Between the Lines XVII: The word we need now

It’s a lovely word. We don’t hear it much anymore – it sounds a bit old-fashioned – but it’s time to revive it, because it’s needed to deal with the world’s craziness. When done right, it’s both weapon and protection, offense and defence. The word is “rebuke.”

To rebuke means to criticize or reprimand, but that’s just the surface. Rebukes can be hurled in arrogance and self-righteousness, and these are rarely effective in changing actions. Or they can be given with gentleness and love, clarity and moral strength. When done in the right way, rebukes are powerful. They don’t even have to take the form of words. In the end of Holy War, Tamar gives her nemesis, Russian President Ilya Chestnov, a mighty rebuke of his actions toward her and toward his people by ignoring his preening and doing what he himself should be doing as president, lifting the people up, giving them real hope. She does this simply, through her quiet presence as well as her gentle words. Chestnov thinks he is untouchable with the power of his office and the Kremlin behind him, but he realizes that the power Tamar exercises is greater because she knows how to exert power with love. The result is that Chestnov goes where he belongs: to his knees.

Tamar has power because her love for people is not an elaborate fake, as is Chestnov’s. She proved her love when she emerged from the tragedy of her brother’s death stronger than ever, able to face down the cruelty of her country’s Soviet occupiers through a campaign of hope for a Georgia free from the Soviet Union. As she was growing up, she learned how to use her moral strength when she faced a corrupt school teacher, rebuking the teacher not with words but with her integrity. In the United States, she proved the power of fearless rebuke in the face of Jonah Meek and his followers and their hate and ridicule toward foreigners like herself, turning many people to hope in an American future “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” And she learned the power of love in an even deeper way when her friend David helped her emerge whole from a hit-and-run accident clearly instigated by Chestnov.

On that amazing evening in Red Square that ends Holy War, one thing that becomes clear is Tamar’s understanding of how to rebuke in silence. In multiple ways, Chestnov has tried to make her disappear – through arrest, rape, attempted murder – because he cannot tame her. But each time she comes back stronger because she has learned how to rise mentally, morally and, to some degree, spiritually. She knows that the kind of rebuke she gives Chestnov through her unexpected return from the darkness of injury and near death can lift not only him but everyone around him.

Rebukes are not always gentle. Christ Jesus himself rebuked his opponents with brutal honesty. But his motive was always love. Tamar’s rebuke of Chestnov is effective because she has moved beyond hate and learned to love him with a pure, impersonal love. She brings that love literally into the public square, Red Square, showing that courage, humility and purity are powerful rebukes to evil. There may be righteous anger in effective rebuke, but there is never hatred or vengeance.

Rebuking is part of the package that proves the power of God to heal. Jesus’ rebukes would have been little more than hot air were it not for the love that impelled them, as well as the healings he performed as proof that a loving God is the ultimate and only power. Holy War and the accompanying Between the Lines are tiny parts of my own rebuke of those who try to shape a story that humanity is now helpless and hopeless when it comes to the future.  

What deserves rebuke today? In part,

-       The apparent success of some political actors in the United States in reaching power through dishonest, manipulative, violent means

-       The effort by government leaders in other countries to attain power and glory through wars of conquest

-       The effort by state and non-state actors in the Middle East to provoke war and enact vengeance on their enemies

I do not name these people, although it’s obvious who they are, because the issue is not personality. We are dealing with mental, not personal, evil. It isn’t Democrat vs. Republican, Ukrainian vs. Russian, Muslim vs. Jew. It’s moral versus immoral. The world needs all the strength and all the proof we can muster of the healing power of love. Love exposes evil fearlessly and rebukes it forcefully. There is no hate in effective rebukes, only love. The Old Testament puts the need in the form of a command, “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Rebuking is an important part of the peace process in the US, in Ukraine and in Israel/Palestine, and it’s an important part of the work of each of us. We all have our own ways to rebuke, but to be effective, rebukes need to have the common theme of love. A nineteenth century hymn by Samuel Longfellow, Unitarian Minister and brother of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, talks of Jesus, the bold and loving enforcer of God’s law:

“The faithful witness to the truth,

His just rebuke was hurled

Out from a heart that burned to break

The fetters of the world.”

We can express the same love, each in our own way. This is the spirit I have tried to capture in the character of Tamar. I want to help in some small way to instill her spirit in public thought today. We don’t need neutrality when it comes to our efforts against evil. We need the understanding and proof that truth and love are powerful, that they heal.

Note to readers: As Holy War has ended, this is the last Between the Lines that I will post. Next week this column will become:

Be Not Afraid

Reflections on the world, the news and the spiritual battles we face

I hope to see you there.

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