Ethics After Eden
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
The above quote, first recorded in the opening paragraph of The Great Gatsby, was intended to highlight the mistake in using material success as a proxy for moral goodness. But for me, these words have long illuminated the simple, yet overlooked fact that behind every person we condemn is a story we likely know nothing about.
On November 13, 2015 a coordinated attack claimed the lives of over 100 people in the city of Paris, France. I was almost one of them. That evening, I languished in the ever present anticipation that I wouldn’t see home again, quietly praying from within the sanctuary of a barred up hostel that God would spare me. When all was said and done, the city of lights had been dimmed to a mere flicker. Luck, it seems, was on my side. Many others were not so fortunate.
Before the events of Paris, I loved God with my whole heart. Whatever doubts lurked beneath the surface of conviction were always thwarted by my intuition that at the center of everything lay an ineffably great, self-transcending love, the very same love with which St. Augustine and St. Thomas sought eternal unity. Afterward, however, I sensed only an vacant cosmos when I gazed upward. Nothing made sense and I began to wonder how a genuinely benevolent God could permit the atrocity I had witnessed. I soon abandoned my faith in the face of clear and sure rejection. Worst of all, I began abandoning goodness itself, growing numb to all save a burning hatred for everyone and everything I deemed even marginally responsible for my pain. It ravaged me, inside and out, and placed moral clarity well out of reach. I saw the attack in Paris as sufficient evidence that the world would never be capable of loving me properly. So I temporarily closed myself off and practiced a crude form of self preservation by hurting others before they had a chance to do the same to me. I renounced the virtue I once longed to cultivate and instead delighted in self-pity and anger.
What became clear through this experience is that we hurt. Each and every one of us. Relentlessly so. And much like Cain, we allow our broken heart to blur the path towards wholeness. I did this many times, often to the detriment of decent people who only intended to help. What saved me, and what has continually kept me from slipping back into nihilistic absolutes, was not finally receiving the just punishment I likely deserved for my self-effacing retreat into unbridled animosity, but undue graciousness gifted by loving mentors who somehow identified in me someone worth the trouble her healing would require. Where others saw only callousness, my mentors identified pain and sought to love me past my error. Without these people and their patience, I wouldn’t be standing here today.
As I have grown stronger and wiser, I’ve come to see that, for the most part, all the people in this world that caused me and so many others to hurt were, themselves, probably suffering from an existential affliction they felt helpless to overcome. You can’t hate someone if you understand how they got to be the way that they are. And I now understand that we are all victims in our own way, mercilessly conditioned by a past and present we had no say in designing; carelessly reacting to the vicissitudes of existence, not because we are monsters, but because we are deeply human. We can certainly choose to do better, but that outcome is nearly impossible in the absence of loving guidance.
In Genesis, Cain grapples with guilt, responsibility, and the immense suffering imposed by a broken world he had no say in creating. Caught between cruelty and kindness, he reflects a primordial pain that lingers on. Cain’s despair led him to murder his brother, a dehumanizing path that we must recognize and fiercely resist. He let rejection get the better of him. At the same time, we should take good care to avoid viewing Cain’s fateful decision as an utterly alien possibility in our lives. Because, as the saying goes,“nothing human is alien.” Maybe you or I have never taken up arms against a brother, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t needlessly hurt others, even those we claim to love.
The truth is that you’ll never really know how far you can sink until you are staring up at your idealized self from the trenches of what you’ve become. It’s an awful feeling to hide in the shadow of what you know you ought to be. I’ve been there, and I’m more certain than ever that the fragility of one’s character is only really evident once you’ve seen how remarkably easy it is to betray the good you once loved. Therefore, we have to dig deep, honestly asking ourselves what sort of sordid hell it would take to drive us towards the unspeakable. Through this process, we should endeavor to practice loving acceptance towards those we detest, those who have hurt us, and those we believe to be wholly undeserving of our kindness, acknowledging the very real possibility that their attitudes and actions reflect a broken, and not just inherently wicked, heart. This means not that we should assume resignation in the face of injustice. But it should, at the very least, serve as a reminder that some of the most vile expressions of hate are very often the consequences of human brokenness. And brokenness can only be mended with grace. I know the depths to which pain can cause us to descend. I surrendered my virtue to the cathartic pleasure of indignation. But I was loved back to some semblance of wholeness and given a chance to be good again. My ignorance was compassionately revealed to me through the nurturing acceptance of people I continue to hold dear. People who demonstrated that, to quote Hemingway, “the world is a damn fine place and worth fighting for.” I did nothing to deserve this gift, and yet, I am the recipient of something precious and beautiful and life-giving. I am the product of grace.
And so, Cain shamefully journeyed east of Eden, and it is in that same morally fraught terrain that we find ourselves today. In light of this, I invite you to leave here with one simple assurance that Cain, it seems, never adequately grasped: Whether you realize it, or want it, or feel it, or see it, you are worthy of kindness and dignity and happiness. You are loved and capable of loving others beyond measure. You are, as Tillich proclaimed, accepted. If not by God then by your siblings in Christ, who surely share in the misery of this world and need your help in making it better. And once you’ve finally internalized that message it is your obligation to share this awareness with similarly broken hearted people likewise struggling to see beauty and goodness, even if and when existence itself feels like a shit stain on the universe. It’s your duty to remind yourself that everybody has a story to tell and that not all stories begin happily….it’s your duty to see the pain endemic to this world and, rather than retreat into excoriating judgment, facilitate grace, whenever and wherever possible because, as Hegel insisted, we achieve our satisfaction in another. It is undeniable that, in so many respects, we are all alone in this world. But never forget that, for better or worse, we are all alone in this together. In alienation, we suffer. But, hand in hand, we my yet overcome.
