It has increasingly struck me, probably for decades now, what an "inquisitorial" age we have been, collectively, spawning socioculturally. Along with that comes the deepening realization how vital it is for true selfhood and wholeness to resist it, defy it, say "No" to it.
I can't help recalling how the Pharisees (was it, or the Sadducees, or maybe the lot together?) demanded that Jesus tell them by what authority he was doing what he was doing. He told them, basically, "Sure, but first tell me whether John the Baptizer's authority came from God or not." Well, that sure put them on the spot! They couldn't say it did, as that would be a virtual validation of Jesus' work, since John hailed Jesus as the Christ. But they couldn't say it didn't because they knew the people revered John. So they told Jesus, basically, "We're not sayin'." So Jesus in response told them, "Fine, then I'm not sayin' either." 🙂 Marvelous!
And remember, this is the same Jesus who told his arresters, "Wasn't I in the temple daily openly preaching? I have hidden nothing."
There is an exquisite creative tension between these two utterances.
On the one hand, Jesus preserved his prerogative to say what he chose to say, and why, and when, and not hop to anybody else's attempt to make him speak on command. He was free not to tell what he chose not to tell. Especially when he was being arrogantly "subpoena'd" to verbally perform in satisfaction of somebody's manipulative aims.
On the other hand, the Lord "hid nothing"--his motives and meaning, his self-offering and ultimate, divine horizon were transparently manifest for all who had eyes to see. Nothing Jesus proclaimed in Galilee or Judah obscured an ulterior motive.
In all he said and did, Jesus was serving the Father, not to satisfy people's expectations but to fulfill the Father's purposes to the very end. Therein lies the key to that "exquisite creative tension" I referred to. There is no tepid, hue-less "balance" at play here between transparency and privacy. Rather, the operative principle is a fierce and vital, driving passion to enact only "what I see the Father doing" and whatever lies outside of that, including the Pharisees' obnoxiously imperious orders to say this or that, is simply irrelevant, not worth...well, not worth it.
I can't help ponder these things as I reflect on our society's increasing obsession with opinions, positions, side-taking, "identity" (of all stripes), "validation," etc. The insidious, yes truly poisonous, cancerous trend is one of demand, of inquisition, of performance. That is, it's obtusely assumed these days that to ask someone a question like, say, "Who are you voting for?", means the other person is obliged to tell. Or that, should the person refuse to say, they're hiding something insidious of their own. The presumptuousness behind such questions is astronomical and foul.
Essentially good principles like freedom of self-expression, the right to one's own opinion, equal access to the ballot box and the public square have, bizarrely, spawned a certain grotesque Idolatry of Opinion. I remember public opinion polls in the paper during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The question was, of course, basically "Did they or didn't they?" Surprise, surprise, some percentage thought they had, another percentage thought they hadn't. I thought, as I stared at the ridiculous graphs, "So what? Either they did or they didn't, and we don't know, so opinions mean nothing. If they did, then all the opinions that they didn't are wrong. If they didn't, then all the opinions that they did are wrong. And in neither case do the opinions make it so." Yet the opinion polls were touted as virtually making it true or false.
Which is, I think, delusion of the highest order. Mass, collective, societal delusion. The delusion of creation ex nihilo by majority opinion.
But this is where the essentially good principles of the freedom of thought, speech, self-expression and conscience have warped into a dictate, i.e., the virtual dictate to HAVE an opinion, to EXPRESS a view, to TAKE a position, and to VALIDATE others' utterances (or oppose them and take what comes for it), as somehow your constitutional duty, a Frankenstein's-monster parody of the freedom of speech, i.e., the quasi-sacred onus to speak up on command, at the beck and call of anybody's whim who feels like asking.
And it is, as I said, all a delusion of course. No such duty exists. We each possess infinitely more freedom, and prerogative, what I might even call a sovereign propriety, to speak or not, reserve what we want, share what we want, when and with whom we want. To tell the obnoxious boor who demands to know who we're voting for: "My vote is between me and the ballot box. That's how it works." To maintain our peace, equilibrium, our private space and prerogative ANY time we're interrogated on: "How do you stand on _____, how do you feel about ______, why don't you ______, why do you ______, who are you for, who are you against, do you support ______, do you oppose ______, do you believe in _______, do you agree with me that ______, would you be outraged if _______, do you condemn ________, how come you never ________, why do you always _______, do you stand with _______, would you join ______, would you wear _______, would you post _______, did you retweet_______, would you did you are you will you...?"
There is a toxic assumption at work in our society that is so baseline, so pervasive, that it's genuinely difficult to maintain the necessary presence of mind, particularly at the moment one is directly interrogated, to resist it. The assumption is that, well, of COURSE you'll hop to the demand, and immediately, because...why wouldn't you? Not answering, or declining to discuss something, is taken as either a "diss" or an admission of some kind of guilt: "Ahhh, you're hiding something." And so the Inquisition Carousel goes round and round.
And then I go back in my ponderings to the face of Jesus, as he tells the Pharisees, "I won't tell you." So perfect, so exquisite. Not because the Lord had anything to hide, but because he wasn't going to act like their trained dog, speaking on command. How much more of that kind of freedom, prerogative, sense of self and propriety, we need today in this grotesquely opinion-mongering, validation-addicted morass of a culture.
It takes awareness, conscious effort and intention, readiness and practice, because it's something that's so counter-cultural, it's scary, feels like asking for a fight when in actuality it's nothing but the profoundest common sense and intrinsic human right.
Here, for fun if nothing else, are some lines one can use when one finds oneself hounded to opine or take a side or "identify" somewhere on the spectrum of sociocultural controversy. Admittedly, some of the lines verge on antagonistic, and are best kept for correspondingly antagonistic inquisitions:
That has nothing to do with our conversation.
I prefer to continue what we were talking about, thank you.
I have no opinion on that.
That doesn't interest me.
That topic bores me.
I keep that to myself.
Not going to discuss that.
Have never formulated an opinion on that.
I exercise my right to keep that private.
No, I never tell people that.
I didn't/don't/won't because I don't want to.
Just don't want to, that's all.
Don't know.
Who knows? You don't. I don't. Nobody does.
Useless speculation bores me.
Whatever I might feel about that changes absolutely nothing, and I'm not at all interested in discussing feelings just to discuss feelings.
Have never bothered to work up on opinion on that topic.
I never heard of _________ so why would I have an opinion on it?
Sorry, I don't manufacture hypothetical reactions to satisfy others. (This in response to imperious emotion-demanding questions like "You WOULD be outraged, wouldn't you, if...?")
You don't need to live inside my head, there's barely room in there for me.
If you're comfortable with your own view, you need no validation from me. And if you're not, I can't help you.
I'm not interested in your view on it so there's no reason for you to be interested in mine.
I don't talk about that with strangers.
Er, what? Oh by the way, do you know what time we're supposed to be out of here by?
That's too deep for me. Hey, did you get any of the hors d'oeuvres?
That's not what I'm here for.
Sorry, that's a conversation I have with maybe three people in my life.
My constitutionally-protected freedom of speech includes the prerogative not to say.
No.
No (and walk away).
