At the end of this long detour, on this new way of speaking, listening, and thinking about ourselves, others and the world at large, and after discovering that this new language, besides being a way of speaking, it is a new philosophy of life that is transversal to all human sciences and a new matrix or paradigm for human life in all its social and individual dimensions, we therefore conclude that NVC is the language spoken or will be spoken in the Kingdom of God.
NVC leads us to be compassionate, and to give and receive compassionately. Whatever we do, the services we give to others and to ourselves have as their sole motivation to enrich lives, our happiness and the happiness of others. Therefore, we do nothing out of obligation, duty, fear of punishment, hope of rewards, shame or guilt. We understand that it is in our nature, in our genes to be drawn to gratuity and we do nothing that isn’t play. Furthermore, we serve others because it makes us happy to contribute to their happiness.
In NVC, we do not make moral or ethical judgments about the performance of others: we do not insult, humiliate, criticize, or label. We also do not make analyses or comparisons, because we know that such attitudes will put others on the defensive. We evaluate our performance and that of others in as much as this meets our and theirs needs or values, we do this to learn from our mistakes and not to feel guilty or blame others.
We take responsibility for our own feelings and actions. What others say or do can trigger feelings and emotions in us, but they cannot cause them. Their causes lie in the way we receive, judge and interpret what others say or do, as well as whether or not they meet our needs and expectations at the moment. In expressing a feeling, we are also expressing a need, whether met or unmet, that gives rise to it, always using the formula: “I feel… because I need… (or I feel… because I value…)
The Kingdom of God not the church
“Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church.” Alfred Loisy (1857-1940)
There is a discontinuity between Jesus of Nazareth and the Church; in fact, while the word Ekklesia appears only twice, and only in the Gospel of Matthew (16:18 & 18:1) in two very debatable verses, the expression Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven as preferred by Matthew, appears almost one hundred times.
Jesus inaugurates the Kingdom not the Church, not a cultic organization at the service of a religion or a political system as it was later, but rather an egalitarian movement of men and women, which does not let in discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, culture, gender, religion, social class, or geographical origin, and has as its paradigm a society where justice and peace reign.
The announcement of the Kingdom of God has had a subversive, nonconformist, utopian and destabilizing character on the violent domination system predominant long before the coming of Jesus, during his time, and after his death to this day. Of course the Kingdom of God is not the work of a single man, even if that man is Jesus of Nazareth, and not even of one generation, that of his disciples and apostles. In this sense, the Church is born as the leaven of the Kingdom of God, as the depository of the doctrine of Jesus and as the mystical body of Christ, the reincarnation of Christ in the here and now throughout the history of humanity.
The Church is at the service of the Mission which began when God sent his Son into the world. The purpose of the Mission is not the implantatio Ekklesia, the implantation of the Church, but the implantation of the Kingdom of God. The absolutization of the ecclesiastical institution and its identification with the Kingdom are heresies and perversions of the movement Jesus founded. The Church is tempted to idolize herself, but to avoid this, the best antidote is to imitate Jesus in the way he placed himself side by side with the poor, took up their cause and worked for their liberation and for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus and religious violence
Jesus of Nazareth did not parachute into the history of Israel, but integrated a movement that began before him and of which he took to completion, that is, to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:2), the destruction of Himself with the Temple (John 2:19), and the institution of each of us as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
It all began when a sect of Judaism, comprised of the Qumran monks, abandoned the official religion of Israel because of its corruption and violence, and took refuge in the caves on the shore of the Dead Sea. At that time in order to re-enter into communion with God, after violating the Law of Moses, the Israelites had to sacrifice an animal that acted as their scapegoat. In fact, at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, more than 3000 lambs and goats were slaughtered in the Temple of Jerusalem.
All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. No one shall appear before me empty-handed. Exodus 34:19-20
This does not sound very different from the ancient religions of the Mayans and Aztecs where human sacrifices were offered to gods. In Jerusalem, around the Temple was created the priestly class, and with it business and corruption were installed. High priests Annas and Caiaphas instructed the Temple guards to reject lambs and goats brought in by the worshipers as defective and unfit for offering to God, so that they had to buy replacements from the flocks that belonged to the high priests.
John the Baptist, being the son of a priest, and a priest himself, never took up his privilege to officiate in the Temple of Jerusalem, instead he moved to the banks of the Jordan River, thus bringing the purification of sins by way of water out of the walls of the monastery of Qumran, offering it to all the discontents of the Jewish religion.
You will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, (…) the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth… John 4:21-23
Jesus goes beyond John the Baptist and offers not the existing baptism of water but rather of the Holy Spirit, he forgives sins in the same way he heals, and brings the religion to where the people lives, not in the Temple of Jerusalem, nor in the desert where for 40 years the people related with God, but to the cities and towns where people live. In this sense, God dwells again with his people as he once did in the wilderness living in a tent and walking with them.
In Jesus, God walks again with his people like the way the Ark of the Covenant was carried everywhere by God’s people, even to battles; he is no longer confined in a Temple, to which someone has the key and uses it as an instrument of power. God is Spirit and as such he is everywhere, he is inherent in all his creation.
The end of the dualistic thinking
The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. Isaiah 11:6-8
In the Kingdom of God there are no hatred because there are no enemies; hostilities are all overshadowed; the animals, that were once enemies of one another, now live in harmony with one another and with human beings.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28
Among human beings there is an authentic French revolution as they distinguish themselves by social classes and castes, blue blood, slavery and lordship, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia. However, all are equal before God who is the Creator of all and the Father of all, therefore Jesus advises us not to give the title of Father, or teacher, or doctor to another person other than God; let us not admit anyone as being above us, nor see anyone as being beneath us.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. Revelation 21:1
The Kingdom of God is the new heaven and the new earth where the sea, which for the Hebrews was the symbol of evil, no longer exists. As we find ourselves beyond human and animal hostilities, the differentiation between good and evil also ceases to exist; God is good and created only good things. Human beings are the masterpiece of God’s creation therefore they can only be exceedingly good.
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Isaiah 2:4
As evil ceases to exist, its maximum expression or war also ceases to exist, so that the obsolete weapons of war are now re-melted and forged into weapons of peace. Jesus himself on entering Jerusalem as king did not come mounted on a horse, an animal used for war and a symbol of power and ostentation, but he came mounted on an animal that is for all a symbol of peace and humility, a donkey, for donkeys even to this day are the only mode of transport of goods in poor countries.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations. Isaiah 25:6-7
At last for Isaiah, as for Jesus four centuries later, the best way of representing a kingdom is a banquet, where there is pleasure and joy, fun and human coexistence based on respect and love. A banquet that in the event of the lack of the wine of joy, Jesus turns the water, destined for purification, into the most generous wine that has ever been produced (John 2:1-11).
NVC – The solution for all ills
Our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize that our well-being and the well-being of others are in fact one and the same. Marshall Rosenberg
Nonviolent Communication is the panacea, the medicine that cures all ills, both individual and social. It is the Philosopher’s stone that turns everything it touches into gold, and the general theory for everything, the paradigm, the matrix of the new world, the Kingdom of God. In summary:
NVC can be effectively applied at all levels of communication and in diverse situations: intimate, relational, familial, in schools, organizations and institutions, in therapy and counseling, in diplomatic and business negotiations, in disputes and conflicts of any kind.
It adjust the worldview of the human being by affirming that man is not naturally evil as the Babylonian myth asserts, but is naturally good as the biblical myth asserts, and violence is not in our genes, but is a sickness, a problem that we must solve.
It also unmasks the myth of redemptive violence, where violence presents itself as the solution for itself; violence does not solve any problems and only creates others. Hatred will only make our enemies stronger, only love can defeat them.
In loving our enemies as Jesus told us to, we expose the fallacy of redemptive violence myth and deprive the domination system of its moral justification. Throughout history, in order to survive, the domination system has always accused and declared certain people as “bad” and “enemies” in order to justify using violence against them.
By replacing retributive justice with restorative justice, NVC reconciles the victim in a positive and healthy way with the criminal so that both can heal the wound infringed and the offender restores or pays for his crime, not to the State by rotting away in a prison, but to the victim by restoring his initial dignity thus enabling the criminal himself to go back and live in the society.
It establishes a new relationship with our planet, one of sustainable growth and peaceful coexistence with all living things, free from all exploitation. It is a relationship where we are fully responsible for the care and protection of our common home.
In schools, as Rosenberg says, in addition to basic reading, writing and math skills, children need to learn to think for themselves, find meaning and make sense of things for themselves in what they learn, as well as to work and live together harmoniously.
NVC is the best and most positive way of dealing with anger and resolving conflicts, even the long-standing ones, provided that, as Rosenberg says, people resign from criticizing, judging and analyzing one another and get in touch with their own needs and the needs of others. Once the need of each person in the conflict is identified, it is possible to resolve it without anyone’s compromise and to the satisfaction of all.
Underlying all human actions are needs that people seek to fulfill; knowledge and comprehension of these very needs certainly create a point of encounter and a basis for possible cooperation and more globally, peace.
Understanding one another at the level of needs creates communion, because at this deepest human level, the similarities among us outweigh our differences, which gives rise to greater compassion.
When we focus our attention on our mutual needs, without interpreting, criticizing, and blaming, this raw and bare observation awakens our creativity in such a way that solutions surface naturally to our consciousness. At this depth, conflicts and misunderstandings can be resolved more readily.
By following in the footsteps of his teacher, Carl Rogers, being inspired by the concept of compassion present in most religions and basing his theological and anthropological understanding on those of Walter Wink and the vision of the future of Teilhard de Chardin; other than just a language, with Nonviolent Communication Marshall Rosenberg recreated in his own fashion, the matrix, the paradigm, the worldview of the Kingdom of God as Jesus of Nazareth had envisioned two thousand years ago.
10 steps to peace
- Be sure to observe what others say or do as objectively as you can. Give feedback of that observation when needed, without including analyses, interpretations, or judgments of any kind. Take responsibility for them if you do need to include any of these.
- Feelings and needs are the core of a person and they make up for what is alive in us, what is going on in us at the present time. As such, feelings and needs are universal and that all humans at all times and places have the same feelings and needs.
- Come to know yourself better by increasing your vocabulary of feelings and needs to better clarify what’s alive in you and assist others in clarifying what’s alive in them. Be sure to be as interested in identifying and meeting the needs of others as you are in identifying and meeting your own.
- Other than taking it personally and reacting against, agreeing or disagreeing with someone’s opinion, try to attune to the feelings and needs behind what the person has said, thus acting on the knowledge that all rage, outbursts, insults, criticisms and negative messages are tragic expressions of feelings and needs that are unmet.
- If you find yourself irritated, sad, depressed, try to discover the need in you that is not being met, and what strategy to use to meet it, instead of passing a verdict and concluding that there is something wrong with you or with others. Use this same philosophy and process with your mistakes and wrongdoings, mourn them instead of passing verdicts on yourself such as putting yourself down or blaming yourself.
- Be sure to make an empathic connection with the person before you ask for anything; eventually when you do, make sure that it is a request and not a demand.
- Instead of saying what you do not want the other person to do, in the hope that the other guesses what you truly want, say upfront and concretely what you want the other person to do, that is, phrase your request using positive action words instead of negative ones.
- Instead of declaring what you want someone to be, affirm what concrete action you would like the person to realize, so that he directs towards what you want him to be.
- When someone asks you for something, instead of saying “no” refer to the need that prevents you from saying “yes”. When someone answers “no” to a request of yours, listen to the needs that prevented him from saying “yes”.
- Instead of praising someone for having done something to your liking, express your gratitude by referring to what need of yours was met by what he did. Refer to the same process when you are praised. Make praise and being praised a gratitude, a celebration.
I end with a piece of advice, from the creator and founder of the language of nonviolence Marshall Rosenberg (1934-2015), however impressed we may be with NVC concepts, it is only through practice and usage that our lives are transformed… and, I would add, the Kingdom of God will become a reality.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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