More Simone Weil: The Choice

 Every once in a while, not often mind you, a philosopher will say exactly the right thing in a short, concise form that really hits home. Today, Simone Weil did that for me.

"Whoever takes the sword will perish by the sword. Whoever lets go of it will perish by the cross."

Perfect.

Now let's do a little unpacking. The first part will be familiar to most people. Jesus said, "Whoever lives by the sword will die by the sword." We get that, well, in theory anyway. None of us do it. Not really. Everybody doesn't have a basement full of guns and ammo, but almost all of us are inclined to take God's justice ("Vengence is mine; I will repay, says the Lord" - Deut 32:35) into our own hands. Defending the defenseless, or even giving the bad guys what we think they have coming to them, seems like standard procedure. What else are we to do? 

Well, maybe take God at His word. Don't do it. Just don't. 

But what then, some of us wonder. What if no one stops the playground bully? He grows up to be Don Trump. What if no one stops Hitler? We all end up speaking German and clicking our heels. Or do we? I mean, no one really knows what would happen because no one has really tried. 

OK, a few have - Ghandi and Martin Luther King, for example, but things didn't go really well for them, did it? Minor victories, but nothing universally world-changing. And yet we admire them for what they did do. We know on some level that humans were not meant to exact violent revenge on one another. We were not meant to kill each other. Even in an effort to save innocent lives.

I've often wondered what would happen if we stopped taking revenge, or even defense, against a clearly evil enemy. First off, I think a lot of innocent people would die. A lot more even than in the fighting, perhaps. And at the end of it. we would still be stuck with a tyrant. That's not a happy ending, and it kind of proves Simone's second point. Once we lay down our weapons, we will die anyway, but by the cross, by sacrifice, without personally perpetrated, heart-destroying violence. It could happen, and I can't help feel there's some kind of salvation in it. After all, nobody wins a war. Ever. 

That's one thing about philosophers. They are some of the few people who admit everyone is going to die and really believe it. That's most of the cause of all their angst, but it does lead to a good, heavy dose of reality. We have to choose how we are going to live and in doing so, choose to a great degree how we are going to die. Because we will die, you know. We all will. And what will we be holding onto at the end? The self-righteous end of an .357 or  the cross? If my own death is going to count for something, let it speak of love.

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