"Epictetus, what should I do about those who have hurt me?"
If you could ask the great first-century AD Greek philosopher and former slave, he would perhaps tell you about his life, and that his limp came from a broken leg, a punishment whilst a slave. He would talk about being considered, by others, a worthless, less-than-human creature meant for the benefit of those who considered themselves better.
But he would tell you this not for sympathy, but because he wants you to understand that these things are outside himself, external to his happiness. He would tell you so that you understood clearly that he knew about hurt, about injustice, about the temptation to become vicious in return and that his knowledge was won through deep suffering: exile, physical pain, the injustice of being considered a child of a lesser god, confined and bought and sold like a horse.
And then he would tell you where real happiness lies, where your real life lays, out of reach from all who seek, unconsciously or consciously, to damage you.
Epictetus was a Stoic, one of those who were seeking, like the Buddha, a kind of enlightenment in a world of suffering. He would ask, "What can you control?"
The Stoic answer is that I can control my rational judgments, and my will: my volition, based on rational choice, is truly who I am. Anything outside that is beyond my control, and cannot truly hurt me; my mind and will cannot be enslaved, ever, unless I allow it. So if a tyrant or even a brother or sister in Christ seeks my life, takes away my goods, it is hard, but neither can take away who I really am. In this, I can choose, always, to respond virtuously. In this lies my dignity, my freedom, and my true happiness.
Socrates once said that it was always better to be the person suffering injustice than the person who is inflicting it. This seems like an upside-down statement; but if one looks from the perspective of the virtuous soul, the freedom of the mind and heart in a search for the Good, then the statement comes clear, like the view out a newly cleaned window. To be the person suffering injustice may mean that one is suffering from the vices and fears of others, but not the vices and fears of oneself. The most enslaved person is not the man in shackles on a ship heading somewhere far, but the man who is shackled by his own insecurities, fears, ego, and vices, the man who inflicts injustice on others: and the worst form is from those who think themselves the best minds, the best Christians, the most loving in their contempt and lack of understanding.
I was looking out the window the other day, thinking about Epictetus, the slave-turned-philosopher who sought 'excellence in volition' as the truest happiness, and I was thinking about the man in Paris who said, "You will not have my hate" and the events and people in my life who have hurt me, about the blindness that happens to us all when we think we know enough to make judgments on others from our own paltry, stale, stock of wisdom, human, egoist wisdom that has nothing of the humility and love of God in it. I thought about when I have been inflicting that injustice on others, when I have been the egotistical, clueless Pharisaical tyrant or terrorist in the lives of others.
As I looked out the window, I wished I could meet Epictetus, one of my heroes; yet our meeting would not be just a fan getting an autograph. I would challenge him with the vision I got, as I looked out my window, of what is beyond Stoicism. I saw the truth clearly that yes, all I can control is my own choice, my process of rational thought leading to action, and it made me realize not my strength but my utter dependence on my ability to see Reality, and that this was given--it was not mine, in a sense. It was made mine for a purpose that included Another; I saw that through the narrow, humble door of my rationality and will, that God was calling me to do more than refrain from response-terrorism or tyranny. I was to use that volition to rise above it and to do more than not give back hate: I was to rise above to God, and ask Him to fill me with His love, the selfless love, agape. This was Reality. I was to pray for my enemy, to wish good for him. I lived it for an instant-eternity. I experienced it, and so I know it is possible. I saw myself, in that moment, rising above what seemed like a waterfall, the waters of emotion rushing down, the desire for revenge and justice rushing down, and I was flying up over it, past the powerful turn of water, and into a horizon of limitless space, each molecule of air golden and full of God.
The narrow door of the Stoic was just that: a door and nothing more; perhaps it is a discipline of humility, like the door in Bethlehem leading to the site of the Nativity, where one has to lean way down to get through to the place where the ancient golden star lays on the floor, and the golden lamps come down, like tongues of fire descending, where one wants to leave all behind and lay on the floor, hoping for the touch of a tiny infant, across millenia, who holds the cosmos in his rationality and will, and is paradoxically an even more humble, yet infinitely greater, Door.
My vision was telling me the way to join His rationality, his will; not by leaving mine behind, but through my poor rationality and volition, to choose with what He gave me, Himself. And He who is absolutely free, and absolute, unconditional love, will give me wings to rise above the waterfall of revenge and dignified, resentful restraint to a place where I can, truly, love my enemy, and do good to him, though he may never know it in this life: because those who have done injustice to you will need your love to be truly whole and I will need the love of those I have hurt to be whole. And yes, to have the prohairesis, or will, or agency, of God's love no matter what happens is true freedom--and happiness, for my enemy no longer controls me, nor does he constrain me in the small place that is my volition. I am free if I use my will to do good, but I am a whole new creature if I love with God where it is hardest. I become one with the Light.
Does this mean there is no pursuit of justice between human beings?
Love, the selfless love of God which baptizes all the other loves, has the truest sight. When we selflessly love another, wish his or her good, we can see more clearly than when we are wrapped in a pursuit of justice that is based solely on the sight which only includes our own good; as the Orthodox teach with such profound depth, this selfish 'good' is not really a good, because we are not separated from each other like tight-wound atoms in the void: we are more like the cottonwoods here in Lander which appear as separate but are really part of the same tree. My sin is also your sin, my holiness yours, in a sense; like the proverbial ripples a stone makes in a pond, our actions affect, over eternity, the whole human family: this makes suffering for each other very real, very effective, very visceral. We are a family and no one sins in a vacuum.
The only true pursuit of justice is done with the eyes of selfless love, the eyes that looked out from under thorns, eyes that wept, forgave, bled and closed as a scapegoat in the eyes of others. Eyes that opened again in defiance of death to heal those who had failed them: Peter who had failed in love, was re-established in love by three questions in front of others; Thomas was disciplined and given a great mission also in front of the others.
We know ourselves, we know our virtue and vice, we know others, within community that Christ calls to be built on love, because it gives us an openness and humility required for true learning. The most painful, destructive thing in a Christian community is the fearful one, the egoist, who cannot see others except perhaps as "one of those threats" or as iterations of his own narrative.
We can only be healed of our injustices and vices if we allow ourselves to be truly known and to know. This requires the love of God; it is beyond us. Only then will real justice happen. The sophists, the isolationists, the egoists, the prideful, the scapegoaters can do none of this, for these all stem from fear and pride. And the worst, worst of all, is what Fr. Zossima warns Alexei of in The Brothers Karamazov: "Be most wary of the lie to yourself." Be most wary of thinking you are pious, or holy, or a guru, or better than others. You become more blind than all others, because who can heal the blindness that is self-imposed?
Thus, justice in the world is often a chimera, a far-flung dream that we keep looking for, and it will not be fully realized until each of us dies in the sense of realizing that all we have is our own rationality and volition, and that any true sight, and connection with reality, comes through the laying down of oneself and one's perceptions at the feet of God, who asks us to, simply, love our enemy.
Only then will we have justice; and from justice, flows peace.
