War, Good for, and What?

I found a towel on the bench. It was sweaty and place-marked at the top of bench where the head rests. This is a warning, the way Chicagoans reserve their parking spots with lawn chairs in the snow-banked winter, whoever was previously pressing here left their sweaty towel to say, "Hey, don't park your body here. I'm coming right back."

But, after five minutes in an ultra-busy fitness center, time's up. I kicked the towel to the floor, wiped up the moistness, and continued to take down the old weights to put up my significantly less-weighty weights. After I completed my 1,000 reps of grandma bench presses, I get up and a guy comes up to me and I nod that it's cool, I'm all done, just gotta clean up my glistening sweat. He says, to me, "Can you pick up that towel and put it over there? See, that towel is mine and it was right there and you moved it."

If you've ever seen Hi Fidelity or "Scrubs," you're familiar with the imaginary scenario moment right, where the guy dreams all these dreams of what should happen, but doesn't. A ninja-quick kick to his bald head, me yelling at him to pick up his own sweaty crap, me putting him in place about his lack of modesty, standards, hygiene, timeliness, and share-care.

But the truth is that not only did I do none of these things, I didn't even consider them. Before you could bat an eye, I said, "OK," sprayed and wiped the bench, picked up the towel as if it were a dirty, sweaty, foreign towel and dropped it in the dirty, sweaty, foreign towel bin on my way to take a much-needed shower. And I didn't even snap the towel on the creep. And I did it all reflexively because I'm generally a pretty nice guy. In person. (In the webz, maybe not so much...)

My niceness is tied to passivity. I generally try to avoid conflicts. And I know that this is not always the right thing to do. Sometimes there needs to be change, and sometimes there needs to be a conflict or a crisis to bring about the change. To seek what's best for humanity, indeed, to be Godly, means to sometimes bring things to a head. But it also means knowing that sometimes heading headfirst into conflict is irresponsible and dangerous.

When Weapons of Mass Destruction were supposedly hidden under Saddam's beard, I mistakenly believed (as did many Americans) that our options were:
1) Be afraid, be very afraid like those acquiescing surrender-monkeys in France.
OR
2) Ninja-strike force straight to the gonads.

Of course, it wasn't Saddam's gonads that suffered the most (although the Marie Antoinette treatment was a bit... nasty), but as of July 16, 2010 (one day before my sweet daughter's third birthday):

• Nearly 4,500 US soldiers have died
• Nearly 32,000 US soldiers have been officially reported as wounded (unofficially, 150,000 Iraq vets are receiving disability benefits from the VA back in the US)
• 338 journalists have died
• 437 academics have been killed
• Nearly 1500 contractors have been killed
• Fatal Iraqi casualties are estimated to be, however, to be at 1,366,350.
• This does not include basic structural tolls that knocking out an infrastructure would entail (running water, clean water, electricity, refrigeration, food, gas...)
  

Add up a trillion dollars and what do ya get? Was the cost worth it, in the long or short run?

Iraq, for me (at least now), is an easy target in a sense. Right now I'm beginning to question the veracity of any war. One could argue that the US's involvement in WWII was just and called for. But then was Hiroshima just? Fire-bombing millions upon millions of citizens in Japan and Europe? Better yet, could the whole war been avoided in the first place?

Not, mind you, neglected. Not ignored. Could there have a way to address the problems in Iraq, in Germany, in Afghanistan, in Japan before they escalated to all-out brazen attacks? A third way to address the problems rather than acquiescence (turning the other way while the problems continue or escalate) or the Bush Doctrine (striking at the 'nards before the 'nards strike back). There are viable alternatives to war.

There are several alternatives to war (some ideas taken from here and this here):

• International coalitions to put on international pressure
• Tribunals
• International Criminal Courts
• Arbitration and International Courts between the two states
• Weapons sanctions
• Allow the oppressed people to topple their own dictator through grassroots and nonviolent civil unrest
• NOT food embargoes (that only starves the innocent and turns the ill-will against those who are blocking the food)
• NOT restricting access to necessary, daily supplies (especially under the guise of weapon sanctions)

And from this article at Ode Magazine

1. Require the leaders who promote and support war to personally participate in the hostilities – like medieval kings had to. This would provide a critical threshold of personal commitment to war by requiring some actual personal sacrifice of leaders.

2. Show the faces and tell the stories of the children of the ‘enemy’ until we can feel the pain of their deaths as though they were the deaths of our own children. It is much more difficult to slaughter an enemy who one recognises as being part of the human family.

3. Give full support to the establishment of the International Criminal Court, so that national leaders can be tried for all war crimes at the end of any hostilities. All leaders who commit horrendous crimes must be held to account under international law as they were at Nuremberg, and they must be aware of this from the outset.

4. Impeach any elected leaders who support illegal, preventative war – described at the Nuremberg Trials as ‘aggressive’ war. It is the responsibility of the citizens in a democracy to exercise control over their leaders who threaten to commit crimes under international law, and impeachment provides an important tool to achieve this control.

5. Rise up as a people and demand that one’s government follows its constitution. Cut off funding for war and find a way to peace. For any challenge to the legitimacy of war is the most powerful force for change to be found in history.

You know the myth that when you hit a man hard in his privates, you could affect his children? It's very true in the international sense. Too true.

Guest Post II: Naked Poor People and Other Teachings of Jesus

In the hardly-ever visited comments section on this-here blog, I got a very generous invitation from Mason to adopt one of his posts on his wonderful website to use for the Blog-a-thon on Nonviolent Resistance. In this post, Mason covers area that was fundamental for my understanding of NVR, especially stuff that I talked about in regards to Walter Wink previously, but never went into as much depth as he does here. And for that I'm grateful. But the end of this piece serves as an important bridge for what I want to cover in a couple days, the macro of anti-violent concerns: war. Without further adieu:

I believe the New Testament and the early Church teach a ethic of nonviolence. Not less violence, not 'just' violence, but nonviolence.

At the same time I want to make clear that I in no way think the Scriptural witness is that we ought to be passive, to be doormats. Quite the opposite, I think that starting with the teachings of Jesus we see a call to a radical, proactive, imaginative, intentional use of nonviolence to oppose the powers of this world. So pacifism (a term which I won't use often) is not what I'm getting at, much less passiveism, I think the Bible teaches us a way forward that is neither of those, but is also not violent or militant.
[I'm not claiming to have this all figured out, but I'm going to try and work through the issues as best I can.]....

Jesus lived in a place and time with an exceptional amount of violence (though the same land in the present day might give it a good run for it's money). After years of being conquered by competing empires, Israel was now in the hands of Rome, one of the most brutal and efficient empires in history. Rome claimed to bring peace and security (as all good empires claim), but in the words of the Roman writer Tacitus “they create a wasteland, and call it peace”.
To make the situation worse, people in Second Temple Israel also faced the violence of rebel zealot groups, messianic uprisings, and the sometimes violent but always present oppression of the poor (most people) by the wealthy elite.

It is to people in this sort of world that Jesus makes his call to “turn the other cheek”, “go the extra mile”, and “love your enemy”. Surely there is more material on this in the accounts of Jesus alone to fill any future posts, but I want to just touch on a couple of the most striking examples of his radical teaching primarily as seen in the Sermon on the Mount.

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” Matthew 5:38-44

There is much here and I think even if this is all we had the teaching is clear, we just tend to explain it away or try to marginalize it with other passages.
But first I want to deal with an objection often made to the application of this to our lives, that it simply is not practical. Jesus says “do not resist the one who is evil”, is that not far too much to ask? Are we really supposed to just sit back and let people perpetrate injustice against us, to harm us, to harm our loved ones? Combine that with 'turn the other cheek' and it sounds like a recipe for passive doormat living which solves nothing and maybe even smacks of cowardice.

That however is not what is being said here. To begin with, the word “resist” is ἀντιστῆναι , which actually combines “anti- against” with “histemi- armed revolt/rebellion”, so 'go against in armed rebellion'. In the Septuagint ἀντιστῆναι is used 44 times for military encounters, specifically the moment that armies collide in battle.1 So a better translation would be “do not retaliate with violence against the one who is evil”, much different than “Do not resist” I think.

With this in mind let us look at the examples Jesus gives here. The backhand slapping of the cheek is something one does to an inferior, and in that culture you only hit with your right hand (for sanitation reasons), so if you 'turn the other cheek' you are doing two things. First, you are declaring that the person abusing you has not forced you into submission. Second you are putting him in a position where if he wants to strike your left cheek with his right hand, he pretty much has to hit you, which declares (culturally) that you are an equal. Both methods have the effect of standing against and shaming the one who is hitting, while not endorsing the violence of striking back.

The second scenario is brilliant. In the court system of the day, you could use clothing as collateral, and if you failed to pay your debts it could be repossessed. Quite obviously the person who must use their clothes as collateral though is very very poor. The one who takes them to court then is taking from them the only thing they own, with one exception, the undergarment.
Jesus says to give your undergarment to the person dragging you into court as well.
Logically then, the poor person has nothing, at all, not even clothes. So he is then standing naked in front of his oppressor (for in those days, as it often is now, poverty and debt was linked inextricably to political oppression and marginalization).
The twist here is that although nakedness was shameful in Judaism, it was shameful to the one who caused it. So the poor naked man, who is going to draw a lot of attention, will now be sharing the story of who caused his nakedness, bringing shame to the one taking the last of his possessions.
Again, we see a creative, but nonviolent resistance to evil and misused power, which exposes it for what it really is for all to see.

Third we see someone forced against their will to carry the heavy pack of a Roman soldier for a mile, doubly offensive since the Romans were the occupiers. Rather advising one to slide a knife in their back (a popular practice around this time) Jesus says to go a second mile.
Why?
Again, this changes the dynamic of the situation, and exposes the injustice being done. It was not legal for the Roman to make you carry the pack more than a mile, so to avoid punishment and public outcry (which was always boiling just below the surface) the soldier would be forced to ask and plead for his pack back, and perhaps along the way recognize that the other here is a person as well and not a pack animal.

All these show us three things.
Jesus was opposed to violence even in situations of oppression, abuse, or gross injustice.
Jesus was, at the same time, opposed to passivity, promoting instead a creative third way which changes the situation and shames evil actions.
Finally these are not “timeless” proposals. The way they are grounded in specific cultural situations means we can not just parrot these responses but must imaginatively find ways of following the principles taught here in our own context.


More important than all that though is the last part of the section. People will make their arguments for violence and war, but these arguments always assume that war is a valid response (which Jesus does not seem to agree with) and that the opponent is the “bad guys” who will only respond to violence.

Jesus undoes all that with the command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

I've heard many people attempt to get around that, but have yet to hear a single real explanation of how shooting, or stabbing, or bombing, or nuking, or waterboarding, or clubbing, or beating our enemies could possibly be an expression of love. And if they are not, then we should not be doing those things, no matter the cost, because that is what Jesus says we must live like, and he doesn't give an exception clause for “if they're really really bad”. Rome, the “enemy” if you were Jewish at that time, was incredibly ruthless on a great many occasions, Jesus himself had been alive during some of the most brutal repression and killing of uprisings in Galilee, and so Jesus knew exactly what he was saying when he said to love even and especially those people.

1 Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence. Pg. 11

Wrestling with Nonviolence. A guest post

Today's guest blogger and inaugural post in The Great Nonviolence Blog-a-thon '010 is Facebook friend and all-around good guy Kurt Willems. I chose to start out with this essay (found here in his blog Groans from Within) because I think it serves well as both an introduction to the topic and as a sort-of parallel to my emergence with nonviolent resistance.

Dear Reader,

There is an area of theology that I have wrestled with in new ways for the past four years or so: war and peace. I have a friend who pushed back on areas of nationalism and just-war theory for quite some time, and it seems that we have found consensus in the last year and a half or so... Through much reading, reflection, and prayer; I now hold to the view of nonviolence.

Nonviolence is a word that has more benefits than using the term pacifism. Pacifism often communicates inaction or helplessness. A useful observation that was made by my professor recently was differentiating between the language of – nonresistance, pacifism, and nonviolence. Pacifism’s weakness is that it seems to relate to withdrawal from conflict. The other terms (“non_____”) are also a bit frustrating because they define themselves around what they are not, rather than what they are. The difference here (which is a key difference for me) is that nonresistance is just as much of a “withdrawal” word as pacifism. Traditionally, the Mennonites (my tradition) have preferred this term, but I am not sure that I am fully against “resisting” someone if justice is threatened; I am however against doing violence to them. Now this is where the dialogue gets a bit interesting for me because this logic begs a question: what qualifies as violence?

The above question can surely become one that is relativistic because it depends on how one perceives violence. Some would be against violence to the point that football is too aggressive of a sport (this doesn’t work for this former team captain ). Others would say that killing is the line that must be drawn, but everything up to that point for the protection of the innocent is justifiable. I am not comfortable with either of these extremes on this spectrum... As I continue to wrestle with this tension in light of Scripture, I have found that it is helpful to think of violence as anything that dehumanizes the ‘other.’ Using some forms of restraint to hold back a person who is violent does not have to be dehumanizing. Force and restraint, when done for justice without the use of actual dehumanizing techniques seem to be consistent with the Sermon on the Mount’s nonviolent witness. This is very much a circumstantial approach, but always within the parameters of avoiding anything that would treat a person as less than a human created in God’s image. But, this also leaves the passage in Matthew 5.39 as seemingly “resisted” as it says, “do not resist an evildoer.” This would be problematic if we did not look at the context a bit closer. Jesus follows this saying by adding that someone who is slapped on the right cheek is to show them the left cheek as well. As Walter Wink and others have demonstrated, this was an act of subversive resistance. Not through violence, but through demanding to be treated as a human equal. The first backhand slap to the face on the right side would be the way a master would hit a slave (superior to inferior), and Jesus says to turn the other cheek in a way that makes the attacker have to choose to punch you with a closed fist as a man would strike another of equal status. This is a new kind of resistance, not with the fist or sword, but with creativity that causes your attacker to consider his actions once more. For this reason, I am more comfortable with placing myself on the nonviolent part of the larger spectrum of war and peace from a Christian perspective. I believe in resistance without violence.

It should also be noted that Mark Baker’s insight in his article about his own journey towards embracing pacifism (his language) also allows for there to be the restraint of evil through violence, but that this is to come from the state. Taking the lead from Ellul, he separates the role of the governments to carry out justice through the sword from the role of the church in the midst of conflict. The church must not expect the state to operate as though it were ‘Christian.’ To impose such makes this position illogical in light of the broken relationships the world has at the present. All this is the say that the church is invited to resist violence in all its forms, while recognizing that in a fallen world, God allows for a “plan b” (nations) in order to restrain this planet from becoming completely chaotic. Mark’s perspective raises important questions about the level to which a Christian ought to be involved in military/police force. Perhaps at times it may be appropriate to live in the “gray” on this question rather than create solid black-white boundaries of a bounded-set ethic (although my personal conviction is against all military service, but not necessarily police).

Finally, I was really helped by Richard Hays’ chapter on violence in The Moral Vision of the New Testament. I do not think that there is a single moment in which I found myself disagreeing with him (except his choice word of pacifism, which is mostly semantics). His exposition was insightful and clarifying for me. The section that helped me the most was the one that dealt with the questions of the Roman soldiers in the New Testament. Just-war folks always bring up: when soldiers became Jesus followers, they were not told to quit their job. Hays took this on in a section of his chapter and made the following observation: “…precisely as Roman soldiers, they serve to dramatize the power of the Word of God to reach even the unlikeliest people” (335). God reaches to unlikely places and peoples to reveal his grace, which serves to illuminate that military participation is similar to tax collectors and other sinners. It would be an argument from silence to claim that the rest of the NT texts about peacemaking are revitalized because soldiers are not specifically told (in the text) to quit their jobs. I think, as faithful readers and ethicists of the NT, we must listen to where Scripture speaks and not give a louder voice to the silence.

Kurt Willems is a pastor in the Mennonite Brethren movement and is currently working towards a Master of Divinity degree at Fresno Pacific University. He is considers himself an: Anabaptist, lower-case evangelical, fairly charismatic, sometimes contemplative, follower of Jesus. Kurt’s passions include theology, spirituality, social justice, creation care, ethics, ministry, and leaving behind the right answers. He blogs at: Groans From Within and is also on Twitter and Facebook .