The Dark Side of Potential
It's clear, when looking at the scene of Jesus on the cross,
that we as humans have the capacity to hurt each other, deliberately. We have it in us to inflict pain. What Jesus underwent at the cross was no mere
accident. He was not inadvertently run
over by a horse or struck down by random lightning. He died as the result of premeditated
strategy. Human beings, knowing
precisely what they were doing, planned out every detail of this process of
torture and execution as a deliberate means to an end.
Crucifixion was the strategy the Roman Empire had devised to
keep occupied people under control. The
Romans had successfully extended their domination over the whole of the
Mediterranean Basin, and as a way of maintaining that control, the process of
crucifixion had proven exceedingly useful.
It served two purposes. It not
only eliminated troublemakers from occupied lands, but it also served as an
example to any other would-be rebels who might have contemplated lifting their
hand against the authorities. It was as calculating
a way as you could find for one set of human beings to destroy and control
other human beings, and this is part of what we see when you come into the
event of the cross – human beings deliberately inflicting pain on other human
beings for purposes of their own.
And when asked about the mystery of human potential, room
has to made for this sort of thing. It
is not a subject we like to dwell upon, but neither can it be denied: we humans
have it in us to hurt other human beings.
We are willing to dominate and destroy. The savage impulse to taunt and
to torture and to kill is a real part of the human story. All you have to do is read the accounts of
life in a concentration camp or walk the streets of some of our cities to have
this fact underlined. You could even
look internally to the people in your life that you exclude, hate, or wish
didn’t exist.
We usually try to ignore the presence of such darkness in
our “culture of niceness” but that does not eliminate the reality of it. Hard as it is to admit, we who were given
power and the possibility of being creative are capable of turning things
upside down and using that power to hurt and destroy.
I’m convinced that nothing is more dangerous than trying to
ignore or deny this aspect of ourselves.
It’s rooted, according to John Claypool, in a basic despising of self
and is a poison that moves outward from thinking, “I’m not ok” to “You’re not
ok” to “It’s not ok.” And when one
operates out of this negative feeling base, the impulse to hurt comes rather
naturally.
And make no mistake, this darkness is present in each of us
in a very real way. The form it usually
takes is hostility for the people who are different from us. They may have different ideas, different skin
tone, or different life-styles, and we get terribly enraged in their
presence. And the weapons of choice are
not guns or knives but rather words.
I for one have never been overly tempted to be brutal with my
fists, but my tongue – that’s another matter.
I have said some terribly cutting things in my time, and the hurt this
inflicts on others is very real.
We, therefore, would do well not to be naïve here. The ones who think they are without
destructive tendencies are out of touch with all that is within them. My prayer this Lenten season is that we will
come to grips with the negative, dark side of our humanity, confess it, turn
from it, and start living our lives out of love and not fear (or hate).[1]
[1]
Thoughts from this blog were taken and adapted from a 1978 sermon by John R.
Claypool on 1 Corinthians 1.18
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