Brian’s Reflection: Monday, Feb 2, 2009

 

When love is suppressed, hate takes its place. 

 

- Havelock Ellis, English essayist and physician, born

  on this day, 1859

 As you know by now, I believe that Truth is “revealed” in countless ways. When human beings think that this is not true, division and contempt and hatred leak out into human Life, and misery becomes our lot. Look around the World today; Misery is rife.

 The essential “opposite” of Love is Power. In the Christian faith, this is proclaimed in Jesus, whose willing choice of death on the cross is the consummate rejection of the desire for Power, the lust for which infects the Human Community with a malignant seed of self-destruction.

 The principle “place” I see this at work in the World today is in the diminishment of Woman. The World today is primarily still a patriarchal ghetto. For example, I have carefully listened to and reflected upon the “place” of women in most Islamic societies. It is proclaimed by those societies that the basic invisibility of women, physically, emotionally, and culturally, is for their “protection” and for the preservation of their “honour”. This is utter delusion and hypocrisy. It can only “wash” in societies in which women have been oppressed by fear to accept their inferiority. Islam is not unique in this – though it is highly evident in the symbol of the Taliban refusing education to girls. You see it in many cultures, some of which proclaim to be “advanced”. I see it in Italy and other Latin and Asian cultures, where boys are hopelessly spoiled and indulged. I see it in American and in Western European cultures where women are denied equal pay for equal work.

 Let’s be clear:  all this is a triumph of Power over Love. And power is still in the hands, essentially, of men.

 I have worriedly wondered for a long time if many heterosexual males are congenitally incapable of real Love for women. (Most Gay men I personally know do not “see” women, or their fellow men, in the same way.) Which has frightening implications for situations in which males own the power – as, for example, the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, and many cultural or religious structures. Jesus did not treat women in this fashion, and was often criticized for it. And I have followed the Anglican dimension of it principally because, at its best, it has rejected misogyny (at least since the 60’s!).

 I believe that all behaviour which denies absolute equality to men and to women is infected by a suppression of the kind of Love which God, in Jesus, shows for all persons. And Ellis is right: in the suppression of Love, Hate takes its place – however hidden or denied it might be.

 The restriction of abortion rights has nothing to do with ensuring Life to incipient newborns. It is about the preservation of power by men over women. Remedy this, and no child will be unwanted.

 “In Christ, there is neither male nor female”. Which means, we are equal. Love knows this.

 Brian+