Continuing our Lenten reflection, let us begin with a few quotes:
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.…. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower…. Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
Stephen Miller (top White House advisor) in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Jan. 5, 2026
“I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary.”
H. Rap Brown, Black Activist, 1967
“Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.”
Ken Burns, historian and documentary maker, 2026
“No one is illegal on stolen land, and, yeah, it’s just really hard to know what to do and what to say right now, and I just, I feel really hopeful in this room and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter and the people matter. And F ICE is all I want to say.”
Billie Eilish, at the Grammy Awards, 2026
“There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used…Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.”
Gil Bailie, Catholic theologian
“The Park Service debuted the digital tool in step with other recent actions across the national park system complying with Executive Order 14253, ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.’ They include removing materials describing atrocities committed against Native Americans, dismantling exhibits highlighting the treatment of enslaved people, and deleting information on how climate change is negatively impacting ecosystems and landscapes.”
From SFGate, Feb. 11, 2026
It is not easy to think or speak about nonviolence in our culture or really in any other culture without at the same time seeming to sink into total irrelevance. To some people “nonviolence” looks like a safe harbor for cowardice; to others it appears as a moral Disneyland….you can visit the “fantasy” at times, but it’s not life as we know it and you can’t live there; and to still others it is nothing more than a fatal passivity and abnegation of responsibility. And truly history would seem to vindicate such opinions. Too often these kinds of caricatures of true nonviolence are what is presented as an alternative to a violent response. What Stephen Miller is articulating in the above quote has been the vision and practice of all great powers, from ancient times to now. But violence, either in aggression or in response to aggression, is pervasive in human culture at all levels—political, social, economic, relational, and, yes, even deeply personal. So often violence is concealed and disguised as some form of a “good” both on a grand scale and also in our everyday personal life. Whether the violence emerges from the established order (or better called, disorder), or whether it emerges as a response to this disorder/injustice from either a simple shout of “F…. you” out of frustration/anger toward another human being or it goes all the way to a bloody revolution, it is all within a great untruth. The fact is we all live within this Great Lie and it influences all we do and all that affects us. To get some understanding of what this really means and then what true nonviolence is we will enlist the aid of Vaclav Havel.
Havel was a Czech playwright, brilliant intellectual, and a forceful dissident against the totalitarian communist governments of Eastern Europe in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. In 1978 he wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless,” and some have called it the most Important essay of the 20th century. Originally an underground publication, it became a manifesto for dissidents and resistance across the Soviet bloc and a foundational text for the Solidarity Movement in Poland. In it he acutely analyzed and made manifest the real nature of their systemic oppression and how to go about dismantling it.
From the internet: “Havel argued that late-stage communist regimes weren’t traditional dictatorships held together by a single tyrant. Instead, they were ‘post-totalitarian’—sustained by a vast bureaucracy and an all-encompassing ideology that functioned like a ‘secularized religion’. They were living within a Lie, and the system’s survival depended on everyone participating in its rituals, even if they didn’t believe in them. By performing these empty gestures, citizens became both victims and supporters of the system.”
Havel illustrates this with an example: every morning a shopkeeper goes to his store and as he opens up he puts up a sign: Workers of the World Unite. The grocer doesn’t believe the slogan to mean anything real, nor does he care or expect anyone else to believe it means anything; but he displays it diligently as a signal to officials that he is ‘beyond reproach’ so he will be left in peace to pursue his little business and avoid trouble with the state. This example is Havel’s metaphor for how ordinary people sustain such a regime through small, seemingly insignificant acts of conformity. In putting up the sign, he signals his willingness to comply with the regime’s rituals. Every shopkeeper on the street does the same; they collectively create a world of appearances that sustains the regime.
Havel then explains that the system’s power doesn’t come from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to act as if it were true. This is what Havel means by “living within a lie.” But Havel continues the metaphor: One day the shopkeeper decides to take down the sign, decides to stop putting up the sign. It is an act of resistance, and by this act he “shatters the world of appearances.” Now he is moving toward “Living in Truth.” He stops voting in sham elections and starts saying what he actually thinks. In effect the shopkeeper has become the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Let us review the fable with help from the Internet:
“The plot follows an emperor who cares excessively about his appearance and expensive clothing. Two swindlers arrive in his city, posing as weavers. They claim to create a fabric so magnificent that it is invisible to anyone who is either unfit for their position or hopelessly stupid. Fearing they will be seen as unfit or stupid, the Emperor’s ministers—and eventually the Emperor himself—pretend to see the non-existent cloth. The swindlers dress the Emperor in the invisible garments. He marches through the city in a grand procession before his subjects. The townspeople, also afraid of being judged, praise the clothes until a small child shouts out the truth: ‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’”
So the Lie, the façade, is shattered by a child who is not shackled by social status or ego, and thus is able to speak the objective truth.
Havel goes on to explain that this single act is extremely dangerous to the state. If the system is built on a universal lie, even one person breaking that lie threatens the entire structure because it invites others to do the same. This “power of the powerless” is the idea that personal moral decisions can ultimately lead to political and social transformation. This whole approach is very resonant with Gandhi’s teaching on the relationship of truth to nonviolence and personal and communal transformation.
I have borrowed Havel to help us understand our own situation, which is of course radically different in many external ways….but also disturbingly deeper and darker in its grip on our lives. In the past I was often envious of the dissidents in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc…their problem, their “living within a lie,” appeared to be staring them in the face, quite clearly, or so it seemed at that time. But now our problem is so pervasive, so dark yet so deeply intertwined with what we value, so subtle that it seems “natural,” and “normal.” And it leads to a kind of deceptive “flourishing,” “success” with a poison pill in it….the “American dream” masking a nightmare. The essence of our problem is that the Great Lie within which we all live is not really something nameable so that we can “measure it” as it were and keep it “out there” and simply put it on the list of “problems to solve”…..simply elect a different political option and then we won’t be bothered…..but in our case THAT does not “take down the sign.”
To name the Great Lie is to deceive ourselves that we see its limits, that we know what it is, how close it is to our hearts and lives and how it totally affects us; when we think we have named it, we are sinking ever deeper into its grip. The Great Lie is not something that we can limit to politics or economics or sociology or law or personal relationships or even religion. It surely involves all these but perhaps not in a way that is apparent to our now-crippled vision. Both Havel and Gandhi….and Merton and a few others….can help us understand our situation, what is at stake, and “what must I do.” And this Lent in these dark times all of these good folk would say with one voice: “Take down your sign!” Resist the Great Lie and begin living in the Truth.
Violence at all levels and falsehood at all levels is the language that the Great Lie speaks publicly and in our hearts. Nonviolence at all levels is the language of resistance to the Great Lie. Gandhi was a master at understanding this. His primary focus was on Truth– deep, fundamental Truth. Truth (Satya) and nonviolence (ahimsa) were for him two sides of the same coin. For Gandhi, truth was not just telling the truth but the absolute, underlying reality of existence….Divine Wisdom we might want to say. And his whole life he sought to align his thoughts, his speech, and his actions with this Truth. ( In this he reminds me of some of our Desert Fathers.) And ahimsa (nonviolence) is the language of Truth with which Gandhi calls us to confront the Great Lie and “to take down the sign” in all aspects of life—personal, social, and political—to shatter the façade, the appearance, of what passes as “normal,” “realistic,” “pragmatic,” etc. And ahimsa absolutely means much more than just refraining from physical violence; it is non-injury in thought, word, and deed, driven by love and compassion. Gandhi: “Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.”
Consider now that iconic scene of the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness. The Gospels present a tripartite temptation structure: 1. Temptation based on appetite, a basic human drive. The Great Lie distorts the meaning and purpose of this bodily function; 2. Temptation based on the reality of power. Power as the Great Lie defines it is marked by possession, domination, and inevitably violence; 3. Temptation based on ego/identity, even doubt about who one really is. (Interestingly enough, the early writings of Buddhism also depict Buddha as undergoing a tripartite temptation ordeal by Mara the Deceiver.) Recall now that scene in the Gospels when Jesus rebukes Peter, the apparent lead disciple: “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus had implied that his mission to manifest Divine Wisdom, the Divine Reality, the Truth, would require a total self sacrifice even leading to suffering and death. Peter objects to such a scenario. By calling Peter “satan,” Jesus is telling Peter he is totally in the grip and living within the Great Lie. That kind of religiosity knows nothing of God though it may utter much “God language”. What is at stake here is our very identity in God….as we are all called to be a manifestation of the Divine Reality.
One of the most egregious distortions of the Great Lie is aimed at the very notion of nonviolence itself. All paths of authentic nonviolence go through the heart. Nonviolence is not just a strategy or a tactic to use to “win” against an opponent; it is not a method or technique of manipulation to be used “against” someone. It does not recognize anyone as an “enemy” to defeat; it is not anti anyone. Nonviolence is not simply political, nor all social action, and not just personal—though of course it will encompass all these dimensions of life as we seek the Truth. Resistance to the Great Lie must take place in all these dimensions, and change will manifest but surely not in the way the Great Lie can recognize.
Michael Nagler, prof. of classics at Berkeley and Gandhian disciple:
“True change is not about putting a different kind of people in power but a different kind of power in people.”
“….there is a world of difference between calling something evil and calling someone evil. The first strategy mobilizes resources against the problem; the second only recycles the ultimate cause of the problem, which is ill will, resentment, lack of empathy, and eventually hatred.”
“It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends.”
Gandhi
“Gandhi would always offer full details of his plans and movements to the police, thereby saving them a great deal of trouble. One police inspector who availed himself of Gandhi’s courtesy in this matter is said to have been severely reprimanded by his chief. ‘Don’t you know,’ he told the inspector, ‘that everyone who comes into close contact with that man goes over to his side?’”
Reginald Reynolds, in A Quest for Gandhi, Doubleday, 1952
During the 1960s, during the Vietnam war, there was quite a vigorous protest movement against the war effort. Much of it was non-violent, but certainly there were many occasions when things slipped into a sad confrontation that got swallowed by the Great Lie. I remember seeing protesters shout, “Hey, hey LBJ, how many babies did you kill today!” or protesters calling soldiers returning from the war “baby killers.” And all kinds of much worse instances. Merton wrote about the protests and advised a number of peace activists and leaders. He definitely supported a resistance to what was going on, but he also had some serious criticism about the way things were unfolding. Here’s a couple quotes from that period:
“ Nonviolence must simply avoid the ambiguity of an unclear and confusing protest that hardens the warmakers in their self-righteous blindness. This means that in this case above all nonviolence must avoid a facile and fanatical self-righteousness, and refrain from being satisfied with dramatic, self-justifying gestures. . . . Nonviolence . . . is convinced that the manner in which the conflict for truth is waged will itself manifest or obscure the truth.”
And
“The important thing about protest is not so much the short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war. Far from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure mythology of force. Hence the strong ‘patriotic’ reaction against protests in the United States. How can one protest against war without implicitly and indirectly contributing to the war mentality?”
Merton understood well how difficult the way of nonviolence could be. In fact it was the journey of a deep spiritual life and its concomitant struggles. Nonviolence could be a way of life only for courageous people. Its goal was community, friendship and understanding; not humiliation or “defeat” over an opponent. So, nonviolent resistance will attack systems and policies of injustice, not the people who happen to be doing the evil.
“Nonviolence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but because it excludes mere transient self-interest from its considerations. In a very real sense, those who practice nonviolent resistance must commit themselves not to the defense of their own interests or even those of a particular group: they must commit themselves to the defense of objective truth and right and above all of human beings.”
To discern and resist the Great Lie in the public square first of all requires that we discern and resist the Great Lie working on our minds and hearts. Otherwise we are just trying to defeat an opponent. And a reshuffling and a recycling of the problem takes place; the villains of one revolution are killed and new ones are established; one war sets the stage for the next war, and so on. In the early ‘60s Merton was studying the writings of Gandhi when he had this sudden epiphany….from one of his early Journals:
“Today I realize with urgency the absolute seriousness of my need to study and practice non-violence. Hitherto, I have ‘liked’ non-violence as an idea. I have ‘approved’ it, looked with benignity on it, have praised it, even earnestly. But I have not practiced it fully. My thoughts and words retaliate. I condemn and resist adversaries when I think I am unjustly treated. I revile them; even treat them with open (but polite) contempt to their face. It is necessary to realize…this restricting non-retaliation merely to physical non-retaliation is not enough—on the contrary, it is in some sense a greater evil. At the same time, the energy wasted in contempt, criticism and resentment is thus diverted from its true function, insistence on truth. Hence, loss of clarity, loss of focus, confusion, and finally frustration. So that half the time I don’t know what I am doing (or thinking). I need to set myself to the study of non-violence, with thoroughness. The complete, integral practice of it in community life.”
One last thought: From a Christian perspective we have one more resource in following the way of nonviolence, in our resistance to the Great Lie. If history is only what Macbeth and Stephen Miller described, only “a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury,” then the Great Lie has dominance; but no, we have the “eschatological secret” as I alluded to in the previous post in regard to Julian of Norwich, and this means “sound and fury” are not the “last word.” Love, infinite love defines and encompasses the end and meaning of it all, even our most horrific failings….but in a way we cannot see or comprehend. Resistance to the Great Lie is already to be living in the eschaton.
And to conclude:
“That’s fine, Dude, I’m not mad at you.”
Renee Good’s last words to the ICE agent who shot her. Renee was “taking down the sign” as she died.
You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
– The Upanishads