. Gravity already existed even before Newton threw light upon it. Newton’s discovery of what is gravity doesn’t force God to repudiate His claim to designing it.

I wish to speak about love. When I move out of my home and board a train swarming with people who are peeved at each other. When I walk the street and observe that not many find it worthy to fight for another’s cause. They either play the spectator or walk briskly ahead as if nothing happened. When someone is in need of a favor from me and the ball is in my court or when I need a favor and wonder what can convince him to oblige? Should I smile or rather make him smile by bribing him?

What can motivate us to love others? Where do we find love in a world that our elders define in the following ways: ‘wait to help someone and you will get duped’…’think about others and others will not bother to think about you’…’as long as he is of help to you, be on good terms with them’…’you try to be a nice guy and the world will make you pay’…’everyone lives for themselves in the world and no one is different’

Such ideas perpetrate a gross pessimism in which Love cannot thrive. If I have to calculate my loss of time or money or comfort before helping someone, surely nothing much is motivating me to love. Why isn’t a man’s suffering out of an accident not motivating me to pick him up and take him to the hospital? Why don’t I look at a man trying to con me or not being proper to me as I am to him, with sympathy and compassion on the man’s weakness?

I believe it roots in our worldview of existence and origin. Love starts from our choice of our deepest belief. Love goes back to God. Pachomius was a secular young man, he volunteered as a soldier in Constantine’s army. Some soldiers were camped outside a little village near Thebes and could not be supplied with food. The citizens of that community were friendly Christians. They took care of the soldiers with kindness and courtesy. Pachomius was impressed. He asked for an explanation of this kindness and was told about Jesus Christ. He was stirred awake. His life was utterly changed¹.

This is the principal difference between a child of Nature (CON) and a Child of God (COG). A CON has no reason to feel motivated to love. He can live just like Evolution tells him: be fit enough to survive. Why should he bother about ethics or any other aspect of life that impacts another? Even so a CON may and often does live ethically as a responsible citizen or an honorable person but this too is a means to live in harmony with society or to abide and maintain the highest standards in society. In other words, love of self or betterment of Society motivates it.

If ten people on the boat have reached their maximum capacity and one is left on a burning ship, a CON would not know how to weigh the life of a man hanging on the choice people in the boat make. He may be ethical but because its nature we are talking about and not God, he probably is clueless to the respect for each man’s life. He would mathematically decide to weigh the life of ten people, more important than the life of one left there in the ship to die.

Even if I have to concede that a CON does show sympathy. It is my sympathy in fact with all those people who show sympathy without ever questioning: where does this sympathy come from? Why do I feel this sympathy to another helpless person? Is it because he needs love? And why should I give him that? As no one else would? A CON will stumble upon truth but never reach the complete truth. His kindness to the helpless fellow helps him (the fellow) to better society but there is no contribution from Nature as a parent to motivate him to love. It is just his gratitude for his own life and reflection on the way the helpless fellow is suffering compared to him.

A COG is also motivated by love if not general sympathy. Seeing the helpless person as God sees him and remembering that Christ said: Love one another as I have loved you so that the child can show his love for God and love his neighbor as he would love himself. Loving God motivates us to love others. I do not know one person who has felt motivated to love others because an inanimate vague nature has said so or the radiant beauty of nature motivated him to be kind to his neighbor.

A COG may err and fall into wrong doing. But because the child has his reference as God, and God knows all and in principle can never be confused. The child is aware that either he is right or wrong. There is no middle ground or anything subjective in the sense that is alright for him to do but not others and others to do but not him. For God can neither be deceived nor be in a dilemma. Thus the COG, though commits a wrong, acknowledges it as his weakness that he did something wrong and hopes God would have mercy and help him ahead to be more courageous.

A CON doesn’t see wrong doing as an act whose consequences is perpetual or something he will have offer an explanation to. A CON is not obliged to think that his action is transcendental. So in an event that he commits an immoral act or perpetrates wrongdoing, he may just approach it as…”well, everyone does it, I had to survive…had to stay afloat…no point telling the truth if it doesn’t serve my purpose.” Values and ethics just serve as a means to an end for a child of nature. A child of nature expects others to be ethical when it serves him like paying ticket to board a train and may not be ethical himself while overcharging a product because he is just doing it to protect himself and his business. There is no reference. A CON is lost in the confusion and relativism of the world

The final point is that a CON can only do so much. He can love all he wants but what he achieves is just…”every one of us will live in harmony and brotherhood.” Such pursuits are only to the betterment of society and so that we all can co-exist peacefully. This is a very subtle and subconscious selfishness, actually. A COG just loves because God is love. He loves as Love is an end in itself. Thus our love for god reflects in our lives as we try to bring God to others. If God truly enters our lives, it bends us and breaks us and makes us new moulds into clays the Potter decides. All virtues that are instilled in me, all gifts, and all graces are God’s will and generosity. A child of God has nothing to claim as his own. There is much to hope to be a COG. Alas, the child of nature leaves the show at the time of death. For the Child of God, the show has just begun, banquet that awaits him for running God’s show.

1. Living Love, a Treatise by Francis de Sales on the love of God

THE HONEST SOUL

A smile has fragrance

That the other can smell.

A smile costs a little more dearly

Not so much as to sign with a president’s pen.

Little bit of honesty, a little bit of truth

Little bit of humanity every day in this world uncouth.

A little bit of love and service to bear.

You will find the world changing

The chance is everywhere.

Sing a song, tell it all

Make your intentions clear.

To get your all, you spoil their hope.

Hiding one self and living in fear.

Let people know you by your tongue.

They take a chance and are left in despair.

Because we only care about ourselves

I make humanity but no humanity I share.

Nowhere to run, nothing to hide

I am clear in my soul.

If this be my test, will I stand about You?

I have loved You with my whole

Para 1:

It is easy to smile. So much so, that we fool people in our smiles. Our dishonesty is veiled in our smile. A real smile is one that says you love that person in all honesty. This ‘real’ smile, no one desires to offer. This smile takes more effort than for a president to sign a bill that makes a nation’s law.

Para 2:

The author says that every day we talk very vaguely about humanity and goodness. Real humanity is something as ordinary as loving a person next to you and being honest with him. We get these opportunities everyday and in every walk of life be it in the bus with disgruntled passengers or in a queue.

Para 3:

We often use so many euphemisms, subtle ways, stories and alibis to suit our purposes. We keep hiding and finding cover under lies and deceit.

Para 4:

Let your words be a precursor and the sign of your identity. Let others believe you by your word. To trust another, is a noble way to measure humanity. In order to serve our purposes, we give others hope that their purposes are being served too. Once our purpose is fulfilled we leave them in despair. We all are a part of humanity but there is nothing so ‘humane’ we share with others. Instead we justify our actions everyday by saying-everyone does it (dishonesty) or this is the way the world works.

Para 5:

Misery and worry makes us lose our health. A man who has no debts, a clear conscience and good health is then the happiest. This man even goes on to believe that his soul is not in sin and awaits the judgment of God in hope. He knows he must have paid a price to choose to be so. He only hopes that if having a clear conscience is the test God asks us to take every day, then he has loved humanity with all his efforts. God made all of humanity and the world and this man has loved God by all his strength.

INTROSPECTION

There are a lot of gifts in me

If only I discover

But all I do is look at the world outside of me

Overlooking the joy that is near

Between me and my peace

Lies a certain kind of fear

That tells me not to carry

What means to me so dear

I seek a joy that is fleeting

Running away from the knowledge of myself

This world has joys my heart is after

And my soul cries out instead.

It is difficult to let go

Once what has done my senses in

Does my life have any purpose then?

If senses all but end in sin

Am I really free to be?

They say you can do what you please

If my conscience cannot prick me

I am enslaved by the darkness, no light to see the breeze

I seek what is easy

But gain is only for the brave

I can try many things lest I be a fool

Sickness leaves my soul deprave.

So put my heart at peace

If pursuit of pleasure is so vain

What for is pleasure if so deceiving?

Why don’t You fill me with your grace instead?