Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Faith is More than Morality

Jorg Zink | 19.08.2007 01:38 | Repression | World

With Jesus, there are only two models and two basic movements that ethically train a person. One leads from the heart of a person outwards in ever-greater distance. The other leads downwards from the heights where one stands. the first is loving, the expansion of love in all directions including the enemy. The second is descending, renouncing on one's importance, one's rank, one's power, one's dignity and one's success.

FAITH IS MORE THAN MORALITY

What would a Christian ethic look like today? Doing the good, protecting the climate and loving enemies

By Jorg Zink

[What would a Christian ethic look like today? How would Jesus act today? This ethic would not consist of an exact catalogue of rules on what is allowed and what is not allowed. In his new book “Call to Freedom,” the theologian Jorg Zink describes this ethic. This article published in the Bavarian “Sonntagsblatt,” 7/15/2007 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.sonntagsblatt-bayern.de/news/aktuell/2007_28_01_01.htm.]


We are accustomed to speak of values. Are there values with Jesus? Are they called virtues or behavioral models? The sociological approach in current biblical theology raises this question and concludes that with Jesus there are only two models and two basic movements that ethically train a person. One leads from the heart of a person outwards in ever greater distance. The other leads downwards from the heights where one stands.

The first is loving, the expansion of love in all directions, to loved persons, neighbors and those far away up to the enemy. The second is descending, renouncing on one’s significance, one’s rank, one’s right, one’s power, one’s dignity, one’s success, renunciation on status. Take the last place, Jesus says. Everything else that is ethically important results from these two basic movements. Jesus sees the model for this way of life in God. To him, God is the lover who descends in the lowlands of human life.

Faith, not morality, tells a person what to do. Descending on the social staircase is an idea of God. Tradition calls this humilitas, being humble or lowly. This word is related to humus, nearness to the earth. One has to remain on earth and be realistic. Both faith and morality confirm that basic values can be demanded and prescribed by a community, society, family, state or whoever. They must be observed. Still these values only exist in the free decisions of the two basic movements. Loving and descending require the free renunciation on freedom by a free person.

Neither faith nor morality provides standards for a legal order. Whoever does not want to love his enemy or descend to a suffering person cannot be punished. This is Jesus’ understanding. Punishing evil-doers was not his reason for being. Fundamental ethical conflicts can first be solved with solutions that go beyond the ethical frameworks, Jesus was convinced.

Justice is a necessary goal of all ethics though it is unattainable. Still loving and descending show the ways the unattainable becomes attainable. Whether people are able to seek peace on the way of descending from some lofty horse, high claim or know-it-all attitude, not with the help of their power or their right, decides whether peace can come somewhere. Give your love in an ever larger circle to more and more persons, to the most foreign persons and the enemy. Descend with this love. Descend ever deeper until you are at eye level with the one who needs your love. We like to speak today of solidarity. But we always encounter reality in a certain perspectivist narrowing as long as we think of solidarity from above. Reality only appears to us in its true proportions when we think of solidarity that sees eye to eye the one dependent on this solidarity.

What are our instructions for our practical conduct? Only these two: loving and descending. Everything else is free. We do not have an applicable command or behavioral model, a hierarchy of values or the fiction of an inner law called a conscience. The whole mystical tradition understood Jesus better than church dogma in this point by emphasizing the simple instruction: Love and do what you will! To complete this rule in Jesus’ sense, descend until you are at eye level with the one needing your love.

Is that a political ethic? No. For Christians, a political ethic is a free space for decisions that no one can prescribe. That truth arises or justice in the form of more acceptable effectiveness must be decided here. This was Jesus’ intention in opening up freedom. The sudden solvability of problems that cannot be solved appears here. Descending means managing without consciousness of one’s own superiority, for example thinking, speaking and acting without force. In all cases, violence separates us from the people before us. The problems we want to solve cannot be solved with violence. As long as we rely on violence, we cannot heal the conditions besetting the people of this earth. We cannot change or improve what we are fighting. Malevolence or delight in hostility is a position beyond all solvability of problems.

These are like laws of life that cannot be ignored if we want a somewhat better earth. Today everyone knows hundreds of millions of people around the globe are dying of starvation. Everyone also knows Europe is deeply buried under its mountains of butter, wheat and pigs. Everyone knows there are enough reasons why food does not come to those needing it. Everyone knows hundreds of millions of people live under conditions caused by unjust ruling classes or the indifference of authorities. Everyone suspects this will continue to the end of the world for a thousand unfortunate reasons despite ethical appeals here and there.

Everyone knows the human environment will not hold out much longer and that a rethinking must occur regarding the production of industry and the consumption of nations. Everyone knows the catastrophe will come if nothing happens. Everyone also knows nothing can happen for many reasons to prevent this. All this could be prevented if we descended to where solutions are offered.

We like to speak of justice. However no one fighting for his right can do anything for justice in the world. Justice only arises where many renounce on their right. Justice always means the right of others. We like to speak of peace but we seek our success, our great and small victories.

But whoever wants to win is in some kind of war and cannot be freed from war. Whoever wants to win cannot do anything for peace. We like to speak of truth. At the same time we want to be confirmed. Still truth is more than our know-it-all attitude. Whoever wants to prevail cannot do anything for truth. We like to speak of understanding. However we should finally recognize the law of life that is true for all human understanding: that we only understand what we love at least a little. We turn emotionally to ourselves.

When I do not love a person at least a little, I can have a thousand pieces of information without understanding him. That is also true for my enemy. When I do not turn emotionally to him, my reaction is dictated by fear or hatred. I cannot understand him at all. The war against terror today is a case in point. The demand “Love your enemy” means Take back the evil projected on the enemy. Try to understand why they think and how they think. Why do they fear? Why do they play as they play and not otherwise?

Loving the enemy so one understands him and bringing this understanding into security policy is a question of wisdom. This is the only way that leads to peace. Understanding what history has left behind in the souls of other people in traumata is indispensable, for example the history of colonialism or the history of the technicizing of life.

Loving the enemy means thinking beyond hostility. It means starting from the assumption that hostility need not remain and conflict can end. Loving the enemy means distinguishing between injustice and the person who does it. It means opposing injustice and winning the one who does injustice. There is no alternative to the love and affection toward the opposing party about which Jesus speaks. This love is the condition for the survival of humanity.

Jorg Zink
- e-mail: mbatko@lycos.com
- Homepage: http://www.mbtranslations.com

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech