Legitimizing Indignation

Continuing from the last post, on verbal aggression, I think Paul Tournier, in his book, The Violence Within, nails the reason for the generally divisive state of being today:

“Everyone talks of dialogue nowadays, but true dialogue is extremely rare. What we get Is more the exchange of threats and reciprocal aggressiveness, a dialogue of the deaf, confrontation by adversaries each of whom is sure his views are right and anxious only to impose them—not conversation between partners desirous of mutual understanding.”

This, he further and so beautifully exposes, is simply because of the delusional perspective we carry of our own self:

“What I discover in the course of meditation and in reading my Bible is my own violence which I had been calling legitimate indignation. Yes, indeed, what the Bible reveals is that it is not a case of the righteous on one side and the sinners on the other, peacemakers on one side and men of violence on the other, with a clear line of demarcation between them, but that violence is in the heart of all men.” 

“Those who reject the biblical concept of sin always tend—logically enough—to minimize the problem of violence, looking upon it as a kind of anomaly, an exceptional deviation, confirmed to a few sick persons, and a few ill-disposed persons; and this is reassuring to the others. But they are astonished when events give the lie to this easy optimism.

Sin is a word psychiatrists do not often use. I understand them, nevertheless sin is what is involved. I understand them because the idea of sin has been radically distorted by moralism, and because psychiatrists see, as I do, far too many pious souls weighed down by it.” 

Weakness reacts in verbal aggression out of a blindness to one's own sin. 

Be it gossip behind the back of a person we are too stubborn to personally air grievances with, haughty posts on social media, saccharine patronizing, a civic "discourse" of shouting and humiliating, or the sideways needling and belittling of the passive-aggressive kind--verbal antagonism merely indicates a hardened attitude, not only towards others but towards one's own complicity and accountability. 

Strength, on the other hand, responds non-defensely out of a softened heart: willingly aware and comprehending of one's own sin. 

Copyright Barb Harwood