Our Ugly Underbelly

We saw it again this past week—the ugly underbelly of our human nature. We like to ignore it, pretending it is not there. Then it surfaces in ways that strip us of our self-deluding pretense, in ways that no longer allow us to deny its reality—like it did this past week in the Hamas-led attack against the villages in southern Israel.

People around the world were caught up in a whirlwind of emotions and reactions at the atrocities that were committed against Israeli citizens—men and women, children, infants, young adults at a music festival, the elderly. Some were quick to condemn while others danced with joy in the streets. Many reacted with horror, appalled by what they saw and heard, describing it as evil. Not-this-again dread and fear stirred in the hearts of Jewish people all over the world.

Of course, many were quick to lay blame at the feet of one group or another—Hamas, Israel, Iran, the US, Biden, the Democrats, the dysfunction of the U.S. House of Representatives, some present-day Axis of Evil. Their words of accusation reflect their own alliances and loyalties and priorities, not necessarily reality.

We may never know the deep, festering cesspool of motives behind the attack or the complex network of alliances that planned and financed it. Few of us can understand the convoluted historical, political context which produced and fuels the seemingly unending, life-threatening tension between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.

As with our experience of 9/11, people are dividing into us-them groups. The focus is on “the other.” Blame is attributed to “them.” “The other” is being demonized, robbed of their humanity. One Israeli leader spoke of the Hamas as “human animals.” Such demonization does not just express our anger and hatred, it validates it, freeing us to retaliate in kind. It allows us to feel superior to the one we view as our enemy.

As with our experience of 9/11, a retaliatory eye-for-an-eye reaction is at play. Israel has declared war against Hamas with the stated objective of wiping them off the face of the earth—not unlike what Hitler sought to do with the Jewish people in the Holocaust. Their objective moves beyond the biblically based eye-for-an-eye retaliation. It reverts back to the practice of unlimited retaliation (Genesis 4:23-24) which the eye-for-an-eye law was designed to replace.

As with our experience of 9/11, we fail to acknowledge that unlimited retaliation—even eye-for-an-eye retaliation—breeds more retaliation. It keeps the cycle of retaliation whirling in constant motion.

Again, as with our experience of 9/11, our anger, hatred, and desire for revenge blinds us to ourselves. We fail to recognize that when we retaliate, we do to “them” what “they” did to us. We become like those we demonize as our enemy. We become the mirror image of those we hate. In condemning and attacking the ugly underbelly of our enemy, we fail to see that our own ugly underbelly is exposed.

Jesus addressed this recurring human pattern in multiple ways.

Jesus taught “do not judge” (Matthew 7:1, Luke 6:37) and “do not condemn” (Luke 6:37). He spoke of judging and condemning another as focusing on the speck in the other’s eye while being blind to the log in your own eye (Matthew 7:3-5). His teaching reinforces the truth that focusing on the other blinds us to ourselves. Judging another is an unconscious effort to avoid seeing what we do not want to see in ourselves—in the language I’m using in this blog, our ugly underbelly. Jesus called us to deal with the log in our own eye—those things about ourselves that we don’t want to see or acknowledge, those things we don’t want to believe we are capable of doing, those things that express our ugly underbelly.  

Dealing with the log in our own eye does two things. It positions us to understand and help the other with the speck in their eye—“then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). It moves us beyond judging and condemning to understanding and compassion. We can never help another from a posture of judging and condemning. Helping another requires understanding and compassion.

Moving beyond judging and condemning to understanding and compassion is the first step, but not the last. Jesus also taught nonretaliation.

The nonretaliation Jesus taught and practiced was not a passive, let-them-run-over-you response. His language of “turn the other cheek” and “go the second mile” (Matthew 5:38-41) taught nonviolent resistance. The nonviolent response was intended to expose the abuse of power by people in positions of authority and the unfairness of the system that perpetuated the abuse. The nonviolent resistance Jesus taught called for a sense of personal power and dignity that would not react to the indignity embodied in the abuse. It called for personal strength to live out of who we are as the people of God and the followers of Jesus. Such strength resists the inclination to react, doing the same kind of thing the other did, becoming like the other.

Jesus taught a third principle. He taught “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27), that is, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27). Even more, using the language of unlimited retaliation, he taught unlimited forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-22). He taught us to live as children of our heavenly Father, loving as he loved (Matthew 5:43-48).

Living the ways that Jesus taught is only possible through the power of the Spirit at work in our hearts and minds. Foundational to being able to love our enemies is acknowledging the ugly underbelly we seek to deny—the proverbial log in our own eye. As long as we deny its reality, pushing it out of our awareness, it lurks in the shadows (what Jung called “the shadow”). It wields power in our lives, shaping how we view others. Its presence is seen in our judging and condemning them. Its power is broken when we name the log in our own eye. Acknowledging our anger, bitterness, hatred, and desire for revenge—our ugly underbelly —allows the Spirit to cleanse what is in our hearts. (The old fashion word for this acknowledging of our ugly underbelly is “confession.”) Acknowledging it positions us to see the other with different eyes. It positions us to respond to the other with understanding and compassion. It positions us to love as Jesus loved. It positions us to be a part of ending the seemingly never-ending cycle of eye-for-an-eye retaliation. It allows us to escape the power of our ugly underbelly.