On Nonviolence

One of the things about converting into something that is not primary culture is that you have to kind of fumble your way through the intellectual tradition, sometimes thinking you’ve stumbled upon something unique and great that everyone else already knows, sometimes struggling very hard with something that has already been ‘answered’.  I have converted to Christianity, but my Christianity is not that of the culture around me.  The zeitgeist cannot answer my questions, in fact, the zeitgeist is the cause of most of my issues.  I have to enter the faith by pole vaulting the distortion of the Christian fundamentalism around me.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my youngest brother, we have the greatest conversations, and he’s an atheist and so we were talking about religion as we often do.  We were talking about my particular religious journey – converting to Christianity, which has perplexed him to no end I think.  I was talking about that while I respect the ethical pragmatism of Judaism and it is easier for me it didn’t challenge me like Christianity did (keep in mind, I’m never attempting to impugn Judaism – this was simply my experience).

The imposition to love one’s enemies is hard.  Amazingly hard.  But it creates a better social ethic than I think we can gain anywhere else… because I can have enemies, I can have opponents, and I can fight for what I believe in but I can never forget that I must love them, too.  I not only have to fight for those I believe are oppressed or subjugated, but I have to fight to save my enemies as well.

I was kind of surprised at myself for saying this, as I had just answered something that has been troubling me for a long time.  How do we fight?  How do we resist injustice?  How do we make positive changes in the world against people so radically opposed to it?

I’ve been brewing on that for the past couple of weeks since I said that.  Trying to understand its deeper implications.  And this isn’t going to surprise anyone who is probably reading this, but for me it really knocked me off my feet.

Then, a few days ago, quite by accident (it had been on my reading list for a while, but I just decided to pick it up) I began reading Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way. This short little book really opened my eyes to that concept – that we must save our enemies as well as ourselves.  We must attempt to transform our situation, but also transform those that oppress – both into something better.

In particular, he quoted a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr.

To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.’

I don’t think this clearer understanding makes things easy, but it does make things easier.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is how you save the world.