Author: G. Scott Huggins

What We Can Learn From A Killer, A Mother, and Iran This Maundy Thursday

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

Maundy Thursday, a friend reminded me today, derives from the Latin command of Jesus in John 13:34: “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos,” with “mandatum novum” (shortened to “Maundy”) being the “new commandment” Jesus was delivering to his disciples, that they love one another as he had loved them.

And then I read this article, and saw these pictures. They are scenes from an execution in Iran. You can read the entire article here. But I’ll summarize. It’s a story that I imagine happens every day, many times over, in our broken world: Two young men fought, about what ridiculous stuff I can’t imagine. One, called here, Balal, stabbed the other, Abdolleh Hosseinzadeh, who died. Balal was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. His family apparently appealed, and the appeal was denied.

On the morning of the execution, Balal was led to the gallows, his mother looking on, watching her world about to come to an end. The son she had born, nursed and raised, to be hanged as a murderer. Beside the gallows stood the parents of Abdolleh, whose son was already lost. Balal struggled. Prayed. Screamed. Was quiet.

Abdolleh’s mother, Maryam, addressed the crowd. She could not forgive, she said, though she believed that Balal had not intended their son’s death. She had been, she said, living a nightmare.

We have all had dreams that became nightmares. But this time… this time the nightmare turned into a dream. Maryam turned. Asked for a chair. Moved it to face Balal who stood their, the death hood on his face, the noose around his neck. She stood on the chair. Slapped Balal across the face.

“Forgiven,” she said.

And she and her husband took the noose from Balal’s neck. The execution was over. Called off.

And that is how an Iranian mother, a Muslim, showed me today what it means — what it must mean — to be a Christian.

To forgive the inexcusable, at the cost of your own son’s life. That is the forgiveness of the very God of Christ; the sacrifice of the very Christ of God.

Some readers may accuse me of some sort of religious appropriation. I do not mean it to be that. I am well aware (given this story, how could I not be?) that forgiveness is not the invention, let alone the exclusive purview, of Christians. But forgiveness is central to Christianity in a way that I do not think  it is central to Islam. I take the centrality of Islam to be nearer to the concepts of submission and righteousness. I hasten to add that I will be gladly corrected by anyone whose Islamic theology is stronger than my own, which should be easy enough. I mean here only that this person has grasped the centrality of my own faith better than almost anyone, including myself, that I know. And my admiration for her, and her husband, is boundless. We must learn from them. Christ commands us to learn from them.

You may say what you like about the Iranian legal code, for which I am certainly no apologist, and which has done things I shudder to contemplate. You may say Balal should never have been sentenced to death. That the death penalty is wrong. Well, I am not here to defend the death penalty, certainly not as it is practiced in my own nation. I do think some crimes earn death, but that is not the subject of this discourse. I know only this: the forgiveness of his victim’s parents would not necessarily have saved Balal under our laws. And this is also a sobering thought. I am not a child: I know there are sound reasons for the state to prosecute regardless of the victim’s wishes. But I also wonder if we sometimes heed those reasons to the point that we choke out forgiveness.

I do not know what will happen to Balal. I have not the knowledge of the Iranian legal code to know whether he now goes free or returns to prison. Only one thing I know: he was dead, and is alive tonight. His parents, broken in despair, have a living son, and rushed to weep at the feet of his pardoners.

This is the love of God towards us: our lives, in return for a Son murdered. His command is for us to do likewise. To love one another, as He has loved us. Tonight I pray fervently, even as Christ prayed on this day more than 2000 years ago, that no such forgiveness shall ever be required of me. That I shall never stare down the dregs of that dreadful cup.

I pray also, that should it ever be demanded of me, that I shall obey as well as Maryam Hosseinzadeh.

Will the “Real” Whatever Please Shut Up? (Please, Shut Up)

/ G. Scott Huggins / 2 Comments

Okay, it’s been a long time since I posted on this blog, despite a resolve to do at least one a week. What can I say, a big idea turned out to be more work that I had in me, and then life happened. But this blog topic is less nuanced, and I think I can fire it out there really fast:

I was recently shooting the breeze in my own thread online about a topic I would have to work to care less about when a rather Upset Young Guy™ I know barreled into the conversation with the subtlety of a chainsaw and informed me that because I was not acting in the manner of Real Fans Everywhere, my opinions on the topic had no merit, and that by merely airing my opinion… on my page, which I guess is his business because… he can see it? I dunno, where was I? Ah, yes: By merely airing my opinion, I had caused the UYG™, personally, great mental, nay, physical, anguish and distress. UYG™ proceeded to berate me for pretending to be a Real Fan and not spending the time or money to back it up. (In deference to the fact that he’s young and generally not a bad guy, I’m not being more specific than this. In deference to the fact that actions have consequences, I’m not being vaguer.)

The funny part is that he’s right: I’m not a Real Fan. I never said I was a Real Fan. I was just commenting on a few trends I’d recognized (trends that I was actually picking up by reading analysts who are likely far more Real Fans than either of us, as they get paid for this crap.) But apparently, no one who is not a Real Fan gets to talk about the topic at all, lest they get called out as ignorant or unenthusiastic by Real Fans, I guess.

The even funnier part is that he actually seems to think that I care about whether the self-appointed Real Fans respect my opinion on the topic of entertainment and how I should be enjoying it. But, then, he’s not alone: in the past few months I have seen professionals in a number of fields of study and craft, some of them quite close to my heart, rip each other to pieces in the name of what Real Fans, and Real Artists, and Real Activists, and Real People do and do not do.

And that’s not funny. That’s actually just sad.

Before I go further, a disclaimer: there is such a thing as real expertise in the world. And before you go intruding in a conversation set up by, about, and for experts with your own opinion, you’d better make sure you know what the hell you’re talking about, or damn well expect to get your head handed to you. For example, if it had been me who had barreled into a conversation UYG™ had been having with other Real Fans in a space for Real Fans, he could have said almost the same things he did say and have been totally in the right to do so.

But the Real Experts remember that they too were once novices, and they don’t look down on novices for not being experts, or question their motives for entering the field, or badmouth those taking a passing interest in the topic for expressing a feeling about it, or for passing on the opinions of those more knowledgeable than themselves, or even (gasp) for being WRONG once in awhile. Real Experts don’t take it upon themselves to be the Topic Police and run off the unworthy and uninitiated from discussing it among themselves. Because that’s not being an expert. That’s being the gatekeeper for a clique. That’s cutting your own field, or fan-base, or whatever off at the roots, because no one is going to want to be around people who act like that.

Don’t care? Figure people will always want to be Real Fans like you because you’re just That Cool? Okay. But there’s a lot of good people who won’t put up with your crap, whether its a fandom or a cause. And eventually, they’re going to welcome more people than you. Because they’re welcoming and not gatekeeping.

From Somewhere in Orbit

Popular UnWisdom #2: No Better Than They Are

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

“If you kill people to show that killing is wrong, you are no better than they are.”

–Unknown

I don’t have any sort of research for this quote. I have found no source for it, but I hardly think one is necessary. Variants on “killing” include “hitting” or “doing violence.” I have heard it all my life, and I imagine that most of my audience has heard it likewise. It is frequently found on the placards and in the mouths of mothers, elementary school teachers, and activists who oppose war and the death penalty.

It’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

Let’s just examine this a little bit more closely, shall we? The death penalty is wrong because killing makes us, as a society, morally equivalent to the killers. Ah, yes, of course. That makes perfect sense. Then what, exactly, does that make our society when we lock people in prison for kidnapping? Doesn’t it make us kidnappers? What if we fine them for committing theft? Doesn’t that make us thieves? And why does the punishment have to fit the crime? If the proverb above holds, then it seems we have built a society in which justice has been confused with kidnapping people and stealing from them.

And, by the way, why do we not draw that parallel? Why is killing criminals wrong, while kidnapping them is not?

I begin to suspect that most of the moral outrage that purports to equate execution to vengeance really has very little to do with morality. Instead, it simply has to do with squeamishness, as evidenced in the debate over the death penalty itself. Dr. Jay Chapman, one of the inventors of the mix of drugs which until recently were used for lethal injection, has since repudiated his own invention, saying that the guillotine would be more humane. So why don’t we use it?

Because it would be messy. It would be ugly. We would not be able to hide behind the notion that we could clean up death. And we might have to face the fact that we live in a world where sometimes, we can’t clean it up.

It’s not that we don’t want to kill, it’s that we don’t want to deal with the mess. Or why else was there so much outrage over the way a giraffe in Denmark was recently killed? It was shot through the head, which is one of the less painful ways to go that I can imagine. And yet, some asked why the animal wasn’t euthanized by using drugs, (which of course, would have made its meat useless for consumption by the zoo’s large cats). Could it be that people were outraged simply because guns draw blood? Because that method of killing is ugly?

I have probably left some people under the impression that I am pro-death-penalty and even pro-violence. Actually, I am neither. You see, there are a host of good reasons to be against the use of the death penalty. Right now I’m against it for two reasons: Firstly, the probability of executing an innocent man under our present laws is just too high. Secondly, it seems that judges and juries have a nasty habit of condemning minorities to death at a disproportionately high rate.

But neither of those reasons is the same as making a false equivalence between a murder by individual whim and an execution by the rule of law. The difference is profound: Criminals inflict random violence on random victims. Juries and judges are supposed to inflict it after deliberation and reasoned judgment, and to do so on those who are aware that their punishment is deserved, or at least that such punishment a likely result of their own actions. It is the process, and the limits on that process, that makes all the difference. To us, this is vital. If we do not understand it — if we confuse all punishment with vengeance, and all law with whim — then we approach a mindset in which the very idea of a civil justice system is impossible. And that’s what we built to avoid being murdered by criminals.

Most crime involves the criminals inflicting some form of pain on the victims, whether that is physical, social, or financial pain. And in all the justice systems I know of, justice involves some form of society inflicting some form of pain on the criminal, as a deterrent and/or a means of protecting society from the criminal. Of course, it would be preferable to simply persuade the criminal to repent and make restitution, but few criminals will do this. And on what basis do we say that, for example, Singaporean caning is torture while American solitary confinement for years on end (and this is done) is not? The problem is not that our consciences are strong. The problem is that our stomachs are weak.

Now, I’m just waiting for someone to point out that judges and juries can and do make mistakes, or act out of fear or vengeance and therefore, my argument here is invalid. And that misses the point entirely, of course. It’s a true observation, but it’s not a counterargument. Depending on the venue, it may be a completely separate argument against the death penalty. But it’s not the same as saying that punishment is the same as vengeance, and that’s the real danger. That way lies anarchy.

From somewhere in orbit

Popular UnWisdom #1: What the Good Man Doesn’t

/ G. Scott Huggins / 4 Comments

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

— John F. Kennedy Edmund Burke Charles F. Aked Every Activist on The Internet.

The above quote, which has no verified source, but seems to me most likely to have originally come from John Stuart Mill, has been driven at me so often and so hard that I am beginning to flinch every time I see it headed my way: the overloaded hitch-trailer of indignation pulled by the immaculately buffed car of self-righteousness. It tends to dangle from the end of pleas, or worse, demands, that I join the caravan of this champion of justice, or be an agent in the triumph of Evil.

Well, I really can’t afford either the Saville Row suits or the traditional black leather that comprise the current Agents of Evil dress code, so I’m not a fan of being relegated to their ranks. But the popular wisdom that has been misattributing this quote to Edmund Burke for the last hundred years is hard to refute, yes? I mean, Hitler could have been fought at the gates of Prague rather than at the gates of Moscow if Chamberlain and Daladier had just stood up to him, yes? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. You can find countless anecdotes throughout history in which this is true. If only the good men had stood up to the evil when it was small, how great the past would be.

And it’s all complete and utter balderdash.

Let’s look very carefully at what the users of this argument are asking us to accept without any examination on our part here. Firstly, they want us to accept that what they are fighting against is evil. Note that this is an entirely different proposition than the idea that what they themselves are doing is good. Good people want us to join them in building up what is good. The proponents of this aphorism want us to join them in a crusade against Evil. Do we remember that the Crusades themselves were launched more or less on this very principle? Do we remember what we think of the Crusaders, and the Popes who unleashed them against the “evil” of Saracen occupation of the Holy Land (land the Saracens and their predecessors did, of course, conquer themselves). For a more modern example, however, we can turn to something a bit less extreme, but damaging enough:

“The earliest known citation showing a strong similarity to the modern quote appeared in October of 1916. The researcher J. L. Bell found this important instance. The maxim appeared in a quotation from a speech by the Reverend Charles F. Aked who was calling for restrictions on the use of alcohol [SFCA]” (O’Toole).

And we all remember what a rousing success Prohibition was, right? How many lives were saved because “good men” stood up and fought the evils of drink, yes? Would it not be wise to remember that much evil, if not more, has been done by “good men” who stood up and acted without seriously considering what evils they themselves might be tempted to, driven to, or simply accidentally unleash in the name of their crusade?

But let us say that we have considered it, and the target of the cause is indeed evil. The warriors of righteousness are fighting Hitler, or his moral equivalent. Those people exist; I’m not a moral relativist. But now look at what they go on to say, and this is the real issue I have with those driving this particular load of guilt around. Their fight is so important, that they get to draft us into supporting their fight. We are either for them, or against them. We will either speak up every time they want us to, at the volume and pitch they want us to, or we are not their friend. We are not their ally. We are instead their oppressor and their enemy. Well, I think that’s sad, because many of these people I like, but the cost of that friendship is just too high.

Because the real statement here, and it’s fairly insulting if you think about it, is that they get to choose for me what my moral energy goes into fighting.   And that is one thing that no one should get to do besides God and me, in that order. The people making this statement do not want allies. Because allies have a voice in what you say, what you do, and how you say and do it. They have an interest in your success, and you have one in theirs. What these people want in you is not an ally. The word we’re looking for here is “subordinate.”

“But, Scott,” I hear you say in the comments (assuming you, like me, are the kind of jerk who throws Hitler into every argument), “Are you saying that there’s nothing everyone is obligated to fight? Wouldn’t every good person have been obligated to join the fight against Hitler?”

Leaving aside for the moment that there were many who considered themselves good who didn’t join that fight (I’m not a pacifist, either), I do agree that there are some extremes in which one must act, indeed must act instantly and violently, against evil (and if you’re waiting for an exhaustive catalogue of such things here, good luck to you), but they are for most of us, rare. I don’t know how I would act when presented with one of them. I hope I would act honorably, but I distrust those who are sure before they’ve been tested. Octavia Butler once said in my presence, “Hitlers are rare. That’s one of the reasons they are so popular.” But while I’ve heard a lot of people try to enlist me in their cause by claiming their opponents are fascists, I’ve yet to agree with that assessment.

Of course, some of you are seething by now, because you’re sitting here saying, “Sure, Scott, you can talk, but those ‘rare situations’ are my LIFE! I’m one of the victims of this injustice you say you don’t want to spend your precious ‘moral energy’ on.” Okay, let me slow down and answer that one with utter, dead seriousness and respect.

I’m sorry. Truly, I am. And if there’s a specific thing you want me to do for you, personally, you contact me and ask, and I’ll do what I can to help you. Your pain is not meaningless. Your pain is real. I’ve been the victim too (and if it’s ever relevant in this blog, I may even tell you of what) and it sucks. And I was fortunate enough to have people to help me.

But I’m not going to pick up your banner for you. I’m not going to devote my life to your cause because you threaten to disrespect me for that or call me names. I have my own causes that I champion, my own callings to help the less fortunate that I follow. And neither you nor anyone else has the right to override that and call on my aid for your cause to the exclusion of the others unless you can demonstrate a clear, immediate, and overriding threat. We live in a world overflowing with injustice. We’re up to our eyeballs in it, and the stink of it is in our nostrils to the point it’s sometimes hard to distinguish it anymore. I’ll fight the injustice with you, but understand it may not be the exact injustice you’re most committed to. And that’s for the simple reason that my pain is not your pain. And we should respect each other’s pain, not fight over whose is worse, and whose need is greatest. Someday, God willing, we’ll meet up on the same side.

From somewhere in orbit