In yesterday’s DM, biologist Rupert Sheldrake instructed us on how resentment and those who preach it can create an entire culture or political movement around it. One wonders if that is happening today in America.
It has been said that hatred is anger oriented to the past and resentment is anger oriented to the present. Anger stored in the memory keeps the fires of hatred going, and some cleansing of the memory is needed to calm those fires.
I understand resentment to be the simmering hatred that makes itself known in the present. We fool ourselves if we underestimate its power for destruction. Resentment happens when we hold hurt in a long time and it festers and rots and seeks expression in hatred and violence. Resentment represents an advanced state of ire and anger, a situation that develops readily into bitterness and rancor. This anger lodges in the heart if it has not been purified and redirected in the third chakra.
Resentment builds up and up over time if it is ignored and not dealt with. This is why it gives birth to so many forms of hatred and revenge. I met a man from Bosnia who told me that the entire war and all its awful genocide in his country was due to one thing: the politicians who tapped into the resentment among the three different groups in his culture—the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and the Muslims.
All three had long-standing complaints against the others, and the politicians, with their own agendas, exploited this resentment. Politicians love to exploit resentment.
Exploitation does indeed follow on resentment. Resentment is such a powerful force because it stems from love energies that are denied us—it bears all the power of love behind it as a giant thrust against that which we hate. Being a great misdirection of love energy, resentment will eventually not be denied and those who exploit it know this. Hitler knew a lot about resentment and the trick of creating scapegoats; otherwise he could not have achieved his programs of destruction. He appealed to his citizens’ resentments and they gladly responded in kind.
There is only one cure for resentment and that is forgiveness. But resentment refuses to let go and refuses to forgive. It learns to cherish its hurt and to cherish its anger and hatred. Like a child refusing to surrender its teddy bear, a resentful person refuses to let go of the security and comfort that spite gives him or her.
Like love, resentment grows; it does not stay still. It builds up over the years, over the generations, over time. One can feel that quite palpably in the struggle still being waged between war and peace in the Middle East. Again, certain politicians have staked the success of their careers on appealing to people stuck in resentment. And the violence and hatred that resentment gives birth to is only too evident in both the Middle East and in Bosnia.
And in today’s presidential politics where one candidate claims talks openly of imprisoning his rivals and executing others. Resentment is a sign of the antichrist insofar as Jesus and the Christ in all of us (or Buddha or Image of God) seeks to learn and practice forgiveness and letting go.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 288-290.
See Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, Natural Grace: dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science,pp. 98f.
See Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.
Banner Image: “Congregate Charlottesville Confronts Unite The Right, 2017.” Photo by
Stephen Melkisethian on Flickr
Queries for Contemplation
How important do you think Resentment is in today’s politics? And how dangerous? Do you recognize how forgiveness is necessary for resentment to melt away?
Recommended Reading
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science
by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake
Natural Grace, a 208 page inspired dialogue between theologian Matthew Fox and scientist Rupert Sheldrake, unites wisdom and knowledge from unconventional angles. Considering themselves heretics in their own fields, Matthew and Rupert engage the conversation from postmodern and post-postmodern perspectives, deconstructing both religion and science—while setting the foundation for a new emerging worldview. Having outgrown the paradigms in which they were raised, both Fox and Sheldrake see it as part of their life missions to share the natural synthesis of spirituality and science rooted in a paradigm of evolutionary cosmology.
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
2 thoughts on “Resentment & The Politics of Resentment, continued”
Yes, as I mentioned yesterday in my Comment, as many others have analyzed spiritually, historically, and socially, there are many unresolved wounds in our collective past (collective unconscious) from our ancestors and present conditioning that still negatively affect our personal, interpersonal, and societal functioning. Some of these unresolved ongoing wounds are archetypal in human history/evolution, and have manifested in destructive wars, various types of racism, misogyny, cruelty, greed, materialism, and increasing exploitation/destruction of peoples and Our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth/Her creatures/essential graceful abundance, especially the last few centuries with the growth of secular patriarchy, nationalistic imperialism, and modern polluting industrial-military economies. No wonder many scientists have researched that our planet, modern civilization, and possibly our human species are nearing stages of collapse/extinction. Spiritually we’re being challenged to take more responsibility for our personal and collective spiritual journeys of Faith, Love, Wisdom, Truth, Peace, Justice, Forgiveness, Healing, Transformation, Creativity… with one another and openness to the inner LIVING PRESENCE of Our CREATOR~SOURCE’S SPIRIT of LOVE~LIGHT~LIFE to heal, guide, and transform Us towards manifesting Our LOVING Diverse Wholeness~ONENESS within and among ourselves, the COSMOS and the SPIRITUAL REALMS… COSMIC CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS….
Suleiman Abu-Namous’s account reminds me of an earlier effort to bring Jews and Arabs together by a mixed race Jew/Arab actor Juliano Mer Khamis. His mother was Jewish; his father was Arab. He always described himself as 100% Jewish and 100% Arab. His mother founded The Freedom Theatre in Jenin for Arab children. After she died Juliano gave up his successful career as an acter to run the theatre. He was murdered in April 2011 for this effort.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/hope-for-israeli-arab-co-existence-dies-with-slaying-of-activist-actor/article575782/