Brian Zahnd Is Off His Rocker Again

Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling downward to the House of the Death and then many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two start broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
—The Iliad

Western civilization has e'er had two competing sacred texts: The Iliad and the Bible. We have long pretended we tin can course a overnice synthesis of the 2—that Homer's Achilles and Isaiah's Immanuel are somehow compatible ethics, but they are non. The rage of Achilles and the peace of Immanuel are fundamentally contradictory visions for the ideal of humanity in general and of manhood in particular. Those who derive their ideal of manhood from the pagan vision personified in Achilles volition never be able to reconcile it with the ideal of manhood depicted in Christ. Achilles or Christ? Who is our model of manhood? We must cull. We must choose between the brutal way of Achilles and the peaceable way of Christ. And if you lot experience compelled to appeal to the whip-wielding Christ in the temple as an attempt to synthesize the two, permit me just say that Christ cleansing the temple is a world away from the violence of The Iliad that dominates imaginations from Homer to Hollywood; i.due east. Jesus' prophetic protestation against religious exploitation is no endorsement of a "Walker, Texas Ranger" version of Messiah!

(I have much to say near this, merely I will reserve those thoughts for more serious writing.)

Last Midweek—the last day of our almanac summer vacation in the mountains—I spent the whole day perched on the side of a mountain reading the Bible, Annie Dillard, and John Howard Yoder. I read most of Yoder's The Original Revolution that day. What follows is a (slightly edited) portion from the chapter entitled "Christ, the Hope of the World." (This chapter is taken from a lecture Yoder gave in 1966…yet it sounds every bit if it were written yesterday.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, John Howard Yoder…

Manhood Is Not Brutality

Not just the history books preach a view of man co-ordinate to which physical and political violence is the ultimate exam of the value and of personal merit. It is as well the example for popular verse and literature, all the style from the classical tales of the age of chivalry to the modern morality legends of the Western motion picture, the spy story, and the comprehend story of the successful businessman in Time magazine. What these stories print deeply upon the soul is not simply the flick of a personage simply a view of the universe. They tell us we are in a universe where there are "bad guys" who are utterly beyond redemption. The simply satisfactory effect of the disharmonize with them must be that they be banished or crushed. The "bad guy" is not evil because nosotros know that he has wittingly done evil deeds or expressed malevolent intentions; he is bad past definition, by status, considering he belongs to the incorrect side.

And so in that location are the good guys. Goodness, like evil, is not morally based. The practiced guys lie and kill just like the others; but they are on the correct side, they are good because of the cause they represent. This guarantees not only that they have the correct to lie and to kill but also that they will always win out in the finish.

We have here a flick of the whole moral universe; one which (at least in the United states of america) has apparently influenced the national personality and the national manner in international affairs, equally nosotros can find in the history of the past few years most abundantly:

a. All conflicts are reducible to blackness and white moral bug, where one party is wholly incorrect, and so wrong as to forfeit his right to be, and the other political party right, then correct as to be authorized to exercise about anything for his crusade.

b. Moral problems are not determined from a personal moral perspective only on the basis of "sides."

c. For those who are on the incorrect side, fifty-fifty their proficient deeds are deceptive facade; for those who are on the right side, even the almost evil deeds are excusable.

d. The good guy is sure to be successful in deceit and in physical combat; the story always comes out that fashion.

The fable paints for youth, those who are most ready to learn, a moving picture of the nature of the moral universe which is fundamentally false. It is not truthful, from either the biblical or the historical perspective, that the world is divided into two organizations, ii societies, 1 proficient and ane evil. Information technology is not the instance, either factually or on a more than conscientious logical or biblical analysis, that the good human being is generally triumphant in concrete or intellectual disharmonize. It is non true, from the perspectives of either logic or of the Bible, that every possible ways can be considered justifiable if it is used toward an end considered desirable.

At this bespeak, modernistic critical thinking and faith in Jesus Christ volition coincide. They join in condemnation of the self justifying vision of conflict and manhood existence traced past these legends. If we once dare to challenge the picture, and come across information technology crumble, nosotros then tin discover that in fact violence and deceit represent a particular form of moral weakness (the same parallel relationship of violence and deceit which we observe was striking in the Sermon on the Mount).

Secrecy and deceit are forms of slavery. The United states experience of the past few years has demonstrated publicly several times that authorities secret intelligence agencies accept been a major source of misinformation. [!] Also concrete or psychic violence is a confusion of moral weakness. He who resorts to blows confesses he has no better arguments. And still our legend literature, making virtue, personal backbone, and success in combat coincide as they do not in real life, sustains a pagan, pre-Christian defoliation of manhood with brutality.

Thus spake Yoder.

BZ

(The art is a Grecian urn depicting Achilles slaying Hector.)

P.Southward. Just for fun, here's a pic from my twenty-four hours of reading on the mountain side.

northcutttheavalogy.blogspot.com

Source: https://brianzahnd.com/2011/07/manhood-is-not-brutality/

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