The Most Unkindest Cut of All
The sting of betrayal and a divine friendship
On the wall in my son’s room hangs a canvas printed with the words of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—” Many see this poem as inspirational, though for others it is merely an ode to the stoic resolve expected of English public schoolboys (a fact I discovered when mentioning on social media that I had hung it in my son’s room). Leave it to Kipling to be controversial at every turn.
The title of the poem is the first word in every couplet or quatrain, and the expected result of all these conditionals is, “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!” The words are therefore framed as a father teaching his son what is necessary to achieve proper manhood. How much the conditionals reflect Kipling’s own views and how much they are simply a reflection or parody of Victorian ideals is, as always with Kipling, a subject for debate. Here is the poem’s first stanza.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise
As you can see, most of this is just good common sense: the sort of proverbial wisdom treasured by most cultures throughout history. It is not so much a recipe for how to be a man as advice for living a good human life. I can endorse nearly all the advice in the poem, but there is one line which admittedly drives me bananas: “If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you…”
This is where the poem steps beyond useful wisdom into the sort of hardened stoicism expected of fictional Jedi knights. We might be able to keep foes from hurting us too much precisely because we expect them to hurt us. But the idea that a loving friend could never hurt us is preposterous—so much so that I would dare call it inhuman.
The Scripture tells us, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” (Proverbs 27:6) but that refers to the incision of a careful surgeon rather than a stinging body blow, and the fact is, loving friends are capable of delivering the most punishing body blows: actions not taken out of love or concern. Such wounds are desperately painful because we expect a loving friend to be loving.
The wounds of a loving friend are therefore a betrayal.
In 480 B.C., the armies of the vast Achaemenid Persian Empire and its ruler Xerxes I invaded the Balkan Peninsula, which at the time was ruled by rival city-states. In the face of such an existential threat, many of the Greeks chose to cooperate for the sake of their common security. The warriors of Sparta went to head off the Persian forces and buy the residents of Athens more time, taking a famed stand at the Battle of Thermopylae.
Despite their inferior numbers, the Spartans succeeded in holding back the Persians for days by defending a narrow passage that was the only route for the Persians to take around the rocky cliffs. So vigorous was the Spartan defense that the Persians only defeated them through the help of a Greek named Ephialtes who revealed to Xerxes another route the Persians could take and outflank the Greeks.
Perhaps you will not be surprised when I tell you that it was not Xerxes whom the Greeks would spend centuries hating, but their countryman Ephialtes. As horrific as the Persian invasion was, and all of it taken upon the orders of Xerxes, it was the kind of thing the Greeks expected. After all, empires always attempt to conquer other lands, particularly if the residents of those lands have agitated them (as the Greeks had). But the betrayal of Ephialtes was so hurtful that he is seen as the archetypical villain in Greek culture and his name means “nightmare” in the Greek language.
When Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in the fourteenth century, he placed traitors in the lowest (and therefore worst) circle of hell. He imagines two assassins of Julius Caesar being eternally chomped in Satan’s teeth. Consider these lines from Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel.
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all,
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitor’ arms,
Quite vanquished him.
When someone we dearly love wounds us, it is indeed the most unkindest cut of all, for it reeks not only of treachery, but ingratitude. We thought they valued all we gave them, but in fact they spit upon it.
Why is the political climate in the United States so volatile right now? Because those on the Right and Left do not simply believe their opponents have some wrong ideas. They believe their opponents are attempting to destroy American democracy itself, which is to say they are spitting upon everything for which America stands. Having been given freedom, education, and all the resources necessary to form a proper judgment, they have shown ingratitude for these gifts, spitting upon the hand that fed them.
But there is a treachery even greater than these.
One of the reasons it is so easy to hate traitors is that we believe they belong to a separate category, much the way Dante assigned them. Surely, we would not spit on the hand that feeds us! We would not deny love to those who loved us most!
However, I suspect you are ahead of me at this point. You know I am about to make a turn and tell you that we are all guilty of treachery. That is the kind of thing I do.
Dante placed Judas Iscariot in the center of Satan’s mouth: the worst torment of all for the greatest sinner of all. Indeed, there is no name as globally synonymous with treachery as Judas. What fewer people probably realize is that Judas’ name comes from the same root as the word Jew. Names are incredibly important in the Bible. The fact that the one who betrays Jesus of Nazareth is essentially named Jew is meant to symbolize the fact that the entire nation is in on the betrayal, even as the Roman governor who condemned Jesus to death symbolizes the culpability of all Gentiles. Again, everyone is in on it, not just Jews.
The authors of the four Gospels that recount Jesus’ death present it as the greatest act of treachery to ever occur: the betrayal of the only truly innocent person who had poured out his infinite love on all humanity. Given the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, this is a betrayal of God himself. Human beings have, to a person, denied their love to God and spat upon his honor, breaking his trust and commandments. Having received every gift a person could need, we have shown no gratitude, instead attempting a coup against divine authority.
We may like to think we would not have supported the crucifixion of Jesus. Surely we would not have plunged a knife in his side! But the most unkindest cut of all was the one we all delivered vicariously through our disloyal words and deeds.
“Even my close friend in whom I trusted, / Who ate my bread, / Has lifted up his heel against me.” (Psalm 41:9)
How strange then that we who are traitors should be counted true! That we who ate the bread and then lifted up our heels should be given the bread of heaven! The very blood we shed now washes away our sins. The love we denied is returned to us a thousand-fold.
This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.
(John 15:12-17)
The most unkindest cut of all has become the river of life from which we shall drink for eternity. When the friendship was broken, he restored it with his broken body. Yes, despite it all, he calls us friends.
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All Scripture quotations are taken from The New American Standard Bible (1995 version), copyright The Lockman Foundation.
Beautiful and thoughtful writing as always. Before I receive the Eucharist, one of my short prayers is this “Saint Peter pray for us, that when we deny and betray our Lord as you did, we may cast ourselves upon his mercy and allow ourselves to be transformed into the saints he has called us to be.” I need this reminder-that I am a traitor, and that I am, like St. Peter, called to ask for forgiveness of my betrayal and begin. I always imagine what an incredible saint Judas could have been had he hoped rather than despaired. Thank goodness for St. Peter’s example!