Can You Fight Cruelty Without Becoming Cruel?
How do you keep going when the world feels like… this?
Sacred Jewish, Christian, and Islamic wisdom invites us to consider whether difficult times require us to become harder — or more deeply rooted in courage, compassion, relationship, and love.
Watch The Gathering
How do you keep going when the world feels like… this?
Maybe “this” means divided.
Uncertain.
Frightening.
Exhausting.
Confusing.
Lonely.
Or maybe your own life has an entirely different version of “this” right now.
Throughout September, The Gathering is exploring that one question through several very different lenses.
We are not looking for one answer.
We are looking for what we might not have considered yet.
This week, we begin with Sacred Roots — ancient Jewish, Christian, and Islamic wisdom that has helped generations of people navigate uncertainty, conflict, suffering, relationship, and change.
And one deceptively simple idea keeps appearing:
Love.
Which sounds wonderful.
Until there are actual people involved.
Love Gets Complicated When There Are Actual Neighbors
One of the most familiar teachings from Christian scripture is:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Paul goes even further in Romans 13, arguing that the commandments ultimately come down to love because love does no wrong to a neighbor.
It is an appealing idea in theory.
Real relationships make it considerably more complicated.
Human beings disagree.
We misunderstand each other.
We disappoint one another.
Sometimes we hurt each other.
And sometimes the people we are being asked to love are the very people who make love difficult.
That raises an important question:
What if love is not primarily a feeling?
What if love is also a way of moving through the world?
Who Will You Be While Things Aren’t All Right?
Islamic tradition brings another perspective to the question through the Arabic word ṣabr.
It is often translated as patience, but the idea is richer than simply waiting.
Ṣabr can mean steadfastness.
Perseverance.
Remaining grounded in what is good even when life is difficult.
It asks a powerful question:
Who will you be while things aren’t all right?
Another Islamic concept, tawakkul, speaks of reliance on God.
But this is not passive reliance.
We still do what belongs to us.
We act with compassion.
We seek justice.
We care for one another.
And then we release what lies beyond our ability to control.
The Qur’an contains an intriguing promise: with hardship comes ease.
Not necessarily after hardship.
With it.
Perhaps even inside difficulty there can be moments of grace — someone reaching toward us, a community helping us carry what is too heavy, an unexpected moment of beauty, or a strength we did not know we had.
Maybe keeping going does not require knowing how everything will turn out.
Maybe sometimes it means taking the next faithful step.
And then the next.
What Do We Do When Someone Actually Hurts Us?
The Gospel of Matthew complicates the conversation even further.
Jesus talks about what to do when another person has actually hurt us.
His first instruction is strikingly direct:
Talk to them.
Not about them.
To them.
Be honest about what happened.
Listen.
Try to repair what was broken.
If the two of you cannot find a way forward alone, invite trustworthy people into the conversation.
Let the community help.
What we do with our hurts matters.
What we hold onto matters.
What we choose to release matters.
And what we repair matters.
Maybe Survival Isn’t About Becoming Tougher
When life feels unstable, one natural response is to become stronger.
Tougher.
More resilient.
Harder to break.
And sometimes resilience is exactly what we need.
But perhaps our sacred traditions suggest another possibility.
Maybe we survive difficult times by becoming more connected rather than more hardened.
More like the willow than the oak.
Rooted, but able to bend.
Strong, but not rigid.
Connected enough that we do not have to carry everything alone.
Can You Make a Loving Choice Without Feeling Loving?
Paul wrote about loving one another during a Roman world filled with political tension, economic inequality, violence, competing loyalties, and uncertainty.
His answer was not to figure out who was right and defeat everyone else.
It was not to protect ourselves from anyone who thought differently.
And it was not to wait until we happened to feel loving.
Love, in this sense, becomes an ethical practice.
We may not always be able to create a loving feeling.
But we can make a loving choice.
We can decide how we speak to someone.
We can decide whether we listen.
We can decide whether disagreement becomes humiliation.
We can decide whether we add cruelty to a world already carrying more than enough of it.
And perhaps most importantly, we can decide whether another human being becomes merely a category in our minds — or remains a human being.
Can You Fight Cruelty Without Becoming Cruel?
This may be one of the most difficult questions in the entire conversation.
When the world feels like this, we do not have to become like this.
We do not have to absorb the anger around us and send it back into the world.
We do not have to let fear determine who deserves our compassion.
We do not have to become cruel in order to resist cruelty.
And we do not have to surrender tenderness in order to survive.
None of that means remaining in relationships that are dangerous or abusive.
Sometimes love requires boundaries.
Sometimes love requires leaving.
Sometimes love requires saying:
No. You may not treat me — or another person — that way.
But perhaps even a boundary can arise from somewhere deeper than hatred.
Courageous Love Has a Backbone
Love does not magically fix everything.
It does not erase injustice.
It does not eliminate conflict.
It does not require us to pretend everything is okay.
But love may help us choose compassion over contempt.
Curiosity over certainty.
Relationship over dehumanization.
Not sentimental love.
Not easy love.
Not everybody-be-nice love.
Courageous love.
Persistent love.
Love with boundaries and backbone.
Love that keeps recognizing another person’s humanity even when doing so is difficult.
Especially when doing so is difficult.
Who Are You Becoming?
Maybe the question is not only:
How do I keep going when the world feels like this?
Maybe there is another question underneath it:
Who do I want to become while I’m going through times like these?
The world is shaping us all the time.
And we are shaping one another.
Think of one place in your own life right now where the world feels especially difficult.
Do not try to solve it for a moment.
Do not try to win.
Do not even try to fix it.
Instead, ask:
Who do I want to be in the middle of this?
And then perhaps ask one more:
What would love ask of me here?
Not sentimentality.
Not surrender.
Not pretending everything is okay.
Courageous, grounded love.
Keep Choosing Love — And Don’t Do It Alone
Sacred traditions do not give us one simple formula for surviving complicated times.
That is not what The Gathering is looking for.
But these ancient roots leave us with possibilities worth considering.
Remain steadfast.
Do what is yours to do.
Release what is beyond your control.
Repair what can be repaired.
Set boundaries where boundaries are needed.
Refuse to dehumanize.
Find companions for what you should not carry alone.
And keep choosing who you want to become.
Perhaps when the world feels like this, one of the most courageous things we can do is refuse to let its worst forces determine who we become.
Keep questioning.
Keep learning.
Keep becoming.
Question boldly. Live compassionately.