YeKengalé

Equality is an ideal, and as most ideals are, for all practical purposes, unattainable. The point of having an ideal is having a standard worth aspiring for, like the carrot on a stick, it gets the donkey moving in the right direction. As Jesus said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” Some might complain, “But that’s impossible!” Others might hint that it depends on our understanding of Jesus’ usage of the word ‘perfect’. And both of course are correct.

Perfection like equality is aspirational not experiential. Having a perfect heart does not mean being flawless, rather it means being meek or teachable. Even Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered.

So wouldn’t we all want to know how to love lesser people. Admitting that there are people lesser and greater than ourselves shouldn’t technically be a problem, save for the religiously pompous. (Bullshiters is the crasser term). There are those who never come to terms with reality, blinded by fundamentalist idealism which makes one more pompous than practical in one’s attitude to life and to people. Diehard dogmatists often bear contrary fruit in their conduct and relationships. Often it is the unassuming, or the hard nosed pragmatist that accomplishes more in the way of modeling ideal behaviour.

But even those who admit the obviously substantial differentials in human value, in spite of whatever espoused religious, political or legal ideal or ideology, find it extremely uncomfortable to admit sometimes, even to themselves, their perceived differences.

I may see you as beneath me culturally, educationally, morally or intellectually, even if you are my boss or of an outranking social or economic status; or you may hold me in such awe as to not see my attributes as personally attainable yourself. (And yes, of course both the I’s and You’s here are universal and reversible, I am quite deliberately intending to provoke …. honesty. Truth so often is offensive to those who think they have it most, hence the above seemingly pompous tone of the title of what really is a very pragmatic article.)

Whosoever I respect / revere, I place higher than myself in value. And obviously, the reverse for whosoever I despise, scorn or contemn….even ever so subtly, and since this appears to be the age of passive aggression, some have made an art of concealing their inner feelings of superiority and masking their scorn with thin facades of feigned civility. As Churchill, I believe it was, said, “Diplomacy is the art of saying the nastiest things in the nicest way.”

Our culture places a high value on feigned respect, we consider it a mark of civilization. Diplocracy (the cross between diplomacy and hypocrisy) is the language of the cultured; only the uncouth plebeian dares speak his mind. The culture considers unfiltered speech a moral or intellectual defect. Transparency is viewed a psychological liability, not an asset.

If we must condescend, (and we absolutely must) then let us do it right. And so we turn to the condescension king, Jesus, who, like so many of us, ‘thought it not robbery to be God’s equal”. Another way of saying that is he thought what most of us think who have very high opinions of ourselves, who think we’re right or righteous, who talk it, act it, think it, that we’re better than everybody else, but Jesus was at least honest enough to admit it to himself … and to others. No robbery or offense in doing so. It’s the truth. God and I are one. You see me, you see living God walking.

Jesus, however went further to ’empty himself’ of that notion and identify with both the deprived and depraved. He did what we often vehemently refuse to do.

He identified with the selfish, and the savage, the vile and the violent, even with our high opinions of ourselves, or perhaps because of them – we refuse to identify with the shadows we see only in others, too blinded by our own brilliance to see those same shades in ourselves. We cling to our divinity, afraid to empty ourselves of it, lest we be devoured by that contemptible which we despise (a sign that our self-assumed, even if not self-confessed divinity was fake in the first place).

Nothing we repudiate more than servility. The Great I Am is to be served (and of course we mean, whether or not we admit it, ourselves, that Great Being we think we are, but shhhh. Dont tell anybody. It’s an offense.)

This ’emptying of self’ is what allows for being ‘filled with compassion’, and compassion, (somewhat akin to pity, but less distant, more involved) is the diametrically opposite disposition and drive in the face of an encounter with a lesser being. Both contempt and compassion recognize a difference in human value between another and ourselves, but the first approach is to repudiate, the second to recognize or identify; the first to condemn, the latter to cover.

The ability to appropriately select between the two (contempt and compassion) is not in the hands of the lesser being, but the greater one, who considers no robbery committed either way – whether in identifying with God in all his perfection or identifying with man in all his inadequacy. God is not robbed, neither am I.

We can then become bridge builders, taking others from where they are to where they really want to go but don’t know how, and probably are too proud or hurt to show that to us, or to ask for help; and way-makers, bringing heaven down on earth, lifting the sullied to their divine potential.

Though we are loathe to admit it, and our theologies blind us from rather than reveal our psychological truth, we are much better at identifying with God than with mankind (the Jamaican ego especially). But the nature of true divinity, though we attribute such to Lords and the like is service, not dominion. We worship a God of majesty in the iconic, Judaic Lion-Lord, but it was revealed to John that it is actually the servile lamb that sits on the throne.

PS. Just so as not to end on a morally pompous note, let me confess the inspiration to write this article, which really is shared self-therapy. I was thinking of all the lesser people in my life who were irritating the ‘hell’ out of me (at least that was the divine intention).

Irritation shifted to identification when I became more aware of the stories of my perceived provokers than my own and the instinct to identify with rather than to scorn kicked in. May we all continually access those wonderful self- emptying experiences which liberate us from the lesser being we often are into our greater potential and capacity.