What To Do ...... Nothing

The summer edition of the American Scholar trumpets the value of doing nothing.

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The Dalai Lama has claimed that when someone harms you, the best thing to do is nothing.
Don’t call attention to it in order to shame the offender. Mark Edmundson says that much of the pain in the world comes when we pass on our own injuries, compensating for our belittlement by sticking it to somebody else.

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When I read that, I can feel a protest coming on. But surely the prophetic tradition demands that we protest when harm is done to any of God’s creatures.

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The rebuttal I suppose would be, yes but when we fall into a pattern of reacting to everyone who cuts us off in traffic or says something unpleasant to us, then we can become negative rather than positive forces in our relationships. So here’s to doing nothing for the sake of the gospel.

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Peter

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