On Turning the Other Cheek IV

21 January 2023

This is the final blog on the series about turning the other cheek, a response to a great question whose answer turned out to be more layered than anticipated. The final layer, taken from the subject passage from Matthew 5, of the New Testament, concerns prayer and our common inheritance.

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also…43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.  44  But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5, Holy Bible, King James Version, 1957).

As you’ve seen, prayer is raised at 44 and our inheritance at 45.  Prayer is not something I have personal experience of, and this leaves me thinking I should say less rather than more.  When I turn to those qualified to opine on prayer, the findings are interesting.  In Karen Armstrong’s surprising best seller of about 25 years ago, A History of G-d, this is more familiar than expected.

The essence is that stillness and silence—inner and outer—leads to peace and improvement.  In a nonreligious context, this looks like the transcendence of self-actualization per Aristotle, Maslow, Rogers, Erikson, et al., a theme familiar to regular readers. 

Maybe 25 years ago, I was working as a project architect for a firm in Toronto.  One of our clients asked for historically sensitive guidance for the exterior renewal of an older house.  That client and I had some similar interests, so we talked.  He had been hired as a professor having completed a doctorate in Christology, the formal study of Christ.  I had just begun reading Stoicism and realized there was probably some intersection between these two fields.  With this in mind, understanding prayer—as the pursuit of serenity—is a bridge. 

More coincidentally, the day I began this blog was also the day I first listened to Dr. Kirby Reutter on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy’s (DBT) interventions for distress tolerance.  Naturally, there was an acronym, IMPROVE (Imagery, Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing at a time, Vacation, and Encouragement.)  The most relevant aspect was the P which stands for—of course—prayer.  This is one way they used that term: “In DBT, prayer can actually refer to any spiritual or religious coping strategy, or to any kind of structured meditation practice.”

Alternately,“It is a commonly held view that meditation is a way to shut off the pressures of the world or of your own mind, but this is not an accurate impression.  Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off.  It is seeing things clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relation to them” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 30).    

There’s a lot here and it’s different from my initial understanding of verse 44 of Matthew 5, “…and pray for them which despitefully use you…”.  I saw the praying that my grandmother taught me, putting my hands together with closed eyes and imploring a deity to make things well.  Instead, this blended contemporary vision of prayer is more broadly applicable, less church-based, and concerns inner calm, silence, and a placement of self in relation to the world.  In a way, this happens in almost every recovery meeting I’ve attended or hosted: you review, as a group, that most Stoic premise: what is in your control and what is outside your control.  If you can position your heart and mind in relation to that dynamic, the serenity of stillness and silence begins.  Returning to review that relationship, over and over, with consistency and discipline, is the how of this contemporary prayer we call meditation.

Finally, we’ll return to verse 45, “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”  That rain and that sun, that good and evil, are the same agents of motion as the waves referred to, directly above, by Kabat-Zinn.  Or, per Heraclitus (LXXXIII) “In change is rest.”   

It is in accepting that knowledge, that life is change, that restful thinking—serenity—begins.  It is that acceptance of the agents of change e.g., good, evil, wind, and rain, and of the inevitability of change itself, that are the common inheritance of all human beings.  What I believe Matthew was saying is that we need to pull this off together if we are to be children of Matthew’s Deity.  However, how and when we turn that other cheek makes all the difference to our individual souls.

Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies.  He works as a supervised psychotherapist at CMHA-Hamilton where his primary focus is trauma.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.

References

Armstrong, K. (1993). A History of G-d: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Ballantine Books.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994/2005). Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.  Hachette Books.

King James Bible. (1957). Collins’ Clear-Type Press. (Original work published 1769).

Patrick, G. T. W. (Tr.) (2013). The Fragments of Heraclitus.  Digireads.com.