Life, the wise life I mean, is upside down.
The true spiritual life is the wise life, and it’s a life that defies the world’s values for a supreme and eternal value set woven into the living, breathing, space-time phenomenon we exist within.
The world will have us believe that pushing our way around, asserting our authority, taking control of what we can, etc, is the right and best way to live.
But the precise opposite is true — never do we, however, receive feedback from this world that that is the case. We can only trust this to be the truth by faith, to absorb other peoples’ pressure, stress, and aggression is the only way to peace and eventual victory.
The more we absorb, the better it is for us.
The more others spew their garbage toward us and we don’t react, the more their putrid behaviour stands as its own testimony.
Far better is it in the true spiritual life to be the abused than be the abuser — notwithstanding the judgement facing us in the next life is the judgement that prowls in this life threatening the person who thinks they’ve gotten away with it.
When a person impugns me, the more I need to gird the temptation to react.
I need to absorb the threat and respond with kindness, as it’s a reflection of my heart on test. If I cannot absorb the indignity thrust my way, I’m no better than the aggressor. If I meet aggression with aggression, I prove my carnality and distance from the Benevolent One. At which time, I can repent.
If we believe in the gospel message, we can possibly live the gospel message. Believing is living, because if we don’t live the way we believe we enter unbelief.
It makes no sense in the moment to absorb the aggressor’s attack, but as we absorb the attack by choice, we are not observed as a weakling, but as someone strange — “did you see that, how that person did not react?” This is the witness of Christ in a person’s life, and it is what the world celebrates — once it sees the outcome of the behaviour.
The only way to beat aggression is to transcend it.
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