Non-violence and new keys for understanding Jesús

Abstract

Given the need to construct new cultural referents for addressing the threats to life on this planet, it is urgent to review existing myths that have been used to give it meaning, in order to fill them with new contents or – basically the same thing – to reinterpret them based on today’s urgencies. The historical Jesus based many of His proposals on countercultural logic, and today they are resurfacing within the non-violence strategy, understanding this to mean a cultural alternative emerging from the profound need to take a new look at ourselves, reinterpret ourselves and resignify ourselves as humanity.

Jesus poses alternatives to violence for dealing with conflicts and in the relation between opposites, contributing to the deconstruction of dualisms based on the rupture of the borders separating them; He insinuates a new world built upon the weakest; He invites us to discard fear as a social regulator and prefers regulation through love, above blind obedience to the norms. Today more than ever it is necessary to deconstruct violence as a means to salvation because the existing take on violence has legitimized causes and reasons for killing and dying.