What does it mean to have faith?

Have faith is a common advice from a lot of people. When a Christian says it within the rubric of the Christian worldview it has a specific meaning. It does not imply believe that things will turn out alright, it does not mean have faith in your self. It means have faith in God's purpose for you, know that he actively intervenes in the affairs of mankind and subordinate yourself to God's purpose purpose. That presupposes a belief in the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife.

Taking a look at the presuppositions, are they blind beliefs or are they justified true beliefs? Take the first, existence of God. Many have argued that it is the latter using a variety of arguments pegged on a beginning for time, existence of morality, life and its properties, explainable attribute of nature and the world around us etc. Listen to any debate between an atheist and a theist, you can see that it is a reasonable belief to hold. With regard to existence of an afterlife, Christ and his resurrection are seen as a historical event and that is a powerful evidence for existence of an afterlife. Again, refer to historians debating the matter of resurrection, there are grounds to hold to the belief of historical event of resurrection.

I have dealt with the presuppositions only summarily because they are vast topics in itself and many have dealt with it extensively in the past and I see no reason to go there again. I do a broad reference to the justification for those beliefs only to make the claim that these presuppositions are more justified beliefs and therefore more in the domain of reason and less a matter of faith.

Given the above, what does it mean to have faith in the Christian sense of the term at a concrete level. Stemming from the presuppositions and at a more flesh and blood level, have faith refers to believing in God's assurance and His love. And that is a matter of faith. Existence of God is not a matter of faith, what God is is a matter of faith.

A way in which I can explain that faith is to narrate a story an uncle once told me about my father (his younger brother) and my grand father. My father was involved in campus politics when he was into his graduation at a college in Kerala. There were instances when police came searching for him and there were perhaps the threat of some kind of minor violence. My grand father gave a word to my father then. "Eda evidelum kozhappathil chennu chaadiyal, vilichekkanam, njaan vannu kondokkolam." (Hey, if you run into some trouble, call me, I will come and take you home.) Now, the son can find solace in the words of the father and live life with that assurance. However, there can always be doubts about whether the father can cross the distances, overcome the challenges, whether the father will practice tough love or soft love, whether the father might take the wrong strategy or the right strategy, will the father misread the situation, have I gone too far in my ways so on and so forth. But the word of the father gives the son a sense of assurance that seems to transcend these doubts in some manner enabling the son to live with that assurance. And that I believe is what is implied by having faith. There is a word that we have from our Living God, our Father and we have a sense of assurance in that word. In other words, we must place our faith in the word and more importantly in the God and Father who gave the word. It is that faith which helps us live life to the fullest.

Yes, there are instances when we waver in our faith. We do not experience that sense of assurance. It is not uncommon. What we must realise is that it is not lack of evidence that leads to that absence of sense of assurance. For those of you familiar with the story of exodus of Israelites from Egypt, they had all the evidence of God being with them and yet they strayed and there were moments when they did not have the same sense of assurance when faced with trouble (response of Caleb compared to others brings out this rather sharply).

So what do we do when we find that assurance to be missing. Well, what would we do if it is our biological father? We will speak to him or we will remind ourselves of instances where he has pulled us out of trouble. Same with God our Father, pray and refresh your memory of his saving grace in the Bible and in your own life. 

Cricket Oh Cricket..........

Cricket, a game that I have loved ever since I can remember. The earliest memories of my childhood are related to playing cricket. Playing the game with a plastic bat and then by age 4 quickly graduating to a wooden bat. In fact, there was an occasion when, due to a miscommunication, both my parents ended up buying me a cricket bat each on the same day. Of course that was a happy miscommunication.

There are too many memories associated to cricket. Stories of celebrating an off day at school with cricket, coming back from embarrassing bowling performances by focusing on fitness and skill development, my insecurity coming to the fore and running away from a University Tournament, observation of leadership by cricket team captains and much more. But nothing beats the sheer joy of playing the game.

But what I have noticed is that what started as a love without reason has now reached a stage where I try to explain or maybe justify my love with reasons. I am not sure if it is a good idea to do that. Let me explain a specific instance. I once came up with the following reason to love cricket. In cricket, the tradition was for the umpire to ask the fielder whether the ball had bounced in front or behind the boundary rope; which determines whether to add 4 runs or 6 runs to the total of the opponent. Or the umpire can ask the fielder whether his body touched the rope at the time of making the contact with the ball or not. Again, the implication is how many runs to be added to the opponent's total. In both cases, the umpire goes with the word of the fielder when the fielder has a clear incentive to lie. Such a practice can be expected to give fair results only in an environment where a culture of integrity is valued and practiced by everyone; at the very least, a very very large majority. I keep coming up with reasons like this to explain the love for the game, a love that I have had since I was 4 or 5 and using reasons that would not have been appreciated by me until I was 12 or 13 even if were an extremely precocious child (which I was not sadly).

Love leads to discovery. And as we discover more, our love grows stronger.

Justice and Compassion

I came across an opinion piece in the Indian Express by Pratab Bhanu Mehta, a reputed academic with a number of acclaimed publications to his credit. The piece can be found here.

I found a point made by the author where he says "The widespread cooperation with the gruelling demands of the lockdown (countering COVID-19 in India), on some interpretations, can also be seen as expressions of solidarity. But this should not blind us to the fact that solidarity, in the true meaning of the term, is failing us, just at the moment we need it most. It is failing us because at the core of the idea of solidarity is not pity, compassion, or even care. It is justice.

Compassion and pity has been given a bad name in modernity's emancipatory discourse because it apparently fails to address the issue of power relations. I think it is slanderous. I am not going in depth into the reasons of why I think so. Partly because it is something that I am basing more on intuition rather than a carefully thought out argument.

Before I go into why I think so, I must also say that my own personal evaluation has been from justice to compassion. When I was working with Social Initiatives Group, ICICI Bank which later transformed into ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, we had the opportunity to define a vision statement for the Foundation. I can claim credit for introducing the word Justice into the vision statement as I had brought in the word into the discussion by the group working on the vision statement. (The vision statement was later changed after a few years, but that is a different story.) Later, when I was heading Zyxware Technologies, where I am currently, again, an organisation with an ambitious social vision along with its business vision, I was in two  minds between what I felt where the competing pulls of the ideas of justice and compassion. This time, I included both the ideas into the statement. But the more I live, the more I feel that it is the latter that is at the heart of justice itself.

Now coming to my claim of giving compassion a bad name being slanderous. Justice usually requires a complex political, social and economic construct in ones mind and often two agents which can be individuals or formal and informal institutions who have a shared understanding of responsibilities. This understanding that is agreed upon can be called as a social contract. There are plenty of instances in human experience - of past and present - that suggest that human beings still have to act on behalf of others and for others in the absence of such a social contract. For instance, a war zone, a place under a civil war, dysfunctional state etc. Most of us ignore such experiences or treat that as temporary or as of the too distant past to be worthy of serious intellectual consideration in the context of ideas of justice (War Crimes Tribunals notwithstanding). But we are making a fundamental mistake there. We forget that the undergirding for social contract is compassion. It is compassion which gives us the idea of justice. Extreme situations reveal that to us. In normal times, we forget about compassion. Forgetting compassion is dangerous. Giving it a bad name is slanderous.



 

Religion, worldview and impact

There have been many an assault on religion from various quarters. The primary argument being that it is not rational, it is not scientific and that it leads to violence and oppressive structures and patterns. For starters, religion does not deal primarily with areas of science. And science should know better than to delve into areas where it has no competence. But that is a philosophical line of defense. I would let that pass and attempt a historical defense.

Modern world has not seen a greater violence than that brought about by Hitler's attempt at eliminating the Jewish race from Europe. It was an attempt that was markedly modern in its values and methods with one crucial difference. But first the similarities. It was materialist in its knowledge systems, scientific in outlook with it drawing on state of the art of genetics and eugenics for its ideological foundation, statist in its adoption of social engineering as one of its goals. It was modern in its method with design of a bureaucratic machinery that would rival any of the modern bureaucracies and their rational legal frameworks. Now, to the difference. The difference was the value of equality of human beings. He could not conceive of a world where all humans, including Jews, were of equal value. And on equality, I quote Jurgen Habermas. ""Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk."

The Christian influence is not just in Europe. Trace back the origins of the statistic of literacy in Kerala at over 40 percent when national average was approximately 16 as per Census of 1951, you will find additional evidence.

I cannot speak for the contribution of other religions. For I have not had as much of an active engagement with their world views and the comprehensiveness of their impact.

So the next time, someone says that religion's influence has been bad, ask him to get himself a cup of tea and read a little bit of history. Once he is done with that, he can then start on philosophy. And then once he gets his analytical tools and historical background in place, only then, start the conversation with him.

Being unfair to oneself

In this day and age of many having an opportunity to be heard by a reasonably large audience, many philosophies, prescriptions of attitudes and such float on the world of web. Being fair to oneself is one such idea that floats around on the web. It is seen as the touchstone for all decisions in one's life. Perhaps, amongst those with an undying concern for justice, the inclusion of the word 'fair' gives it a slight edge over the other popular ideal of 'pursuit of happiness'.

Being fair to oneself has given birth to a progeny – of Abrahamic proportions if I might add - of ideas with some leading ones being 'do what you love', 'walk away from exploitative relationships', 'enlightened self interest' etc. Apart from these positive ones, I believe even the cynical statement, 'cannot rise up from one's class interests' also has the same parent.

The idea is assuming a hegemonic status today in the informed circles. It would be interesting to ask the question, what is the alternative or is there an opposing idea. There must be one because ideas can emerge only in a context of multiplicity of ideas. So what is the other and what is the basis of the other. I will make an attempt to put together the other which can also be its exact opposite.

The sailor who refuses to abandon a sinking ship until everyone else is safely on the rescue boat and risks going down with the ship, the wife in an abusive relationship choosing to risk her life in all senses by staying in the relationship either by nurturing an irrational optimism of transformation in the relationship or believing that to be the demand on her on account of the commitment entered into on a happy day years before, the person who suppresses his voice out of concern about the impact his speech will have on different members of the audience and beyond. These are people, who I think, are challenging the 'being fair to oneself' idea.

To be fair to the idea itself and its proponents, the idea probably has many riders. There can be a moral boundary on what are one's legitimate interests, one can argue that one's interest is actually others' happiness and therefore, being fair to oneself would necessarily include others' happiness. While that might indeed be there, the practical usage of the idea has generally been about protecting the person's life, property, dignity, happiness and right to fair treatment.

There is a fairly dramatic counter example to this. The following is the description of the finest hour of Jesus Christ.At the age of 33, Jesus was condemned to death. At the time Crucifixion was the "worst" death. Only the worst criminals were condemned to be crucified. Each nail was 6 to 8 inches long. The nails were driven into his wrist. Not into his palms as is commonly portrayed. There's a tendon in the wrist that extends to the shoulder. The Roman guards knew that when the nails were being hammered into the wrist that tendon would tear and break, forcing Jesus to use his back muscles to support himself so that he could breath. Both of his feet were nailed together. Thus he was forced to support himself on the single nail that impaled his feet to the cross. Jesus could not support himself with his legs because of the pain so he was forced to alternate between arching his back then using his legs just to continue to breath. Jesus endured this reality for over 3 hours.

A few minutes before he died, Jesus stopped bleeding. He was simply pouring water from his wounds. From common images we see wounds to his hands and feet and even the spear wound to his side. But do we realize his wounds were actually made in his body. A hammer driving large nails through the wrist, the feet overlapped. And an even large nail hammered through the arches, then a
Roman guard piercing his side with a spear. But before the nails and the spear Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from his body. The beating so horrific that his face was torn and his beard ripped from his face. The crown of thorns cut deeply into his scalp. Most men
Would not have survived this torture."He had no more blood to bleed out, only water poured from his wounds." The human adult body contains about 3.5 liters
(just less than a gallon) of blood. Jesus poured all 3.5 litres of his blood; He had three nails hammered into his Members; a crown of thorns on his head and, beyond that, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into his  chest. All these without mentioning the humiliation he suffered after carrying his own cross for almost 2 kilometers, while the crowd spat in his face and threw stones (the cross was almost 30 kg of weight).

That is the description of the hours in which he surrendered to God's will and  sacrificed his life, dignity, happiness and right to fair treatment. Since he never had any property worth the name, there wasn't much to sacrifice on that front. Did he find happiness in undergoing crucifixion. Only in the sense of fulfilling his duty. For as C S Lewis states 'In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from him. It did not.'

The question that one should is ask is, why the sacrifice? He sacrificed for redeeming humanity from the consequences of eternal death for lives drenched in a sinful nature. He opened a path out of those consequences and invited all to enter. What if we deny the whole need for such a redemption by saying that the 'consequence' is merely a figment of our imagination. In that case, can we have an ideal that would logically demand similar sacrifices out of us? My guess is no. If we remove that condition, we cannot really think of anything more than 'being fair to oneself' and calibrated sacrifices. Not the total sacrifice of the kind written above.

To further accentuate the contrast, one can compare the finest hour of Krishna in the Hindu mythology. The revelation to Arjuna at the end of the Bhagvad Gita where Krishna is revealed as the all powerful, all encompassing and omnipresent followed by his fulfilling the purpose of his incarnation by destroying evil in the form of Kauravas in the war in Kurukshetra. In the case of Krishna, the evil had a person in the form of Kauravas which had to be destroyed. In the case of Christ, evil did not have a personality and there was nothing to be gained by destroying the Jews or Romans. The Jews and Romans went about their lives undisturbed by the crucifixion and the resurrection. There was simply no material impact for the sacrifice. At least not for a few years. It is a different matter that today our newspapers proclaim the 'event' when they use the Gregorian calendar for dates.

There are many who have taken that path towards a complete, total sacrifice. Where they were unfair to themselves. Every missionary who has ventured into the unknown and suffered the consequences, a Mother Teresa who went out into the streets of Kolkata to take care of the leper, the dying, Paul Brand who treated leprosy all his life and made astounding contribution to understanding leprosy, a Gandhi who stood spellbound by a statue of crucified Christ at the Sistine Chapel and eschewed every protection other than that offered by God, a Socrates who willingly drank the hemlock in service of his beloved democracy. Closer home, my grandfather knelt in front of a knife wielding, drunk attacker who had come to take the life of a friend of his and said, 'take my life if you must.' They were not being fair to themselves.

Now that there are examples of individuals who lived a life that was the opposite of 'being fair to oneself', let us see what the left liberal calls these people and their sacrifice. “Professor Thapar’s public intellectual is not a Socratic or Christ-like gadfly with a raging death drive, but is embodied in the figure of the Buddha.” (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-rise-of-the-liberalright-intellectual/article6926683.ece). There is no glory in sacrifice. It is merely a 'raging death drive' for some. I would think that these are also the purveyors of 'being fair to oneself' as an idea. For they have effectively destroyed the foundational premise of 'glory in sacrifice'. There is no eternity, it is only the life on earth. There are no seraphs inviting you to be in their midst and glorify God, it is only a figment of imagination. There is no metaphysics, it is only a dead branch of philosophy. There is nothing before the beginning of time, nothing has no observational consequences (http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html). I also suspect that there is the assumption of 'no natural limits' that underpins the 'being fair to oneself' idea. If life had zero sum games, then being fair to oneself might actually entail stepping on someone else's toes. But this assumption is not a necessary one.

It is important that we are extremely guarded when we proclaim the virtues of sacrifices. A simple test would suffice. Gandhi has given us that test. "Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself." If you are asking another person to sacrifice, be warned that you are not glorifying sacrifice but denigrating sacrifice. If you are asking yourself to sacrifice, you are indeed glorifying sacrifice. But then there will be moments where others seek your advice on whether to sacrifice or not. Answer cautiously, with prayer, with faith. And do keep in mind the fate of the holiest of all petitioners. 

This is something I dedicate to a friend who has stood by me through my highs and lows, who has challenged me, who has comforted me and importantly listened to me. While I do dedicate this to her, it is by no means to be seen as suggesting her concurrence with these views. But this is for her. 

My grandfathers and me

The stories that I heard of members of my family, the stories that were played out in front of me in the family setting, both have had a profound influence of how I thought and acted. It has had its role in shaping the values that I live with or try to live with. I still remember the solemn promise I made to myself when writing my name on top of the answer sheet in exams. 'This answer sheet belongs to Thomas P. Thomas and it has my grandfather's name on it. (My paternal grandfather is Dr. P. M. Thomas and I am named after him.) I will not do anything that will sully his name.' Basically, it was just my prop to stop myself from cheating in the exam. Clearly, the unethical nature of cheating in the exam itself was not enough to stop me. And I must admit. This did not always stop me. I did have a couple of instances of cheating in exams in my time. But it did seem to work in most cases. But that is how I look at family folklore.

Now, it was not just Dr. P. M. Thomas, I also had another grandfather, the one on my mother's side. C. J. Palu. Now if you were to look at the two characters, they appeared very different from each other. One was a medical doctor working as a missionary doctor, initially for a short spell in Dahod in Gujarat and then later settling in with another missionary hospital in Vazhoor in Kottayam district of Kerala. He took  matters of Christian faith very seriously. I will rely on his nephew for a description of him. "Dr. P.M. Thomas who passed away in Oct. 1972 was a very extraordinary man. Six feet tall, broad shouldered and weighing over 80kg, he had an arresting personality. Always pleasant and soft-spoken, calm and unruffled, his eyes bespoke sympathy and tenderness. The papers have done scant justice in reporting his death, because in his lifetime he never cared to publicise his services; but the village (Vazhoor, near Kottayam) where he practiced medicine for over 30 years, held a condolence meeting and decided to perpetuate his memory. They wanted to construct a village hall in his name; but being short of funds, decided in stead to institute a foundation to help the poor children studying in schools."

Now C. J. Palu had fairly different pursuits in his life time. He was a businessman with interests in gold, agriculture and agri-commodities, chit funds (a financing mechanism), real estate and perhaps a few others as well that I do not know. In many ways he was a remarkable man. He grew up in a rather poor family. Was not educated beyond basic schooling, his grasp on matters of faith was perhaps not very high (Although he was fairly active in the church and my most enduring image of him is when I saw him through a partly opened door saying his prayers just before hitting the bed. He built a bit of a business empire during his time and he became a fairly well recognised person in Thrissur district. I came to know about the breadth of his influence only when I was typing address on invites to his death anniversary function. I was typing addresses of half the town of Thrissur and even senior politicians in Kerala turned up when he died. For me, he was the person who brought chewing gum for us in the evening when he returned from his shop, the leader of a silent pack of three (including his brothers) who sat quietly when there was any celebratory function at home. He was the one who took us to his farm early in the mornings and instructed the person in charge there to give us tender coconut water and raw mangoes with chilly powder and salt as accompaniments. He was the one who would address us in rather uniquely Thrissur ways like 'Kochappan' for boys and 'Kochammani' for girls, asked why we lacked 'chodi' (energy), moru kazhukiyo (did you wash your face?) and much more. His quietness was one of the most remarkable traits. As my uncle, his eldest son used to say, 'You should have seen him in his elements in his youth. He was a fairly fiery character.' But I did not get to see much of it. I still do not know much about him. But from what I have overheard about him at numerous alcohol driven conversations at home between my uncles, he must have been quite a character in his times, unafraid of anything, a visionary businessman and someone who always acted with a sense of fairness and in a spirit of compassion.

While, the two appear different on many fronts, there are two stories that I have heard about both of them which tells me that there was something which was common to both of them.

On one occasion, there was a theft at my grandfather's (Dr. P. M. Thomas) place. He knew who had done it. It became a bit of a talk of the town or rather the village. He did not file a police complaint because he felt that it was not required to harass the person on this theft which he was willing to overlook. The then Home Minister, who happened to be a friend dropped down in Vazhoor around the time and heard about this incident. He asked him to file a police complaint. However, he declined. The Home Minister then asked the police to send the beat police every night to their house. Thus was established a routine of two policemen coming to the house every night to sign the beat record kept at the house. Meanwhile, the person who committed the theft was not acted against.

Coming to my maternal grandfather, one of his friend's and supplier of gold for his business was arrested under a dreaded anti smuggling law of the time. The man was isolated by the gold business community as none of them wanted to direct the suspicion of the police towards themselves. My grand father was the one person who stood by him and helped him fight the case. He came down from Thrissur to Trivandrum to meet him in jail. The man, after the case was settled, went on to become a successful businessman in Thrissur. He remained a loyal friend of my grand father and his family since then.

What I see as common to both the persons is that they give primacy to their own moral judgment instead of legality and due process of the law. They had their own convictions about rights and wrongs and was not willing to 'let the law take its own course.' There is a boldness in asserting their sense of rights and wrongs and they had not 'outsourced' their ethical framework for operation to the 'law of the land'. Perhaps, I note this feature the most because I find myself often doing this outsourcing and being afraid to apply my own sense of rights and wrongs when the law says the opposite.

Resurrection and the necessity of the claim

The resurrection of Christ is a claim that lies at the heart of Christian thought. It is a claim that meets with a lot of questions. From historians, there is the question of is it true. From the theologian, the philosopher and the spiritualist, there is the question whether the truth of the claim is material to the idea of Christianity. It is the second question that I am going to write about here.

Many commentators from different disciplinary areas have admired the Sermon on the Mount and assorted sayings of Christ for its clarity, the continued relevance of the sayings to the present days and philosophical consistency. Often, they detach it from the claim of the resurrection and say that it is not material for our spiritual development. In this, there could be two categories of people. One, for those whom the speaker and the spoken are two different things and for others the spoken (and the done) are the only ways of defining the speaker and often the spoken is the speaker. For the latter, the saying from Christ, 'Before Abraham, I AM' is a strong indicator of his claim that he was indeed divine. For them, it has to be either true or false and if it is false, the questions about other things he said about kingdom of God, God etc becomes difficult to accept at face value because here was an intentional lier. And then the ethics that flows from it will have to be examined carefully. Clearly, I am taking a side on the issue of whether he actually said that. I am also talking specifically about taking the word of a person because you know him to be a truthful person. Not about applying your reason to examine what he said and then taking a call on the truth of it.

Now, for those to whom the speaker is immaterial and the spoken words are the only matters at hand, those who want to apply their reason.......it is to them that I have to make an argument and a claim. There is a part in Christ's statement about turning the other cheek. When faced with violent action, do not defend yourself, let alone counter attack. What is the basis for it? It is a clear call to adopt non violence as a principle and not merely as a principle. What can be the world view in which that is doable. When faced with the massive scale of violence of a Hitler, Winston Churchill called for arms against Hitler, Gandhi wrote letters to Hitler. What explains the difference. In my view, this one call from Christ to turn the other cheek is the clear marker of the boundaries of the temporal earthly kingdom and the glorious eternal kingdom of God. Without a glorious eternity, it is difficult to conceive a reasoning for turning the other cheek. Our history of the world does not give us enough reasons to do that. The demands of establishing peace and a reign of fairness and love in any time bound manner (whatever be the length of time) demands some form of violence to counter the 'violence of the evil'. The more massive the scale of violence, the less time we can tolerate. Which is why Barack Obama, in spite of his best attempts to adopt the Gandhian world view on non violence, had to concede that he cannot abjure violence as the Commander in Chief of the United States of America. He chose to concede this when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

But when you do have a glorious eternity to think about, one has the option of turning the other cheek. Without the belief in a glorious eternity, one cannot cross the final frontier of the earthly kingdom and turn the other cheek. And I am not saying eternity. I am saying glorious eternity. For if there is no value for eternity, again one is left with no meaning or purpose for turning the other cheek. That begets the question, what is eternal. It is timelessness and what exists eternally. The only thing that is eternal is God. And God is glorious in himself. There is no cause for God's glory. He is uncaused and his attributes are uncaused. If there is a glorious eternal and it matters to us (if we take turning the other cheek seriously), then we must think of what is beyond death. And it is here that the Christian claim of resurrection comes in. There is eternity and death is not an end. There is a God who can transcend death. And the only basis we  have for that claim is the resurrection of Christ. In the absence of that, one questions the claim of eternity. When one questions the claim of eternity, one questions the sagacity of turning the other cheek. So for that saying of Christ to hold true, resurrection is his only argument. Of course, you can choose to apply your mind and pick what you want and leave what you dont want from what Christ said.