By Ben Valentine
We live in the age of the viral takedown. Scroll through social media for five minutes and you’ll encounter videos with titles like “Conservative HUMILIATED by College Student” or “Woke Activist Gets OWNED by Facts.” Our digital discourse has become a gladiatorial arena where the goal isn’t understanding or dialogue, but public defeat of our opponents.
This isn’t just harmless entertainment. Walk down Greenwich Avenue on any given day and you’ll witness our community’s remarkable civility (mostly!). We hold doors, exchange pleasantries at Whole Foods, navigate the school pickup line with courtesy. Yet online, many of these same thoughtful neighbors become warriors in the culture wars, sharing content designed to humiliate those who think differently.
We’ve created a culture addicted to humiliation, where complex issues are reduced to zero-sum battles and nuanced conversation dies. But what if there’s a better way forward?
The Ancient Wisdom We’ve Forgotten
Most people misunderstand the famous principle “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Far from promoting vengeance, this ancient law was actually revolutionary in its restraint. It established proportionality in justice: the punishment should fit the crime, no more, no less. Before this principle, injury to a member of a powerful family might result in the destruction of an entire village.
But even this measured approach has limitations. While proportional response prevents escalation, it doesn’t break the cycle of retaliation. It manages conflict but doesn’t transform it.
The Revolutionary Third Way
Two thousand years ago, a young rabbi from Nazareth proposed something radical. Instead of fight or flight, instead of domination or submission, Jesus outlined what scholars call “the third way.” In his famous Sermon on the Mount, he said:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5:38-39)
Most people read this as a call to become a doormat, but Jesus was actually proposing something far more subversive. In the firstcentury culture of that region, a backhanded slap to the right cheek was an insult between unequals, a way for superiors to humiliate inferiors. By turning the left cheek, you force your aggressor to either walk away or strike you with an open palm, the way one hits an equal. It’s a brilliant act of nonviolent resistance that exposes the aggressor’s bullying while asserting your own dignity.
Jesus wasn’t teaching passive resignation but creative, subversive resistance that exposed injustice while maintaining dignity. These are acts of creative resistance that break the cycle of retaliation while exposing injustice.
Applying the Third Way Today
What might this look like in our current moment? Instead of responding to political opponents with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, we might ask genuinely curious questions about their concerns. Instead of sharing videos that humiliate people we disagree with, we might seek to understand the fears and hopes driving their positions.
This doesn’t mean abandoning our convictions or avoiding difficult conversations. It means engaging in a way that seeks transformation rather than domination. It means recognizing that the person across the political divide is made in the same image of God we are, worthy of dignity even when we believe they’re wrong.
The third way requires more creativity and courage than either aggressive retaliation or passive avoidance. It asks us to step outside the predictable cycle of attack and counter-attack to find solutions that address underlying needs rather than just surface positions.
The ultimate expression of the third way is what Jesus called loving your enemies. This isn’t sentiment or emotion; it’s a determined commitment to seek the good of those who oppose you. It’s choosing to see opponents as fellow human beings rather than obstacles to be removed.
This kind of love isn’t weakness; it’s strength. It takes tremendous courage to respond to hostility with genuine care. It requires the security that comes from knowing your worth isn’t dependent on defeating others.
Our culture’s addiction to humiliation isn’t making us happier, wiser, or more unified. The dopamine hit of watching someone get “owned” is fleeting, and it’s contributing to a society where we see each other as enemies rather than neighbors.
The third way offers a different path. It suggests that our deepest problems require more than better arguments or more effective takedowns. They require transformation, both of ourselves and our relationships with others. This isn’t naive optimism. It’s a realistic assessment that our current approach isn’t working. Whether we’re discussing school board policies, town budget decisions, or national politics, we need to learn the difficult art of loving our enemies.
In a world obsessed with winning, perhaps the most radical thing we can do is choose transformation over domination. Perhaps the strongest response to those who oppose us isn’t to humiliate them, but to love them.
What if we started practicing this third way right here in Greenwich? What if instead of sharing that viral takedown video, we chose to have an actual conversation with someone who sees things differently? What if we approached our next political disagreement with genuine curiosity about the fears and hopes driving the other person’s position?
That might just change everything.
Ben Valentine is the Senior Pastor of Trinity Church in Greenwich. Discover more at www.trinitychurch.life
