At the end of last year there was a stabbing at a Hanukah party at a Rabbi’s home in New York. Those in attendance fought the stabber. Yet there were injuries – some extremely serious. Five ended up being stabbed.
There was also shooting in a church in Texas. The shooter killed two. The church had a volunteer security detail that pulled a gun out and killed the shooter.
We’ve also had a US drone strike on an Iranian general, killing him, along with protests/public mourning/funeral for him in Iran that caused a stampede that killed over 50 people who were gathered there. The official word from our government is that the strike came in response to an Iranian backed militia attack that killed an American contractor. The Iranians vow to strike back. Our President has vowed that any strike back would be met with a bigger strike back.
Violence.
And violent responses.
Violence isn’t new. The Bible records the first act of violence in Genesis 4:8 – “Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out to the field.’ And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”
And then Cain tried to cover it up before God. But God saw through it.
In Acts, we read about Saul (later becoming Paul) persecuting Christians, even overseeing their death. Acts 8:1 states – “And Saul was there, giving approval to [Stephen’s] death.” Saul was persecuting the Christians for religious reasons.
Revelation offers a plethora of fictional stories that convey great carnage and destruction.
In the Old Testament, the Scriptures make the claim that God orders Joshua to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing. A good portion of the book of Joshua is full of carnage done in the name of God.
There are plenty of other examples. A stabbing during a religious celebration, a multiple-person killing during a worship service, and a nation striking the leadership of another nation and that nation threatening a retaliation – all three of these stories could easily fit into the Biblical narrative. Just change the names of the people, the weapons used, and the nations, and you could easily find these stories in Scripture.
And the question remains, what have we learned? Have we learned anything in the multi-thousands of years about violence? I don’t think so. We’re still doing the same thing and responding the same way.
Yet, there is another way. It’s just not often utilized. This requires moral imagination though. It requires us to go beyond the human preference of duality – only having two options in the face of violence. We falsely believe that the only way to respond to violence is to either use violence in response or to roll over passively and become victims and be abused. Given those options, responsive violence only seems to make sense. But that’s not the only response available. And as we have seen for thousands of generations, responsive violence doesn’t solve the problem. It just creates more destruction, causes more deaths, and sows further mistrust between people.
There are other options. It’s just that we don’t like to consider them. Martin Luther King, Jr used an alternative response that was not violent and certainly not passive. And it worked. Ghandi did too. Jesus, for that matter certainly did.
And, surprisingly, I saw this option portrayed in the last Star Wars movie too. When Rey was posed with the choice of killing the Sith Lord or letting her friends be destroyed, she rejected both options. She defended herself, but did not attack Palpatine. He attacked her and she defended herself without striking him. In the end, Palpatine brought about his own destruction, thus ending the Sith. If she had killed him, she would have been consumed by evil and become evil. That’s the problem with using violence to combat violence – you become violent as a result.
Star Wars is just a movie of course. But the idea presented is real.
I wonder what it would look like to respond to violence in an active way that does not cause violence to the perpetrator. I invite you to be creative. I invite you to imagine what a Christ-like response to violence might look like in your context. I invite you to explore active non-violence. I invite you to open your faith and moral imagination. The muscles of imagination need to be worked out so that they will be ready when trouble comes. And instead of responding in kind to violence, you will be ready to respond in love. Love isn’t passive and weak. It’s active and uncomfortable and dangerous. It’s vulnerable and willing to risk life in order to expand life. It’s daring. It’s unpredictable. Violence on the other hand is very predictable. It’s lazy. It’s weak. It isn’t life giving.
Love. That’s the response to violence. It’s a response that is hardly ever tried. So what. Guess what, it isn’t going to be popular. Do it anyway. Start loving anyway. Love your enemies – even if they try to kill you. Love your enemies – even if they try to harm you. Love your enemies. Love may get you killed. But here’s the thing – violence will definitely get you killed. Either way, we’re all going to die at some point. What are you willing to die for – Love or violence? Death doesn’t get the final say, and neither does violence. If God is love and God is eternal, then Love will last. God makes promises to us. To love us, to forgive us, to show us mercy and grace. To raise us from the dead. To be with us. That doesn’t change.
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A good word, Brutha! Thanx for this.
I might be wrong, but I think you asked for response here. I think you asked us to talk imaginatively to this issue. The comments here could, I would hope, flood with imaginative responses…. people envisioning LOVE conquering fear and death. This is right at the heart of the Christian life.
I am thinking on these things daily in recent times. My thoughts keep growing and morphing as we go. I may want to come back and amend this. I hope someone else reading here will open my imagination further than I am getting on my own, even.
Let me offer this:
How about we move the needle forward just a bit. Let us think preemptive, preventative, proactively AS WELL AS responsively. What might our Christian love and charity be doing… how might we focus it on the FRONT END a bit sharper and maybe, just maybe, head off an attack?
It’s been about a decade back now, but we had a local story come out which MIGHT have made it into the back pages and the small print of the national media for a day or two, but it was a plot foiled by a would-be terrorist here in Lubbock who was collecting explosives in order, so he claimed, to attack former President Bush at his home in Dallas. The young man was Muslim and was inspired as a lone wolf attacker way back about 2010 or so.
He also was a fellow student at SPC, our local community college, and I was taking classes there at the time myself.
This is West Texas. We have more than a few Muslims here, but they are by FAR the minority in this part of the world. Most of them stand out by their clothing and behavior fairly quickly, but even if not… well… I mean if you are sitting in a community college class next two someone every day, surely you would begin to put it together. Right?
West Texas is CHRISTIAN country. We have a church on every corner in Lubbock. Christians outnumber all the others 2-1 combined.
I did not, in fact, sit in the same class with this guy, but since I was a fellow student at such a small school, I did give it thought when this came out. I COULD HAVE. And IF I HAD, I was hoping my Christian witness would have been such that this person would have been confronted with Christian LOVE such that it would give him second thoughts about how the world works. I didn’t need to know he was a terrorist; I didn’t even need to know he was MUSLIM, I needed only know he was a classmate. How might I have made him feel and know the presence of God everytime I was near???
I am certain that if we set out to INVITE strangers to sit down and EAT with us, even if at McDonalds, just the act of sharing simple meals and the interpersonal exchanges that inherently go with them, will be the doorway throughwhich sooooooooooooooo much can begin to EASILY happen.
If I could have got to this kid BEFORE the postman who called into the tip line that the packages he was dropping off seemed suspicious, then that delivery driver’s vigilance might have been matched with the LOVE of Jesus coming through me! And if that is true of me, then it is equally true for all the other 2-1 Christians in this town. This poor Muslim boy should have never standed a chance of brewing his Muslim hate in the atmosphere of Christian LOVE that LUBBOCK has to offer. If we had got to him first, his plot would have foiled itself – AT LEAST it might have. And that would have been FAR BETTER that a life in prison this poor, misguided young man has now.
Granted, THAT is far better than a bomb in Dallas too.
So,
There is good, better, and best here. And I think it STARTS before the shooting begins.
There is still a LOT of work and a lot of imagination to do for during and after too, but we should not necessarily wait that long.
Thanx! Great post!!!
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Thanks for sharing this. Yes, I completely agree – proactive preventative action is important and a key. It’s about creating systems and putting them in place. Won’t stop everything, but I don’t think we’re ever perfect at anything.
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Reblogged this on Fat Beggars School of Prophets and commented:
If you are reading my blog, click over and check out Matt’s. I am not offering anything today nearly as important or timely as his. Thanx! X
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Call me crazy, but I just have this little fantasy that a post of this nature on a blog of this nature SHOULD, really-really SHOULD, generate conversations in the comments. First off, I am certain that restraint instead of kneejerk/violent reactions are THE RIGHT ANSWER to such issues (at least in general terms), but I am also sure there is LOTS of room left for us to explore.
Our culture (and the church right along with it) seems to have little desire to imagine such.
Here is what I am NOT certain of: Though I am certain that in general terms I am one who espouses THE right answer to these things, but in the details, I am NOT certain at all. I, like almost 100% of everyone else, appreciate a well-trained, good aimed good guy with a gun to save my life and that of others. But that is a very selfish and visceral reaction too. I am far more impressed with the grace of the Amish after their little school house got shot up! THAT is what the world NEEDS to see. I can watch Rambo defend me from bad guys with guns just as often and as fast as Netflix or Amazon Prime can churn it out for me.
I don’t see Jesus dying on a cross saving the world practically anywhere, and that portrait St Paul paints for his churches seems to have quietly been replaced by conceal carry permits where I go to church.
So where are the conversations to this? Can’t someone either defend this tactic or repent? Show me where I am wrong about this! I gotta say, if you can, every fiber of my selfish body and pathetic little life will THANK YOU if you can.
Still, your post has not been far from my mind for these days since.
I am recalling another story. One that has some elements in common with that of the terrorist thwarted here in Lubbock a decade back. One that is even more impressive, but also closer to 40 years old.
I was not there to witness this story, except the very last of it, and that was the summer of 1999. In fact, that summer, July 4 fell on a Sunday.
July 4 does not fall on a Sunday every year, but when it does, it always offers a perfect opportunity for the syncretism of Christianity with Civil Religion. Jesus, God, and Mary all gather round for some apple pie, to pass the ammunition, and salute Old Glory! (Should be a lyric in a blues song)
Anyway, I was in Seattle, WA that summer, and attended a church up in Shoreline that Sunday where a very long and winding story of Jesus subverting all that unfolded and stretched my imagination. We actually did celebrate July 4 in Worship That Sunday after a fashion, but somehow it all very paradoxically called us to Jesus at far deeper levels.
How can that be???
Glad you asked.
I will try to shorten this story – a story with is NOT mine, actually and which I am certain I will botch some details anyway. So if you can track down a Preacher by the name of Milton Jones and ask him, you will get the real skinny.
Milton was a young minister of the church way back when Iran took the American Embassy hostages in 1979. He was from here in Lubbock, but he moved to Seattle where he became a college/campus minister at UW. That’s a big school up in Seattle! It’s a long way from Iran.
I was maybe 11 or 13ish when that crisis happened. (Cant remember exactly) I was old enough to watch Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw talking about it everynight. In fact, that story prompted ABC News to start a program called Nightline with Sam Donaldson. All that is ancient history now, but it was a big deal then. But I was a young kid just learning to process current events at that time.
It was a world away.
But it took over the public discourse day after day. We saw pictures of embassy people lead around in blindfolds looking like sheep prepared for slaughter! It was ALL WE TALKED ABOUT.
I remember a kid showed up at school with a tee shirt featuring Mickey Mouse flipping the middle finger and a caption that read, “Hey Iran!”
Up until that story broke, I think more Americans like me had never heard of Iran and/or knew practically nothing about the place. (My parents got similarly introduced to a little country called Vietnam a generation before!)
So… back to Milton Jones and friends.
I showed up at church on July 4, 1999 where Milton, now a much older, well-seasoned “pastor” of a large and vibrant church, was speaking and bringing Jesus to our holiday in a very subversive way which put all the powers and principalities on notice. He told us a story which started way back when Iran took Americans Hostage.
Young Milton and his young friends ministering to UW with him all met for a regular time of prayer as they reached out to this very Northern, very liberal, very large university with the Gospel of Jesus. And then came the day when at their prayer meeting, all anyone could talk about was the Iran hostages. And these ministers decided to pray about it.
But they, like me, felt that Iran was a whole world away. What more could they do for that situation than pray on it, but then get back to the ministry at hand – UW and all those pagans and bohemians and “different” people?
Then one of the brothers had an idea.
Are there any Iranian students attending UW?
Let’s get into the registry and find out.
And there was!
Two young ladies.
It dawned on Milton and the boys that if you were Iranian and trying to live in the USA at that time, you might find the culture downright hostile! So, they located these young women hold up in their apartment hiding from the outside world in fear of harassment or violence!
So, Milton and the boys began running interference for them. In the name of Jesus, Milton and his crew began grocery shopping for these Muslim women so they did not have to leave the apartment and be confronted by Americans angry at Iran. When the women did have to leave, for class or other things, Milton and the boys escorted them! They were never alone again during the whole ordeal.
What effect do you think Jesus had on those Muslim women???
Oh, yeah! Milton was bucking the patriotic, kneejerk reaction and bringing Christ to bear in the fragile lives of two Muslims right when it counted most!
One of them eventually asked for baptism.
The boys were so excited! They had a new notch in their belt. This was too good to be true. This is how you build a career in ministry!
But as she came up out of the water, one of the brothers suddenly had a deadly serious thought: What happens to her when she returns home???
She told them she would be killed, probably by a family member, probably the same day she arrived back to her home. She literally had just GIVEN HER LIFE TO CHRIST! This was no symbolic gesture!!!
And suddenly the boys had a new found depth of responsibility toward her.
Do you know how hard it is to get Asylum in the US?
Can you imagine how hard it WAS to get Asylum in the US for an Iranian in 1980???
The boys had their work cut out for them. But they managed to do it. And eventually the young woman even gained her citizenship here. She also went on to earn a Ph.D, and continued living in the US.
It so happened, the woman, who in 1999 was no longer the young lady Milton and his friends had won to Jesus, but now was a well established American Christian, was there for worship that Sunday, and Milton introduced her to us!
Yay!
And in doing so, Milton introduced Jesus to July 4th!
And the implications of that are still being felt, and perhaps NOW this story needs to be told again!
I sure hope you get some readers here! And some fresh comments. WE NEED to open our minds to SO MUCH MORE than that little, bity, god we have safely kept in our American boxes.
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That’s an awesome story. Thanks for sharing it. Very powerful. I love the idea of introducing Jesus to July 4th. I tire of the trite predictable patriotic stuff that one is “supposed” to do on Independence Day in church. It just feels so fake. That’s pretty much how I feel for most secular holidays though.
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Reblogged this on NONVIOLENT CHRISTIANS and commented:
This is an excellent post about the violence in Texas and other places. Also some excellent comments by readers.
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Reblogged this on War and Peace: 'Fighting the war to <strong>win the peace.'.
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