This week I find myself very busy with the kind of work that pays the bills, so I decided yesterday to postpone the next post in my series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy. Writing those posts involves a fairly heavy amount of research, and while I do not mind the research (indeed, it is what makes for good posts!), I am crunched for time at least this week, and possibly next week as well.
However, I did find today an unexpected source of both inspiration and instruction to those who seek nonviolently to spread disruptive, yet righteous change in the midst of a dangerous environment. As I was reading the Gospel of Matthew, I came across the following verse: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore become shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men..." Two words caught my notice. The first was the word translated "shrewd", which in the Greek is the word φρόνιμος (pronounced "phronimos"). It can be rendered as "shrewd," "having presence of mind," "sagacious," "sensible," "prudent," "practically wise," "showing discernment," or "in one's right mind." The second word is ἀκέραιος (pronounced "akeraios"), which can be rendered "pure," "unmixed," "uncontaminated," or "guileless." In my Bible it is translated as "innocent", but I like the other renderings better.
These two qualities are an interesting mix for those nonviolent change agents who operate in a threat environment. On the one hand, they are to be pure, unmixed, guileless - that is, they are to be truthful. They are not to operate by underground conspiracy or deceit. In other words, WYSIWYG. Thus we see that Gene Sharp's warning against building movements that depend on secrecy has an ancient and much higher antecedent. Yet if the open building of an open and virtuous movement is to succeed, it requires careful strategy. Hence the need for practical, hardheaded shrewdness. If we feel our lack of this kind of wisdom (and after all, who can say that they know everything?), it's time to go to school.
