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Dave Dellinger's excellent essay 'Not Enough Love' (1) exposes the hypocrisy or self-contradiction of renunciation as it is usually practiced.



Many of us who are unwilling to renounce the objects of greed and lust cannot help but recognize that we are slaves to those passions. Therefore we  respect ascetic saints who overcome their desires for the things of this world;  we consider them to be even more powerful than emperors who have conquered the world but not their own desire to have it.



Yes, the ascetic is also on a power trip: he conquerors the world by renouncing it;  he overpowers the world indirectly by conquering himself. Although we might suspect that asceticism is a case of sour grapes, or that the self-emperor has really taken the easy way out, many of us do adore the saints and do believe that saints are saints because of their asceticism as organized by their religion.



Religion, the organization of the worship of absolute power, regulates the definite exercise of power.  Religion is by various degrees virtual suicide.  That virtual suicide is, we should add,  greatly respected by rulers regardless of their religion or lack of it. Some rulers are seemingly faithful yet are actually atheists, rulers who are concerned with power in this world rather than in the next; they use religion because it works as their tool to manipulate their subjects. After all, a few skillful references to Jesus on the Cross can move the faithful to make certain sacrifices in the Name of God for the Promised Land; that is, once Augustine gave, by means of his sophisticated interpretation of scripture, the sword of Jesus to the ruling authority. Incidentally, it is possible for saints to be atheists, hopefully of the Compassionate Order of 'Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr', canonized by Miguel de Unamuno.



Beneath the absolute ruler, whether he be spiritual or secular, it is hardly surprising that many people find themselves in an anxious double-bind somewhere along the power continuum between the billionaire and the pauper, or between the pope in his fine cathedral and the naked sadhu who has been standing beside the Ganges for 27 years with one arm in the air.



It is in that multitude of in-betweens that Dave Dellinger has found  "too many (who) are afraid to enjoy what they are also afraid to renounce." He points out that this conflict causes some people to emphasize a renunciation based upon three assumptions:



First of all, "It is generally assumed that there is a conflict between the body and the 'soul'....such distinctions are highly artificial and lead to disastrous social results. I can think of few acts with a higher 'spiritual potential than treating the wounds of the injured...helping the naked the cold, the homeless...kissing a child or have sexual intercourse with a beloved....On the other hand, our society is rotten because so many person crowd into churches and intellectual centers to experience feelings of love or enlightenment which do not extend to sharing the physical burdens of society's necessary labor or the physical fruits of society's production."



Secondly, "the assumption that our sexual drives can be sublimated into higher purposes--the pursuit of truth or the service of humanity....Disuse is not the answer to misuse....Like the Catholic boys who speculated that their new neighbor might be a Father because he didn't have any children, the ascetic hopes he may learn more about love and humanity by cutting himself off from a whole area of the most intimate and enriching human relations. It is probably truer to say that no one can love people--or penetrate the mysteries of human meaning--who does not love at least one person deeply."



And third, "It is assumed that ascetic self-denial helps us to gain freedom from passion...and 'nonattatchment'....But an unnatural suppression seems likely to lead to an unnatural preoccupation....The Puritans...suppressed their love, for fear that it would become lust, and ended with a love of money and a lust for power. They set out to find God by chastising their own flesh, and ended by flailing, imprisoning, or burning the flesh of their neighbors, in whom they had found the Devil."



I believe that we have just witnessed and now continue to observe one of the most absurd episodes of the Puritanic conflict in the annals of American religious and political history, the hypocritical prosecution of a president for lying about blow jobs. Perhaps there is no more ludicrous episode since God was abstracted from the world with the division of state and church and set upon a throne where nobody could see Him. Let there be no mistake, despite the current innuendos, I speak of the perennial conflict that falsely divides body and soul, the conflict that  lends "hypocrisy" and "bigotry" their most up-to-date usage.



I allude to  the rise of the extended Suidae family and the corresponding sinking feeling of many good hearts. Our political body suffered a vicious vindictive attack from politicians who preached religious ethics and claimed to stand on high moral ground. By vindictive I mean personal hatred for particular persons, a personal and diabolical hatred that is absolutely contrary to the Christian ethic of love and forgiveness the haters professed to follow.



We are seeing the true colors of that hatred in the false forgiveness that comes from winning power:  persons were hated because they had power or were associated with it, and not because of their particular expressions of human hypocrisy. Now this is evident from the rush to confirmation wherein office seekers are swearing under oath to uphold laws that are contrary to their moral and religious principles; in other words, they are trading their principles for the powerful political offices they crave. But this division between church and state, between religious words and political deeds, was already glaring when their candidate refused to give a mere 30-day reprieve to another born-again Christian, drawing a line between his political office and his faith, and later publicly declaring Jesus to be his favorite philosopher. And now he calls, once in power, for reconciliation and "responsibility." That is the reconciliation of the forgiveness which says:



"Excuse me, you got in the way, but I forgive you now despite your suffering at my hands, providing that you recognize your responsibility to be obedient in the future."



Although we are forgiven once again, we remain in the clutches of bigotry and hypocrisy; it appears that this is, in fact, the status quo under our political system, no matter who rules--all hands are dirty: we are simply in the worst ones again.



I speak of bigotry in its etymological sense, a pejorative appellation for those hypocrites who go around saying "By God" ("bigot") yet act like barbarians behind the sophistries and scenes, in the swank back rooms where they curse in most vulgar, criminal fashion all those who dared to oppose them. Nonetheless, I say,  Be not afraid, and do have faith, for we can still win them over from hate with Love.



We can forgive them. Are we not all hypocrites in one particular or another? "Hypocrisy" refers to the underlying crisis of every human being on the stage. "Hypocrite" in Greek once meant "actor", but the term eventually came to be used by Christians, with the aid of Jewish scholarship, to denote Christian bigots. Perhaps, for our mutual good, it is time to revert to the old sense of the word.



Be that as it may, when the secular and the spiritual world are falsely divided, we find bigotry and hypocrisy in both halves. Those who renounce politics and its practical power for the sanctuary of religion and its spiritual power have their own version of hypocrisy in their asceticism. As Dave Dellinger said:



"In the world of selfish indulgence without regard for the rights and deeds of others, the ascetic and the 'saint' appeal to us for a moment, because of their repudiation of the grosser sins. But too often they have repudiated the great virtues also. They have fled from the problem instead of solving it....True 'nonattachment' consists in being able both to enjoy and to give up sensual delight and human intimacy according to the overall human relationships involved."



That statement is certainly applies to members of all political parties and religious denominations. As I meditated on Dave Dellinger's essay and tried to imagine the right balance between body and soul, and between state and church, I suddenly thought, "Dave, you want to have it both ways!" A rejoinder was immediately returned, "There are no two ways in action, son, there is only one." At that point I began to think about Spinoza, then about the Trinity, Hegel and Marx, but I will bring this essay to a close with a few remarks about ascetic extremism.



I believe we should avoid the ascetic extremes. I mean the asceticism that gives up things not to share them with others but to be personally saved, an asceticism that forsakes action in this world for the sake of a glorious personal life in an imaginary paradise. And I also mean  a selfish worldly religion of personal salvation to the exclusion of helping others practically. Worldly adherents of that swinish cult respond to suffering with prayers for miracles instead of material and human aid; they tend to preach personal responsibility when asked for such aid; when others require help by means of legislation, those who adhere to the swinish cult would naturally, for the survival of their species, leave charity, or rather the inadequacy of their version of it, in their own, private hands.



In conclusion, I agree with Dave Dellinger's 1958 statement, 'Not Enough Love', and I regret that it holds true in November of 2001. I believe everyone can do something about that, so I plan on starting with myself; perhaps I may learn to forgive and to overpower hate with Love.