Remember Hannah Clarke.
There's not Good Men and Bad Men, nor Christian Men and Ungodly Men.
It's not boxes that you're put in when you're born and you'll never end up in the other one.
There are only Men On A Continuum Of Gendered Violence. And yes, it's absolutely gendered violence, because the incidences of women abusing men in relationships is so small in comparison that it's like, say, Ghana taking on the USA in a financial throwdown. Yeah, it's there, but it's not even statistically significant.
The truth is that every man is somewhere between "has never gotten frustrated with his wife" and "sets his wife and kids on fire rather than let them walk away from him". Every man.
This is what I imagine Jesus meant when he said "to hate is as to murder". The first is the seed, the last is the full grown plant that harvests blood. It's not what goes into a person that makes them unclean, but what comes out of them: thought, word, and deed.
The man who gets angry with his wife and thinks that she's his property, that he should get to control her life and lifestyle, that she should submit to him...well, that's on the same continuum as the man who set his family on fire. Yes, it's a long way away from it, but even the trip of a thousand kilometres can be done by taking one small step at a time.
And, honestly sometimes I wonder: am I the only one who is terrified of the possibilities that live inside me?
I could soak the world in blood if I was given a reason and my conscience taken away. If I saw people as things or lesser, and didn't care about their feelings or their suffering.
Just about everyone who knows me will say that I'm a nice person. And it's not that I'm not. But I know the possibilities that live inside me, and they terrify me.
All I can think is "hoo boy, you have NO IDEA".
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