We have tasted the worst of ourselves; we have had to look at the vilest we are capable of – mass murder by technological skill. And we will probably then either put enormous energy into denying this (and blaming others) or adopt a negative and cynical approach to our shared humanity, in which everything comes down to competitions for power.
It’s hard to quarrel with the implication that the advent of the nuclear age has introduced higher levels of both denial and cynicism into our public life and our expectations of humanity; we don’t have far to look for examples. But Knox steers us towards the key point here. We are capable of horrors – Belsen, Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Rwanda and Srebrenica. But we see these as horrors precisely because we know that not one of them was forced on us, not one of them was inevitable. We chose. And to say we made a dreadful choice is also to know that there were other choices that were possible. We are not doomed to evil. The problem is that we are seduced by it, reassured by it, fascinated by it, and all too ready to gloss over it and justify it when it suits us. It’s not that we need to be liberated from an iron necessity. It’s tougher than that: we need to be liberated from an addiction that we always seem to be eager either to deny or to rationalize. We can’t see straight or think straight.
Williams, in a previous chapter of the same book:
St Paul tells us to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds’ (Romans 12.2). And in the discussion that follows in his letter to the Romans, he makes clear that this is essentially about learning the habits that will create trust, minimize resentment and rivalry, and dissolve our greedy longing to occupy the high ground at our neighbour’s expense. Transformation is the process of growing into a state in which this is second nature to us – a state in which we are so deeply attentive to the practical and psychological needs of those around us, so unfussed about our own status, so liberated from the longing to save and solve everything by our own wisdom and heroism, that we instinctively speak and act in ways that give life to the neighbour. This, for Paul, is what it is to live in Christ and to let Christ live in us – the Christ who is uniquely, freely and eternally attentive to the world’s needs at every level.
Growing into this is a long and frankly painful business.