There's an old saying my dad taught me: Es mejor ponerse colorado una vez, que rosado cien ("It's much better to get really red one time than pink a hundred times.")
The saying reflects folk wisdom reminding us that sometimes real indignation --- red hot once and for all --- can be a positive force. The hundred "pink" times reflect not only the idea of straddling the fence and not taking a stand, but the reality that such attitudes of accommodation, of looking the other way and giving lip service to our convictions while doing little about them will change nothing. We (and those around us) will have to suffer through the offending situations many more times.
We see this power of saying "No" in Holy Scriptures repeatedly. Taking a stand is what Moses does when he demands that Pharaoh free the Israelites, and what the prophets routinely did, it was their job to speak the difficult truths.
Even Jesus, who not only preached non-violence but lived it until his very last breath on earth, got so fired up when he saw what was going on around him that he roared at the top of his voice for the behavior in the courtyards of the Temple to stop. Jesus said "No!" with all his might to the way some of his contemporaries were living their lives.
In this "No!" he modeled an important teaching: it is not wrong to be critical and it is not sinful to be angry, when our critique and our well-directed anger are the result of being tuned in, in complete humility, to the will of God and how that will is not being done.
Closer to our time we have a voice that also uttered a resounding "No!" awakening many others to join him. "If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love," Martin Luther King Jr. exclaimed in Montgomery Alabama in 1955, "when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, 'There lived a great people - a black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.'"
That courageous protest with dignity and Christian love flowered into the struggle for civil rights and changed this nation. But Rosa Parks, and many others, black and white, had to join King in saying "No" to what was contrary to the will of God. Some died because of their "No." King did.
How do we nurture our responsibility to give voice to the prophetic No? It is from our religious tradition that we can gather some clues.
1. The truth sayer sees and names the wrong publicly. Seeing what is wrong is not an easy task because it assumes our awareness not only of what is really happening around us, but of the religious ethics of our communities that help us discern what is contrary to God's will. We first have to understand why something is wrong, and grasp not its surface but its depth. We cannot do this in a vacuum, relying solely on our own "lights" or personal judgments --- we need to listen.
In a culture that is obsessed with youth and innovation, where the phrase 'that is so 10 minutes ago!" parodies the power that the latest fads have over us, it is imperative that we cultivate a respect for the slow and patient wisdom of our elders. If we can renew our appreciation for the creative ways in which human beings have communicated with each other throughout history from the simplest story-telling to the great works of art, perhaps in those often well-polished mirrors we can see a truer picture of our humanity and also of what disfigures it.
2. We need to attentively read the past with an eye to the present, actively learning from those who came before us. For instance, what does Francis of Assisi have to teach a culture where a pair of sneakers can cost $300? Francis stripped his father's wealth from his body because he understood that such wealth was built on dehumanizing others.
When we think of a worker (usually supporting a family) who does not make enough money at her factory job to feed her children, are we not compelled to say a resounding "No" to the exploitation that lies behind such extravagance?
3. We need to read the present with an eye to the past. When nations have routinely ignored their weakest members and trampled them, hasn't that society eventually crumbled under the weight of its own selfishness? Is not "decency" a way we used to name the respect we believed was owed to other human beings?
If we condone the many multiple ways that our contemporary society has made big business out of the indecent humiliation of other people, do we not break down the fabric of our own humanity? When is enough…enough?
4. We need to live life as we want life to be, not just complain about the way it is. This is the creative power of the well-placed No --- this actual living, daily living, of our convictions. Perhaps this means being unpopular with our kids when we deny them the expensive sneakers, but it also means explaining to them, carefully and compassionately, why such sneakers, or giant TVs, or gas guzzling SUVs are immoral.
It is only by going beneath the surface that they will understand the well-informed source of our No. It may mean taking a stance at our work, against pettiness, vindictiveness, dishonesty, even if it costs us our job. It certainly means scrutinizing our nation's public policies for their underlying effects --- for the killing they sanction, for the dehumanization of our fellow human beings they propagate, for the selfish motivations of profit and comfort they legitimize.
Our "No's" will be different; they will be lived out in many ways, in the very particular circumstances of each of our lives, and they will often bear a cost. Jesus told us following him was not easy, yet, along with his "No" Jesus always uttered a new and light-filled "Yes." In other words, part of saying "No" to something is imagining creatively something else, something wonderful. Martin Luther King had "a dream."
Jesus was appalled at those who called themselves religious yet lived only for profit and prestige, so he invited those who had no wealth or prestige to dine with him. Their very need became the source of his gift. He imagined a world, a glimpse of God's coming reign, where a human being's worth came from their very humanness --- tax collector, prostitute, leper --- he broke bread with all of them. He made community with them and he made those moments supremely joyful.
Our creative Yes has to dream of ways to undo the wrongness our No is confronting. Our No to luxury can be coupled with our active presence where there is no luxury. And our family can rejoice when our $300 not spent on sneakers helps to build a lunch shelter at an inner-city school. Yes, there are many ways in which our No can be the catalyst for a life-giving Yes.
So, back to our ancestors and to much wiser voices:
Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God's soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.
---Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1914) Cecilia González-Andrieu joins the Theology faculty at Loyola Marymount University this fall. |