Passive Fist: Part III

“Oh what savory satisfaction. What splendid joy. In one instant, all my anger dissipated and all the rot in my soul has been removed!”

That’s how I imagined it. What freedom would taste like once the earth was rid of Frederick Johnson, and I had exacted revenge. Once I had exchanged my passive fist with an active one. But this was not my experience. To be sure, there was a kind of exhilaration. A hollow thrill at watching him die. And it scared me, like a dark figure coming into the light for an instant and then slipping back into the shadows. I realized this darkness, this dopamine rush at killing a man, was living inside me. How long has it been lurking there? Out of curiosity I reached for it again by conjuring up the image of watching Frederick die and I could feel the edge of the thing just behind the curtain of my consciousness. There was within me the thrill of the kill.

This revelation was both frightening and freeing. I had a pathology about violence, a compulsion. Maybe we all do. Maybe we all possess it like a dormant virus, hidden in our DNA until awakened. This analysis happened within a few moments of Frederick’s death, and it brought with it a pair of duel desires – the desire to be rid of the darkness and a lust to experience it again. Once the virus was awakened, could it be lulled to sleep again?

I got home that day sometime before noon and I slept for 20 hours. When I got up, I reached for a book on Bonhoeffer – an old favorite. I rushed through the early chapters to get to the part where this pacifist, Lutheran pastor joined a plot to assassinate Hitler. Of course secret plots make it hard to know whether he was actively part of this intent to kill, but I’d like to think that he was.

Bonhoeffer said, “It is worse to be evil than to do evil.” Purists might be tempted to chalk this up to some kind of rationalization to ease his pacifistic conscience. But I was realizing that theological convictions like pacifism are far more complicated than just whether one does or does not use violence.

The darkness that peered at me from behind the curtain of my consciousness resembled Frederick Johnson, or a near facsimile of him. Bonhoeffer spoke as if he carried the guilt of the silent German Church, the guilt of the German Christian soldier and the guilt of the Nazi party inside himself. To identify with the sin of violence was to gain a kind of power over it. He never got a chance to pull the trigger – or, in my case, flip the switch, because he was executed before that could happen. But I think that he would have done it.

Convictions like pacifism are not cadavers that one cuts open to examine and study. They’re more like lovers; someone whose beauty captures your heart, then you fall in love. After a while you fight with them, break up, and come back together until after a long while you settle into a mature relationship.

Pacifism and I have made up. It’s taken a few years, but we’re back together again. Not like the old, idealistic relationship based on infatuation or superficial attraction. It’s a mature love. A more refined love. A love that says “no” to the Vietnam War and “yes” to World War II. A love that says “no” to the death penalty but “yes” to using force to defend the powerless from the powerful. “No” to the militarization of the police but “yes” to the need for a community trained to defend the vulnerable under certain circumstances.

Me and my lover don’t excuse Frederick, neither the man who took the life of my wife and baby nor the Frederick inside me that exulted in flipping that switch. But we have learned to live with them, to hate their actions, and to forgive them both.