I heard from a marriage counselor that a marriage with some resilience, help and God's grace can overcome almost any obstacle, even abuse, adultery and addiction. But not every obstacle: there is one condition that, if present, efficaciously destroys a marriage: contempt. If the spouses view each other with contempt, there is no hope: the marriage is dead.
Our country is like such a couple: the two sides view each other with deep contempt. There is a profound, possibly unbridgeable abyss of disgust between the two. This is far more serious than a clash of views or a fight over how to divide the economic pie.
What is contempt? It is deeper and darker than anger, rage, fury, hurt, betrayal, disappointment. It is not merely the absence of respect and affection. It is an intense response of disgust to what is encountered as vile, despicable, nauseating. It is analogous to the visceral, somatic response, largely through the sense of smell, to what is violently sickening: a dead animal, rotten meat, human or animal waste.
Like its opposites, love and reverence, it is a feeling but far more. Initially it is an involuntary emotion; but it then moves into a judgement of the intellect, that the offender is indeed worthless and even deserving of condemnation; and finally it settles into an attitude, a permanent viewpoint, out of which proceed a series of hostile thoughts, words and deeds.
As a powerful, overwhelming emotion, contempt is irrepressible: it cannot be dismissed by an act of the will or intellect. It has an immense power behind it. But as with all emotion, it is capable of being directed, guided, channeled by the intellect and will. So, if we cannot merely dismiss the contempt we have for each other, how do we direct it in a fruitful, wholesome manner?
The contempt of the Left for the entire Trump phenomenon is evident: "deplorables" is the word made famous by Hillary Clinton in reference to about 50% of the voting population. The disdain is reciprocated by the Right: in large part the vote for Trump was not for his person or agenda but a renunciation of the Biden/Harris legacy and the DNC. This recent election was less a positive mandate for a specific alternative than a clash between two systems of contempt and disgust.
How are we to live together with such contempt?
Answer: detach the contempt from the person; aim it at the values as distinct from the person. Engage the person, not oblivious to that which is disdained, but as someone far greater-deeper-denser than that which offends.
Maximilian Kolbe, shortly before he was arrested and eventually killed for his crusade against Nazism, was visited by a contingent of Gestapo agents. He received them into his monastery with impeccable courtesy and dignity. He did not personalize his contempt: he did not associate it with these specific men in front of him. Nor did he back down from his resistance to that system.
We are able to do this with analogous conditions. In relating to someone in a psychotic or addictive state, we hold the person in reverence even as we clearly, if quietly renounce the delusional and compulsive dynamics at work. Similarly, if one self-presents as "gay" or "trans," I defer courteously to the dignity of that subjectivity, however erroneous, and receive him in the dignity of his entirety, resisting the stereotype of a misleading label. When the 12-stepper introduces himself with "Hi! I am Bill, an alcoholic" he is admitting to a condition over which he is powerless; but he is also saying, if in Hope, I am more than that condition, which does not essentially define who I am.
We come back, as always, to: "hate the sin, love the sinner."
So, yes I despise contraception, Nazism, Communism, pornography, adultery. But I don't have a big problem with contraceptors, Nazis, Communists, porn users, or adulterers. Hey: we are all sinners, right? At the foot of the cross, the ground is level.
It helps always to remember that politics is not everything. It is not nothing. Especially to those of us (like my family) who take it seriously. But it is NOT everything. There is faith and religion. Family. Friends. Sports. Study. Music, cinema, dance, and culture in all its splendor. We do well to respect the autonomy of all these areas: no kneeling at football games; no political tirades, PLEASE, at the academy awards!
It is good to pray for all our political leaders, as St. Paul advises, even our political antagonists.
I like to pray for the families, marriages and souls of political figures...detached from their politics...the Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, Bidens, Trumps...that they all be drawn closer to God and into genuine love for each other. This is a salutary exercise. An excellent way of minimizing the toxic consequences of contempt.
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