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Christmas and why our past shouldn’t define us
Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Our past shouldn’t define us, our willingness to get past our past should.
The Equalizer movies are a trilogy of the vigilante genre, with American actor Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall using violence as something of a cleansing force when the proverbial baddies keep a sanitary distance from self-redemption.
In the opening scene of The Equalizer 3, the third and final instalment of the trilogy, McCall takes down a Mafia base at a vineyard in Sicily, Italy.
After “equalising” the Mafiosi thereat, McCall is shot and thereupon sinks into the blankness of unconsciousness.
Later, when he comes to, he finds himself in bed in a remote coastal Italian town called Altamonte, where he is treated by small-town doctor Enzo Arisio.
After he is well enough to do some shopping, he has a conversation with Dr Arisio that goes like this:
Dr Arisio: Remember what you said when I asked you?
McCall: When I first came here, you asked if I was a good man or a bad man.
Dr Arisio: You said you didn’t know; only a good man would say that.
Between the lines, one could tease out home truths which many of us have overlooked.
One, by McCall saying he was unsure whether he was good or bad, he opened himself up to the possibility of personal improvement.
Yes, it is only when you doubt your own virtues that you may question yourself sufficiently to arrive at answers which pave the way, away from your vices.
Second, self-doubt removes self-righteousness, a quality which lends itself to intolerance and a holier-than-thou mentality beyond question. This plants the seeds of the weeds of dictatorship.
We must recall, like McCall, that we are all fallible. If we weren’t, why did Jesus Christ die for us?
Indeed, it is our sanctimoniousness which has provoked a vein of anger from opponents of government who think they are right and proponents of government who believe they cannot be wrong.
That is why those outside government call everyone in government thieves and those in government do their best to prove them right.
However, in this season of giving, we must all give each other the empathy which creates shared meaning and casts us in the mould of Christ-like beings.
Sure, there are those who are “eating” in government. But the idea is not stop them from eating. The idea is to ensure they eat with everyone else in proportion to one’s contribution to the national cake.
Besides, dear brethren, self-righteousness frequently mutates into inertia when self-righteousness meets with self-righteousness and a stalemate ensues.
As an immovable object meets an irresistible force, they say, it will move and not move. This is the stagnation we see in our politics today.
In the Bible, Ephesians 4:2 urges us to show “tolerance for one another in love”.
This is the essence of Christmas because it implies we must be others-centred rather than self-centred. It is the season of giving, after all.
We can wipe the slate clean and start afresh by “forgiving us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”.
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War translator Dr Thomas Cleary relates to us how a samurai candidate was supposed to be promoted, but the elders doubted the wisdom of such a promotion.
One elder, against promoting the samurai, pointed out that he, the samurai, made a big mistake in the past and so should not be promoted.
Another elder, however, demurred saying that what is counterproductive is the warrior who never made a big mistake and is due to make one in the future.
Our past shouldn’t define us, our willingness to get past our past should.
Merry Christmas!
Phili Matogo is a professional copywriter
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