NVC: Empathy, the Lubricant of the Nonviolent Communication

The four components of the nonviolent language, as I have previously mentioned, are: observations - feelings - needs - requests. The objective of this language of nonviolence is to establish relationships based on compassion and giving from the heart so that the needs of everyone involved are met. Empathy and giving from the heart are the fundamental philosophy in which these four components operate, the means by which they operate and their ultimate goal. In this sense, they are at the same time the beginning, the middle and the end of the language of nonviolence.

The alchemists of the Middle Ages sought the Philosopher’s Stone because they believed that such stone had the magical power to turn everything it touched into gold. In this same sense, the Philosopher’s Stone of the nonviolent language is empathy; it is the magic wand that makes it possible for the four components to work and for people to live together in compassionate giving, harmony and understanding.

Nonviolent Communication works like a four-cylinder car engine; the four pistons inside each cylinder are the four components of NVC: Observations – Feelings – Needs – Requests.  The continuous movement up and down of the pistons activated by the explosion of the fuel is what keeps the engine going and the car moving. The fuel for the combustion and explosion is gratuity or giving from the heart; for the engine to keep going indefinitely the pistons need to be enveloped or soaked in lubricant that facilitates their smooth movement and operation. This lubricant in NVC is called empathy; it is what makes NVC possible and what facilitates the whole process.

What is empathy?
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36

In the nonviolent language, empathy or unconditional positive regard, terms used by Rosenberg and Carl Rogers, respectively, means fundamentally the same. It involves going out of oneself, seeing reality as others see it, feeling with and making the suffering of others our own. It is to accept and support a person independently of what he has said or done. To be empathic is to be sensitive to one’s own suffering and to the suffering of others.

Expressing our own observations, feelings, needs and requests to others is one part of NVC. The second part is empathy: the process of connecting with others to find out their feelings and needs. Empathic connection can sometimes happen silently, but in times of conflict by communicating to the other person that we understand his feelings and that his needs matter to us can be a powerful turning point in problem situations. Demonstrating that we have such understanding is not the same as complying to requests that might conflict with our own needs.

Connecting empathically with another person is a way to meet our own needs – for understanding, connection, contribution, or others. At the same time, we hope that the empathy would meet the other person’s needs as well, and would aid both of us in finding strategies that would meet each of our needs.

The language of nonviolence often helps us relate with others, but the heart of empathy is in our ability to compassionately connect with our and others’ humanity. Offering our empathic presence, in this sense, is one strategy (or request) through which we can meet our own needs. It is a gift to another person and to ourselves of our full presence.

When we use NVC to connect empathically, we use the same four components in the form of a question, since we can never know for sure what is going on inside of other people. They will always be the ultimate authority on what is going on in them. Our empathy may meet other people’s needs for understanding, or it may spark their own self-discovery. We may ask something like:
When you see, hear … Are you feeling … Because you need …. Would you like …?

Empathy and self-empathy
Charity begins at home – It is difficult to have empathy or benevolence towards others if I don’t have it for myself. If I don’t love myself unconditionally, I will never be able to love others unconditionally either. Both the expression of our own feelings and needs, and the empathic guesses of the other person’s feelings and needs are grounded in a particular consciousness which is at the heart of NVC. This consciousness is nurtured by the practice of self-empathy.

In self-empathy we give the same compassionate attention to ourselves that we give to others when listening to them using NVC. This means listening past any assessments and judgments we are making to find out what we are feeling and needing. This inner awareness and clarity support us in choosing our next step: expressing ourselves to others, or receiving them with empathy. This next step is our request to ourselves on where we want to focus our attention. The practice of NVC entails an intention to connect compassionately with ourselves and with others, and an ability to keep our attention in the present moment – which includes being aware that sometimes in this present moment we are recalling the past, or imagining a future possibility.

Oftentimes self-empathy comes easy, as we access our sensations, emotions and needs to attune to how we are. However, in moments of conflict or reactivity to others, we may find ourselves reluctant to access an intention to connect compassionately, and we may falter in our capacity to attend to the present moment. Self-empathy at times like this has the power to transform our disconnected state of being and return us to our compassionate intention and present-oriented attention. With practice, many people find that self-empathy alone sometimes resolves inner conflicts and conflicts with others as it transforms our experience of life.

Self-esteem – It is to be able to dismantle self-criticism, judgment and feelings of guilt, and to identify and connect myself with my needs, values and what is important to me. As Rosenberg says, self-criticism, judgment and guilt are dramatic expressions of unmet needs. If I am able to discover and identify these needs or values, then I can reformulate my negative feelings and start to feel good about myself by virtue of having succeeded in connecting with the real and true ‘I’.

Empathy for others – In order to better feel and express empathy for others, it is advisable to follow the sign posted at any railroad crossing: Stop – Listen – Look. Others may turn to us in a manner of judgment or criticism, looking to accuse us for something that is happening to them. But if we have our ears tuned to hear only the nonviolent language then other than criticism, what we hear mostly is the dramatic expression of an unmet need. So all we need to do is to look beyond the form of the violent expression - the criticism – and turn it into the content of that expression, that is, the unmet need.

The violent language of the speaker must be translated into the nonviolent one, that is, we must not take the accusations personally and accept them as if directed to us. On the contrary, we are to look past the way they are expressed, and regard them psychoanalytically and realise that they are simply frustrations and dramatic expressions of unfulfilled needs.

To identify these very needs takes time, it requires that we stop to think, take a deep breath, and have the time to translate and identify these needs that are between the lines of an outburst, an accusation, or an insult.

In order not to keep the other person waiting for the final results of our mental process, we can think out loud and try to guess, tentatively asking the other person what are his feelings, needs, and what is most important to him. Certainly the person we are speaking to will either agree with the interpretation and understanding we make out of his speech, or he will help us to clarify them. This tentative attempt from both of us to understand what is happening to him will calm the person down and help him connect with his own needs, and slowly to let go of his negative feelings and violent words.

At the heart of empathy is our ability to connect to our own humanity and the humanity of others, with what is most real and alive in us and in others without criticism, judgment, feelings of guilt, pretensions or deceptions.

Nonviolent language helps us to connect with one another and with ourselves in a way that brings out our natural empathy. It is this empathy that inspires, forms, informs and guides our observation, feeling, needs and request that we make of ourselves and of others. Empathy is the general theory of the nonviolent language and is also, at the same time, the means to achieve harmony and understanding between people. It is like the oil in a car, which wraps the engine’s moving parts to prevent overheating, friction, and premature wear.

Through empathy we observe without evaluating, blaming, or labelling; we feel and make ourselves responsible for our own feelings without accusing, and we urge others to also take responsibility for theirs. We express our needs or values, what is most important to us without deception and we create the conditions or the environment for others to do the same. Then we make requests without pretensions, demands, obligations, or blackmail and similarly help others to do the same.

The triune brain
Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species tells us that life on this planet evolved from a common trunk, so that all life forms are intertwined along the many millions of years since life first appeared in the sea. The earlier states of evolution have not been lost, and are still evident in us. Applying this principle to the formation of our brain, neuroscience tells us that we have three brains: the reptilian, the mammalian and the cerebral or neocortex. These are organized in the same way as a Russian matryoshka doll -- the cerebral contains the mammalian which in turn contains the reptilian.

The reptilian brain – Located at the end of the medulla, it is the most primitive and occupies the innermost and central part of our brain. It has remained unchanged by evolution, so that we share it with all animals with backbone or the vertebrates. It is responsible for functions related to survival, from heartbeat, digestion, basic movement to sexual behaviour. It functions according to stimulus principle – automatic response such as fight -- flight -- immobilization.

Synonyms of these basic reactions in our day to day are: desire – aversion – ignorance; love – hatred – indifference; hope – fear – disinterest. Being highly territorial, it acquires and defends its territory by fighting. The motor of this brain is the “Might is right”, meaning power is right and justified.

The mammalian brain – It corresponds to the telencephalon, the part of the forebrain where hippocampus and amygdala are found, and provides mammals with greater awareness of themselves and their environment, their friends and their enemies. As mammals take more time to care for their young, from instincts emotions are formed not only in relation to the offspring, but also to members of the same species, thus giving rise to life in groups.

The cerebral, rational brain or neocortex – The last step in evolution of the brain occurred about a hundred million years ago, with the emergence of the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex or the rational brain is not present only in humans. Intelligent animals like dolphins, whales and monkeys also underwent this last stage of brain evolution.

However, man has the most developed rational brain from which emotions like bodily sensations, common with other mammals, when mediated by a greater and more rational understanding, turn into feelings such as love, compassion and empathy.

How we lose our temper
When we are calm we work with the neocortex, we think critically, solve problems, and are creative and empathic with others. On the other hand, when we are stressed or perceive a less positive behaviour on the part of someone, we lose connection with the neocortex and no longer feel empathy as we automatically attach ourselves to the most primitive reptilian brain and are left with only three options: fight, flight or hide.

Stress activates the age-old reaction conceived by nature to help us cope with danger, which is the function of the reptilian brain. We cannot feel empathy for a lion running towards us, that is, to see things from its perspective; on the contrary, we either fight, run away, or hide. However, a 5-year old child may be disguised as a lion, who angrily stamps his feet and shouts that he does not want to brush his teeth. We immediately fail to see the child and see the lion instead, and react towards him as if he were indeed a lion. Just like Dom Quixote who threw his spear at the windmills, thinking that they were his enemies.

If at times like this we can remember that all behaviour is an attempt to satisfy needs, we can disconnect from the reptilian brain and stay connected to the cortex. Coming from our reptilian brain much of our behaviour is reactive, we speak or act first, only later do we take the time to think; it is as if our behaviours were on the autopilot mode.

How we best function
Against negative emotions such as criticizing and judging others, stress, fear, worry, self-centredness, resentment, frustration, or unhealed emotional pain, we must increase our self-observation and self-awareness, and take better care of ourselves, our physical, emotional and spiritual health; fight stress by improving our life and allocating time for sports, meeting friends, meditation and praying.

Psychologist Paul Gilbert distinguishes three groups of emotions: those that have to do with threat and self-preservation, those that have to do with our activity, achievements and successes, which he calls our comparative mind, and finally those that have to do with contentment, feeling safe, calm, relaxed, joyful and happy.

According to Gilbert, the first and second group of emotions are more motivating so they are more likely to get our attention. But this only happens if we allow it to happen. Our competitive mind makes us not to care if we lose a person as long as we win the argument. Similarly, negative news are usually the more blatant and are always on the front page of newspapers in large prints; the positive ones, on the other hand, are frequently lost in the middle of a newspaper because few are interested in them. Giving the priority to our reptilian brain only magnifies our misery, it does not make us happier.

It is true that empathy does not dwell in the center of our brain; the center, as we know, is occupied by the reptilian brain. However, as Gilbert notes, it is more than proven that our immune, hormonal, cardiovascular and other vital systems function best when we think, feel and act from our cortex or rational brain; loving and feeling loved, not hating or feeling hated, and supporting and helping others, not belittling or ignoring them make us happier. The thrill that our reptilian brain may give us is short-lived and can get us into more trouble.

If human beings were truly violent by nature, as Hobbes in his "Homo homini lupus" theory believes, and most people being, consciously or unconsciously, followers of the Babylonian creation myth, Man would be happier in a violent milieu where his bodily functions and organs would work better. The truth, however, as stated by Gilbert, is precisely the opposite. In addition to warning and helping us in case of danger, the reptilian brain does aggravate communal interactions. In fact, reptiles do not establish relations with anything or anyone, because everything and everyone is hostile to them; this being the case, our reptilian brain cannot be of much help and can become a great obstacle because human beings are in essence relational beings.

According to a legend of the North American Indians, there are two wolves fighting in our hearts and minds disputing between themselves for our interest and attention; one is angry, vindictive, envious, resentful and deceitful and the other is loving, compassionate, generous and peaceful. Which of these two will get our interest and attention? The one that is better fed. Practice empathy, even without feeling them, and you feel empathy towards yourself and others.

What empathy is NOT
In his book, Rosenberg quotes his friend Holley Humphrey when he points out some common behaviours or temptations that many of us often fall into in trying to help others, but in truth far from helping, these behaviours only make things worse and certainly prove our inaptitude at being candidly present with the other.

•    Advising: “I think you should…”, “How come you didn’t…?”
•    Analyzing: “How did it start?”, “When was the last time you felt this way?”
•    Outdoing: “That’s nothing; wait till you hear what happened to me.”
•    Educating: “This could turn into a very positive experience for you if you just…”
•    Consoling: “It wasn’t your fault; you did the best you could.”
•    Story-telling: “That reminds me of the time…”
•    Dropping the subject: “Cheer up. Don’t feel so bad.”
•    Sympathizing: “Oh, you poor thing…”
•    Questioning: “When did this begin?”
•    Explaining: “I would have called but…”
•    Correcting: “That’s not how it happened.”

How does empathy work
Empathy is getting in touch with what is alive in the other person, that is, what is going on in him, it is to be in his shoes. It is to see reality from the point of view of the other person or to see it as the other sees it. Very often when the other person realizes that we are not managing to connect empathically with him, he will say in exasperation, “Put yourself in my place.” Thinking that I was doing a good job advising and consoling my father during the final days of his life, one day he suddenly interrupted me and said, “How easy it looks to the healthy, the condition of the sick.”

Hearing these words, I realized with pain that I was unable to be empathic with my father. He was not in need of a quick fix as he knew there wasn’t any, he was only in need of empathy and I was unable to provide it. We believe that quick fixes, advice, consolations would make others feel better but the reality is that far from making them feel better, they only add to the pain of those suffering.

If it is already difficult to be empathic with our loved ones, imagine how difficult it must be with those we feel nothing for or may even have negative feelings towards. True empathy in NVC, however, is for all; no matter what the person is, says or does we need to see the beauty in his personhood. True empathy is composed of three components:

Presence – The philosopher Martin Buber says that presence is the most powerful gift one person can give to another. It is a major component in healing; in fact, some psychotherapists go as far as to say that active presence accounts for 90% of the healing process. But it is not easy to stay actively present for another person as it requires that we bring nothing from the past into the present.

If we start to think about what the other person is saying, or begin to analyze and think of some advice to give, or that we need to fix something or feel the urge to help or to correct, we lose the quality of the presence because intellectual understanding is not empathy. The moment we go up to our head trying to understand and conceptualize what we are hearing, we have stopped listening and being with the other person to be with ourselves instead.

People might be fixating their emotions on something that is false; what we have to do is to connect with those emotions first and to correct after. For example, “How stupid the Americans were in invading Iraq thinking that Gadhafi had weapons of mass destruction!” We might want to step in and say that the president of Iraq at the time was Saddam Hussein not Gadhafi, but this urge to correct would ruin our empathy. Empathic connection is more important than correction.

Sympathy, however, is not empathy. If I show sympathy by saying, “I am sad because of what happened to you”, this would be okay if I have shown empathy beforehand. If not, then I would be taking attention away from the other person’s feelings to focus on my own feeling of sadness. It would also not be empathy if I were to say, “I understand how you feel”, as this would be too presumptuous on my part. In NVC we don’t say that we understand, we simply demonstrate the understanding.

Focus on the now – If people tell me things that have happened to them in the past that are still causing them great pain now, I place my focus on what is alive in them now. If I follow them into the past also, I might be tempted to analyse or understand intellectually and lose the presence in the here and now. So to remain in the present, all I need to do is to stay in touch with the feelings and needs of the person now.

Therefore, the question is how you feel now as the result of what has happened to you in the past. For example, if someone were to tell me how his father used to hit him and how scared he was at the time, my attention is to focus on how he feels now. The feeling now might be of anger or rage, therefore my empathic connection will relate with this present feeling and not with the one in the past. Enquiring about the feelings in the here and now is what we also do when a person is using lots of words and jumping from one story to another; we simply interrupt and say, “Excuse me are you feeling…. because…”

Check it out by means of paraphrasing – We are not to assume that we have correctly connected with the feelings and needs of the other person, so we check it out by saying: “Are you feeling… as you do because of your need for…”  Reflecting back our understanding is important for two reasons: first, if we have guessed wrong, the person can correct us; second, the person might need some confirmation that we are really with him and are following and understanding him correctly.

It is difficult to empathically connect with a person that says he is going to commit suicide and that the world is better off without him… We tend to analyse, ask questions, give advice… Or with a criticism as when somebody tells us, “The problem with you is…” We need to disregard the criticism as if it has not been made or directed at us and look for feelings and needs behind it. Checking it out with the person so as to give him the opportunity to correct us if we are wrong.

Empathy – Sympathy - Compassion
Empathy - is viscerally feeling what someone else feels. Researchers have called it the “mirror neurons” as empathy may arise automatically when we witness someone in pain. For example, if we see someone missing the nail while hammering and hit his finger instead, we would immediately have a sense of his pain. It is not always this easy, so when it does not come automatically, we need to rely on our imagination. Of course empathy is not just for unpleasant feelings, it is also for pleasant ones as oftentimes the smile of a person makes us smile back.

Sympathy - Most people confuse and mistake sympathy for empathy. Empathy is solidarity and being with the other while sympathy is fundamentally being with ourselves. Furthermore, empathy is more of an attitude, a way of being, and sympathy is more a feeling that comes to us from the understanding of the other person’s situation. If sympathy comes after empathy then it is good; however, if it comes before or instead of empathy then it is not good and does not help the other person or the situation.

Compassion - Compassion takes empathy and sympathy one step further. When we are compassionate, we feel the pain of another (i.e., empathy) or we recognize that the person is in pain (i.e., sympathy), and then we do our best to alleviate the person’s suffering.

Compassion is the end of the process that starts with being with the other person, just feeling his feelings as we need to be present for him first without attempting to understand or grasp the whole situation; second, with the understanding of the situation, we feel sympathy for his cause and in the end we do something with it.

We could look at the mystery of the incarnation of God in this light. God did not attempt to save us from above; instead, he took our human form and dressed in our human nature, from within it he felt sympathy to our condition, and out of compassion saved us.

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2: 6-8

Summing up what has been said, empathy means that we feel what another person is feeling; sympathy is the feeling that we get out of the understanding we got from his feeling; compassion is what we do about his feeling, the willingness to relieve the suffering of another.

The power of empathy
Rosenberg mentions an experiment his teacher Carl Rogers did to prove that empathy alone may accomplish most of the emotional healing. In this experiment Rogers had two groups of patients, one group was treated by psychotherapists of different schools and the other by lay people with no formal psychotherapy training just using empathy. The outcome showed that the ones who used empathy well, regardless of being psychotherapists or lay people, were the ones who obtained better results.

From this experiment and from his own experience, Rosenberg concludes that empathy by itself is the best way to attain emotional healing as well as resolving conflicts and bringing reconciliation between individuals and between groups of people.

For this to happen, the only requirement is that each of the antagonistic individuals or groups of people must first through self-empathy discover what is alive in themselves at the level of feelings and needs and realize that unmet needs are at the heart of what divide them. Then second through empathy connect with what is alive in the others - their humanness, at the level of their feelings and needs. When this two-way empathic connection is established, conflicts dissolve, healing and reconciliation occur magically, simply because feelings and needs are universal.

Commonality between individuals and groups of people at the level of thoughts and ideas may occur from time to time. However, commonality at the level of feelings and needs can be taken for granted as it occurs always. It is precisely because of this that empathy is the most powerful tool for emotional healing, resolving conflicts and bringing about reconciliation between individuals and groups.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

NVC: Jesus of Nazareth and Redemption through Nonviolence

Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword’. Matthew 26:51-52

“Live by the sword, die by the sword” – It is a well-known expression that probably takes its root from the verse above. Violence not only does not resolve conflicts or problems, but tends to escalate them. One speaks of violence spiraling out of control because it spreads easily each time involving more and more people. By the way of violence, the only peace that can be attained is the peace in the cemetery, of death and destruction.

Jesus of Nazareth challenged the domination system and its core value of redemptive violence. And he did not live long because of it. The Church in charge of proclaiming his teachings did not carry them out in full measure, maybe because she did not really understand them, or maybe to survive she had to adapt to the culture and ally herself to the dominant power.

The Christ of history that the community passed down in time was a Christ who was watered down, diluted, less radical, less revolutionary. Providentially, however, this Jesus of Nazareth, who did not sail into the Christian community, nor made history, is contained in the Gospels, and it is through them that we perceive the revolutionary dimension of his teachings.

Jesus rejected the autocratic power (Matthew 20:25-28), appealed for economic equality (Mark 12:30-31), rejected violence (Matthew 5:38-41), broke the customs that treated women as inferior (Luke 10:38-42), broke the rituals of cleanliness that separated people from one another (Mark 1:40-45), challenged the patriarchal view of the family (Luke 11:27), and rejected the belief that God demanded sacrifices of blood (Matthew 9:9-13).

Power as service, not as dominion
But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’. Matthew 20:25-28

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:8-12.

Jesus is an anarchist not in the sense that a society should not be orderly and governed, but in the sense that no one should have the right to exert power over someone else; power is either a service or is malicious.

For Jesus, all autocratic government is naturally violent and oppressive. He saw power as service to the people and not dominion over them. He substituted love for power, for the power of love and service to others. This is the way to the greatness and popularity that is so coveted by the powerful.

Those who exercise power tyrannically are feared, not loved; the leaders that are loved by the people are those who exercise power by means of service; these are the great ones in the history of humanity. The great ones in our own personal history are also those who have served us like our parents, teachers, catechists, doctors etc., and not those who have dominated us.

Economic equality and equity
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 12:30-31.

Within a single commandment, Jesus unites the two values that human life is based on. To love God above all things means to acknowledge no authority above God’s authority and to submit to no one and to nothing. This is the guarantor of freedom as a value on which the dignity of the human person rests.

On the other hand, since a human being is not an island, the social dimension is based on equality; under God, no one is more than someone else. The combination of these two dimensions, vertical in the love of God and freedom, and horizontal in the love of our neighbour as ourselves, form the symbol of Christianity, the cross.

Jesus warns us of the danger of wealth that makes men antagonistic and bars them from salvation (Mark 10:25). For this reason, he invites the rich young man to detachment and to give all his money to the poor thus redirecting his sight on a greater treasure in heaven (Matthew 19:21). He praises Zacchaeus for his act of giving back and sharing his money thus earning him his salvation (Luke 19:1-10). The sharing of material goods is part of the criterion of entry into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 25:31-46).

Love for enemies
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous...’ Matthew 5:43-45.

You have heard that it was said ... But I say to you … -- Several times in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus uses this grammatical construction to expose each statement of the ancient ideology or domination system and to reciprocate one for one with his doctrine.

Jesus came to prove that the domination system is not the only way to live in society; the Kingdom of God that Jesus brought by his coming into the world, is an alternative to the dominion system, the only alternative in fact. The Kingdom of God initiated by Jesus is a win-win situation, because everyone wins, no one loses; there are no oppressors nor oppressed, no winners nor losers.

For the system of domination to work, man has to be a predator and this is why he must convince himself and his fellow men that the enemies are treacherous and that the only way to live in peace is to destroy them. For Jesus there are no enemies; but even if there are, they will not be won over with hatred which only makes them stronger; it is like trying to put out fire with gasoline; only love can truly disarm them.

For redemptive violence to operate, it is necessary that some people be declared as enemies, so that their elimination by means of violence is viewed as a redemptive act. Jesus' command to love our enemies leaves redemptive violence without its moral justification. In connection with this Rosenberg says, “When we understand the needs that motivate our own and others behavior, we have no enemies”. 

Jesus came to make this world the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of justice and peace, a “civilization of love” as Pope John Paul II liked to repeat. The Sermon on the Mount is the Magna Carta or the Constitution of this Kingdom.

Redemptive Nonviolence
‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.’ Matthew 5:38-41.

The Code of Hammurabi enacted in Babylonia, the same place where the myth of redemptive violence emerged, is the first code of law that human civilization knows. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was a law designed to restrain the natural escalation of violence, permitting its controlled use for revenge within the principle of reciprocity. For Jesus, this is not the solution because it tackles violence with violence.

Do not resist an evildoer – To resist violently, to seek revenge or to conquer evil by violent means, is to let oneself be controlled by violence and to perpetuate the myth that salvation is achieved in this way. Theologian Walter Wink notes that this verse has traditionally been interpreted as advocating passive submission to oppression; therefore historically, Christianity has rejected the teachings of Jesus concerning nonviolence as a utopic, impractical and naïve idealism.

The truth, however, is that the Gospels do not teach nonresistance to evil; Jesus teaches us resistance, but without violence. Wink assures us that if we take the words of Jesus in their historical and cultural context, it is clear that Jesus is advocating a creative form of nonviolent opposition to oppression, not submission. On the other hand, Wink also insists that the above verse is a poor translation of the original Greek which according to him says, “Do no react violently against the one who is evil”. The examples that follow are additional proofs of this.

If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also – Any slap on the face is given with the right hand because the left hand, according to the Jewish law, is only used for unclean tasks. Now, to slap someone's right cheek with your right hand, this can only be done with your backhand. Even today, a slap with a backhand is given not with the intention to injure physically, but rather to insult, humiliate and degrade.

It was not given to a person of equal status, but to an inferior; it was the type of slap that a master would give to a slave, a husband to a wife, a father to a son, a Roman to a Jew, in order to remind them of their position of inferiority and put them back in their place; or to cut someone down to size as the saying goes.

To strike the left cheek the aggressor can no longer use the backhand, that is, cannot humiliate again, to strike he would have to do it, this time, with the palm of his hand, something that could happen only between people of the same social status, so that if the aggressor were to do it, he would be lowering himself to the same level as the one he is assaulting.

Therefore, the act of turning the cheek is meant to say at the time that, ‘I am your equal in dignity, I do not accept being humiliated’. He can no longer strike the right cheek with the backhand because it is now hidden, the nose will be in the way. Therefore, more than offering the other or left cheek, he is hiding the right so not to be humiliated again; he is rebelling and leaving the master without arguments, not being able to attack without lowering himself and recognizing the other as an equal.

If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well – To understand these words, one needs to understand the Roman tax system that led the poor farmers to be so indebted to the point of losing their lands or inheritance to creditors, left without any means of sustenance, completely embezzled and unprotected, that is, stripped naked.

The parable of the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew (20:1-16) refers to those who had lost their land because of their debts and are now obliged to go to the square every day in the hope of being hired. Ironically, the landowner hires first those who were the previous owners of the land because they know the work well and only later, in needing more hired hands does he return to the square to hire other labourers.

The debtor had no chance of winning the case in court because the system always favored the creditor. As we saw in the case of turning the other cheek, and later in the case of walking the extra mile, one of the rules of nonviolence is to be assertive; by stripping himself of the only garment left to him, and ending up naked, the debtor protests and points the finger at the system that brought him to this state.

Nakedness was a taboo in Israel, but the shame fell less on the naked person, and more on the ones viewing and causing the nakedness (Genesis 9:20-27). In fact, even today, in many situations, displaying nudity is a form of protest. Stripping off the cloak and leaving the court naked is equivalent to saying, ‘you stole everything from me, I only have my body left, what are you going to do now?’ The attention and accusatory glances are now directed to the one who caused the nakedness, the creditor.

As Wink concludes, Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence points to a strategy of confronting the system by unmasking its essential cruelty and mocking its pretensions to justice. Those who hear these teachings will no longer accept to be treated like sponges to be squeezed by the rich. On the surface they can accept the rules of the game played by the rich, but in reality they are exacerbating the rich and the system to the absurd, and thus exposing their cruelty. By stripping naked before their fellow men, what is left naked is precisely the system and the creditors.

If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile – It was the custom at the time of Jesus that whoever was found on the road or in the street could be forced into service by the Romans, like the Cyrenian who was forced to carry the cross of Christ (Mark 15:21).

In the imperial Rome, high ranking soldiers had slaves, donkeys, horses or carts to carry their baggage; not so with the low ranking ones, therefore they could force whoever they found on the road to carry their baggage for a mile. To carry the baggage for more than a mile was illegal and punishable by Roman military law.

As in the two previous instances, the question here is how the oppressed can regain their initiative and assertively affirm their human dignity, in a situation that for the time being cannot be changed, that is, within the Roman dominion. By carrying the soldier’s baggage for an extra mile, the soldier could not but be taken by surprise and feel provoked as not only he did not have to coerce the Jew to carry his packs but the latter even exceeded in the task. By depriving the soldier of the predictability of his victim’s response, he is thrown into confusion and left without a moral authority.

Now it is the soldier who has to plead to have his pack back to avoid being punished by his superiors. The humor of this situation may have escaped us, but could hardly have escaped Jesus’ audience, who must have been delighted at the prospect of teaching a moral lesson to their oppressors. In conclusion, Jesus is against passivity and violence; evil can be confronted and overcome without the use of violence.

The third way
In the face of danger or threat, the fight (armed revolt, violent rebellion, revenge) or flight (submission, passivity, surrender, withdraw) responses are the two possible reactions of any vertebrate living being because these responses are imprinted, as we shall see in the next article, in our first brain, the reptilian brain.

According to Walter Wink, Jesus offers a third way. This new path marks a historical change in human development: the revolt against the principle of natural selection. With Jesus a new way emerges, by which evil can be fought without being mirrored. These would be the directives that are deduced from the Gospels:

•    Do not stay inactive but take a moral initiative
•    Find a creative initiative to violence
•    Assert your humanity and dignity as a person
•    React to violence with disdain and humour
•    Break the cycle of humiliation
•    Show unrelenting refusal to any position of inferiority
•    Expose injustice in the system
•    Assume dynamically a position of power
•    Shame and ridicule the oppressor into repentance
•    Stay firm
•    Compel the powers to make decisions that they are unprepared to make
•    Recognize your own power
•    Be willing to suffer, instead of taking revenge
•    Compel the oppressor to look at you in a new light
•    Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a demonstration of force is effective
•    Be ready to pay a price for breaking unjust laws
•    Conquer the fear of the domination system and its laws

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

NVC: The deceptive myth of Redemptive Violence

What is a myth?
Myths are narratives that emerged in the early days of human civilization, and they help us to explain and respond to key issues that men have asked at all times, such as the origin of the world, human beings, God, meaning of life etc.

Myths are not historic because they do not refer to events that really happened. However, because they did not happen it does not mean that they are false. In fact, they are true in as much as they try to explain realities at a time when science did not exist. Take for example the myth of the god of time named Kronos, who after giving birth to children eats them up. Of course, this has never happened, it is not historical, but it is true; in fact, time is something that first we have it and then we consume it; each day when we get up in the morning we “give birth” to a new day, so to say; each night when the day is over it’s because we have consumed it.

 In this and other articles to follow, I use the word “Myth” in its anthropological denotation and not in the sense it has now in modern English meaning a delusion, a lie, or something untrue.

The domination system or structure of power
This is how the theologian Walter Wink calls a set of unjust economic relations that are politically oppressive, racially biased and patriarchal in as far as gender is concerned. All this within a society that divides people into social classes in order that relations between people become hierarchical and not egalitarian; and finally, it is also the use of violence to maintain and guard this status quo, which has been in force since the birth of Babylon in 3000 BC.

According to Wink, things do not happen by chance, attached to a domination system there must be a domination myth, a legend or narrative that tries to explain and justify the reason for the situation being as it is, and how we got here.

“Might is right” – The myth is called “Redemptive Violence” and it entrenches the belief that violence saves and justifies itself, and that war brings peace or as the Romans used to say, vis pacem para bellum, that is, if you want peace, prepare for war. This myth, or stories people tell to explain nature, history and customs, justifies that power is imperative to establish peace and harmony. Like we turn to God when all else fails, so we turn to violence to solve individual and social problems as the last resort, thus attributing to violence the function of a god. As a matter of fact, for Wink, this, and not Judaism, Christianity or Islam, is the prevailing, and the most ancient and dominant “religion” in the world since Babylon.

The myth of redemptive violence endows the domination system with a narrative that can be reproduced in an infinite number of ways, convincing all those involved, both the oppressors and the oppressed, that without this system of domination, or structure of power, the world as we know it would cease to exist. Therefore, only “legal violence”, more specifically that which is exercised by the domination system, can save us from self-destruction.

The game of cops and robbers or heroes and villains
Let’s look paradigmatically how this myth works: a powerful individual, system or group, has caused injury or distress to another particular individual or group. From inside the oppressed group, a hero or powerful group arises, who confronts by violent means, defeats and kills the oppressor, thus ending the reign of terror.

Subsequently, the victorious protagonist and hero creates a system in which the newly liberated people can live freely and in harmony for a period of time. However, because power corrupts, eventually the previously fair liberator, seduced by power, is himself turned into a dominant oppressor, a villain. And so, the cycle starts once again with the eventual emergence of another hero.

It is on the basis of this myth that some historians claim that history repeats itself. Let’s look for instance how this paradigm evolved in the last century in Russia.  The czarist Russia was so oppressive that for a while, sadly a too short while, people felt a relief with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which soon evolved into an even more oppressive regime under the domination of Stalin and those who followed him in the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat.

From an early age, children are indoctrinated into the domination system through the worship and admiration of heroes in cartoons and later in films. Against an invincible hero is an apparent equally invincible villain.

Children, youth, and even us adults, consciously identify ourselves with the hero, in order to have a good concept of ourselves; but unconsciously we also identify with the villain, to whom we project our repressed anger, our rebelliousness and lust, and we enjoy this wickedness of ours for three-quarters of the film, allowing ample time for indulging the violent side of the self, during which evil seems to be prevailing.

When the end eventually comes, and the good declares victory after much effort and suffering, it is as if our innermost selves were able to re-establish order over our own wickedness and base instincts. The villain’s punishment provides catharsis to reassert control over our own inner tendencies, repress them, and re-establish a sense of goodness without coming to any insight about their own inner evil.

This is why we like watching movies or perhaps we need them to keep our aggressiveness under control or at a manageable level. This sort of sublimation also happens in sports; it is always preferable that the rival groups or countries face each other in stadiums at the Olympic Games than in battlefields.

Films serve therefore as a catharsis or release because the punishment of the villain in the film corresponds to a self-punishment of our own evil tendencies. Salvation is found in the identification with the hero, maintaining in this way the use of violence and self-violence, justified and reinforced, and the continuation of the domination system.

By making violence pleasurable, fascinating, and entertaining, the Powers are able to delude people into compliance with a system that is cheating them of their very lives.  We have been educated for thousands of years to make violence enjoyable; all you need is to think there are bad guys and these bad guys need to suffer for what they have done, so it is enjoyable creating pain for these people; revenge is very enjoyable indeed. In a violent society nothing is more enjoyable than the revenge.

Similar to what used to take place in Roman arenas where gladiators fought each other to death or Christians were devoured by beasts, and to this day in bullfighting arenas, throughout history, violence has been not just a means to advocate justice and peace, but our culture has been making it an enjoyable and rewarding spectacle.

In short, the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. Based on the fact that man is naturally violent, violence, or better said “legal violence”, justifies itself because it makes us believe there is no alternative way to obtain order and peace. 

The violence in education
“La letra con la sangre entra”
This is the Castilian proverb extolling violence against children as the best method of teaching. At the mercy of sadistic and unscrupulous teachers, children were beaten up in schools and colleges as well as in the bosom of the family. I will always remember a schoolmate of mine, who had lost his father, and because the elderly mother did not have the strength to beat him up and the beatings he received in the school were not sufficient, he would go systematically to the police station to be beaten up there every day.

The Babylonian myth of creation
The most ancient myth or sacred narrative of creation of the universe and human beings tells us that in the beginning there was Apsu, the father god, and Tiamat, the mother god, who gave birth to many children gods; but because the younger gods were extremely noisy when at play and disturbed Apsu in his sleep, he decided to kill them off; the younger gods, however, discovered the plan and in anticipation killed Apsu.

Tiamat pledged revenge for the death of her husband, filled with fear the rebel gods solicited the help of their cousin, Marduk. Coming to their rescue, Marduk captured and killed Tiamat; later he dismembered her body and scattered her blood; so from her dead body, according to the Babylonian myth, the World was created. In other words, creation was an act of violence and not of goodness as in the biblical myth of creation.

In such a world, for cosmic order to exist the violent suppression of the feminine is needed; this is mirrored in the social order by the subjection of women to men, and men to their rulers. In the beginning there was chaos, and violence was used to establish order. It is therefore justified to use violence because without it there would be no order. We can then conclude that the myth of the redemptive violence is about the victory of order over chaos by means of violence.

After the creation of the world, Marduk threw into prison the gods who sided with Tiamat; since these complained of the bad prison food, Marduk and his father, Ea (son of Apsu), killed one of the imprisoned gods and from his blood human beings were created to be servants of the gods.

Therefore, according to the Babylonian myth of creation, violence is natural, it is encoded in our genes. So, it was not mankind who created violence by an act of disobedience to God as the biblical myth has it; violence has always been a reality, and part of the cosmic and human nature. Humans are naturally incapable of peaceful coexistence; peace has to be imposed on from a higher order.

Therefore, the smartest and the most powerful present themselves before others as kings, Czars, emperors, princes, priests and masters, that is, as representatives of the goodness and justice of God with the mission to combat evil and punish evildoers. The “legal” violence of the leaders in the society opposes the “natural” violence in order to defeat evildoers and dissuade others from their evil tendencies thus facilitating social coexistence.

In this way women are advised not to have needs since they must sacrifice themselves for the good of the family; men are instigated to renounce their personal interests to serve the king to the point of giving up their lives in battles to protect and increase the king’s dominion. Similarly, children are instructed from very young that there is right and wrong, good and bad, and that to be good they must give up the use of their natural power outwardly, and use it inwardly against themselves to suppress and repress their evil tendencies and obey authority unconditionally.

The biblical myth of creation
Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. (…) And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. (…) God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1, 4, 12, 18, 21, 25).

The biblical myth of creation described in the book of Genesis is quite different from the Babylonian one. However, because it was developed during the time the Jewish people were living in exile and captivity in Babylon, there are similarities between them, but fundamentally it opposes the Babylonian myth. In the Bible, God is good and creation is an act of God’s goodness. The way God creates each of the various realities, he makes sure that what is created is good. In other words, God is good and creates a good creation.

Evil and violence are not part of the creation as God conceived it. Creation is an idyllic garden where the first human beings lived in harmony with each other, with nature and with God. Evil entered later as the result of misuse or abuse of freedom. The world and the realities that God created were good initially, but were later corrupted by the sin of Man.

In the Bible, after Adam and Eve stole from God the prerogative of good and evil, and placed themselves as the standard of all things, arbitrariness entered into the world and with it violence, which is exercised soon after in the second generation by Cain over his brother Abel. Violence never appears in the Bible as a naturally good reality, but always as an artificially evil one; it does not present itself as a natural fact that has to be assumed and accepted, but always as a problem to be solved.

It is clear that the biblical story of creation is not the myth that prevailed all over the world, from Babylon or Mesopotamia to Egypt, Greece, India, or China. Instead, the Babylonian myth is the most ancient and most current, and has no rival; there are very few that confront and challenge it. It is a type of civil religion that is transversal to all cultures, civilizations and religions, and the matrix that is used in most of the films and cartoons that are made, in order to educate the new generations of the necessity of violence to re-establish and maintain order.

Religion as legitimation of power
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. Romans 13:1-2

The belief that authority comes from God and that whoever exercises it on earth does so in His name belongs to the ideology of the domination system. From this belief of idolizing authority is a short step that many kings and emperors took. Already in our time after the Spanish civil war, the dictator Francisco Franco, in order to justify the usurpation of power, declared himself ruler and even minted coins with his effigy and the words “Francisco Franco, Leader of Spain by the grace of God”.

Religion, instead of asserting its myth that man is not violent per se because he was created by God from an act of love, let itself be influenced by the Babylonian myth, thus becoming violent as in the case of the Jewish religion.

The whole sacrificial system is based on the belief that only with blood is one redeemed or rescued. The only difference between the Jews and the surrounding peoples, or the distant Mayans and Aztecs, is that they replaced human sacrifice with animal sacrifice. Christianity has somehow returned to human sacrifice by giving it a new meaning, this time to the sacrifice of one man once for all, valid for all times and places.

Christianity, the successor of Judaism, as the verse cited by Saint Paul suggests, followed in the footsteps of Judaism, blessing and adopting the myth of redemptive violence. It is certain that Jesus of Nazareth stands apart, and precisely because of this, he was not understood by his disciples and furthermore, his teachings were washed or watered down already in the apostolic generation by his own followers.

For Walter Wink, Christianity was perverted and made chaplain, or religious educator and moral guarantor of all that the State did. Caesaropapism is the ideology that ruled the Western world after the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, despite Jesus being against the union of powers as we conclude from his warning to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. (Matthew 22:21)

The Crusades and the Inquisition are the most exponential cases where the interests of politics united and coincided with the interests of religion, merging into a single goal and strategy, one being justified by the other. In the Crusades, the Church, which declared them, mobilized armies to defend the holy places occupied by Muslims, hence the concept of the holy war, killing in the name of God which is the “non plus ultra” in the self-justification of violence.

The Inquisition, an instrument of the Church to purify and compel faithful to true faith and doctrine, was used more by the state than by the Church herself; the most blatant case was the conviction of Joan of Arc. Both in the Catholic and the Protestant world, witch-hunting was promoted by the state, with the approval of the Church, thus freeing themselves of individuals who threatened the system.

The Karpman or the Bermuda triangle
In short, the myth of redemptive violence is a fallacy that order can only be victorious over chaos by means of violence. As in this myth, violence presents itself as the only possible solution to chaos, barbarism and anarchy; since violence is not a problem but a fact, our world is neither perfect nor perfectible. The world is a theatrical stage of an eternal conflict on which there is a more or less lenient version of the law of the jungle, that is, the survival of the fittest.

Ultimately redemptive violence redeems nothing, neither the victim nor the villain, nor does it solve the problem or conflict that created it. The only thing that it does is to perpetuate itself in a kind of eternal vicious circle. Thus, we have a version of the Karpman triangle (persecutor – rescuer – victim equivalent to villain – victim – hero) and from this sort of Bermuda triangle no one escapes alive.

The Greek thinking is shaped by the myth of eternal return, and so is the Hegelian dialectics that consists of a thesis that is opposed or confronted by an antithesis resulting in a synthesis; with time the synthesis itself becomes a new thesis to which follows a new antithesis and so on ad infinitum. The Greek circular understanding of time also follows the same paradigm, the god of time called Kronos continuously gives birth to children and eats them.

If we do not change the paradigm, if we do not dismiss the Babylonian myth and adopt instead the biblical sacred story of creation, then there is no hope, the world is at a dead end, and so the self-destruction of humanity is the most likely outcome.

Opposed and very different to the Greek paradigm of eternal return is the Jewish thinking because it is rooted in the Hebrew epic of emerging from the slavery in Egypt, passing through the desert of purification and entering into the Promised Land of freedom. Time is not cyclical, but linear; in this view of time we never return to the starting point, unlike a mouse running on a wheel, we walk into a future that enables us to progress ad eternum.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

NVC - Worldview and Worldviews

NVC = Non Violent Communication

When we were babies and first began to talk, we could learn one or two languages without needing to learn the grammar, that is, the reason why we should speak this or that way. As we grew and became adults, to learn a language now, we need to learn the grammar, that is, the rules of the language, and to somehow obey them in order to speak properly.

Non-violent or compassionate communication is a new language, and to learn it in adulthood we need to learn its rules, its philosophy, its worldview or the thinking behind it. If we are going to learn a non-violent language, we need first to know in what way the language that we are using today is violent. Where did this violent language come from, and what was it based on?

Whatever it is, it has to do with the way we conceptualize the world and its history, the human nature, the reality that surrounds us and the very meaning of life. Worldview is the cornerstone or the foundation on which our thinking rests upon; it is composed of beliefs, myths and basic ideas that are mostly unconscious, and as such they are neither discussed nor questioned.

To turn our present violent language into the language of the Kingdom of God, we need to first change our thinking, and to do that we need to challenge and eventually change the worldview on which it is grounded.

The theologian Walter Wink, in his book The Powers that Be, says that worldviews are the skeletal structures of our thinking and describes the worldviews that are prevalent in the Western culture.

The Ancient Worldview
This worldview presents a heavenly world existing in parallel with its earthly counterpart; whatever happens in Heaven also happens on Earth, and vice-versa; this is indeed how it was in the Greek and Roman mythologies. Every material reality has a spiritual dimension and a divinity that represents it in heaven; hence, the god of war is Mars, the goddess of love is Venus, the god of the seas is Neptune and the chief or father of the gods is Jupiter, etc. In the ancient world, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Indians and the Chinese, in fact most people in the ancient world, shared this way of understanding reality.

The Spiritualist Worldview
This worldview appeared in the second century during the Christian era and is in direct conflict with the idea that creation is basically good. Greek dualism is imposed where Spirit is regarded as good while Matter is regarded as evil; the world is a prison of the Spirit, and the body is the prison of the Soul. It considers anything related to the body, like sex for instance, as evil; so, in order to conquer evil, the body needs to be mortified and denied so that the spiritual component can be imposed and affirmed. This world is a ‘vale of tears’, and death is seen as freeing the soul from the shackles of the body that makes it impure.

The Materialist Worldview
In opposition to spiritualism, the materialist worldview establishes that what is real is what can be known through the five senses, and everything else is pure superstition. In other words, there is no heaven, no God, not even a soul; human beings are nothing more than matter; the universe has no intrinsic meaning so it lacks essence and purpose. Ethics is non-existent, there are no good and no evil, what are considered right or wrong are arbitrary and conventional, and result from a social agreement for the survival and peaceful coexistence of citizens.

Walter Wink says that this is the dominant ethos of the post-modern world; it is the mental structure or motherboard that most universities, politics, the news media and the culture as a whole model and follow. This worldview has penetrated so deeply into the society and the modern way of thinking, that it even claims to be scientific or based on science, at a time when science, especially physics, has moved beyond mechanist materialism into a “reenchanted universe”.

People who live within this worldview see themselves accompanying science at every step, but in reality, they have been left behind by modern science. They still cling to the Newtonian physics where the world is like a clock that functions predictably with mathematical precision.

After Einstein, the mechanistic Newtonian physics gave way to quantum physics which is based on Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty and causality, replacing the predictability of the real world with the calculation of probabilities.

The Theological Worldview
This appeared from a spiritual reaction to the materialist worldview; it reaffirms the existence of a supernatural realm and thus seals itself off by declaring that its existence is purely a matter of faith; it cannot be accessed by the senses so its existence cannot be proven nor denied by science.

In this way of understanding reality, science and religion live with their backs to each other. This forces believers with a great sense of culture to live with a schizoid view; during the week they believe that man is the result of evolution of species, and on Sundays, they believe that man was created directly and explicitly by God; evolutionists during the week, creationists on the weekends.

The Integral Worldview
This worldview combines and overcomes at the same time the previous ones by placing the spirit at the heart of the matter. God is transcendent, that is, different, he is detached and beyond everyone and everything, but at the same time is at the heart of each and every person and thing. This mutual harmony between immanence and transcendence must not be confused with pantheism where it is affirmed that God is everything.

The integral worldview has to do with panentheism: everything is in God and God in everything. It is somehow the view that St. Francis of Assisi had of creatures as being manifestations of God because God is immanent in all of them.

Wink states that this is the worldview of quantum physics, liberation theology, feminist theology, and many religions of Native Americans, and also names psychologist Carl Jung and the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin as proponents of this worldview.

With the way these worldviews are presented, it implies that there has been a process of evolution and that now most people on this planet are guided by the integral worldview, but it can also not be so; in fact, all worldviews are current and probably only few people are guided in their lives by just one type. Wink says that we all possess pieces of one or the other view of the reality, depending on the issue at hand.

According to Wink, understanding the worldviews that inspire, guide and govern our thinking is important so that human beings and their institutions can be freed from the powers that dominate them.

“Homo homini lupus” or “Beau sauvage”?
Homo homini lupus – For the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1679), Man in the natural state assumes that he is entitled to everything, and uses his power in an arbitrary way to preserve his own life. Since his selfish interest prevails, he cannot have security and peace because the survival of the fittest is always at play. Not being sociable by nature, the social coexistence forces the individual to give up his will in favor of a leader or government, the king or the state, that represents him, thus losing his freedom and even relinquishing violence.

Beau sauvage – For the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712), Man is by nature good, sound and happy; the creation of private property leads to the distinction between rich and poor, slaves and free, thus promoting in this way the survival of the fittest. The man who tries to emerge out of inequality is corrupted by power and crushed by violence. He proposes a contract in which the general will is sovereign; since everyone loses equally therefore no one loses.

Which of these two theories best describes the true human nature? As humans come from an evolution of 5 million years of primates and mammals, it would be helpful to first arrive at a conclusion regarding the animals that preceded us in the history of the evolution of species: whether these animals are violent or non-violent by nature. We do not need to look too closely at the animal kingdom to conclude that as a general rule, animals are not violent gratuitously or by nature; they only behave violently when their needs are not met.

Since life only feeds on life, in the biological context of the food chain, every form of life is food for another form of life. For example, a gazelle feeds on grass, a lion comes along and eats the gazelle, the lion dies and is eaten by hyenas and vultures, and when they die they are eaten by worms and when the worms die they fertilize the soil and make the grass grow. A dead body is called a cadaver; curiously enough this same word in Portuguese is made up of the initial for ‘carne-dada-aos vermes’, translated as meat given to worms or Ca-da-ver.

If any of the aforementioned animals finds an alternative way of feeding itself, it will immediately stop being a predator, that is, it will no longer be ‘violent’. Let’s take our pets, cats and dogs, as examples, they were previously merciless predators, but today they live in perfect harmony in our homes.

Millions of years of evolution separate us from the primates, the animals closest to us. Created in the image and likeness of God the Father, Man is not a wolf to Man, but a brother; the world that God created has sufficient resources for the needs of everyone to be met without resorting to violence.

This leads us back to one of the fundamental assumptions of the non-violent communication: as with the rest of the living creatures, violence and conflicts among people occur when their needs are not met. NVC is, in this sense, a process that leads to the needs of everyone involved being met thus appeasing violence and resolving any conflict that might occur when needs are not met. The belief that man is by nature evil, selfish and violent is a myth and has served for centuries to justify violence of one person over another, and even of man on himself through the feelings of guilt and shame.

“Se vis pacem para bellum” – If you want peace, prepare for war. This has been the motto of the worldview of man as an individual and within a community. According to this motto, because it sees man as being violent by nature, peace cannot be achieved through peaceful means, but only through violent ones.

Society educates individuals to be violent with others and to repress their innate anger; for those who cannot do this, society exercises its coercive and punitive power over them. In this way, based on the false concept that humans are violent by nature, the structures of power and violence are perpetuated.

The worldview on which non-violent communication rests as the language of a New World, the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to bring into the world, is that God created all things good. The author of the book of Genesis shows us a God who rejoices in every created reality by saying, “And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1). If everything is good then how much more is man who is created in the image and likeness of God himself, the creator of everything (Genesis 1:26).

The Man of Tomorrow
In addition to Walter Wink and other theologians like Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin, Rosenberg was also much influenced by his teacher Carl Rogers, the great master of non-directive, person-centred psychotherapy.

In an article written at the end of his life, Rogers described the mood of the man of tomorrow. His predictions have been proven to be correct and his ideas continue to be current and inspiring, and should help to determine which worldview ought to guide our thinking. Therefore, the men of tomorrow,

• will be open to the inner and outer world, new ways of being, of seeing new ideas and concepts.
• will be suspicious of science and technology aimed at controlling the world of nature and people.
• will be of new forms of communication, closeness and intimacy.
• have consideration for others and have a positive and benevolent regard; when they help out, they do it in a gentle and courteous way, non-moralistic and non-judgmental.
• with regard to ecology, will ally with the forces of nature, not at war for their conquest.
• will be hostile to the highly structured inflexible and bureaucratic institutions; with the understanding that institutions exist to serve the people and not the other way around.
• will be suspicious of external authorities that are morally autonomous, that is, trust in one’s own experiences and moral conscience to make value judgments that may go against laws that are considered unjust.
• will be spiritual people, that is, ones who seek to find meaning, design and reason for life that are bigger than the individual and even life itself.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

NVC - The Language of Peace

One of the NVC logos

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

“New Year, new life” – To do justice to this proverb, this year I am going to write about a way of living that I want to progressively adopt as I research and write about it. Frankly speaking, this is probably the main reason why I chose this theme for the 2018 blog.

I am researching and writing about this topic to convince myself that up until now, I have been living in a wrong way, so this year will be for me the novitiate in this alternative way of living. If by these writings others also come to the same conclusion, then so much the better. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we want to see in the world”.

The initials NVC stand for Non-Violent Communication. I first learned about this type of communication in a Bible course that I took in Jerusalem, and quickly realized the potential this theory has to transform the lives of individuals, and eventually the society and the world as a whole.

According to its founder, Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is not just a form of communication, nor does it refer only to non-violence. More than just a simple theory or technique, NVC is a whole new philosophy of life and a new way of communication that is based on a new worldview, that is, a whole new way of thinking, feeling and looking at life, and everything about it.

Marshall Rosenberg (1934-2015) was an American Jew who graduated from Clinical Psychology, but at the start of his career as a psychotherapist, he quickly realized that the analysis, psychoanalysis and diagnosis of anger and other psychological problems that people presented to him did not lead to the changes that he and his patients wanted and needed most. Rosenberg realized that the problem was more systemic than specific to this or that person, and for this reason the solution to the problems also needed to be systemic.

Non-violent communication strives to be an alternative way of communication, a brand new language to tackle individual and social violence, and create a new culture, a new world, the Kingdom of God on earth in Christian terms. Meanwhile, we are aware that the language we have been using since the beginning of civilization is violent, because we are violent, not by nature but by education. We are violent, because we grow up and are educated in a society whose social structures and institutions are based on a violent worldview and culture.

The success of using the NVC process in psychotherapy prompted Rosenberg to run NVC workshops thus reaching many more people. From then on, the founder of NVC traveled around the world to teach and get people to speak this new language, especially in areas of conflict. The success has been enormous. All who came in contact with NVC sooner or later realized that they had lived in error, and smiled hopefully at the possibility of living a fuller, more genuine and happier life.

How we are called to live
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Colossians 3:12-13)

Rosenberg realizing that he was dealing with a global issue, a question arose in his mind: how are we really meant to live? Given that this question could not be answered in the field of psychology, he turned to religion. In all the religions he studied, he found the word compassion in them; so, he came to the conclusion that we are meant to live compassionately with ourselves and with others.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God’s compassion for his people is unconditional (Isaiah 54:10). For Jesus, it was natural to feel compassion for the people who crossed his path; it is why Jesus felt compassion for the multitudes who walked like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:35-38) and the two blind men sitting on the fringe of the road of life, unable because of blindness to fully participate in it (Matthew 20:29-34).

The concepts and tools of the non-violent communication are designed to help us think, hear and speak in ways that arouse compassion and generosity inside of us and towards others. NVC helps us to interact in ways that lead us to feel more alive, genuine and in solidarity.

The way of thinking and the techniques necessary to live compassionately are very different from the ways that we have been taught over the centuries.

How we have lived
Without even noticing, far from communicating compassionately with ourselves and with others, we have been using a language that is offensive and violent: it injures, and causes and feeds conflicts. The language that most human beings use is a static language, based on the misuse and abuse of static verbs, like the verb to BE, used to judge, interpret, diagnose, classify and label people we meet. We have the bad habit of pointing out the faults of others, telling them what is wrong with them and giving them advice on how they should be.

Since ancient times, we humans have used a language that promotes internal and external conflict, the cold or open warfare, passive or explosive aggression and so we live in a world of exploiters and exploited, masters and slaves, dominant and dominated – neither one nor the other is happy; neither the promoters nor the sufferers of war live in peace; as the saying has it, “Those who go to war, give out and take in (violence)”.

We have been educated in structures of power in which some judge themselves superior to others, snatching for themselves the prerogative to label what is good or evil, right or wrong, just or unjust, adequate or inadequate. Those who submit and obey the rules imposed on them are called good, those unwilling to submit or rebel against the rules are called bad or evil. Justice in this world is retributive; the good, those who obey, are rewarded and the bad, those who disobey, are punished. NVC confronts and exposes this fallacy in the language and behaviour that underlies this worldview.

A language that evaluates and labels
The times when we can observe without giving an opinion, evaluation or judgment do not happen very often. Our culture abuses too much the usage of the verb to be, because we are addicted to labeling and framing everything we observe. Because one has killed a dog, now everyone calls him a dog-killer, and so on, we put labels on everything and everyone we see: so and so is selfish, lazy, vain, mean, a liar…

The use and abuse of the verb to be tie people to a static identity, and prevent them from growing, discovering and changing into their true self. As time goes on, our eyes cloud over with prejudices that blind us like cataracts to reality, until we end up only seeing what we want to see, and hearing what we want to hear.

A language that denies responsibility and the ability to choose
The use and abuse, with ourselves and with others, of expressions such as “I have to do this or that whether I like it or not” and “It is my duty to do such a thing…” remove our freedom, and make us slaves to duty and subject to something that is not of our choice.

The denial or abdication of our choice and decision-making capacity, has the immediate result of denying responsibility for acts we commit. As it is not really our choice, we do not answer or feel responsible for what we do.

In this frame of mind, millions of Jews were murdered in gas chambers during the Second World War as those who killed them defended themselves in court by saying that they were only following orders, thus desensitizing themselves to the atrocities that they had carried out. Today we use the same method when we say: they are orders from the boss, it is the rule or the constitution or company policy…

A coercive language that threatens with punishment
People who are forced to do things out of fear of being punished or out of shame or guilt, feel debased, as they realize that someone can punish them and make them suffer if they do not comply.

Those who are forced or coerced into performing certain tasks, even when they are well performed, as well as those who demanded them with threats of punishment, pay a very high price because violence can only generate violence; on the road of violence, compassionate giving and receiving can never be achieved.

A language that seduces with rewards
The same can be said when a task to be accomplished is motivated by a reward that we yearn and expect to receive. Also in this case, the motive is not compassion, nor the joy to contribute to the good of others. Doing something to receive reward does not come from the energy that aims to enrich our lives and that of others.

Whoever does something in order to get paid will stop doing it once the pay stops; whereas “whoever runs for the joy of running, does not tire”. Both the tasks motivated by rewards as well as the tasks motivated by punishment are violent; as neither are voluntary, that is, by free choice, they do not enrich the life of the one who orders them nor do they enrich the lives of those who execute them. On the contrary, they impoverish the lives of both because they establish human relations of inequality that are born out of violence thus generating more violence.

To live compassionately
Language is the interaction between words and concepts; intelligence is the interaction between neurons. Throughout the millions of years of human evolution, language and intelligence have evolved in parallel. It is unthinkable for intelligence to exist without language and language without intelligence; even so, it is not a chicken or egg question. A baby learns to talk and with this learning he is, at the same time, educated; education would not be possible without the use of language.

We could consider changing our lives first and only then learn a new language suited to this new way of living. However, since the baby is educated at the same time he learns how to talk, let us embrace conversion, that is, let us integrate this new worldview and new way to live, as we adopt and use, with ourselves and with others, this new language that is implicit in it.

Let us learn and use the language of non-violence and the rest will follow. This is what made Rosenberg drop out of private practice in psychotherapy and instead, take to the road running workshops from town to town teaching this new language, and everyone who learned it saw their problems resolved and experienced a “metanoia” – a change of mind – followed by a change of life, without the need of any psychotherapy based on analysis or psychoanalysis.

Underlying all human actions, there are needs that seek to be fulfilled; the understanding and recognition of these needs can lead to establishing a shared basis for connection, cooperation, and, ultimately and more globally, peace.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Fatima: The theology of the message

Have a blessed Christmas and a wonderful year!

At the heart of the message of Fatima is the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Being the object of two Fatima prayers, one taught by the Angel and the other by Our Lady, we can very well say that the apparitions at Fatima open and close with this mystery.

Lucia, however, has said to the then Cardinal Ratzinger that the “practical” goal of all the apparitions was to increase in the people of God the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity which was evident in the message starting from the first prayer taught by the Angel: My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You! I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You.

Contrary to the view of some theologians, in my understanding, Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima are theophanies and not “marianphanies”. When the little shepherds inquired where the Lady was from, she responded that she was from Heaven. Therefore it was Heaven that manifested itself through her and the message that she came to deliver was not hers, but from Heaven, that is, God’s.

Divine revelations have occurred at all times, in all sorts of places and through all sorts of people. The theophany of Fatima is a little more complex than other theophanies because it occurred at different places, through different people, and at different times. In fact, we can distinguish three different cycles in the apparitions at Fatima:

The Angelic Cycle:  the apparitions of the Angel in 1916
We leave out the angelic experience of Lucia and her friends in 1915 because it was inconsequential and lacked clarity. Despite of this, it did put Lucia in a state of watchfulness for the apparitions of the Angel that came the following year, when she was not with these friends but with her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. In line with the roles of angels in the Bible, this angel is a messenger, and just like Archangel Gabriel who announced to Mary that she had been chosen by God to be the mother of the Incarnate Word, he too announced to the children that they have been chosen:

“The Hearts of Jesus and of Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications (…) have designs of mercy on you…”  In the case of Fatima, the Angel went beyond the role of messenger-only and prepared the children for the true apparitions to come, in other words, those of Our Lady. Something similar to the role of John the Baptist as the precursor of the Messiah, the Angel prepared the children for the impending encounter with the supernatural.

Perhaps this is why the encounters with the Angel were of different nature. The children described the three encounters with the Angel as strenuous; they felt drained of their energies as if they were outside of their bodies. In contrast, the encounters with the Lady left them radiant, comforted and full of energy.

There is one other detail that may raise doubts in some people regarding these apparitions. In the representations of angels that we see in sculptures, paintings, theaters and films, and of course, in the imagery of the little shepherds, angels always appear with wings. The Angel of Fatima, however, as the little shepherds described him, did not have wings. For whatever reason that was how the children described him. This fact may even add to the veracity of these apparitions or manifestations of the divine since messenger angels in the Bible do not have wings; those that have wings are the Seraphim and the Cherubim guarding the Ark of the Covenant.

The Marian Cycle:  the apparitions of Our Lady in 1917
The core message of Fatima is revealed in the Marian apparitions that took place from May to October 1917. Those of the Angel, like we have said earlier, served as a preparation for these apparitions, and those that followed helped to interpret them.

The doctrinal core reveals itself in the apparitions of the Virgin which is vast and complete and the reason why Fatima is considered the most doctrinal, most prophetic and also the most sociopolitical of all Marian apparitions, having inspired and influenced concrete social and political measures in the twentieth century.

The Heart of Mary Cycle:  the apparitions in Pontevedra (1925-1926) and Tuy (1929)
In these apparitions that took place years later and when Lucia was perhaps not yet accustomed to the loneliness she felt after the death of her cousins, the Lady blessed her with these apparitions, as she had appeared to Jacinta at her deathbed, to fulfill what she had promised Lucia, of never abandoning her, giving her strength, and helping her in the interpretation of the message.

These visions had the same effect on Lucia as the transfiguration of the Lord on the apostles, of assuring that she had taken the right course of action both in relation to the interpretation of the message as well as her life on earth and the reason why she had been left behind. These apparitions also served to remove doubts in Lucia and to clarify some aspects of the message, especially in regard to the devotion of the five first Saturdays.

The dimensions of the Fatima message
As the apparition with the greatest doctrinal amplitude in the opinion of many theologians, Fatima is like a “Summa Theologica” because it touches upon all the themes that are essential to our faith and gives clues to how to live them, both in the area of individual as well as liturgical spirituality, in a way that is very practical and pedagogical.

The Sacrificial Dimension – Understood as the Eucharistic sacrifice and offering of oneself in the context of the Eucharist and of life, that is, to make life eucharistic: “Do you want to offer yourself…” From the very first Marian apparition, and paraphrasing James and John who asked to sit one on the right and the other on the left of the Lord but first they needed to drink the cup that he drank (Mark10:36-45), thus the little shepherds asked to go to Heaven, but first the Lady asked them if they were willing to offer themselves for others.

Christ gave up his life for us, and as a Christian or a follower of Christ we also need to love others not only as we love ourselves as the commandment says, but more than that, as Jesus loves us, to the extent of giving up his life for us (John 13:34-35).

The Eschatological Dimension – This is the translation of the Gospel warning: “unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (Luke 13:3).  It is about the misfortunes that hang over the world because of sin – and also about the conversion of sinners, and how we can participate in it; the prophetic and pedagogical vision of hell, as well as how to avoid eternal damnation.

The Missionary Dimension – Mission is transversal through the entire message of Fatima; all the practices that Our Lady asks in relation to prayers, sacrifices, the Rosary, the consecration, the first Saturdays, are aimed for the good of others, that is, the conversion and salvation of sinners and not for personal sanctification. The follower and devotee of the message of Fatima is converted by praying for the conversion of others. Everything is oriented towards others; it is, therefore, a truly “altruistic” and not an “egocentric” spirituality.

Unlike most Catholics in those days and also in ours who live obsessed with gaining Heaven and do good for the sole purpose of their own individual salvation, the little shepherds did nothing to save their own souls because the Lady had already said that she would take them up to Heaven.

It is as if they practiced the theology of Protestant reform, and now also Catholic’s, that Heaven is free for all because Christ has already paid in full the entrance ticket. With Heaven guaranteed to them, the little shepherds dedicated their lives in securing it also for others.

In this way, everything that the little shepherds did was missionary:  by ways of an “Apostolate of Prayer”, in which Francisco distinguished himself, as he was always seeking occasions and places to be alone with God, consoling Him, and by ways of an “Apostolate of Sacrifice”, in which Jacinta distinguished herself by being tireless in finding instances to do more and more self-sacrifices, because she wished that everyone could go to Heaven.

The Marian Dimension – The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Rosary as the contemplation with Mary on the mysteries of Christ. The manifestation of the Lady identifying herself as Our Lady of the Rosary.

The Ecclesial Dimension – Communion in solidarity with the whole Church, in prayer for peace in the world and for the conversion of sinners.

The Petrine Dimension – Fatima started with an appeal from the Holy Father and always involved the popes; and precisely the one who did not want to get himself involved with the Fatima message was the one who turned out to be its greatest proponent -- Pope John Paul II.

The Prophetic Dimension – Fatima represented for thousands of Christians the blue army of Mary - the evangelical activism, against the red army of Russia - the militant atheism. The militant atheism continues to exist even without the tutelage of Russia, in the Freemasons and certain groups of agnostics who always try to influence politics to go against the Church.

In this time as in all times, Fatima is a perennial exhortation for all Christians to become evangelists, always ready to stand up to anyone who demands an account of the hope that is in us (1Peter 3:15). Or as someone has said after the Second Vatican Council, an appeal to become Christians as members of a political party, and militants as members of the Church.

The Pedagogical-Religious Dimension – The learning of prayers and pious practices of devotion as ways to reparate, console and atone the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

To incarnate the Fatima message
This is accomplished by putting into practice what Mary had asked the little shepherds which they generously fulfilled as they embodied all the aspects of this message. It is up to us to do the same if we are lovers of Mary our mother and if like the little shepherds, we want to participate in the redemption of the world.

Stop offending Jesus – This is the first thing the little shepherds did:  to leave behind their own sinful ways of life by developing a more austere awareness that enabled them to judge each one of their own deeds and expose sins in their lives regardless how small they might be.

Pray the Rosary every day – Through the Rosary we are taken by the hands of Mary our mother, to contemplate on the mysteries of our Redemption, that is, the life of her Son. Since she knows him better than anyone else, she more than anyone can introduce us to her son, to his life and doctrine.

Offer sacrifices – By offering sacrifices we are putting into practice the reason why we participate in the Eucharist. At the end of a Latin Mass the priest dismisses the people by saying, “Ite missa est” which means at the same time two different things: first, that the Mass is over and second, that you are on a Mission, that is, once the Mass ends the Mission starts.

Part of this mission is to bring to life the Eucharistic dimension. We eat the body offered and drink the blood outpoured, so that we ourselves in our lives become the body offered and the blood outpoured. We participate in the Eucharist so that we become eucharistic as we make our lives a gift for the redemption of others. We do this when, like the little shepherds, we offer ourselves through self-sacrifices, and embrace the cross of Christ every day by denying ourselves and affirming others in our lives.

Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary – Assiduous prayer places us before God who acts as a mirror that makes us see who we really are, hence a false image of ourselves leads us to have a false image of God. Prayer purifies these two images, of God and of ourselves; prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on the other hand, purifies our heart and makes it like hers. It is in our own interest this devotion since as the beatitude has it, only the pure of heart will see God.

Observance of the five first Saturdays – This is a beautiful observance to reinvigorate our faith and our Christian practices. It is like the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius or like the Cursillos. It gives a new start and awakens a dormant faith that has lost its saltiness which used to give meaning and taste to a life that now is no longer the light of the world.

Use of the scapular – This practice was once very popular, and has not yet lost its value. It is not that the scapular is a talisman that protects us by its own merit without our collaboration; this would be idolatry. The use of the scapular serves to remind us, hour by hour and minute by minute, that we are called to put on Christ as Saint Paul says in Ephesians (4:22-24).

Conclusion
We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. (2Corinthians 4:7)

At the end of this long digression and study of the events at Fatima, both its meaning and message, I realized the richness, the doctrinal depth, and the prophetic sociopolitical aspects of the message. Even I can hardly believe that such important message was placed in the hands of three children of such tender ages, completely uncultured, and in spite of their limitations, they did a very good job of living and delivering, and being the custodians of the message of Fatima, despite the unbelief of their own families and the Church, and the obstacles and threats from the administrative and political power.

I want to end this reflection the very same way I began it: The mystery hidden from the wise who are proud of their wisdom is revealed to the simple and accepted by the truly wise, that is, those who keep an open mind without prejudice and who recognize that they know only that they know nothing. (Matthew 11:25)

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC