Here’s a pickle: If you could tell someone only one thing about Christianity, what would it be? Many Christians believe God already gave us the answer in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
This hits all the highlights: God, the divinity of Jesus, the sacrifice of the Resurrection to redeem the world, the importance of belief; the promise of eternal life. That’s why you see John 3:16 on t-shirts and bumper stickers: in one sentence, it sums up the spiritual – dare I say cosmic – essence of Christianity.
We’ve touched on another important one, the Great Commandment, John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” This version of the Golden Rule appears in all the Gospels, so it must be pretty important.
But it appears in Leviticus 19:18 too: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” And this starts to get closer to one of the most important things I think Christianity teaches: the need to forgive.
Paul puts it this way in Romans 12:19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave ita] to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” Well, that’s cute, and I agree with it, but Paul is still talking about doing good to your enemies transactionally, to get something out of it.
We might call this “selfish altruism”: doing good for our own benefit. See Romans 12:20-21: “To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Paul’s key point is overcoming evil with good. But we can do better. “Reciprocal altruism” in evolutionary biology occurs when organisms pay a penalty when interacting with another organism, which can’t explained from pure selfishness, unless the organism expects its counterpart to repay the favor.
Reciprocal altruism is the next level of altruism, but it’s fragile: in it, agents quit cooperating at the first betrayal. But scientists studying how societies remain stable when filled with selfish agents have found that there are even better strategies, like “tit for tat,” which, despite its name, is even more cooperative.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a microcosm of cooperation that game theorists use to study altruism. In it, two prisoners are being interrogated separately for a crime. If neither rats out the other, both get off with a misdemeanor; but if one fingers the other, the snitch gets off scott free and the rube goes to prison.
The so-called “rational” response to this doesn’t work: each agent acting independently would rat out the other, and both end up in the clink. What works is “superrationality“: making your choice assuming everyone’s seeking the best outcome for everyone, and both prisoners walk with a slap on the wrist.
Superrationality has been compared to Kant’s “categorical imperative”: only act on principles that you would want to be universal laws. The challenge with this is that correct superrationality requires not only that you’re perfectly rational, but also that other agents reason in precisely the same perfect way.
In real life, not all agents are superrational, and the tit-for-tat strategy suggests that you cooperate until betrayed, but then hit back only once, cooperating if your opponent returns to the fold. This enables you and your opponent to learn how cooperative each other are, and perhaps to develop cooperation.
Scientists studying models of human societies think that strategies like tit-for-tat altruism are literally mathematically necessary to keep societies stable in the presence of the occasional defector who wants to defect in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. So tit-for-tat altruism is actually doing good for everyone’s sake.
That’s all well and good, but Jesus asks us to set an even higher standard than that. From Luke 6:27-29: “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”
In this famous passage on turning the other cheek, Jesus asks us to do several important things which climb up past the transactional all the way up to the spiritual. Yes, he says do good to those who hate you – the kind of transaction recommended by Paul and the scientists who study social cooperation.
But he goes beyond that to the emotional: love your enemies – take their goals on as your own. To the spiritual: bless those who curse you – wish them well. To the intercessional: pray for those who abuse you – ask God to help those who are hurting you.
Like both the Apostle Paul and students of the evolution of cooperation, I think this is good for us, and good for the world too, and that’s why Jesus asks us to do it: Jesus wants us to look past pure transactions and to think how we can make the Kingdom of God real here on earth.
I interpret this to mean we should forgive everyone. Priests I respect – and the tradition of mighty men of valor in the Bible – suggest that there’s room to respond in defense against violence when lives are at stake, but beyond that, once the shouting is over, we should forgive and move on.
I call this radical forgiveness – the principle that, unless there’s an active fight happening actually right now, we should forgive the sins of others, no matter how grievous the crime, no matter how much it pains us. This isn’t just good for the world, or good for us transactionally, but just … good. Good for our souls.
I gave the philosophy of radical forgiveness to Dakota Frost, protagonist of my Skindancer urban fantasy novels. In it, Dakota is repeatedly challenged by weretigers, vampires, and fire magicians, and while she gives as good as she gets, as quick as she can, she does her best to forgive those who have hurt her.
Most of her allies in the series are people who, at one time or another, have pushed her away, screwed her over, or even assaulted her violently. Not every threat can be glossed over, of course, but in the series I try to show how the practice of radical forgiveness could realistically build a better world.
I have tried to put radical forgiveness into practice myself. I’m … not always great at it: some people make themselves hard to forgive. But whenever I’ve had the opportunity to practice radical forgiveness, I’ve always been rewarded with less stress, stronger relationships, and a better situation in life.
Almost like the things Jesus calls good are things that He knows are good for us and the world.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Robert Axelrod, author of The Evolution of Cooperation.
