“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war anymore.”[1]
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| Weapons into Plowshares |
Several weeks ago ESPN reporter Chris Broussard made
headlines answering a question he was not asked on whether or not a homosexual
can be identified as Christian. And while the church should be very careful
receiving her theology from an NBA reporter, his comments did incline me to ask
a more statistically valid question: “Can Christians Kill?” Can followers of Jesus, who profess faith and
hope and love in the Prince of Peace, engage in the planning, preparation and
execution of violence for the sake of family, kin or nation? More specifically, in light of the recent chemical weapons abuses in Syria, can Christians support and engage in retaliatory violence against an evil regime for the sake of the suffering? Is it ever appropriate to return evil for evil?
These are statistically and philosophically valid questions. Of the 1.4 million people on active military duty in the United States, 77%
profess Christianity, not to mention the hundreds of thousands employed as
sub-contractors producing and exporting weapons of mass destruction. In a 2002 poll, 69% of conservative
Christians supported direct military force against Baghdad, a full 10
percentage points higher than the U.S. population as a whole. How is this possible given the life and teachings of Jesus? Why, in the face of such direct commands to love our enemy can Christians adopt a theology of redemptive violence? Historically speaking, the church is returning to her vomit by repeating the acculturated sins of her past. Prior to 400 C.E., Christians unilaterally refused service in the military. In fact, their belief in nonviolence was so robust and universal that Emperor Diocletian forbade Christians to serve in the Roman Legions. And yet, just 100 years later with the unification of church and state under Constantine, no one could serve in the Roman imperial army without first professing faith in Jesus Christ. It seems the twisted notion of 'God and Country' isn't a new phenomenon after all.
But let's get back to the original question. If the answer is ‘We are not allowed to kill’, then the
church is in dire need of repentance. If
the answer really is no, then this transformative cultural institution can no longer
stay silent amidst wars and rumors of wars, as our nation spends billions of
dollars on creative ways to destroy our enemy and his family. As one Twitter user recently posted, "Those same #Xtians who are the loudest in protecting the unborn are damningly silent when it comes to killing our enemy's women and children." What would it take for the Body of Christ to
live a consistent ethic of human life that valued not only the fetus, but the
fully formed and broken human person as well?
From Augustine to Tolstoy,
generations of believers wrestled with the problem of evil, and the tempting philosophy of redemptive violence. But now, with feet firmly entrenched in the
chemical and nuclear age where human beings have the capacity to destroy the earth 15
times over, we need room in our Biblical worldview to reconsider Jesus' theology of nonviolent resistance.
For starters, we must dispense with the labels and
negative identify formation that comes part and parcel with ‘pacifism’. Nonviolent resistance is more than passive or
willing suffering, Jesus never asked his followers to stand idly by in the face of evil. The spiritual poverty embraced in the false, uneducated
dichotomy of ‘kill or be killed’ fails to account for the myriad of active ways
Christians can respond when confronted with evil. This break from Darwinian determinism is an
evolutionary progression away from the trademark ‘pacifist’ to a more
appropriate moniker ‘nonviolent resistance’.[3] Modeled by Christ himself, nonviolence is not
passivity or quietism, but an active application of truth and love in the face
of a violent world. The nonviolent
resister promises never to kill, or to be complicit in killing. Instead she
offers the world an alternative paradigm. One that loves the enemy while
confronting his evil. Simply put:
“Nonviolence is a way to fight against injustice and war without using
violence. It is the force of love and truth that seeks change for human life,
that resists injustice, that refuses cooperation with violence and systems of
death. It is noncooperation with violence. It says that the means are the ends,
that the way to peace is peace itself.”[4]
Nonviolence isn't meekness in the face of evil, it is the courageous and oftentimes creative task
of disarmament. Nonviolence deals with the aggressor as God through Christ
dealt with me. In God’s willingness to take on suffering, to right wrongs and overturn
evil, He himself refused to let rebellious mankind be identified as enemy. In this praxis, the cross is the ultimate paradox, it is power not
weakness. Creative nonviolence acknowledges
that loving one’s enemy is far from easy, but incredibly liberating. “When am I
more a slave to my adversary than when I allow him to define our relationship
as my being his enemy?”[5]
In Christ, one’s enemy becomes a privileged object of love since God himself
worked out the reconciliation of the world at the cost of his own suffering.[6]
As Father John Dear expresses,
“As our adversaries begin to recognize our humanity, the sacrifices made,
the risks taken, and the violence hidden in their practice of injustice or
evil, their eyes may be opened and their own participation in the injustice
becomes apparent to them. In that instant of recognition and subsequent shame,
the violence and injustice can stop—forever.”
Beating swords into plowshares is liberating action on
behalf of the suffering and oppressed. It is personal as well as global. It
impacts how I treat my family, my neighbor and especially my posture toward this latest national enemy. It is freedom
from the enslavement to violence; freedom into a life lived in the Spirit of
God. And, it is a real possibility even
here, even now.
In a world replete with injustice and brokenness, do we dare
discuss nonaggression? Is there yet any
room in our world to move from the visceral to a rational conversation on this
topic? The skeptic of course must ask, ‘Aren’t there many other
issues to decry or to defend’? Of course
there are. But in a world where 45,000 people starve to death every day, in a
world that spends $1.7 million every minute on weapons of death and over $800
billion annually, when else should we talk about this?[7]
What better time to lean into a paradigm as fundamental to the Gospel as Jesus
is himself. In the words of Jesuit
priest, poet and peacemaker Daniel Berrigan,
“The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill.
We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in
our name, with our money. I have nothing else to say in the world. At other
times one could talk about family life and divorce and birth control and
abortion and many other questions. But (violence) is here. And it renders all
other questions null and void. Nothing can be settled until this is settled. Or
this will settle us. It is terrible for me to live in a time where I have
nothing to say to human beings except, ‘Stop Killing.’ There are other
beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people…And I can’t…Our
plight is very primitive from a Christian point of view. We are back where we
started. Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today
comes down to that—everything.”[8]
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