Paul Watson is Probably a Deeply Flawed Human Being (But So Am I)

A friend just posted this sad news on facebook and rightly opined thusly:

Quite tragic. A majority of International Whaling Commission members voted to create a sanctuary for whales in the South Atlantic, but 75% is needed, and Japan and Iceland buy the votes of a some poorer nations, including landlocked nations. But, we just need to keep up the pressure and hopefully it can be achieved at the next conference.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18684015

Paul Watson‘s apparent flaws (and, perhaps, pathologies) aside, I still say GO SEA SHEPHERD.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we can all love each other better and love each other more.  I don’t mean like hippies, necessarily, but I do specifically mean like Jesus.   Today, I said to a friend that maybe loving people we find hard to love (and I don’t mean like an abusive partner) starts with recognizing that we’re all broken people.  Maybe, eventually, we screw together enough nerve and humility to start a conversation with the hard-to-love people in our lives that offers our mutual fucked-upness (theological term) as a starting point for honesty and healing.

So, yeah, I think Paul Watson would probably feed me to a whale if the opportunity presented itself, but I think his organization is doing important work that no one else is doing.

On last week’s series premiere of his new FX show Brand X, Russell Brand explained the Dalai Lama’s views on peace and forgiveness:  people are all screwed up, and so you forgive them, but you still resist their actions and the way those actions manifest in unjust systems.  This also happens to be the late, great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner‘s view of systematic sin and the difference between our categorical and transcendental existentials.

Huh?

Most people are trying to do the best they can. Thank your God in heaven that God knows the heart, and for the promise that our truest selves are hidden with God in Christ. When the slings come, it’s easy to forget that.

Save the whales, Paul Watson.  Be a little better to people if you can.  I’ll try, too.