I want to say a bit more regarding yesterday’s batman no more post.
Bruce Wayne was certainly striving to be compassionate, in fact Batman’s compassion one of the key themes of the film. Liam Neesson’s character saw Bruce Wayne’s compassion as his great weakness. After all, Batman not only had a desire to save the the people of Gotham but he also refuses to deliberately take the life of his enemy. My concern has more to do with understanding oneself in opposition to another. I believe that any view of the world which reinforces an “us verses them” is a threat to humanity.
The goal of love is not to destroy the other but to redeem, restore, reconcile and move toward one’s in through God. When discipline is punishment or vengeance then the relationship has shifted from seeking the best for the other, to making them pay.
“Seeking the best” for the other is necessary vague, as the nuances of each relationship will require unique Holy Spirit guides action. That’s why love is impossible to legislate or enforce.
Batman was cut from the same clothe as the Shadow League. The Shadow League with their historic sense of moral superiority saw their acts of terror as a holy act on behalf of an ignorant people. The Shadow League believed the destruction of Gotham was a prophetic act on behalf of humanity.
Unless there is a higher ethic than “opposing the other’s worldview” who can say that Batman has a stronger case than the Shadow League? Who can claim that the United States has a stronger case than Iraq? And on what grounds can such claims be made?
The ultimate mission of the Shadow League was the same as Batman’s: their mission was to defend the defenseless. Granted, their methodologies were significantly different. Their similar mission reveals an important truth about evil. Evil is good-twisted. Evil has no intrinsic substance. Thus naming another as evil, or evil-doers or evil-personified, hurts us all. When we look underneath every “evil” act we see a desire for love, truth, beauty and transcendence. “. . . the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God” (Bruce Smith, The World, The Flesh, and Father Smith, 1945, p. 108 – this quote is commonly ascribe to G. K. Chesterton though I can’t find where he said it).
It seems to me that when we begin to define ourselves as being “against” we open ourselves up to “twisting the good.” However when we see our attempts at justice and discipline as being “for” we may be moving in a healthier direction. I’m not so naïve to to think that a sharp dichotomy between “for” and “against” is possible. Every “for” carries “against” with it just as every “against” carries with if “for”.
This is why relational theology is so important. Relational theology lives into the paradox of “for” and “against” and chooses “us.”
peace, dwight
Good stuff on Batman and evil. A lot of this is about the loss of capacity to engage with the ‘other’ with empathy.
Any idea why the left side of the "And" blog disappears into white?
according to Quotemeister at http://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/questions.htm, the brothel quotation is not Chesterton’s. It’s rightly attributed as you had cited from Smith’s book.
Actually the author’s name is Bruce Marshall, not Bruce Smith, but the title of the book is correct.