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Equality
Meditation by Karen Little, February 14, 2010

I had no idea that I would have as much trouble trying to come to grips about what I really wanted to say on equality. Then on the first of February I was listening to NPR on my way to work and heard a scientist talk about his motivation for sharing the newest scientific information about the universe with the American public. He said he shared with the public for two reasons - 1 He wanted Americans to be scientifically literate and 2 He wanted us to be taught how to think not what to think. (I bet you really wonder how this is tied into equality! Be patient I hope it will become clear shortly.)

That was it. This scientist had an underlying belief that we - you and I - could understand what he was sharing. He gave us the benefit of the doubt. He treated us with respect. He was not coming at it from the one up position but from the side-by-side position. He was assuming equality. It was so refreshing to hear, that I knew immediately that was the handle I had been seeking to try to hone what I needed to say concerning equality.

Equality, by its very nature, is tough to talk about without taking a one-up, one-down position. Do you know what I mean when I say that? One-up, one-down positions come from looking at power in our society. To talk about power is a no-no in most circles but we really can't look at equality without looking at the power structures in our society. Both legislated power structures and understood power structures. Understood power structures come first. Most of the time we recognize these power structures with our gut not our heads. We can instantly feel ourselves tensing up when someone is out of their "place."

We recognize that one up is important in relationship with parents and children. Someone needs to be boss and it should be the parent right? What we don't always admit to is that we recognize one-up in relationships like men with women, whites with colored, rich with poor, literate with illiterate, saved with unsaved, gifted with ungifted, doctors with patients, and on and on it goes. The one up position always gets to make the choices first. As long as our communities agree with who should be up and who should be down we get along fairly peacefully. It is when we begin to question who should be up and who should be down that we run into trouble. That is usually when we push to have society mor'es legislated. That is how we came to have so many unjust laws. We legalized keeping women in their place by refusing voting rights and land ownership, we did the same to keep blacks in their place, children as chattel etc.

Society mor'es are nothing more than being told what to think and not being given the freedom to learn how to think.

So when we talk about the Friends testimony of equality we can say that from a very early point in our history we were told to start thinking for ourselves. That is what has impressed me so much. In 1776 George Fox said to society - our women can preach and teach in church. This was certainly breaking a social taboo. That was nearly two hundred years before any other church gave women the right to think for themselves. In the mid 1800's the Friends began to steal slaves from their owners (an illegal act) and gave them the right to freedom and education. The Friends knew they had a responsibility to think for themselves even in the face of legislated inequality. The Friends have had a long history of breaking society mor'es and orthodox morality which is indicative of the push to help people think for themselves and not accept the status quo. It also is a great indicator that we have had a gut understanding of power and justice in the past.

So where do we see this testimony prodding us to greater consciousness today? We have only to look at the issues which are in the news daily to find out the area where we are being told what to think. The laundry list of issues might sound something like this: Gay/lesbian marriage, abortions rights, the priesthood of women (still), the civil rights of blacks, the sub humanization of Arabs, the safety of our American life style (always we assume there is only one right American life style), and one of the worst perversions we hear is who our enemies are.

I am not here to tell you what is equality in all of these issues. I am here to say to you and to me that each of us must think it through and be willing to step outside of the box of social mor'es if it is necessary. I am not even saying that what we are being told to think about any one issue is wrong, but I am standing here believing that you are bright enough to think for yourself and I am standing here trusting you to do what is necessary to bring equality to any discussion. I am also standing here praying that I will be courageous enough to act on what I know to be truth.

So this leads to the next subject which has to be addressed when we speak of the testimony to equality. What happens when we are convinced that the social mor'es is wrong? What happens when a legislated mor'e is unjust, ill thought out, or just evil? Like the owning of slaves, or the denial of women's voting rights, or the abuse of spouse or children. What happens when society-condoned-roles don't work? For instance, my grandfather was the most nurturing parent imaginable but a horrible bread winner. Grams was by far the best bread winner in that marriage. It took them years and years of fighting before they would allow themselves to break out of the husband/wife roles condoned by society. So they finally separated, lived in two different households (never divorced) and Gramp became a wonderful grandfather and Gram became post master with a steady income and a retirement.

I know that fighting inequality with force will not change the inequality because it merely makes both sides become entrenched and the one-down side just uses the same tactics to over turn the one-up. That is not what is needed. We have to go back to the drawing board to find a way to insist that justice be done.

The Friends have long, long roots in working for justice outside of the box.

Gandhi once said, "Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teaching is non-violent, except Christians." Christians have mistakenly thought Jesus was teaching non-resistance. " Do not resist one who is evil" has been taken to mean simply let them run all over you. Give up all concern for your own justice. If they hit you on one cheek, turn the other and let them batter you there too, which has been bad advice for battered women.

There are some great ways to resist evil without also perpetrating violence. Back in the early 1990's Walter Wink, a professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York began publishing a series of 3 books on power. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Unmasking the Powers and 3rd, Engaging the Powers: Discernment & Resistance in a World of Domination. Out of this extensive research he began to see a truth in this passage that truly began opening my eyes to a new way of living in this world. He named the way of resistance which Jesus advocates "The Third Way." Dr. Wink writes:

One of the most misunderstood passages in all of the Bible is Jesus' teaching about turning the other cheek. The passage runs this way: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. And if anyone takes you to court and sues you for your outer garment, give your undergarment as well. If one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two."
When Jesus says, "Do not resist one who is evil," there is something stronger than simply resist. It's do not resist violently. Jesus is indicating do not resist evil on its own terms. But resist evil with everything in you.

To be able to resistby becoming violent and to not resist at all are not answers to our problem of bring equality to fruition. We have to be more creative than either of these choices. We have to think of a third way. Jesus gives us three examples of the third way just to get us started thinking in this way. There are unlimited numbers of means to confront the inequalities in a society and make the powerful people assume responsibility to make the necessary changes. Jesus believed in teaching us to think in new ways. What Jesus is advocating is taking the unjust requests to such limits that even the powerful one can see the injustice and want to do something about it. Turn the other cheek is to make the one-up think again, give them your cloak also makes you go naked down the street, go another mile was illegal in Roman times so the soldier could be severely disciplined.

Let me give you another example of taking something to such an exaggerated degree that behaviors are changed. When I worked at Weyerhaeuser there was a group of men who teased me unmercifully. I tried ignoring them - they just tried harder to get a reaction. I tried talking back and kidding them this just escalated their behavior. Finally I decided that I would take their teasing to new degrees but always with me as the brunt. They came in one morning to tease me about being a wild woman. "I shouldn't get that loaded - dancing on the table doing a strip tease etc." So I came back saying something about the poor wiring on that chandelier - who would have thought it would come out of the wall. The bar keep was really understanding though. I just kept building up the image and we all knew it was a product of our imaginations. They finally conceded defeat and went back to work laughing. They didn't tease me as meanly after that. What made me laugh though is my boss asked me to go into his office to speak to me. He had taken me seriously and wanted to know if I had a serious problem in my private life!

There are several copies of this short article concerning the third way out in the narthex.

Another way that we can fight for equality is through civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. It is one of the primary methods of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent for it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement. (This is the kind that Gandhi used in India). Friends have used this method down through the years.

As a last word I would just leave you with another quote from that article by Walter Wink.

"In just the last few years, non-violence has emerged in a way that no one ever dreamed it could emerge in this world. In 1989 alone, there were thirteen nations that underwent non-violent revolutions. All of them successful except one, China. That year 1.7 billion people were engaged in national non-violent revolutions. That is a third of humanity. If you throw in all of the other non-violent revolutions in all the other nations in this century, you get the astonishing figure of 3.34 billion people involved in non-violent revolutions. That is two-thirds of the human race. No one can ever again say that non-violence doesn't work. It has been working like crazy.

Questions for discussion:

Learning HOW to think is much more difficult than learning what to think. How have you been able to do this? Is experience a good teacher? What other aspects of life might be helpful in learning how to think? Were there classes in school that were more helpful than others?

What might be modern examples of using the third way to fight injustice?

When is civil disobedience justified? What kind of injustice would push you to civil disobedience?

One-up and one-down power positions have distinct body language? Can you name them and can you recognize the body language in yourself?